by Noel Hynd
Outside the snow continued to fall. Occasionally the wind moaned. O'Hara stood motionless and heard yet two more creaks-or were they two more footfalls?-this time ascending the front steps.
He moved quickly through his living room. He turned a corner and froze. He stared expectantly at an empty staircase.
Nothing. No further sound. He pointed his pistol upward and waited, listening to his heart ripping away in his chest.
“Hello?” he finally called, his eyes narrow and squinting, fixed upon the darkness at the height of the staircase. “Who's there?”
When there was no answer, he called again.
“I know someone's there! Make yourself known! “
Again, nothing.
He cursed mildly. Whatever it was had climbed the steps. He was sure of that. Wasn't he?
He followed, climbing the steps carefully. There were three upstairs bedrooms, plus a bathroom. He searched the two unused bedrooms, plus their closets. He threw on a light in the bathroom and looked in. Every corner of the room was visible. Then turned to his own bedroom.
He entered the room very cautiously, every few seconds glancing over his shoulder to cover his back. He found nothing. He looked in his clothing closets and even leaned down to glance under his own bed. Nothing at all. Nor did he hear any creak again.
Whatever it was, whatever he thought he had heard, wasn't there any more. If it had ever been there at all.
O'Hara sighed. His nerves were betraying him again, he told himself. He sat down on the edge of his bed and tucked his weapon back into its holster.
Again, the silence of the house surrounded him. His gaze rose to the window across the room. Then he walked to it and looked out.
There were outdoor lights on in his neighborhood, little points of yellow to serve as beacons against the continuing storm. They formed a pale light through the blizzard. O'Hara stared at the wooded area that surrounded his home.
If he looked very carefully, and let his imagination go, he could see the forest ghosts again, flitting between the trees.
Snow ghosts. What a concept! What loony, old, native medicine man thought that one up? Yet by now, O'Hara practically felt on close terms with these figments of a waking dream.
“Yeah, I see you,” O'Hara said aloud. “You wretched snow ghosts. I know what you're trying to say. You're telling me that it's time for me to get out of this state. Well, you know what? You're right. It is time! And I am getting out.”
He stared at the figures. The more he stared, the more they moved. That was the irony of them. The paradox. The more he knew they weren't there, the more he saw them. The more certain a man was that they were imaginary, the more real the snow ghosts became. A man could get lost in the dark illogic of it. Get lost and never find one's way back . . . much like the Indians who went out looking for those same spirits, never to return alive.
O'Hara spoke to them again.
“Are you the guys who make my floorboards creak, also?” he demanded. He paused and grinned. “Come on. Don't be scared. Answer me, you supernatural fuckers.”
One of the ghosts seemed to wave back. It mocked him. That, or his own imagination mocked him.
“Bullshit,” he said aloud. “Anyone comes in this house and I'll make a real ghost out of him.”
Angrily he patted his gun. “When you're ready to come out in the open, man to man,” he said, “let me know.”
Angrily, he pulled the curtain shut.
“Bullshit,” he said again. He retreated to his bed, lay down on it and tried to relax, blowing out a long sigh.
It had all been too much this day. First the snow, then the blood chilling echo of the Gary Ledbetter case. Events almost meant to strangle him, first physically, then mentally.
He tried to sort out his own baggage. Tried to make sense of the day's events.
He was disturbed by the snow, he told himself. A final winter blizzard that he did not need. That had set 'his psyche into a vulnerable position. And that had made himself more vulnerable to suggestion.
“How am I doing, Dr. Steinberg?” he asked himself aloud. “Miss Julie?” He laughed and considered another beer. “Not too well, I guess.”
One more beer and he'd have to file a report on himself. And he'd already had quite a conversation, both with himself and whatever phantom was floating through his home. The phantom remained unseen, of course, which meant that he had been carrying on a monologue.
