“Sliced turkey, cole slaw, lettuce and tomato on rye. With Russian dressing.”
“That would do it,” she said, nodding. “No wonder you look so remote.”
“Remote?” he said. “Do I?”
He bent to unlace his other shoe and slide it off. He peeled away his heavy wool socks. Comfortable shoes and thick socks: secrets of a street cop’s success.
When he straightened up, he saw that Monica was still staring at him.
“How is the case going?” she asked quietly.
“All right. It’s really in the early stages. Just beginning to move.”
“Everyone’s talking about the Hotel Ripper. At the meetings today, it came up again and again. In informal conversations, I mean; not in lectures. Edward, people make jokes and laugh, but they’re really frightened.”
“Of course,” he said. “Who wouldn’t be?”
“You still think it’s a woman?”
“Yes.”
He stood, began to take off tie and shirt. Still she had not opened her book. She watched him empty his trouser pockets onto the bureau top.
“I wasn’t going to tell you this,” she said, “but I think I will.”
He stopped what he was doing, turned to face her.
“Tell me what?” he said.
“I asked people I met if they thought the Hotel Ripper could be a woman. My own little survey of public opinion. I asked six people: three men and three women. All the men said the killer couldn’t possibly be a woman, and all the women I asked said it could be a woman. Isn’t that odd?”
“Interesting,” he said. “But I don’t know what it means—do you?”
“Not exactly. Except that men seem to have a higher opinion of women than women do of themselves.”
He went to shower. He brushed his teeth, pulled on his pajamas. He came out, turned off the overhead light in the bedroom. Monica was reading by the bedlamp. He got into his bed, pulled up the blanket. He lay awake, hands behind his head, staring at the ceiling.
“Why would a woman do such a thing?” he asked, turning his head to look at her.
She put down her book. “I thought you weren’t interested in motives.”
“Surely I didn’t say that. I said I wasn’t interested in causes. There’s a difference. Every cop is interested in motives. Has to be. That’s what helps solve cases. Not the underlying psychological or social causes, but the immediate motive. A man can kill from greed. That’s important to a cop. What caused the greed is of little consequence. What immediate motive could a woman have for a series of homicides like this? Revenge? She mutilates their genitals. Could she have been a rape victim?”
“Could be,” Monica said promptly. “It’s reason enough. But it doesn’t even have to be rape. Maybe she’s been used by men all her life. Maybe they’ve just screwed her and deserted her. Made her feel like a thing. Without value. So she’s getting back at them.”
“Yes,” he said, “that listens; it’s a possibility. There’s something sexual involved here, and I don’t know what it is. Could she be an out-and-out sadist?”
“No,” Monica said, “I don’t think so. Physical sadism amongst women isn’t all that common. And sadists prefer slow suffering to quick death.”
“Emotional?” he said. “Could it be that? She’s been jilted by a man. Betrayed. The woman scorned …”
“Mmm …” his wife said, considering. “No, I don’t believe that. A woman might be terribly hurt by one man, but I can’t believe she’d try to restore her self-esteem by killing strangers. I think your first idea is right: it’s something sexual.”
“It could be fear,” he said. “Fear of sex with a man.”
She looked at him, puzzled.
“I don’t follow,” she said. “If the killer is afraid of sex, she wouldn’t go willingly to the hotel rooms of strange men.”
“She might,” he said. “To be attracted by what we dread is a very human emotion. Then, when she gets there, fear conquers desire.”
“Edward, you make her sound a very complex woman.”
“I think she is.”
He went back to staring at the ceiling.
“There’s another possibility,” he said in a low voice.
“What’s that?”
“She simply enjoys killing. Enjoys it.”
“Oh Edward, I can’t believe that.”
“Because you can’t feel it. Any more than you can believe that some people derive pleasure from being whipped. But such things exist.”
“I suppose so,” she said in a small voice. “Well, there’s a fine selection of motives for you. Which do you suspect it is?”
