This latest trance was triggered by the news of the past twentyfour hours. When he had first heard about it on Friday afternoon he refused to believe such a thing. They simply couldn’t have discovered his real identity. Impossible! He was too smart for any of them. Yet there it was, on the TV, in the newspaper. His own name. With a drawing that certainly resembled him. Then by nightfall the license photo from California.
Because of his error he had expected them to get to Jay Cooper and then to the house. Which meant they would also secure a description of him from the landlord. But he assumed they would think him Vincent Mungo. They would show a picture of Mungo to the landlord, and because of the full beard worn by his new tenant and the certainty of the police he would say yes.
Just to be on the safe side, on Thursday evening in his YMCA room Bishop had dyed his hair dark and cut it short, then shaved off much of his beard until only a trim goatee remained. With the heavy hornrimmed glasses, he looked different enough to cause no suspicion. Now, with a general likeness of his own face everywhere, it was doubly important that he appear as different from it as possible.
What had confused him, what frightened and angered him was their discovery that he was not Vincent Mungo. That was not supposed to happen. He had planned everything so carefully. Vincent Mungo was free, Thomas Bishop was dead. Yet they had found him out. He was no longer invisible. He was Thomas Bishop, son of Caryl Chessman. Everyone knew about him, The only safety he now had was his new identity as Thomas Brewster.
On the Friday late news he learned how he had been discovered. Too shaken to go out for a late paper, already having read the brief story in the afternoon Post a dozen times, he relied on the television, his lifelong mentor, to give him whatever knowledge he needed. Huddled in bed, he watched a magazine reporter named Kenton tell of the month-long search for the elusive killer and the series of events that had finally led to Greene Street. He had earlier heard a police inspector say that capture was imminent and they were already following up leads.
Now, as Bishop slowly came out of his hypnotic state on this sunny Saturday morning, his body and mind restored from the stormy emotions that had swept over them, his nerves soothed, he began to evaluate his position and to plan his moves, not as a fox in jeopardy but as the hunter in control again.
He was relatively safe in his new quarters for the moment. The day clerk had paid little attention to him and he had no dealings with anyone else. His money was equally safe, temporarily. But he would soon have to change his residence of course. New York police were checking all hotels, probably even recent apartment rentals. When nothing turned up, somebody might get the idea of asking surrounding towns for help. Even so, they would be looking for those who had registered this past week so he was presumably safe again.
Still, he couldn’t afford another mistake. The best plan would be to remain in the Y for about a week and then move to a New York hotel, after the police had finished checking them all. Some of his money would be used up that way but at least it would get him back into the city, where he could continue his work. Nothing could be done in his present town since they would immediately go after the hotels.
There was one other alternative. He could move on, now, this very day. Leave the New York area completely. Go to another city with his money and his knife. He was supposed to keep moving anyway, that was the plan. To be here and then gone, like the wind itself. Unseen, known only by its effects, by what it left behind.
Except there was nowhere left to go. He had come three thousand miles across a hostile continent to New York, to Mecca, where there were more people, more females, than anywhere else. A cramped, spaceless city where anonymity was virtually assured. He could’ve been safe forever if he hadn’t made a dumb error. Bars with women on every block, and around every corner another town. New York was heaven for him, a city of ghouls and demons, and he longed to send them all straight to hell.
Where else would he be in such demand for his specialized skill?
Bishop thought of the places he had been, the things he had seen. None of them compared to New York for what he needed. And the other big towns on the East Coast were obviously just cut-down versionsof New York. Only Miami sounded interesting, perhaps because he had once been David Rogers of Florida. He thought he might like to go there someday to see about the women.
The TV was on as always, and when a special news report interrupted the regular programming Bishop turned his eyes and ears to it while his mind held onto a thought.
THE POLICE Commissioner looked out over the cameras. He didn’t particularly like a live broadcast at eleven o’clock on a Saturday morning.In point of fact, he didn’t particularly like the idea of a news conference at all, especially in such a sensitive matter. But the mayor and city officials had felt it would help allay public fears concerning Chess Man.
A family man himself, the commissioner well understood the emotion and how debilitating it could become. He wished he could somehow dissipate the fear and ease the pain. But only Chess Man’s death or capture would do that, and he was unfortunately not in a position to announce either one.
What he could do, however, was bluff a good game and tell New Yorkers that his police had strong leads. Which was not entirely false. They knew, for example, that Thomas Bishop had at least $8,000 on him. If he had no new identification and couldn’t put the money in another bank, maybe he would be dumb enough to show it around, and somebody would spot it for the police. Or he could be mugged for it. Maybe even killed. They also knew he might be on his way back to Chicago and out of their immediate responsibility. And of course they finally had his prints as a sure means of identification. In fact, they knew everything about him except where he was.
The Police Commissioner smiled warmly and began the press conference in his most confident manner… .
AS HE listened on the TV to the head of the New York police say there was no place he could hide, Bishop decided on his next move. He would go to Miami for a week and then return to New York where he would live in a hotel. Miami would be better than staying in his room, since the day clerk might become suspicious if he passed by too many times. They had his new name and he had to protect that identity at any cost. Once gone, there would be no need to think of him or even remember him. He would just leave the Y quietly, unnoticed, throwing the room key down a sewer.
