Kolchak: The Night Stalker: A Black and Evil Truth

by Jeff Rice

  Growling low in his throat like some ravening wolf, Skorzeny approached the front door. He discovered almost at once that it had been forced, looked around quickly, then ran inside. In seconds we heard his enraged scream. He came barrelling out the front door all the way to the middle of the road muttering in some strange language. His fists opened and closed convulsively. His entire body jerked. He looked on the brink of a grand mal epileptic seizure. Again he looked toward Sunrise Mountain and he hesitated, his body visibly stiffening. He was just starting to turn back to the house when he spotted one of the deputies who had jumped the gun and had broken cover in order to get a closer look.

  Skorzeny’s lip curled back in a vicious, red-rimmed snarl. His fang-like teeth were plainly visible. He started toward the deputy and Jenks switched on the headlights and spotlight beam.

  Skorzeny froze and whirled, facing our position, his features working into a grimace of pure hate. Other lights flashed on. He started toward us and the deputies began to move forward. Then he hesitated again, looking toward Sunrise Mountain. He swayed as if caught between the two desires–to kill us and to gaze at the slowly brightening dawn. Again he turned toward us and, with a gesture of supreme disgust, turned and strode back toward the house.

  Jenks grabbed his bullhorn and bellowed, “Get those crosses handy! Get your stakes and Holy Water and move in… slow… take your time!”

  He might not believe in my so-called “fairytale” but he wasn’t taking any chances either, I noticed. Slowly, all fifteen of us came out of our positions as the rapidly lightening eastern sky cast a pinkish gray pallor over the whole scene.

  At the words “crosses, stakes and Holy Water” Skorzeny had actually flinched. He was beginning to get the message. He spun away from the door and snarled. Skorzeny saw the tiny crosses in our hands as he looked from one man to another, finally staring with wide, reddened eyes directly at me. Then he saw the stakes and hammers. His face resumed the same mask of fury that I’d seen at Old Town Hospital when he’d been deprived of blood. He started backing slowly toward the door, glancing first at us and then back at Sunrise Mountain. Then, slowly, his face began to change and took on the trapped look I’d seen on cornered animals in laboratories and on hunting trips. I saw it once on the face of a convict at a death house execution as the guards had closed the door on the gas chamber. His expression changed from hate to one of betrayal. Then it progressed to abject fear, very startling on him and very human.

  We were within twenty feet of him when, with one final hiss, he spun around and ran inside, slamming the door which bounced back open, its lock already broken by our previous entrance. Jenks yelled to his man on the east side of the house to shotgun the windows while he opened fire with his Python on the window facing us. The explosions were deafening and in seconds the windows had all been demolished.

  As we headed around to the house’s east face, we heard another shriek of agony and surprise and looked in to see him literally leap from his coffin as though shot in the can with buckshot. He screamed in pain and slapped at his seat and legs where he’d lain in the Holy-Water-soaked coffin.

  I dug Jenks in the ribs and yelled, “You see! The Holy Water. It works like acid!”

  Skorzeny stopped slapping at his clothing long enough to shoot one last look at the sun as it broke cover over Sunrise Mountain. He shrieked again, threw his hands up to shield his face and bolted for the bedroom.

  We moved in, Jenks jumping up over the window sill with me right at his heels, followed by four more deputies. There must have been a dozen of us all crowded into the living room. Jenks and I rushed into the bedroom followed by two deputies. We found Skorzeny huddled in the closet just to the right of the bedroom door. He was writhing on the floor in a tangle of his dark suits and shoes, his face white as a sheet, his eyes blood red, his mouth working convulsively like a beached shark’s, full of guttural noises and fangs.

  I looked away from this squirming thing at my feet and turned to Jenks who ordered the other deputies from the room and slammed the door. I looked back at Skorzeny. Even in his agony and apparent helplessness he still scared me silly. I was afraid he’d find some way to outsmart us no matter what we did.

