by Dell Shannon
All right. He’d been sorry to break with Alison that way, but it had been boiling up for five weeks. Admit it: not for the usual reason, the one he’d told himself it was. For a reason a lot of people would think was lunatic. But then, they weren’t Luis Mendoza.
Alison, always a little different thing with her, from the start: not the ordinary woman. He could talk with Alison. A rapport there, sympathy aside from sex. So that in the end, he had betrayed himself to her .... As long as he could remember anything, it had been the two of them together, the old lady and himself: his parents dead in an accident before he was a month born—there’d never been anyone else. His grandfather didn’t count, the old miser, an ogre-on-the-hearth, and the two of them contriving little schemes to bypass his wrath, to get enough out of him for the luxury of a pound of sugar on the grocery bill, new two-dollar shoes instead of new soles on the old ones. (The old man sitting on all that money then, nobody knowing.) The only person, she was, who had ever known Luis Mendoza inwardly, seen him without all his defenses. And she’d been eighty-seven, she’d gone quick and peaceful, and it was just in the nature of things: but loss of someone like that was still a loss.
And so there he’d been that night, the urbane, suave Mendoza, stripped of his camouflage, betrayed by that sympathy between. He could feel now the comforting circle of Alison’s arms, the softness of her breasts, hear her soothing murmur; and suddenly he downed the other half of the rye and swore aloud. The galled bitterness of humiliation, for unavoidable memory—of having nakedly revealed himself in weakness .... And ever since, awaiting the excuse to break with her. . . because she knew too much of him, she had got too close.
Running, not for the usual reason: not bored with her, not really wanting to be done with Alison, not taking alarm at the trap set. So now he’d got it straight with himself, what he’d been dodging in his own mind, and it wasn’t as important as it had seemed, unexamined. Just the way he was made. He was still sorry for the quarrel, but this way or that way, probably just as well: better stay away from the path to the trap, these respectable women with standards—¡pues si!
All of a sudden, for getting that uneasily postponed self-examination off his mind, he felt much better; he felt fine, no longer tired. Maybe it was the rye. For the Erst time in six weeks he felt wholly himself, the old Mendoza.
Because another rather peculiar thing had happened to him when she ldied. He’d never given much thought to time: the year, it was four figures on a letterhead, no more. He wasn’t conscious of feeling any different this year than last, and the man he faced in the shaving mirror didn’t look any different—the hair just as thick and as black, the stomach just as flat, and in spite of all the paper work, the eyes just as sharp. But quite suddenly, when she was gone, it came to him that half his life had gone with her. Maybe more: you couldn’t know. That he’d turned forty years old last February.
He’d been having some odd and unaccustomed thoughts about it, at intervals, since.
Now he forgot all about it, and he was back to where and what he’d always been. He felt fine. Which was a very good thing, because he had some intensive work and thinking ahead of him: come to think, this would probably be the last evening he had to himself for some time. Might as well enjoy it.
A meal of some kind—it was still early—and then, who was he likely to find unspoken for at short notice? That blonde, Florence Something, look up the number—she’d do. Nine o’clock. Meanwhile, do a little ruminating on this case . . .
He began to cut up fresh liver for the cats, and his mind switched off the blonde temporarily to dwell on four dead women.
FIVE
"Four of them," he said to Hackett next morning. "I don’t say yes and I don’t say no to all four, but there are points in common that might say a very loud yes. And I wonder if we’ve missed others."
"Now that’s something," said Hackett. "A mass murderer in business for nineteen months, and nobody noticing it?"
"Caray, you call four a mass? Well, I don’t like it much either, and the Chief is going to like it less, but there are excuses for us, Art—we had some good solid evidence on Mary Ellen Wood, and of the other three we only handled two, nearly a year apart .... Spilled milk. Point is, no one man ever looked at all four. And it doesn’t mean much, the common denominator Mrs. Haines spotted—that all four were quiet, respectable females. Put any kind of woman in the right place at the right time, that kind of thing might happen to her."
"Claro está," said Hackett. "Admitted. It’s the times, which I don’t suppose Mrs. Haines knew about from the papers."
"¡Ay de periédicos todos!" said Mendoza. "To hell with all scandal-mongering pressmen—don’t mention them to me!" The story had broken this morning; both the conservative and radical press had devoted some space to it, and it would be featured in their sister afternoon papers too.