He was silent for a brief time. Then …
“What I suspect is that it is not a single motive, but a combination of things. We rarely act for one reason. It’s usually a mixture. Can you give me one reason why the Son of Sam did what he did? So I think this killer is driven by several motives.”
“The poor woman,” Monica said sadly.
“Poor woman?” he said. “You sympathize with her? Feel sorry for her?”
“Of course,” she said. “Don’t you?”
He had wanted to play a more active role in the investigation, and during the last two weeks of May he got his chance.
All the squad officers involved in the case came to him. They knew Deputy Commissioner Thorsen was in command, transmitting his orders through Sergeant Boone, but they sought out Edward X. Delaney for advice and counsel. They knew his record and experience. And he was retired brass; there was nothing to fear from him …
“Chief,” Detective Aaron Johnson said, “I got the word out to all my snitches, but there’s not a whisper of any tear gas being peddled on the street.”
“Any burglaries of army posts, police stations, or National Guard armories? Any rip-offs of chemical factories?”
“Negative,” Johnson said. “Thefts of weapons and high explosives, but no record of anyone lifting tear gas in cans, cartridges, generators, or whatever. The problem here, Chief, is that the Lab Services Section can’t swear the stuff was Chemical Mace. But if it was carried in a pocket-size aerosol dispenser, it probably was. So where do we go from here?”
“Find out who makes it and who packages it. Get a list of distributors and wholesalers. Trace it to retailers in this area. Slavin says it’s against the law for a New Yorker to buy the stuff, but it must be available to law enforcement agencies for riot control and so forth. Maybe prisons and private security companies can legally buy it. Maybe even a bank guard or night watchman can carry it—I don’t know. Find out, and try to get a line on every can that came into this area in the past year.”
“Gotcha,” Johnson said.
“Chief,” Sergeant Thomas K. Broderick said, “look at this …”
He dangled a small, sealed plastic bag in front of Delaney. The Chief inspected it curiously. Inside the bag was a half-inch of gleaming knife blade tip. On the upper half was part of the groove designed to facilitate opening the blade with a fingernail.
“That’s it?” Delaney asked.
“That’s it,” Broderick said. “Fresh from Bergdorfer’s slashed throat. We got a break on this one, Chief. Most pocket knives in this country are made with blades of high-grade carbon steel. The lab says this little mother is drop-forged Swedish stainless steel. How about that!”
“Beautiful,” the Chief said. “Did you trace it?”
Broderick took a knife from his pocket and handed it to the Chief. It had bright red plastic handles bearing the crest of Switzerland.
“Called a Swiss Army knife,” the detective said. “Or sometimes Swiss Army Officers’ knives. They come in at least eight different sizes. The largest is practically a pocket tool kit. This is a medium-sized one. Open the big blade.”
Obediently, Delaney folded back the largest blade. The two men bent over the knife, comparing the whole blade with the tip in the plastic bag.
“Looks like it,” the Chief said.
“Identica
l,” Broderick assured him. “The lab checked it out. But where do we go from here? These knives are sold in every good cutlery and hardware store in the city. And just to make the cheese more binding, they’re also sold through mail order. Dead end.”
“No,” Delaney said, “not yet. Start with midtown Manhattan. Say from Thirty-fourth Street to Fifty-ninth Street, river to river. Make a list of every store in that area that carries this knife. The chances are good the killer will try to replace her broken knife with a new one just like it. Have your men visit every store and talk to the clerks. We want the name and address of everyone Who buys a knife like this.”
“How is the clerk going to do that? If the customer pays cash?”
“Uh … the clerks should tell the customer he wants the name and address for a free mail order catalogue the store is sending out. If the customer doesn’t go for that scam and refuses to give name and address, the clerk should take a good look and then call you and give the description. Leave your phone number at every store; maybe they can stall the customer long enough for you or one of your men to get there. Tell the clerks to watch especially for young women, five-five to five-seven. Got it?”