So he cut a deal with himself. If he succumbed to no more beer, he'd lie a little about the talking aloud. One more forbidden brewski and he'd report both.
Seemed fair. A carrot and stick approach to home psychological follow-up.
Fortunately, he was dead tired and knew that he would soon sleep. After lying on his bed for a few minutes, he turned on the radio for companionship. A news station in Portsmouth said the storm would last through the night. All schools and offices would be closed, though O'Hara knew that he would end up reporting for another double shift. When the station moved along to an advertisement for Wilhelm Negri's radio show, O'Hara poked the dial. Even a slight mention of the hypocritical right-wing windbag was enough to set him off.
He would have loved some Sinatra right then, but that was too much to pray for from the local airwaves. Instead, O'Hara turned the radio off.
Then he had just enough energy to rise from the bed, go downstairs, and find some cold turkey left over from the previous day. He made himself an atrociously large sandwich and washed it down-There, Miss Julie, see!-with a diet cola.
Then he went back upstairs, showered quickly, set the alarm on his radio, and fell back into bed. His weapon, as always, was kept on the shelf of the nightstand.
As he was drifting off, he heard a final creak for the evening. It was in the room with him, no more than ten feet away.
Then a second creak, sounding for all the world like another footfall, half the distance closer. Five feet away, and indicating that it was approaching.
He opened his eyes. The room was dark. He studied the configuration of chairs and dressers and tables.
One more creak. Right beside his bed. Right there! An arm's length away.
From somewhere: Hello, Frankie.
“Go away,” O'Hara muttered sleepily, seeing nothing.
He turned on the light and scanned the room. In the light, as in the dark, nothing was there.
Nothing, that is, that he could see.
He closed his eyes again. If there had been anything in the room, it never came back. And it never harmed him that night, because seconds later O'Hara drifted off. He slept soundly undisturbed and apparently untouched-for seven hours.
With the light on.
*
Meanwhile, in Philadelphia, late autumn remained balmy. Brown leaves swept along the sidewalks, and the universities and music schools were well into their fall terms. The city was bright with life and with young people. Saturdays meant the season's last few Ivy League football games at Franklin Field and Sunday meant the Eagles at The Vet.
The weather was pleasant. It had nowhere approached the deep freeze of the autumn storms in New Hampshire. And Adam Kaminski, seeing so many college kids in love in his buildings, was contemplating the latest mysteries surrounding Carolyn Hart.
Kaminski maintained good relations with other tenants on the street. The Levins, two doors away, knew that Carolyn had indeed moved into 565 South Oswell Street. They recalled hearing some sounds coming out of the building. Nothing to complain about, they quickly added. They just thought that they had heard something.
The DeLorenzos, on the other hand, lived three houses in the opposite direction and maintained that no one had ever come and gone from Number 565. It was difficult, Kaminski began to realize, to maintain a daily vigil over a woman when she remained so elusive even to normal sightings.
This prompted him to start thinking further, as well as passing by the house even more frequently. He even used one of his spies with the telephone company to try to fi
nd a number for the property. But there was no listed number for Carolyn Hart. She had an unlisted number under another name, a name he did not know.
“How does a person even communicate these days without giving out a phone number?” Kaminski asked a male friend one evening while walking their terriers in Rittenhouse Square. “I mean, a phone is probably the most basic means of communication in the world.”
“Maybe she doesn't want to communicate,” answered his friend. “Some people want to be left alone, you know.”
The comment sent Kaminski's mind churning again. His imagination fed upon it until he came up with a new interpretation of the Carolyn Hart affair.
Carolyn, he now theorized, had been involved in some sort of traumatic love affair. She had broken up with her boyfriend and feared possible violence. Hence, she didn't wish to be located, not by anyone-including family-until tempers cooled down. That explained almost everything.
Seeing her in this light made Kaminski feel more protective. Her privacy, and hence her safety, was his responsibility. What choice did he, as a decent man, have other than to serve as her buffer against the outside world?