"Yes, that’s the whole point. When it happens to a respectable female—one who doesn’t pick up strangers, go roaming around alone at midnight, that kind of thing, to ask for trouble—it’s because accident put her in the way of it. Like that Jonas thing—I’ve been looking over this year’s crop—or the DeVa1le girl. The car stalls in an unsavory district on her way home from the swing shift, something like that. There’ve been thirty-odd cases of rape and attempted rape through headquarters this eighteen months, and in all but seven or eight of them the woman was at least partly to blame, for voluntarily putting herself in danger. And I’m not counting the statutory cases, where it’s legally rape because the girl’s under age—I mean the real thing, sex by force. Thirteen of those cases ended in homicide. Of those thirteen women, six can be called—mmh—respectable. The others had asked for it, just like those where it didn’t end in murder—hanging around bars alone, picking up strangers, or they lived or worked or visited in the back alleys of bad districts. And two of the first six, it was chance putting them in a dangerous place late at night, in the way of dangerous men. But here we’ve got four women who got in the way of a rapist-killer at very odd times of day indeed, and odd places. That is, I think four, depending on what you can tell me about Piper. Mary Ellen Wood, between three and five in the afternoon—because if she hadn’t been prevented, she’d have been home by five. Celestine Teitel left home that Sunday about nine in the morning, probably got to that stretch of beach by ten or so, and she’d planned to be home by six, so it was between those times. Pauline McCandless left the library at six and so far as anyone knew was going straight home—it wouldn’t be dark until eight or so, and she’d be in the middle of a crowd on the bus. How does Piper line up on this? She lived alone—is there any evidence of her plans that evening?"
"As a matter of fact," said Hackett, "there is. Reason we started to look for her as early as we did. She was expected at a bridge party in the apartment manager’s place that evening. They said it wasn’t like her not to call if she couldn’t make it. And being good friends—she’d lived there five years or so—the manager and his wife went up and let themselves into her apartment, to see if she’d been taken sick or something, you know—called her office to see if she was working late—finally called us, thinking, maybe, a street accident."
"So there we are. Four. Not late at night, not in the dark, and not in slum districts. Sure, all right, put a question mark on Teitel, on that angle—it was a lonely stretch of beach, anybody might have turned up there. But here’s the Wood girl in the middle of Hollywood, Piper down on Spring Street surrounded by members of the Stock Exchange, and McCandless waiting at a busy intersection for a crowded crosstown bus. I ask you!" Mendoza shrugged and laughed. "Sure, excuses for us not spotting it. Like the way you figured it with Jane Piper. That for some reason, innocent or not, she’d put herself in the way of violence—maybe walked down to some bar on Main for a drink before going home, something like that—was coaxed or forced into a car, and driven to a lonelier spot. The likeliest way it could have happened, that hour, that place-about the only way it could have happened. A
nd ditto for the others. We came nearer the truth on Mary Ellen, though we got the wrong man. It must have been somebody who knew her, that was seventy percent sure to start. Somebody should have seen the same thing on these others."
"Barring Teitel, I’ll go along," said Hackett. He didn’t look very happy about it. "It looks that way."
Mendoza was leaning back with his eyes shut. "Unsuccessful women," he said somnolently. "Damn their minds, their salaries—women without men attached, this reason or that. Teitel wasn’t bad-looking, neither was Piper, but that hasn’t much to do with it sometimes. Am I jumping to conclusions to say, on those two anyway, females just a little too intellectual, too—mmh—superior and objective, to attract the average male? And McCandless saddled with a dificult mama who’d discouraged her from 'All That'."
"And if that’s not just the famous Mendoza imagination," asked Hackett, "what does it say?"