An hour later Bishop was on his way to Newark Airport. He was wearing his one set of clothes, his only worldly possessions again. The television set had been left behind. In his pocket were a thousand dollars he had kept out of the bank. He felt a sudden sense of excitement in once again being on the move, and he wondered if his original mistake had been in settling down at all. As much as he had liked the loft, as much as he wanted a place of his own in which to live safe and secure, perhaps he was destined, doomed, to travel endlessly on his eternal quest. Maybe after all the years he was now fit only for that kind of existence. The thought depressed him almost beyond endurance.
At the airport he bought a one-way ticket to Miami under a fake name. Sometime during the afternoon he was lifted into a shimmering sky by a silver bird that flew southward. Bishop soon found himself relaxed and smiling on his maiden voyage. His only worry was that the silver bird might fly too near the sun.
BY SATURDAY evening Adam Kenton was already well into the story he was writing on the unveiling of Thomas Bishop. He had just three days to deadline. Mackenzie wanted it in the next issue of course, as did everyone. With John Perrone’s blessing he had shelved his article on Senator Stoner, but only for a bit. He intended to have that ready for the following week. To Kenton it represented a one-two punch that would be the high point of his career thus far. The downfall of two invidious men of power. It would rank second only to the Watergate investigative series by Woodward and Bernstein.
Power, as Kenton knew so well, came through fear as much as from publicity. Bishop, or Chess Man, held the power of life and death. In killing indiscriminately he had demonstr
ated a willingness to use that power to its fullest, Hence the fear, which only increased his hold over others. This was the same principle used in political power, with its built-in system of rewards and punishment. What Kenton railed against was not the existence of that power but its misuse. For him that was Chess Man’s ultimate crime. And Stoner’s. And that of any leader who flouted the law, or ordered the destruction of a city or the extermination of a people.
Misuse of power. Kenton was always fearful that he would himself be guilty of that if given the chance. And so he ran from any real personal power, and perhaps all responsibility as well. Alone and powerless, he fought the demons in himself by constantly exposing the demons in others, for in truth he saw only a difference in degree between himself and a Stoner or a Nixon. Or even a Chess Man,
Concerning Chess Man, he was pleased about solving the mystery of identification. Certainly John Spanner had helped, and also Amos Finch. But even so, that was only half the problem. Where was the man now? When would he strike again? Kenton believed he had made a bad mistake by not finding his prey in time. Now he had no leads, nothing to go on except his knowledge of the man, his feelings and instinct. He would have to start all over again.
Something within warned him that he was running out of time.
Twenty-two
“ADAM?”
The glare from the silent television screen reached out to Doris sitting up in bed, her legs jackknifed under her chin, her eyes looking down at the long darkened form lying next to her.
She kicked her legs out and lay down beside him. “You’re going to find Bishop, aren’t you?”
“If I can,” he whispered. “I practically had him and I let him go. If I had followed my original thought I would’ve got to him in time. I should’ve got to him in time. It was my fault.”
“Why’s he killing like that? I mean, what he does to them.”
“He’s crazy.”
“But only to women.” She shivered. “How could anyone hate that much?”
“Maybe he thinks he’s God.”
“God doesn’t hate.”
Kenton deftly rolled his body onto hers, his arm circling her waist. “How could he?” A low growl. “He made you, didn’t he?”
Much later he told Doris he would probably kill Bishop if he could. If he ever got anywhere near him again.
“Is there a chance?” she asked hopefully, her hand on his chest.
“There’s always a chance,” he answered unconvincingly, his hand resting on the fiat of her stomach. He couldn’t help thinking what Bishop would do to her body, those breasts, that abdomen. He shuddered. But was Bishop really so very different? He himself had often thought of killing women, especially in his more youthful years. Of torturing them and making them suffer. But that was just fantasy. Just typical male fantasizing.
Wasn’t it?
THAT WAS Monday night and Kenton had just finished the article on his search for the notorious mass murderer. He had begun in California four months earlier with a story on capital punishment and Caryl Chessman, just about the time that Thomas Bishop had escaped from a state mental institution housing the criminally insane. The journey then took both of them across the country over the next months, finally ending in a run-down building on Greene Street in New York City. Only it wasn’t really the end at all. Bishop, Chess Man, had escaped again.
The article would be the lead feature in the next issue, though not the cover story. Chess Man had already been given a cover in the person of Vincent Mungo and reader reaction had been critical, many accusing the magazine of sensationalizing the affair and thereby indirectly condoning his crimes. This criticism of giving undue publicity to a murderer was also repeatedly leveled at network television of course, as had been done the previous year in the coverage of the Charles Manson killings; but once again all such remonstrance seemed to fall on unconcerned ears. The public, as one disgusted critic put it, apparently had the right to know—and know—and know,
None of which bothered Adam Kenton. He had done his job, or at least part of it. Thomas Bishop was the chessman, the madman, the fox. Finally falling asleep that night, Kenton felt he was halfway home.
