Leopold's Way

by Edward D. Hoch

  The green chair was empty now, and Cranston motioned toward the upstairs. “My wife’s resting. Her mother’s up there with her. It’s…it’s been a great shock to all of us.”

  “Yes…”

  “Did you get him yet?”

  “The man who did it? No, we didn’t get him yet.”

  “You’ve got to catch him before he does it again.”

  “I know.”

  “Someone’s got to pay for Tommy.”

  “Yes, someone’s got to pay.”

  Cranston kept pacing as he talked. Back and forth, across the living room floor.

  Leopold sat down and began asking the usual questions. How old was the boy? Was he quiet or wild? Did he make friends with strangers? The father answered, and Leopold carefully noted the answers in a little book. But he knew there was nothing to be found here. The killer had probably not even known little Tommy Cranston.

  He had just been a boy walking in the rain. And the killer had caught up with him in that vacant lot.

  Cranston sat down and tried to light a cigarette. “Who…who found him, Captain?”

  “One of our police cars saw something in the lot, and investigated. They found him just after the rain stopped.”

  “I can still see them over there, taking pictures. Won’t they ever stop? Won’t they ever go away?”

  “They’ll stop.”

  Yes, they would stop. When the next body was found. Then it would be someone else’s turn to watch the prowling men and listen to the sobbing women.

  The phone rang and Cranston answered it in a broken voice. “It’s for you.”

  “Leopold here.”

  “This is Slater. I’m at the circus. Think I’ve found something. Come on over.”

  “Right.”

  “I’ll meet you in front, at the main entrance.”

  “Be there in five minutes.”

  He left Cranston and the brown house, and it was dark outside.

  Dark.

  But the circus was a blaze of light; light and noise and laughter. Here was happiness, undampened by the silence a few blocks away.

  And there were children here, too. Gay children. Living, laughing children.

  Perhaps one of these would be the next. It might not be tomorrow, or next week, but someday, somewhere, perhaps the killer of little Tommy Cranston would see another child running alone through the rain. Then the hands would loop the strong rope around a tiny throat once more.

  “What kept you, Leopold?”

  “Oh, there you are, Slater. What’s up?”

  “I asked a few questions around here and I found out there’s a guy they hired a couple of weeks ago that’s been acting queer. Last week they caught him over near the girls’ tent, and last night one of the girls complained he was prowling around again.”

  Leopold sighed. “Let’s talk to him.”

  His name was Charlie. Charlie Watts. Around forty, strong, well-built, but with a gleam behind his blue eyes that told you to watch out for him. Leopold had seen that look before, too many times.

  “We’re police, Charlie. We want to talk to you.”

  “I ain’t done nothing. Honest.”

  From the big top came the blare of the circus band as the evening show got under way. It was a dying profession, yet here in the midst of it everything was still somehow full of life.

  Slater moved in closer. “You were bothering the girls.”

  “No. No, honest.”

  “What about the boy this afternoon?”

  “What boy?”

  The trumpeting of an elephant, the growl of a lion…

  “How many times you been locked up, Charlie?”

  “Never. Never!”

  Leopold spoke from the shadow. “We can take you downtown and check your prints.”

  “No!”

  From the distance came the booming voice of the ringmaster. “And now, ladies and gentlemen, in the center ring we have the death-defying rope-spin! An unbelievable stunt that will…”

  Slater hit Charlie Watts with the back of his hand. “Then talk, damn you!”

  “Lay off the rough stuff, Slater,” Leopold spoke quietly.

  “No…No, don’t hit me again. I…I was arrested once for…for looking in windows…”

  “You get the idea, Charlie. Keep talking. Tell us about the kid this afternoon.”

  “What…what kid?”

  Slater drove his fist into the soft flesh of Charlie’s stomach. The man doubled against a tent post.

  “Damn it, Slater. Touch him again and I’ll have your badge.”

  “This is the only way to deal with his kind, Leopold. Beat it out of them. Give me five minutes and I’ll have a confession.”

  “Come on, let’s get out of here.”

  “And leave him?”

  “He’s a nut all right, but he’s not the kind we’re looking for. The guy that looks in girls’ windows isn’t the same guy that strangles little boys for no reason at all. Come on.”

  They left Charlie on his knees, with his forehead pressed against the hard earth. Outside the tent the world was living again. Light and laughter and fellows out with their girls on a Saturday night.

  Leopold watched a green balloon break free from a child’s grip and sail up into the blue sea above their heads. He watched it until it disappeared against a cluster of stars. Then the stars themselves vanished behind a sudden unseen cloud.

  “Where to now, Leopold?”

  “Back. Back to the vacant lot.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Maybe the parents killed him accidentally and then put the body in the lot. It’s happened before.”

  “They couldn’t do it in broad daylight.”

  “He was killed in broad daylight, Leopold. Back by those trees it’s hard to see things from the street.”

  “Yeah.”

  “How do you explain it, Leopold?”

  “I don’t know. It was raining. The street was empty. Anything might have happened in that lot without anybody noticing it, I suppose.”

  “But it didn’t start raining until fifteen minutes after he left the house. Did it take him fifteen minutes to…?”