  Jenks and I stood there like statues watching him twitch, his eyes rolling up in his head. He clutched at his clothes pulling the wooden pole then hung from down on top of him. Slowly his right hand came scrambling out away from his body to clutch at my left leg. Without thinking I shoved my crucifix at him and he pulled his hand back with a hiss, shielding his face again. As quickly as I could, I dug my tubes of Holy Water out of my coat pocket and emptied them on his head. He shrieked again and clawed at his face. Jenks followed suit, pouring his two vials on Skorzeny’s body and legs. Skorzeny started to foam and bubble before our eyes.

  I was paralyzed. I couldn’t quite believe what was happening. Those books hadn’t described any of this. I was feeling dizzy and sick. The shrieks turned to groans and a gurgling deep in his throat. He pulled his hands away from his face and it looked like the disintegrating Portrait of Dorian Gray.

  I looked over to Jenks who had an odd expression on his face. He motioned to me and reached for my left hand which, I noticed, was still clutching the airline bag with the stake and hammer in it. I dropped it and he grabbed it off the floor, moving over to the smoking form still squirming in the closet which smelled even more foul than before, and oozing a greenish yellow puss from the crumpled clothing on his scarecrow frame.

  Jenks looked back at me and handed me the stake and hammer. “Go ahead. This was your idea. Finish it.” I declined, turning away.

  Jenks spun me around violently and thrust the stake into my left hand. He pushed me toward what was left of Skorzeny and forced me to my knees. He forced my hand toward Skorzeny, positioning the stake over the man’s chest. Then he stuck the hammer in my right hand.

  “Do it, you gutless sonofabitch. Finish it… now!” And he stepped away.

  I looked at him and back at Skorzeny. Then I gave one vicious swing and hit the stake dead center. The thing made a gurgling grunt, like a pig snuffling for food, and started to regurgitate a blackish fluid from its mouth. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath and hit the stake three more times. Then I fell back and threw up.

  When I looked back, Skorzeny’s hands, or what was left of them, clutched at the stake trying to pull it out. Suddenly, he emitted a kind of moaning, sucking sound, gagged and more bile-colored liquid flecked with black and red came coiling up in a viscous rope like some evil worm from his mouth. And he stopped moving, his hands still clutching the stake.

  Then a sort of gaseous mist started to rise from his body and it was so much worse than the original smell that I pushed Jenks aside and ran from the house. I ran all the way to a patrol car where I slumped against the left front wheel as Jenks slowly strolled toward me. He walked past me, ignoring me, and opened his trunk, taking out a couple of small gas cans, and headed back to the house. I wasn’t paying much attention until he left the house again and I saw it was aflame. Then he came back and grabbed his radio mike, talking quietly with Masterson back at headquarters.

  I got up and started wiping my mouth with a handkerchief. Finally, Jenks said “Ten-Four” and dropped the mike on the car seat. He came over to me and said, “The gentlemen downtown would like you to come back with me. They want to talk to you.”

  That seemed rather unnecessary as I certainly wasn’t going to walk back to the courthouse. I got in the car and slouched down in the seat. I don’t even remember the ride back. I was just glad it was all over.

  CHAPTER 19

  THURSDAY, MAY 28, 1970

  MORNING

  I was ushered into Sheriff Lane’s private office by Jenks who told me to wait and then disappeared. Soon he returned and told me to go up to the D.A.’s office. Once inside, I was told to sit in a chair facing Paine’s desk where he sat shuffling papers and looking grim and unshaven. To his left was Chief Butcher. To his right, Sheriff Lane, Je
nks and Masterson positioned themselves behind me at the door, their arms folded over their chests. The only other “wheel” missing from the little scene was Bernie Fain.

  Paine picked up some papers and began to read: “For release after 9:00 A.M. Thursday, May 28, 1970; from Thomas Paine, Jr., District Attorney, Clark County, Nevada–to all news media.

  “This morning shortly before sunrise, Las Vegas sheriff’s deputies under the command of Lieutenant Williams A. Jenks, thirty-five, day-division commander of uniformed forces, surrounded the home of Janos Skorzeny, a fugitive from a federal warrant for entering the country under false papers, and, in a pitched gun-battle instigated by Skorzeny were forced to kill him by gunfire.