"It says I’ll give you ten-to-one odds that if we can get the evidence, if anybody remembers, Jane Piper and Pauline McCandless had recently met an answer to a maiden’s prayer. Just the way we know now Mary Ellen and Celestine Teitel had. A young or youngish man, who seemed attracted, who looked like—to put it crudely—a good bet. A man of the type to appeal to these women, which means he put up a good appearance, he was—for want of a better word—a gentleman. A man who seemed trustworthy. A man," said Mendoza, suddenly sitting up, opening his eyes, getting out a cigarette, "those women would not only be attracted to, because that in itself says nothing—the most respectable high-minded women, nine times out of ten they’ll feel the animal attraction to the big male brute, never mind if he’s the plumber or the garage mechanic or whatever—but a man of some, what do I want to say, address, prestige. A man who used correct grammar, dressed well, had nice manners. Yes, I see it going like that—"
"Slow down, chico," said Hackett dryly. "This is what the textbooks call theorizing without data."
"Sure, sure!" Mendoza knocked ash into the brass ashtray angrily.
"That’s for sure. But those women, what man but one like that could take them so easy, those places and times? I’m telling you, Art, that’s the way it was, the way it must have been—¡no cabe duda!—I can see it. When they vanished from crowded places like that, in broad daylight, and the times so tight. Mary Ellen, here’s this fellow she’s just met—older than the college boys she knows, more sophisticated, more exciting—meeting her that day, making a date for after her last class. Teitel, that’s the one we can’t say definitely about, but I think she belongs on the list—and how might it have gone there? Did she happen to meet him casually on her way to the beach that morning, or suddenly decide to invite him along? Or maybe they had a date, unknown to Miss Reeder—who’d probably cautioned Celestine about strange men, so Celestine didn’t mention it to her, to encourage more moralizing. This fellow with the looks, the manner, to attract Piper—another mature woman, an intelligent woman—but lonely women are too often fools—meeting her, calling her, that day—saying, maybe, I’ll drive you home, or let’s have an early dinner together, I’ll get you home in time for your bridge party. And, God help us, Pauline McCandless!—from what you got, a walkover for any male who paid her a little attention! And she wouldn’t have mentioned him to Mama, but she might have to a girl friend her own age—"
"None of those at the library had anything to say about that."
"Did you ask specifically? We will, but she hadn’t been there long, probably didn’t know any of those women intimately. What we want is a girl she’d known longer, maybe a college classmate—and of course, even if there was somebody like that she’d confide in, she might not have had the chance since she’d met our Romeo. But I think she’d met him, Art. And that when she left the library that day, she had a date with him, if just to have a cup of coffee at a counter—because Mama expected her home at the usual time."
"This same smooth-talking collar ad who already had those other three to his account. I don’t know, you’re building an awful lot on awful little, Luis." Hackett passed a hand over his jaw thoughtfully. "It could be, I agree with you it looks like a man they knew—or men—”
"Figure the odds on that!" said Mendoza. "Three different men, even in a town this size, with the same qualifications? ¡No hay tal! Be like drawing a royal flush in the first deal—theoretically it could happen, but does it ever? What tripped us up here, it’s the fact that almost without exception when a woman gets raped, and occasionally murdered as an outcome of that, it’s the outside thing—the random thing. The way Miss Evelyn Reeder put it—anyone people like us know, not that kind! It’d be very damned convenient, in all sorts of ways, if we could generalize like that—say for sure what kind of intelligence, personality, capability, occurs in this class, this race, this nationality, place, age, city area, economic level, educational level—¡ay qué ris!— people aren’t made that way. Miss Reeder says to me, a mental defective. Maybe it’s a sad commentary on the state of human culture, but how many convicted rapists you know of have been either lunatics or morons?"
"About one in ten, I’d say, show pretty low I.Q.’s, but not always moron level—and the other nine, generalizing, are just given to violence, smart or dumb."
"Eso es . . . Random violence, that’s the pattern. You don’t go looking among the family and friends. But that’s where he was in these cases, and just by the law of averages, it’s one man, not three or four. No, we’ve got very little evidence yet, but I’ll give you odds that as we get more it’1l show the pattern I can already see here. Mary Ellen had just met this maiden’s dream, was hoping he’d ask for a date. Edward Anthony—and I hope to God these girl friends can give us a little more on him, what he looked like, where she met him, what job he was in—All the sister knows is that he was about thirty, a smooth talker. Damn, eighteen, nineteen months ago—casual little things like that, people forget. We’ll see .... Celestine Teitel, as we now know, had recently met a fellow she described to Evelyn Reeder as charming. His name was Mark Hamilton, and she met him at the music-and-art-supply shop where she bought sketching materials—he was a customer too, they got talking casually. Miss Reeder couldn’t say whether they’d ever been out together, except for once when he bought Celestine a cup of coffee at the drugstore next to the shop. Now we’ll go looking on Piper and McCandless, and I think we’ll find that they’d just met somebody like that—with another euphonious, respectable-sounding Anglo-Saxon name—and that if we get descriptions, they’ll match up."