  Leopold stopped walking. “You are right. His mother watched him start through the lot and it wasn’t raining then. What was he doing for those fifteen minutes?”

  “Maybe a car stopped. Maybe someone called him over.”

  “And lured him into the car and strangled him with a length of rope. And then, when the rain started, carried his body into the lot. That would explain why the rope wasn’t found.”

  “It would have been dangerous, Leopold.”

  “No more dangerous than keeping the body in the car with him.”

  “But,” Slater protested, “to carry the body through a lot right next to the kid’s house!”

  Leopold sighed. “I suppose you’re right. It would be too big a risk.”

  Slater lit a cigarette. “Then what did happen? Where do we find this killer?”

  “Not in that neighborhood. He wouldn’t kill in broad daylight in his own neighborhood. He must be a stranger.”

  They went back to Slater’s car and drove away, back to the vacant lot a few blocks off, and as they rode the lights and noise of the circus grew smaller in the background.

  The lot was hidden in darkness now, covered by the sheltering night which so often screened the movements of evil. Even now the grass was still damp against Leopold’s legs, but he noticed it only in a far corner of his mind.

  In the rest of his mind he was a boy again, a boy much like Tommy Cranston, thinking the thoughts he must have thought just before he died. Thoughts of the circus, and the joy of growing up. Thoughts…

  What was it?

  A boy on his way to the circus…

  What had halted Tommy on his way to the circus?

  It would not be a stranger after all. It would have to be someone that Tommy knew and trusted. Someone t
hat lived on the same street, in one of those houses, behind one of those windows. Or else…

  “This is getting us nowhere,” Slater complained.

  “Maybe not.”

  “Let’s go question his folks again.”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because the answer isn’t with them. The answer is out here, in the street, where Tommy Cranston died.”

  “Well, hell, you can prowl around as much as you like. I’m going back to Headquarters.”

  “All right, Slater. Tell them I’ll be in soon.”

  He watched the big cop walk back to the street and get into his car. He watched while the car drove away and left him alone in the damp grass.

  He looked up again at the night sky, at the moon, and at the clouds passing slowly across the sky.

  Fifteen minutes.

  What had Tommy Cranston done during those fifteen minutes?

  Perhaps no one had stopped him. Perhaps he’d gone on his way.

  To the circus?

  Leopold sighed and followed the weed-covered path across the lot. He went down a slight incline and then across the railroad tracks.

  And then there was the circus, in front of him again, just as Tommy might have seen it.

  And Slater’s car.

  He hadn’t gone back to headquarters after all! He’d driven around the block and come back for another crack at Charlie Watts!

  Leopold ran across the damp earth toward the bright lights of the midway and the dark shapes of the tents. He found the one where they’d left Charlie a half-hour before.

  Slater was in there, as Leopold knew he would be.

  “Damn it, Slater, what have you done?”

  “Just gotten a confession for you, that’s all,” the big detective said between his teeth.

  Leopold looked down at the ground by the cop’s feet. Charlie Watts was sprawled in the dust, clutching his stomach. “I did it,” he managed to gasp. “Don’t hit me again.”

  “Get out of here, Slater. The Commissioner’s going to hear about this.”

  “I’m not going anywhere. He confessed, and he’s my prisoner. I’m taking him in.”

  Leopold looked into his face and knew that he meant it.

  “All right. Bring him along. We’ll settle this at Headquarters, then.”

  And they left the tent with Charlie Watts leaning heavily on Leopold’s shoulder. Behind them the night was full of music and shouting and the laughter of children.

  The ride downtown was long and silent. The session with the District Attorney and the Police Commissioner was even longer.

  The District Attorney was a big, powerful man, a man who’d devoted his life to crusading against crime in his city. He was a man who rarely made a mistake and expected others to follow his example.

  “Damn it, Leopold, why can’t we charge him with murder? He’s confessed, hasn’t he?”

  “Yes, he confessed. After Slater here beat it out of him.”

  “Well, sometimes that’s the only way to deal with child murderers.”

  “Is that what you really think?”

  The D.A. sighed. “It doesn’t make any difference what you and I think, Leopold. The papers are screaming for an arrest, and I’ve got to give them one.”

  “Even if it’s an innocent man?”

  “Watts isn’t innocent,” the D.A. insisted. “We’ve got a dozen circus girls that’ll testify to the kind of scum he is. And he’s got a record a yard long for that sort of thing.”

  “But never for bothering a child.”

  “The boy wasn’t molested sexually. Maybe he just caught Watts doing something else, looking in a window or something.”

  “During the daytime? During a rainstorm?”

  “What difference does it make? Maybe he just felt like killing somebody and there weren’t any girls around. What the hell! He confessed, didn’t he?”

  “Let’s go down and talk to him again,” Leopold suggested. “I’ll bet he’s changed his tune by this time, especially with Slater away from him.”

  Slater stirred in his chair. “Sure, go on. Turn him loose. See what I care! I haven’t got any kids for him to kill.”

  The D.A. sighed. “That’s just it, Leopold. Those parents want an arrest, and we’ve got to give them one.”