  “Apparently, Skorzeny, wanted for questioning by local police in a series of recent murders done through the use of an unidentified poison, and also wanted by Canadian authorities in Vancouver, Montreal and Ottawa as well as by the Metropolitan Police of London, had explosives and gasoline stored in his home at 3779 Spencer Road. There were two explosions and the house was gutted. Authorities are still trying to determine the cause of the fire and, at this writing, units of the Clark County Fire Department are battling the blaze which has been contained in the home.

  “Skorzeny, a British citizen with forged Canadian papers, was sought by both British and Canadian authorities for questioning on several counts ranging from theft to forgery. Before he died he openly boasted of having killed four women and one man with what he claimed, according to officers present, was a highly efficient and ‘untraceable’ poison. He admitted that they were thrill killings and made him feel strong and superior to all authority.

  “It is possible Skorzeny may have perished by his own hand as he boasted he would never be taken alive. Twice before he had eluded local authorities who were unable to trace his hiding place until last night.

  “Bernard Fain, Special Agent-in-Charge of the local FBI office and the man in overall command of the manhunt for Skorzeny, feels that the man behind the recent and brutal murders of five local residents may be the same one responsible for several crimes of violence in Great Britain. Again Fain says that as far as the Bureau is concerned, the file on Janos Skorzeny is closed and he expressed the Bureau’s thanks for the fine job done by local law enforcement agencies and the cooperation of the Las Vegas District Attorney’s Office.”

  “What kind of lousy deal is this?” I screamed as I leaped out of my chair. Jenks and Masterson firmly shoved me back into it.

  “This,” began Paine, “is what is going out to the papers and the radio and TV people. It will go out under your exclusive byline with a comment on how you cooperated ‘closely with authorities’ and were in on the entire operation from start to finish.”

  “The hell you say! What kind of goddamn snow-job is this? You promised…”

  “Shut up, Kolchak. You’re in a lot of trouble so just pipe down and listen,” said Butcher.

  Paine started in again. “No one is ever going to know about the stakes and Holy Water bit, Kolchak. Your friend at the furniture store only knows that he made up a large order of tent stakes for several gentlemen who paid cash and bought in bulk. None of the priests who were contacted are going to talk. All the loose ends are being gathered in.”

  “And what’s to stop me from blabbing this story once I leave here?”

  “You, Kolchak. You’re going to stop yourself. Because if you open your mouth, the press release will never be issued. And if you wait until it is, we’ll deny it and arrest you for murder. Murder, Kolchak!”

  “What murder?” But I was already beginning to see what was going on.

  “Why, Kolchak. You’ve got a very short memory. Lieutenant Jenks over there told me not more than an hour ago you pounded a wooden stake through the heart of a man who was wanted for questioning–questioning mind you–in a murder investigation. He had not been arrested or even charged. You didn’t give the officers time for that. You broke up their stakeout after we were kind enough to let you go along and you rushed in ahead of them and killed Janos Skorzeny before you could be stopped. You were out of your head ranting and raving something crazy about Skorzeny being a vampire and you had to save the world. You set fire to the house with flares and gasoline before you could be stopped. That, Mr. Kolchak, is Murder One. At the very least, you’ll have to plead insanity and I can assure you that you’ll win your case and be committed to Sparks for the remainder of your life. We’ll see to that.”

  “You miserable sonofabitch. I helped pull your fat out of the fire and you’re setting me up for a public hanging! What about all the witnesses?”

  “What witnesses? People who saw Skorzeny? Saw him do what? Walk through a hospital? Beat up some hospital employees? Run from some police officers? Buy a car? No one actually saw him kill anyone.”

  “But one of your own people, a police officer, was killed by him!”

  “Regrettable but explainable. It happens.”

  “What about my paper?”