It was a duty which he took very seriously. He, Adam Kaminski, would serve as the young woman's “chevalier.” And from his personal viewpoint, this history of Carolyn's past served perfectly.
He could snoop mercilessly into her personal affairs, he told himself, because he would need to know all about her in order to protect her.
Kaminski, home alone in his own apartment in the second month of Carolyn's tenancy, felt a surge of excitement. He welcomed this new challenge. And, pushing Paula Burns out of his thoughts, there were now some romantic tunes playing in his mind.
Kaminski pictured sultry Marlene Dietrich, husky voice and all, singing to him and his new lady. Adam Kaminski was already looking forward to falling in love again, head over heels as Marlene rhapsodized, if only Carolyn Hart would join him.
And somewhere, way back in the darkest recesses of his mind, there was another sort of music. Funny, he could hear the eerie tinkling of a piano playing a sad, old Southern hymn.
Chapter Six
The next morning in New Hampshire broke clear, sunny, and very cold. Yet most of the state highways remained closed. The secondary roads were impassable. The official snowfall was measured at thirteen inches, a record for so early in the season.
O'Hara arrived at police headquarters in Nashua by ten A.M. Captain Mallinson was still singing the same tune as the previous day, that the case of the Jane Doe found in the Monadnock cabin was to rise immediately to the top of O'Hara's priority list . . . at least until the case could be scoped out.
Preliminary evidence-photographs and material found at the murder scene-had already been brought to O'Hara's office at headquarters for New Hampshire Homicide. The latter was a set of cluttered cubicles located in a single large room on the west side of the new State Police Building. The room had all the charm of a high-school gym.
The corpse of Jane Doe, according to Captain Mallinson, would be retrieved that morning. By helicopter, if need be. A police guard had been left through the night, a single young cop in a jeep amidst a blizzard. State law: A body couldn't be left without a police guard. No stipulation about the weather.
The remains would be at the medical examiner's office on the other side of Nashua by noon. A preliminary examination would take four hours. Since nothing ever went on schedule, O'Hara planned to go by Dr. Paloheima's office in the evening.
In his office, O'Hara had the plastic bag containing the woman's clothing that had been found in the cabin. O'Hara pondered a point. The clothes had been neatly stacked. Men don't normally stack women's clothing neatly, which suggested that she may have taken them off by herself. . . or at least voluntarily. Another nasty echo of the Gary Ledbetter homicides where the victims, according to the police psychologists, willingly undressed for their executioner.
O'Hara began his first careful examination of the clothing. It would also be his only examination before the police labs got hold of everything.
A light cotton skirt, a blue blouse. No stockings. Bra missing. Maybe she hadn't worn one either. He continued: Two sneakers, laces still tied as if she had pulled them off rather than taking the time to undo them.
What did that tell him? Anything?
There were no socks. No blood or rips on any of the clothing. No sign of a struggle. Panties. Fresh and clean.
Why hadn't the killer kept them? Often psychos collect the panties of women they kill. O'Hara thought back to the Ledbetter slayings and couldn't recall a parallel. He already knew that he was going to have to review the Ledbetter files very carefully.
In his mind's eye, O'Hara saw Gary standing before him. Shaggy blond hair. Those eyes. A dirtball Adonis, all right.
Gary speaking. Bayou tones. In another century, Gary could have been a sergeant in the Confederate infantry.
No, sir. I didn't kill no girls. Gary communicated from somewhere beyond that room, speaking within O'Hara's mind. O'Hara dismissed the thought.
No, sir. I didn't kill no girls, the voice returned a second time.
“Shut up, Gary,” O'Hara said aloud. Gary grinned and disappeared. Then O'Hara continued with the work before him. Another tactile moment with a dead lady's garments.