  “And since you’ve got a convenient ex-con from out of town who happened to be near the scene, you figure he’s the one to pin it on, is that it?”

  The D.A. rose from his desk. “That’ll be enough from you, Leopold. I’m indicting this man for first-degree murder, and nothing you can say will change my mind.”

  Leopold walked to the door. “Go ahead. Send him to the chair if you want to. But don’t come running to me if there’s another murder a week or a month or a year from now, after you’ve pulled the switch.”

  “There’s always another murder. They never stop.”

  And then Leopold left the office, and walked quickly along the hollow corridor of the building. It was night in the city now, past midnight on a Saturday evening, and the city was going to sleep.

  But here there were places where they did not sleep. Here there were rooms where the lights always burned. Like the crime lab…

  “Hi, Leopold.”

  “Hello, boys. Anything on that kid killing?”

  “I guess not. It’s a funny thing, too, in a way.”

  “In what way?”

  “Well…You know how it was raining this afternoon?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, there just wasn’t any wet grass or anything on his shoes or in his pants cuffs. You know the way it sticks when it’s wet.”

  “I know. What does it mean?”

  “That he didn’t walk through the wet grass. Yet the ground under him was wet from the rain.”

  “So where does that leave us?”

  “Either he was killed elsewhere and carried out there, or else he went out there before the rain started and stood around waiting for the killer.”

  Leopold grunted. “Anything else? How about signs of a struggle?”

  “That’s funny, too. His clothes weren’t ripped or anything like you might expect. Oh, he tried to claw the rope away from his neck, but that was all. As far as we can tell from examining his fingernails, he didn’t even manage to scratch his murderer.”

  “No sexual assault of any kind?”

  “Nothing. It’s just as if the killer dropped out of the sky with his rope and strangled the kid for no reason at all.”

  Leopold paced up and down, thinking about it, thinking about the facts as he knew them, waiting for them to drop neatly into place.

  “Somebody from the circus,” he muttered, half to himself.

  “What?”

  “Isn’t there somebody from the circus who does some sort of rope trick?”

  “The guy who confessed?”

  “No, someone else. Someone who spins around on the end of a rope.”

  “Yeah,” one of the men said. “I remember reading about it. He ties a rope around his ankle, and his arm, and even around his neck somehow, and he spins in mid-air. It’s quite a trick.”

  “Around his neck?”

  “Well, it looks like it’s around his neck. Actually it catches him just under the chin. The trick takes strong neck muscles, but if the rope is positioned right it doesn’t stop his breathing.”

  “Yeah,” Leopold said. “Yeah.”

  “Think he killed the kid?”

  Leopold shook his head slowly. “He went on first at the evening show. If he went on first in the afternoon too, he’d have been performing at the time the boy died.”

  “Another dead end.”

  “No,” Leopold said. “Not this time, I don’t think.” He left them and walked back down the hall.

  It was so late, so late at night.

  What time was it, anyway? Somewhere past midnight.

  He went through the dim passages that connected the city buildings and presently he was alone
in his office.

  He stretched out on the battered leather sofa and thought about it some more.

  Of course he knew.

  He’d known for a long time, somewhere back in the deep recesses of his mind.

  It wasn’t a satisfactory solution, not nearly as satisfactory as would have been the guilt of the fellow Slater had arrested. But then life was not always satisfactory. Sometimes, quite often, fellows like that had to be turned loose again.

  Perhaps some day Charlie Watts really would kill someone. But until that day he must walk free, protected from such cops as Slater. It was the system. Right or wrong, it was the system.

  Leopold closed his eyes and drifted into a dazed and gratifying sleep. For it was night, and there was nothing to be done until daybreak.

  He woke with the rising sun in his eyes, slanting along the empty streets not yet crowded with Sunday church-goers. He rubbed the grit from his eyes and adjusted his necktie, and then he left the office.

  “Hi, Leopold. Did you sleep?”

  “Yeah. Do me a favor, will you? Call Slater and the D.A. and tell them to meet me out at Cranston’s place.”

  “On Sunday morning?”

  “Call them.”

  “If you say so, Leopold.”

  Leopold nodded and walked away slowly, feeling suddenly very old. He couldn’t take these long hours like he used to.

  “And get me a car, too,” he called back as an afterthought.

  “O.K., Leopold…”

  The street was much the same as he remembered it, only now the children were not playing there. It was Sunday morning, and the light mist near the grass seemed to hint at a street still asleep.

  He waited in the car until Slater drove up, sleepy and cursing. “What is this, Leopold? Another of your crazy ideas?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “What in the hell’s the idea getting me up at dawn?”

  “I just wanted you to be in on it, Slater. The D.A.’s coming, too.”

  Slater laughed. “I’ll bet he’ll like that. He’s planning to indict Watts for first-degree murder, you know.”

  “I think he’ll change his mind.”

  Another car drew up, and the D.A. got out. “What’s the meaning of this, Leopold? Do you know what time it is?”

  “Yeah. I just thought you might want to be in on it.”

  “In on what?”

  “On the end of the Tommy Cranston case.”