The Love Potion Murders in the Museum of Man

by Alfred Alcorn

  Surprise, strangely enough, is often sharper when you expect something rather than the reverse. I all but jumped at the sight of the deliveryman coming up the front walk carrying what looked like a video camera. But I wasn’t nearly as startled as he was. He turned immediately and ran out the gate and up the street. I pursued, drawing my revolver, and calling for him to stop. I saw him climb into one of those truck-like station wagons and drive away. I suppose I could have, as in the films, fired at him, making him skid out of control and crash dramatically into an abutment. But I lack the killer instinct, or whatever it takes to do that. I did manage to get the first four numbers on the license plate.

  I rushed back into the house and quickly explained what had happened to Diantha. She stood by calm and collected as I telephoned Lieutenant Tracy on his private line. I gave him as dispassionate an account of what had transpired as I could muster, telling him about the suspect, where he worked, the kind of car he was driving, and what I had of the license plate number.

  The lieutenant was most sympathetic. He asked if there was anything we needed. He said he would call headquarters right away and then call back in a few minutes.

  Diantha and I sat on the couch holding hands for a while. Though we were both scared and excited, I think we were both thinking about what had happened, about the intimate aspects of it, and how that might change our lives. It might mean, for instance, that she would no longer be able to live in the house with me. As though intuiting my thoughts, she touched my face. “Norman, I don’t want this … to come between us. I mean it doesn’t have to start anything or stop anything. I don’t want to move out.”

  I nodded. I said, “I don’t want you to. I know Elsbeth is hardly gone from us, but …”

  Diantha laughed. “She would mind much less than you think. She told me to take care of you.”

  “But not like that.”

  “Who knows?”

  Just then the phone rang. It was Lieutenant Tracy. He said he would come by to drive us down to Keller Infirmary to have blood samples taken. He said not to touch any of the leftover food. He would bring a crime scene crew to go over everything. He said they also had a safe house where Diantha could spend the night if she felt threatened.

  When I related the lieutenant’s offer she shook her head. “No way. I’m staying with you.”

  Well, to make a long story short, we went to Keller, gave blood, and then went with Lieutenant Tracy to the home of the deliveryman, which the police had ascertained through his employers. I counted no less than five cruisers on the scene, some of them with their lights flashing. It turned out to be a lavishly appointed condominium in one of the better downtown neighborhoods, certainly not the kind of place one would expect to be inhabited by a delivery boy from a restaurant.

  The lieutenant told us, on the way over, that the restaurant owners had been very cooperative. They said Bob Fang, the deliveryman, had worked for them nearly a year, had been reliable, but had wanted to remain a delivery boy even though they offered to make him a waiter, which pays much more.

  Sergeant Lemure was already there with another crime scene crew. There were signs of a hasty departure, with drawers pulled open, items strewn about, the back door ajar.

  “He looks like he was searching for something to take with him,” the lieutenant remarked. “Perhaps we’ll find it instead.”

  After a few moments there, he drove us home. He arranged to have a cruiser drive by every hour. I carefully locked all the outside doors. I have left the door to my attic eyrie open to keep an ear, so to speak, on Diantha. She finally drifted off into a deep sleep in her room, which is down the corridor from mine. What a night this has been.

  I can only be thankful there was no one else here to join us for supper, say Alfie Lopes or one of the neighbors. It boggles the mind what might have happened.

  36

  It is New Year’s Day and I am in a hellish quandary. Diantha has gone back to that ridiculous gangster and that absurd pile in the woods, and I don’t know whether she has been kidnapped or not. She may simply be suffering from the common illusion that love conquers all. There must be some evolutionary advantage to self-deception. How else to explain its prevalence among the human species? Especially when it comes to love. Especially among women.

  Well, not just women. Since the incident with the doctored food, I have harbored the hope, however unrealistic, that Diantha would take Elsbeth’s place in my life. Several times I have been on the point of declaration, suggestion, even action. But I have not been able to turn myself into a gallant suitor, bringing her roses and lighting candles. I have been, as I should remain, hamstrung by scruple. I am in mourning for my beloved wife. The figurative black band is around my heart as well as my arm.