“Got it,” Broderick said. “But what if we come up with bupkes?”
“Then we’ll do the same thing in all of Manhattan,” Delaney said without humor. “And then we’ll start on Brooklyn and the Bronx.”
“It looks like a long, hot summer,” Detective Broderick said, groaning.
“Chief,” Lieutenant Wilson T. Crane said, “we’ve got sixteen possibles from Records. These are women between the ages of twenty and fifty with sheets that include violent felonies. We’re tracking them all down and getting their alibis for the night of the homicides. None of them used the same MO as the Hotel Ripper.”
“Too much to hope for,” Delaney said. “I don’t think our target has a sheet, but it’s got to be checked out. What about prisons and asylums?”
“No recent releases or escapes that fit the profile,” Crane said. “We’re calling and writing all over the country, but nothing promising yet.”
“Have you contacted Interpol?”
The lieutenant stared at him.
“No, Chief, we haven’t,” he admitted. “The FBI, but not Interpol.”
“Send them a query,” Delaney advised. “And Scotland Yard, too, while you’re at it.”
“Will do,” Crane said.
“Chief,” Detective Daniel Bentley said, “we went back to the bars at the Hotel Coolidge and asked if anyone remembered serving a man with scarred hands. No one did. But two of the cocktail waitresses who worked in the New Orleans Room the night Jerome Ashley was offed, don’t work there anymore. We traced one. She’s working in a massage parlor now—would you believe it? She doesn’t remember any scarred hands. The other waitress went out to the Coast. Her mother doesn’t have an address for her, but promises to ask the girl to call us if she hears from her. Don’t hold your breath.”
“Keep on it,” Delaney said. “Don’t let it slide.”
“We’ll keep on it,” Bentley promised.
“Chief,” Sergeant Abner Boone said, “I think we’ve got this thing organized. The hotel trade magazine gave us a copy of their mailing list. We’re checking out every hotel in the city that got a copy and making a list of everyone who might have had access to it. I’ve got men checking the Mayor’s office, Chamber of Commerce, hotel associations, visitors’ bureau, and so forth. As the names come in, a deskman is compiling two master lists, male and female, with names listed in alphabetical order. How does that sound?”
“You’re getting the addresses, too?”
“Right. And their age, when it’s available. Even approximate age. Chief, we’ve got more than three hundred names already. It’ll probably run over a thousand before we’re through, and even then I won’t swear we’ll have everyone in New York with prior knowledge of the convention schedule.”
“I know,” Delaney said grimly, “but we’ve got to do it.”
From all these meetings with the squad commanders, he came away with the feeling that morale was high, the men were doing their jobs with no more than normal grumbling.
After three months of bewilderment and relative inaction, they had finally been turned loose on the chase, their quarry dimly glimpsed but undeniably there. No man involved in the investigation thought what he was doing was without value, no matter how dull it might be.
It was not the first time that Edward X. Delaney had been struck by the contrast between the drama of a heinous crime and the dry minutiae of the investigation. The act was (sometimes) high tragedy; the search was (sometimes) low comedy.
The reason was obvious, of course. The criminal acted in hot passion; the detective had only cold resolve. The criminal was a child of the theater, inspired, thinking the play would go on forever. But along came the detective, a lumpish, methodical fellow, seeking only to ring down the curtain.
On May 30th, all the detectives met at Midtown Precinct North. If Delaney’s hypothesis was correct—and most of them now believed it was, simply because no one had suggested any other theory that encompassed all the known facts—the next Hotel Ripper slaying would take place, or be attempted, during the week of June 1-7, and probably during midweek.
It was decided to assign every available man to the role of decoy. With the aid of the hotels’ beefed-up security forces, all bars and cocktail lounges in large midtown Manhattan hotels would be covered from 8:00 P.M. until closing.
