By Reason of Insanity

by Shane Stevens

  By early evening, details of the sensational find had been rounded out and TV news shows ran special reports that showed the house and apartment and third-floor storeroom where the grisly discovery was made. Also shown was the drawing of Thomas Bishop secured from California by Newstime journalist Adam Kenton before the actual location of the murder site. The public was asked to note the face and to be on the lookout for such a man. A special police phone number would be operating round the clock.

  The news ended with a brief on-the-spot interview with Deputy Inspector Alex Dimitri, who headed up the special task force assigned the job of catching the killer. In reply to a question Dimitri said Chess Man’s capture was imminent, now that his identity was known, and implied that the police already were following leads.

  In the early-bird edition of the Daily News, on the streets by 8 P.M. that Friday evening, the drawing of Bishop’s face was on the front page. Next to it was the same face with a full beard, a composite sketched by a police artist and based on the remembered observations of the Greene Street building’s owner, an official of a downtown bank and a local shopkeeper. The eyes still gleamed in open friendliness but the face somehow seemed a bit less boyish, a trifle less innocent. The story, on page 3, recounted the finding of the bodies in what the paper chose to call a “house of horror” and went on to tell of the police investigation that had culminated in the near-apprehension of the “Greene Street ghoul.”

  Adam Kenton’s parallel investigation was also mentioned in the body of the story, though few details were given. It was noted, however, that the Newstime reporter had actually located Chess Man’s residence while police were still searching, and had then called them. Either the private detectives had been talking or the magazine’s publicity machinery was grinding into action. Or both.

  The New York Times had the most comprehensive coverage of course, including an interview with Kenton in which he told of his assignment to do a cover story on Chess Man. During his inquiry he had come to the conclusion that the homicidal madman was not Vincent Mungo at all but rather Thomas Bishop, whom Mungo was supposed to have killed on the night of his escape from a California institution for the criminally insane. The opposite actually had occurred, and Thomas Bishop had then begun his crosscountry reign of terror, arriving in New York on October 15.

  Toward the end of the interview Kenton was quoted as saying he would have to conclude that Chess Man was an absolutely brilliant strategist, a consummate chess player who seldom made a mistake. He was also incurably, hopelessly homicidal.

  Unlike the police, the journalist did not seem quickly confident that capture was imminent, or even inevitable.

  IT WAS two o’clock that afternoon when Kenton, who had finally left Greene Street to Dimitri’s men in baggy suits and blue serge, was called upstairs to James Mackenzie’s office. News of the discovery was already public knowledge and he was greeted warmly by Mrs. Marsh. Another moment and he was shaking hands with the chairman of Newstime Inc.

  Mackenzie looked pleased. The strain of the past weeks seemed to have been lifted from his shoulders, and a certain spirit was again evident in his voice. He indicated a nearby chair as he took his own seat behind the cluttered desk. Plants framed the windows at his back and hung suspended by invisible wire from the ceiling.

  “We did it,” he said expansively, the exuberance gushing out of him. “We flushed the fox out of his lair. He’s on the run now, and the police can take over from here. Meanwhile we get the credit—part of it anyway—and the publicity. And we don’t have to worry about Washington accusing us of manipulating the news.”

  He reached for a gold-fluted box on the desk, opened it and offered a cigar to Kenton, who declined with a shake of the head.

  “Of course, we didn’t get everything we went after. We don’t have Chess Man and the story of the year. We don’t even have an exclusive on what happened this morning, except for your account, naturally. On the other hand,” said Mackenzie, leaning back in his green brocade chair, “we don’t have the threat of political or even criminal charges.” He smiled. “In a trade-off, I’d say we came out a good bit ahead. What about you?”

  “It’s not that simple,” said Kenton after a pause. “Everything we wanted is still out there.”

  The chairman suddenly looked pained. “I don’t think I understand.”