  “Jake is cooperating with us all the way. This is his town and he has many investments here. He doesn’t want to ruin Las Vegas’ image by letting a ridiculous story like this get out.”

  “Yeah? What about Bernie Fain?

  “Bernie is going to have a recurrence of an old service injury and retire, shortly.”

  “What about Mokurji? He works for another police department. You can’t scare them off or buy them out. I’ve go you there.”

  “Uh… interdepartmental cooperation. Dr. Mokurji will be granted some money for private research… in Bombay. He should be leaving by the first of next week.”

  Well, that stopped me. Stopped me cold.

  “One other thing, Mister Kolchak,” Paine added, “you are going to leave town very shortly due to personal reasons… perhaps for your ‘health.’ It’s being arranged now. So, I hope for your sake you don’t decide to start crying ‘Wolf!’ It won’t do a bit of good.

  “Just accept things for what they are. You’re a pretty smart man. You know where your bread is buttered. You can always find a job in another city. And, as long as you keep your mouth shut, you’ll get along just fine. Now do we hand out this press release and win you the crime coverage award of 1970? Or do you want to play it the hard way?”

  I just sat there.

  “Well?”

  “OK,” I told him. “You win.”

  CHAPTER 20

  I went home alone, took off my coat, knocked the phone off the hook, and forgot about the world with the aid of two bottles of bourbon. The next night I called Sam and asked her to dinner, hinting very broadly at what had happened. She didn’t ask questions. She’d read Thursday’s “canned account” of the Spencer Road Shootout as it had been billed. She told me to come over to her place and we’d have a couple of steaks. She said she’d be sorry to see me go but she knew me better than anyone else and she knew I’d have to leave. You just can’t fight city hall.

  By the following Monday, I was feeling a tiny bit better and showed up at the office to find I was back to a routine beat of covering petty thefts, robberies and helping compile the local death-on-the-highways report for the paper. Since I still seemed to have a job, I slipped out of the office around 1:00 P.M. and drove over to Parkway to see how the Misses Katz and Riegel were doing.

  Dr. Welles coldly informed me that Miss Katz had been released by her parents’ request and that she’d been taken to a private sanitarium out of state. I was unable to trace her. Carolyn Riegel, I was informed, was dead, and had succumbed to “exhaustion complicated by malnutrition,” during the weekend. She’d had funeral services at the Willows early that morning and was, by now, cremated.

  I returned to the Daily News and wrote an angry story which I shoved under Vincenzo’s nose and stalked out of the office. It purported that Carolyn Riegel was actually the final victim of Janos Skorzeny and if she hadn’t been killed outright at the hospital she was definitely a suicide. By me, it was murder. It just took a little longer than the oth
ers, is all.

  Then I went looking for a movie to take my mind off all that had occurred. I found it at the Fremont Theatre, a block from where Hemphill’s body had been found: A Man Called Horse, starring Richard Harris. That’s all I remember. I sat, filled myself with cheap hotdogs and coke, and then went home to bed, reminding myself, “Ah, well, tomorrow’s another day.”

  That observation proved only too accurate.

  CHAPTER 21

  TUESDAY, JUNE 2, 1970

  When I got my morning paper–from my neighbor’s doormat–I discovered my story hadn’t been printed at all. And I wasn’t too surprised. Then I went down and checked my mail. There were three envelopes, all addressed to me and none of them had stamps on them. The first one contained the following message from the law firm of Bregman, Whittle and Castellano:

  Dear Mr. Kolchak:

  I have been contacted by one of my clients concerning an impromptu investigation and intended article by you on the alleged suicide/murder of Miss Carolyn Riegel, and the alleged removal of her body from Parkway Hospital without proper death certificates.

  This is to inform you that Dr. Stoddard Welles, the Chief Resident at Parkway Hospital and the physician in attendance to Miss Riegel, personally signed the death certificate and photostats are available upon request to any legitimate authority.

  Further, the death certificate states the cause of Miss Riegel’s unfortunate and untimely demise was “nervous exhaustion and extreme malnutrition, complicated by bronchial pneumonia.”