The lieutenants and sergeants worked out a schedule so that a “hot line” at Midtown North would be manned constantly during those hours. In addition, a standby squad of five men was stationed at Midtown South as backup, to be summoned as needed. The Crime Scene Unit was alerted; one of their vans took up position on West 54th Street.
Monica Delaney noted the fretfulness of her husband during the evenings of June 1-3. He picked up books and tossed them aside. Sat staring for an hour at an opened newspaper without turning a page. Stomped about the house disconsolately, head lowered, hands in his pockets.
She forbore to question the cause of his discontent; she knew. Wisely, she let him “stew in his own juice.” But she wondered what would happen to him if events proved his precious theory wrong.
On the night of June 4th, a Wednesday, they were seated in the living room on opposite sides of the cocktail table, playing a desultory game of gin rummy. The Chief had been winning steadily, but shortly after 11:00 P.M., he threw his cards down in disgust and lurched to his feet.
“The hell with it,” he said roughly. “I’m going to Midtown.”
“What do you think you can do?” his wife asked quietly. “You’ll just be in the way. The men will think you’re checking up on them, that you don’t trust them to do their jobs.”
“You’re right,” he said immediately and dropped back into his chair. “I just feel so damned useless.”
She looked at him sympathetically, knowing what this case had come to mean to him: that his expertise was valued, that his age was no drawback, that he was needed and wanted.
There he sat, a stern, rumpled mountain of a man. Gray hair bristled from his big head. His features were heavy, brooding. With his thick, rounded shoulders, he was almost brutish in appearance.
But she knew that behind the harsh façade, a more delicate man was hidden. He was at home in art museums, enjoyed good food and drink, and found pleasure in reading poetry—although it had to rhyme.
More important, he was a virile, tender, and considerate lover. He adored the children. He did not find tears or embraces unmanly. And, unknown to all but the women in his life, there was a core of humility in him.
He had been born and raised a Catholic, although he had long since ceased attending church. But she wondered if he had ever lost his faith. There was steel there that transcended personal pride in his profession and trust in his own rightness.
He had once confessed to her that Barbara, his first wife, had ac
cused him of believing himself God’s surrogate on earth. She thought Barbara had been close to the truth; there were times when he acted like a weapon of judgment and saw his life as one long tour of duty.
Musing on the contradictions of the man she loved, she gathered up the cards and put them away.
“Coffee?” she asked idly. “Pecan ring?”
“Coffee would be nice,” he said, “but I’ll skip the cake. You go ahead.”
She was heating the water when the phone shrilled. She picked up the kitchen extension.
“Abner Boone, Mrs. Delaney,” the sergeant said, his voice at once hard and hollow. “Could I speak to the Chief, please?”
She didn’t ask him the reason for his call. She went back into the living room. Her husband was already on his feet, tugging down vest and jacket. They stared at each other.
“Sergeant Boone,” she said.
He nodded, face expressionless. “I’ll take it in the study.”
She went back into the kitchen and waited for the water to boil, her arms folded, hands clutching her elbows tightly. She heard him come out of the study, go to the hallway closet. He came into the kitchen carrying the straw skimmer he donned every June 1st, regardless of the weather.
“The Hotel Adler,” he told her. “About a half-hour ago. They’ve got the hotel cordoned, but she’s probably long gone. I’ll be an hour or two. Don’t wait up for me.”
She nodded and he bent to kiss her cheek.
“Take care,” she said as lightly as she could.
He smiled and was gone.
When he arrived at Seventh Avenue and 50th Street, the Hotel Adler was still cordoned, sawhorses holding back a gathering crowd. Two uniformed officers stood in front of the closed glass doors listening to the loud arguments of three men who were apparently reporters demanding entrance.
“No one gets in,” one of the cops said in a remarkably placid voice. “But no one. That’s orders.”
“The public has a right to know,” one of the men yelled.
The officer looked at him pityingly. “Hah-hah,” he said.
The Chief plucked at the patrolman’s sleeve. “I am Edward X. Delaney,” he said. “Sergeant Boone is expecting me.”
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