  “Chess Man, Thomas Bishop, is a homicidal killer to the ultimate degree. He won’t stop until he is himself killed. He’s a robot, an engine of destruction that cannot stop on its own. He’s also a genius in some ways, easily the most clever criminal mind America has produced. With our resources, with what I know of him, we still stand the best chance of finding him. He is unique in our time, and I think it’s worth any risk. Any risk at all.

  “Think of what it would mean if we could pull it off. Newstime captures the American Jack the Ripper. Newstime captures the most sensational murderer in modern American history. We would be in all the reference books, we’d be talked about a hundred years from now. More important, our circulation would go up like a rocket. We’d sell more copies of those issues with the story than anybody’s ever sold before.” He took a breath. “All we have to do is find him.”

  “And the police?” asked Mackenzie.

  “I don’t think they’ll get him. He’s too smart, too resourceful. He plans ahead, he doesn’t panic. And he doesn’t make mistakes. Or hardly any. I got to him because I started thinking like him. The police got there this morning only because he made a mistake with his answering service. But he won’t do that again. So all they’ll have to work on is luck, which is just a fancy word for coincidence. And I don’t believe in coincidence, not that much anyway.

  “But I can think like him. He’s a television manqué. He’s been locked up since he was ten and most of what he knows comes from the tube. It’s all flat emotion and extreme behavior and evasive action, but for some strange reason I can think like that myself. A month ago I came to New York, the same as Chess Man. Like him, I had to start from scratch. Learn the terrain. Set the rules. When I determined he wasn’t Mungo, when I discovered he was Bishop, it all began to fall into place. I became Bishop. In my mind I moved through the city as he did. I figured out what he would do and how he would do it, where he would go and whom he would see. Finally it led me to where he lived. I didn’t miss him by much and I still don’t know how he learned there was danger. But I did it once and I can do it again.”

  Mackenzie turned to the window, his eyes seeming to stare for a long moment at the surrounding plants. He longed to be at his weekend home in Stirling Forest, where he could walk the fields far away from the city’s endless decisions. He glanced at his watch. In a few hours he would be in the limousine on his way.

  “As you say,” he began finally, “it would be worth a great deal to the magazine, to the whole company. I think you’re quite right about him. He’s unique and will be remembered when the other homicidal minds of our century are long forgotten. Much as Jack the Ripper is remembered today beyond all others.

  “But I must concern myself at the moment with the practicality of such a venture. Granted you could find him—and you will admit, Kenton, you will admit that is granting a lot—what about the police reaction? Won’t they be watching you closely from now on? We were lucky this time, with that inspector taking a broad view of things. What about the next time? We may not be so lucky. And what about the whole Washington aspect? Theyll be back on us, especially after the Nixon editorial.”

  Kenton leaned forward in his seat, his hand spread on the desk. His voice was one of appeal.

  “The police won’t bother us because I’ll let them know everything I do, now that I got the ear of the top men. If I get to him first they’ll give me a crack at his story. I won’t hold him, he’s much too dangerous even as a prisoner. So we’ll have no trouble with them.”

  “And Washington?” insisted the chairman. “They would love to point to an operation like ours to show they were right a
ll along. What would stop them?”

  “They won’t know anything about it. If the police don’t charge us with anything, Washington can’t very well accuse us of manipulating the news. All we’re doing is running a parallel investigation, which is legitimate. Only we’ll try to come in a little ahead of the cops. If it ends in a tie we’ll still get all the glory. We can’t really lose.”

  Mackenzie was not so sure. He had hoped to end the matter while they were still ahead. Yet to walk away now was to leave the challenge unanswered, and he had always been a fighter. Then, too, there was damn little opportunity nowadays to take chances. Real chances, not just paper-money gambles. And his newsman instinct told him Kenton was a man worth gambling on.

  The chairman of Newstime fixed his steel-gray eyes on his reporter. “Do it,” he said with finality. “But make it good.”