"Maybe—maybe. You sound damn happy about it," said Hackett. "My God, what the press boys’ll say about this one!"
Mendoza sat back and shut his eyes again. "Crossing bridges. Let’s wait and see." The press stories this morning had been all Haines and Rose Foster; they hadn’t got hold of the mass-killer idea yet. "Wishful thinking, that Mrs. Haines won’t come out with it to the first reporter who interviews her. I’d like to shut her up, if for no other reason than that it might not be such a good idea to let him know these cases have been linked up. But, on the other hand, it might be a very smart idea indeed. Let him know we’re looking. You never know with these characters. I’d rather like to keep these others in the background—get him for Mary Ellen, and just quietly mark off the other three as incidentally solved. No lése majesté from the press, or not as much—not as much public viewing-with-alarm. But Mrs. Haines feeling the way she does, understandably, that we can’t hope for .... We’ll be using every man we’ve got, there are a lot of places to look—"
"And damn all to go on," said Hackett gloomily.
"Oh, I don’t know. On Mary Ellen, there’s Haines—I don’t buy Mrs. Haines’ detective-story plot, somebody who wanted to get him in trouble, but our Romeo must have known a little something about that yard, that garden shed—he didn’t just stumble on it as a convenient place to stash a body. He lived around there, or he knew somebody around there. He had some reason to frequent the neighborhood, to walk down that alley—once or twice anyway. Then there’s
the shop where Teitel met him. I think. We’ll get other starting points, with luck, from people who knew Piper and McCandless. Really too many places to look, too many directions to put out a cast. We’ll get him—we’ll get him in the end—it may be a long hunt, but by God we’ll get him ....Happy? ¡No seas tonto!—don’t be funny! But before I start figuring out the answer to a problem, it’s a help to know just what the problem is."
"How do you build him?" asked Hackett after a pause. "A nut? One of those where it doesn’t show?"
"Let’s not go all psychological," said Mendoza almost amusedly. "Your guess is as good as mine, on that .... They knock themselves out, the head doctors, trying to tabulate what’s normal, what isn’t, when it comes to that old devil sex. Can’t be done. Comes right back to the individual. It’s a damn funny thing, you know, and I suppose I’d get sued for slander to say it in public, but the psychiatrists have a lot in common with the Communists—such a desperate effort to classify people, make rules applying to the general type. Talk about waste of time .... This one? Sure, there’s something wrong with him, obviously. God knows there are always enough willing women, nobody needs to get it by force, ¿como no?" He put out his cigarette, immediately groped for another. And his tone on that was rueful, cynical. He hadn’t enjoyed the blonde much, last night. A silly female. Just, in effect, a female—compliant—and obtuse. Nobody to talk to, to enjoy being with, just for herself. You might say, on a par with the waitress who fetched you a meal when you were hungry. That kind of thing. Not like—
He went on sharply, hastily, "Something offbeat, sure, but not lunatic in the legal sense. He likes it by force, maybe—he’s got a grudge against females, maybe—not what we call normal. But in any other—mmh—area of life, quite possibly he looks sane as you or me, and one thing we can say about him, Art, just as I pointed out, he’s not legally insane, by the McNaughton rule. Pues no. He knows what he’s doing, he knows he can go to the gas chamber for it. Because he gives them different names, you notice. Edward Anthony—Mark Hamilton. A family resemblance there, and if, as, and when we get the names he gave to Piper and McCandless, they’ll be the same kind, names out of the popular circulating-library stories. I’ll bet you—I’ll bet you ....Who can say exactly what’s wrong with him, and why?" Mendoza opened his eyes and smiled at Hackett. "Cross out the head doctors’ pompous talk, chico," he said softly, "and off the record—can any man say there hasn’t been a time he didn’t have the impulse to violence with a woman—to let her know he’s a male creature? Or with some men, to repay her for being female? Tell the truth to yourself if not to me."