O'Hara looked at the labels in the clothing. He noticed something that he had not caught the first time. The clothing was upscale stuff. Labels from Boston and New York. Banana Republic sneakers. Ann Taylor blouse and skirt. Undergarment also from a quality department store. Not cheap stuff from the Arnes or the Krnart. If this were actually the victim's clothing, then she might be more middle or even upper-middle-class. Girls in that milieu tended to disappear less frequently. This was also a variance from previous Gary Ledbetter slayings. Gary's girls were solidly blue-collar: two waitresses, a beautician, a secretary, and a doughnut shop clerk.
Then, as he picked through the clothing, O'Hara found something else he hadn't seen. Something moved in the girl's left sneaker. O'Hara tilted the sneaker, and the small object slid again. He reached in and found a delicate chain necklace.
Nothing memorable. Nothing with huge intrinsic value. Just a gold chain with a small turtle charm as its pendant.
O'Hara weighed it in his hand. He guessed that the dead girl had removed it and slid it into her shoe for safekeeping. That, of course, suggested that she didn't expect to be murdered, even when she was undressing. That hinted that she hadn't been raped, either.
But further, why would she have removed it from her neck if she were going to make love? And why would the killer have left it there among her clothing? While there was nothing special about it, the gold chain had a cash value. O'Hara guessed maybe a hundred fifty to two hundred dollars. The typical lowrent killer takes such things. First, to impede identification of the victim. Second, for cash. Those circumstances underscored O'Hara's notion that the girl had undressed voluntarily and her murder came seemingly out of the blue.
That raised another question. Why had the body been left in the cabin where surely it would someday be found? The shrinks always had a ball with something like that.
O'Hara could hear the psychiatrists arguing:
The killer wanted to impress society. The killer got off as much at having the public read about his grisly event as he did in the commission of the act, itself. The killer wanted to be discovered. . . and caught.
O'Hara sighed. He knew a detective could overthink this aspect of a killer's behavior as well as other motivations. Much in a homicide was chance. Much was careless. Yet this killing, following so closely the Ledbetter pattern, seemed intensely calculated.
O'Hara looked again at the neck chain and its pendant. Somewhere, at some time in the past, some young girl had bought the item. Or some boy had bought it for her. (The killer? O'Hara wondered. He doubted it.) The charm had been part of her persona. Part of her. He pictured the girl as having peaches-and-cream good looks. Light brown hair, pretty, per
ky. Someone's lover. Someone's daughter. Now she was dead. Whenever O'Hara followed this line of reasoning he became very indignant over death.
Over murder.
“Obsessive, once you get to know your victim,” his ex-wife had once told him. “You become like the spurned lover to these girls, the guy who could have set things right. It's not normal and not healthy.”
He answered his ex-wife aloud, much the same way he spoke to Gary. “No, Barbara, it's not normal and it's not healthy. It's not even smart. But that's how I am.”
“Obsessive,” she said again, then faded.
Didn't do it, man. The voice was Gary's again, inside O'Hara's head.
“Get lost!” O'Hara whispered, angrier than the last time he had addressed Gary's memory. Both Gary and Barbara disappeared.
Together. Gary put an arm around Barbara as they faded.
O'Hara cringed. He forced the image from his mind.
Then he tucked the necklace into an evidence envelope and sealed it. He put the envelope in his pocket. His old habit picked up from Carl Reissman: one possession of the victim that he would keep with him till the case was closed.
He returned to the blouse and turned the top of it inside out. He found what he needed: a human hair. It was light brown, the same as the hair that remained on the decomposed head that had been discovered with the body. He removed the hair with a pair of tweezers and placed it in a small waxed envelope.
Then he phoned the state police Central Records Division, located in that same building. He requested the files on the Karen Stoner homicide, plus any other material relating to Gary Ledbetter. All material was to be sent to his office.
With that accomplished, O'Hara cleared his desk. He called in two younger members of the state homicide bureau, Detective Leslie Parks and Detective Lawrence Rossiter. O'Hara turned over to them a trio of current cases.