  JOHN SPANNER heard about it that afternoon. He sat in his office a few minutes, dazed. He hadn’t expected it, not really, though God knows he had certainly hoped for it long enough. Now here it was at last. His feel for the subtleties of human behavior was as good as ever. And as needed as ever too.

  He suddenly felt important again. It didn’t matter that the New York reporter hadn’t given him any credit; that would come in the magazine story. Those fellows were basically honest and he would be given his due, he was sure of it. From now on he would be a local hero. More important, he would have the respect and attention of his men when he talked to them about the value of the imagination in police work and the gradual piecing together of clues to form a deduction.

  Thinking about it, Spanner decided he might not retire after all.

  IN FOREST CITY, Sheriff James Oates swore softly, though not particularly in bad humor. Earl had just brought him the news that the Willows maniac had been identified in New York as Thomas Bishop and not Vincent Mungo. Which meant John Spanner had been right all along. Damn him and his feelings and his crazy ways! There had to be some Mexican blood in him somewhere, there just had to be.

  Oates put down a file he had been reading. At least that explained why Mungo had never been caught. He was dead. And no one was looking for Bishop, so he passed right through. Simple. It answered all the questions. Except nine or ten. Like how could a mental nut whose records said average intelligence and no imagination pull off the slickest crimes of the year, of any year? And then just go on killing, with nobody getting near him? He had fooled everybody, the son of a bitch had fooled everybody!

  Except John Spanner.

  The sheriff picked up the phone and called Hillside.

  AMOS FINCH took the long way home from his final class, spending an hour in bed with a young lady who was far from ill. At his own door again, he was greeted by the ringing of the phone in his study. It was Lieutenant Spanner with the good news.

  Had Finch heard?

  He had not.

  Afterward they spent some moments congratulating each other. Then, in a more serious vein, they agreed to offer whatever help they could to Adam Kenton in New York if he continued his search for Bishop.

  As he replaced the instrument Amos Finch resolved to begin the preliminary work on his magnum opus, his life’s work. The Complete Thomas Bishop. It had a certain ring to it, and decidedly better than The Complete Vincent Mungo. Finch could not know at that moment, of course, that the title would have to undergo further changes.

  He would start immediately. And none too soon, for he suddenly had the strongest belief that his California Creeper, the only absolutely authentic contemporary genius in his line of work, would not last much longer.

  AT 6:30 that evening Kenton was interviewed on TV. He told of his search for Chess Man and of his discoveries, or at least as much of the truth as he could tell, just as he had done earlier to The New York Times.

  He was careful to point out that his discovery of Chess Man’s real identity had come out of the normal research done on such assignments. When it was suggested that he had done in one month what the police of the country couldn’t seem to do in four months, Kenton smiled modestly and praised the vast Newstime resources.

  After a suitable pause he went on to note that the New York police had been seriously involved only that one month, and they had cracked the Jay Cooper disguise about the same time he had. Which wasn’t at all the same as unmasking the madman as Thomas Bishop, of course, but Kenton didn’t mention that.

  IN HIS Idaho home Carl Hansun had changed channels till he got his favorite news show, then sat down to watch. He wasn’t particularly interested in the sensational revelations about the California homicidal maniac, nor did he pay much attention as Adam Kenton’s image flashed on the screen. Senator Stoner was well on his way to power, so the whole Vincent Mungo thing no longer bothered the Boise businessman. He was waiting to hear of more local news, or at least local western news.

  He grimaced in remembrance. Twenty years ago they were good men, Don and Johnny. Dependable and ready to do the job right. Straight shooters all the way. He shook his head sadly. Funny what the years could do to a man, how they could change him into somebody else. Someone even friends wouldn’t recognize anymore.

  That was what happened to Solis and Messick. They had changed, turned into greedy scavengers who knew no loyalty. Animals, no good to anybody.

  Carl Hansun shrugged wearily. He wouldn’t miss them, not at all. Those years were gone forever.