The next morning he awoke to the news that the celebrated killer of two dozen women had confessed. In the early Tuesday hours of November 20 he had walked into the 24th Precinct on Manhattan’s Upper West Side and calmly confessed to the murders. He had killed them all. Los Angeles, Phoenix, El Paso, San Antonio, Houston, New Orleans, Memphis, St. Louis, Chicago, New York. And other places he couldn’t remember. Many of them, so many he had lost track. He was a killer. He killed women. A lot of women. He couldn’t help it. He was twenty-six years old and he couldn’t stop himself. His name was Carl Pandel, Jr.
By 8:30 Kenton was talking to Inspector Dimitri. Pandel was not their man. The poor bastard’s wife had committed suicide and he spent half a year in a nuthouse. He had even met and become friendly with Vincent Mungo while there. And he had left his own home in July to come to New York, at just about the time Bishop was escaping from Willows with New York as his destination too. But Carl Pandel was not their man. He didn’t kill anyone, certainly not the women.
Kenton quickly again ran through the investigation he had conducted on Pandel, which had cleared him of at least one of the New York murders. And if he didn’t kill them all, he didn’t kill any. Dimitri reluctantly agreed. The young man had been in an excited state when he confessed. He claimed he needed to be punished—which usually meant psychiatric help was needed rather than punishment. Yet he knew enough about Chess Man’s movements to be taken seriously, at first anyway. Nor could any confession be disregarded at the moment, no matter how improbable.
Dimitri sighed wearily. Pandel’s confession was only the first; more were expected. It went with the job. But for a while there, his had looked especially promising to the inspector’s men.
And Pandel now?
“In Bellevue for observation. They should have word on him by the end of the day. Maybe he just went over the edge a bit, happens a lot to that type.”
What type was that?
“A nice young guy. Very quiet, very polite. Maybe too polite, you know? That’s always a bad sign.”
Kenton laughed. The police mind saw suspicion everywhere. Next to them, real paranoids didn’t stand a chance.
He told Dimitri to treat Pandel with care. His father was a very big shot out West and he might not be so polite.
THE MURDER of Don Solis made all the California papers because of his recent publicity in the capital punishment controversy. On Monday Ding had called Kenton in New York to tell him that Solis was dead. He hadn’t heard.
“How’d it happen?”
“Dynamite. They wired his car.”
“Sounds like mob.”
Ding agreed.
“So we’ll never know for sure about Caryl Chessman.”
“Not from Solis anyway.”
Kenton didn’t bother to mention how he had originally tied Solis to Bishop. It was too late now anyway. Nor did he bring up the Son of Rapist idea that had seemingly spawned so much truth.
Ding meanwhile congratulated him on finding the madman. At least his true identity, which was more than anyone else had been able to do. Kenton was becoming a hero in California. Even Derek Lavery went around calling him one of the best. And taking credit for the whole thing of course.
Afterward Kenton wondered if the Solis killing had anything to do with Senator Stoner’s capital punishment campaign. It wasn’t a Chessman freak who got him or even a death-penalty hater. Dynamite usually meant the mob. But how could they be connected to Stoner through Solis? If anything, he had helped Stoner. Kenton soon decided there was no connection between the two, nothing he could use in his story on the senator.
In San Diego the murders of John Messick and Dory Schuman made only the local papers. It was a professional job obviously, an execution. Messick had been involved in any number of small-time illegal operations. Maybe he
got in somebody’s way. Or got a little too greedy and had to be taken out. Police weren’t overly concerned and had no reason to look beyond their own areas. Homicide by persons unknown was the finding, and the case kept open in police files. Several years later a Sunday-supplement feature on the double slaying would trace the car that might have been used by the killers to a Los Angeles man, Peter “Pistol Pete” Mello. The car’s license number had been found in the slain woman’s handbag, scribbled on a scrap of paper. Mello, an ex-con with mob links, disappeared at the time and was never heard of again.
AT THE office on Tuesday morning Adam Kenton accepted delivery of several cartons of books and household items sent by the stringers from Red Bluff. They had bought everything left from the last home of Sara Bishop and her boy in Justin. Sara’s papers and writings had been sent earlier of course. Now here were the final belongings of the mother and son in two corrugated boxes bound with baling cord.
Kenton cut the cord and slowly removed the contents piece by piece. He examined each item, leafed through each book. It was all junk, worthless. Yet soon all of it would be valuable because of a woman’s tragic life and a boy’s hopeless descent into madness. The hardbitten investigative reporter was suddenly overcome with anguish that such a thing could happen. His crusted heart filled with despair as his hands grasped a worn leather strap, the hide frayed from use, the stamped name faded almost beyond recognition: Strongboy.
When he had finished his examination, he carefully placed the cartons on the floor against a wall. They would be given eventually to Amos Finch in Berkeley, most of the stuff anyway. Finch was collecting Chess Man material and would no doubt write a book on him. In which he, Kenton, would hopefully occupy a prominent place.
By Reason of Insanity Page 56