  HENRY BAYLOR heard about Thomas Bishop in his rather cramped institutional office near the Oregon border. Thomas Bishop had killed Vincent Mungo and taken his place. In doing so he had destroyed reputations as well as lives. There would be many more questions now, more probes and scandal. Everything would be reopened, gone over again, this time more thoroughly. It was not a pleasant prospect, not at all.

  In his favorite easy chair at home, Henry Baylor sat and thought about things for a long time. Bad enough he had to take the humiliation of being removed and demoted. But he was about to be cast in the spotlight again as the man who let the fiend escape, this time a fiend who had been in his custody for years and who had fooled him completely.

  It was, he finally decided, the last straw.

  THE FATHER of Mary Wells Little had seen the face on television the previous evening, on the news. It belonged to someone named Thomas Bishop. He and not Vincent Mungo had killed all those women, one of whom was Mary Wells Little.

  Her father continued to stare into his private vision of hell at this early morning hour. He would not be cheated out of his revenge. No! He still wanted his daughter’s killer. Only the name had been changed, and the face he was paying to destroy.

  But he would not be cheated.

  THE MEETING started at 8:30 Saturday morning in police headquarters. In command was Deputy Chief Lloyd Geary, at his side was Alex Dimitri. They faced almost a hundred police officers from captain to sergeant. Most were detectives of various grades. Less than half were from Homicide. The rest came from Robbery and Rape and Vice and Narcotics. Even Juvenile and Administration, The Department was throwing everything it could into the search.

  Geary began with a brief background of Thomas Bishop, running through the killing of his mother and his years at Willows State Hospital in California. There he grew up on television and learned a lot about the world outside, much of it the wrong kind of thing. He was immensely clever and resourceful. As a boy he had apparently been mistreated by his mother to the point where his mind eventually snapped. Now he was either killing women out of revenge or he was locked into his childhood and killing his mother over and over. Either way it seemed he would not, could not stop by himself. He must be stopped by others. The police. Them.

  The pictures were ready. A drawing of Bishop, clean-shaven, and the bearded photo from Daniel Long’s California driver’s license application. More would be run off during the day. By nightfall all precincts in the city would have enough pictures for local distribution.

  Geary closed his remarks with the observation that the Police Commissioner expected a
quick end to the reign of terror. Everybody was feeling the heat and nobody liked it. That very morning his own wife had told him to be sure and get the son of a bitch. In thirty-one years of married life, Geary hastily explained, he had never heard his wife use that language.

  Alex Dimitri took over and rapidly went through procedures and assignments. Afterward he noted that Bishop had withdrawn $8,000 from the bank, enough money to move around. At least that much, maybe more. Which was a piece of bad luck. On the other hand, it might make him leave the city or even the state. He might already be gone. He had told the bank official he was returning to Chicago. But unless such a move was definitely established, the search would continue.

  If Bishop remained in the city without identification he would soon be caught. The inspector was certain of that. But if he already had another identity he was now using—.

  Dimitri let the thought hang.

  The meeting finally ended at 9:40, after specific assignments had been given out.

  The hunt was on.

  IN HIS lair across the river the fox lay on the bed, his eyes vacant, his mind blank. Opposite him, a flower print broke the bareness of the white wall. On an end table next to the bed a plastic-covered shade dulled the glare of the lamp. Two wood-backed chairs rested in the far corner, and near the window the polished dresser mirror cleverly gave the small room added dimension.

  Bishop noted none of this. His eyes opened and shut automatically but nothing registered. Nor did anything disturb his dormant brain. In truth Bishop was in a trance of his own making, a self-induced semihypnotic state that served to bring all his functional parts back to normal. It was a survival trick he had learned slowly and painfully many years earlier at Willows. Oftentimes when he was confused or frightened or helplessly angry, he would put himself in a kind of stupor where outside stimuli were blocked along with all mental processes. Time briefly stopped for him as his body and mind sought a new equilibrium. Eventually balance would be restored and everything returned to normalcy. In his institutional life it had saved him many times from rash acts that would have brought quick and painful punishment.