  At the same time, I fear that in temporizing with Diantha I have lost her as I lost her mother so many years ago. For courting too slow, as the song has it. Not that Diantha has been open to any real advances had I made them. She has been in turn flirtatious, gay in a semi-hysteria, drawing me on then laughing me off when I have reciprocated in the slightest way; and then silent, her eyes avoiding mine. I have heard her talking at length on that little phone of hers behind the closed door of her bedroom.

  All the while I have been subject to a kind of sensual haunting. Diantha did love me, after all, if only under the sway of that pernicious potion. And I almost willingly delude myself that, despite the grotesque circumstances, we had made love rather than merely raped each other.

  Our coexistence without Elsbeth here would not have been easy in any event. It is difficult and soul trying to stay vigilant. It was a strain to be cooped up, especially given the way things were developing between us. I did go to work, impersonating myself as museum Director. When absent from home I made sure that a cruiser drove by the house at regular intervals. I called to check on Diantha to the point, I’m afraid, that I annoyed her. But what else could I do? An attempt had been made on our lives.

  Indeed, Lieutenant Tracy called yesterday at the museum with some preliminary results on the food brought to us from the Chinese restaurant. It was saturated with the compounds that had been given to Ossmann and Woodley, Bert and Betti, and probably Spronger and Jones. It had been, in short, nothing other than attempted murder.

  Something had to give, and it did. About midmorning the day after New Year’s, Diantha called me at the office to let me know that she was driving over to the supermarket at Northgate Mall to shop for groceries. And, in fact, we had run quite low on things. I cautioned her to be careful. I told her to park as close as she could to the door of the store, even at the risk of getting a ticket. She said she would be very careful, and I believed she would be.

  I came home in the early afternoon to find she hadn’t returned. I called her pocket phone number several times. It rang and rang, the last time in sync with a faint echo coming from upstairs. I went up and found it on her bureau. I didn’t know what to do. I perhaps should have called Lieutenant Tracy then, but Diantha is, as they say, a free agent.

  I finally took a cab down to a car rental outlet and obtained the use of a small inconspicuous sedan. I drove over to the mall and searched every conceivable parking place for my little car, but to no avail. Then, with my heart lurching, I drove out to that monster’s lair in the woods, all the while rehearsing my rebuttals to his provocative remarks about God, art, Hitler, and history. I composed stinging ripostes that sent Freddie/Manfred Bain/Bannerhoff reeling.

  Until, arriving there, I found I really had no words. Because what could I say, I wondered, as, through a gap in the trees some distance from that ludicrous bastion, I could clearly see my little Peugeot docilely parked next to an expensive English car. I suppose she could have been carjacked, as they say these days. Mostly, I hate to admit, I was fearful of appearing like some old besotted fool, knocking on the door, hat in hand, a beggar for love. Because however trenchant my speech to him, what claims, really, could I make on her?

  Perhaps I should call Lieut
enant Tracy, but I have no real proof of anything. I would be loath to tell him what may be the truth: that Diantha prefers that ogre to this ogre.

  Because now my imagination works in feverish double time conjuring all sorts of debauchery out at that ridiculous place where Sir Walter Scott meets the Third Reich. Manfred Bannerhoff aka Freddie Bain is not circumcised. Why does her knowing that torture me? Why can I visualize so acutely her fondling, her submission, her hunger for that prick’s prick? There, I have, finally, been reduced to vulgarity. I want to take my gun and … I am nearly mad.

  37

  The nature of Diantha’s absence became terribly apparent when I answered a knock on the door yesterday morning to find one of the boys who live in the neighborhood standing there with a note in his hand. “I’m supposed to give this to you, mister. Number sixty-eight, right?”

  “Right,” I said, taking the plain white envelope. “Who gave it to you?”

  “A guy on a motorcycle.”

  “What did he look like?”

  “I couldn’t tell. He had his visor down. He gave me ten bucks and told me to wait ten minutes before I rang your bell.”

  “Can you remember anything about him?”

  “No, but he was driving a really cool Hog.”

  “I see. Well, thank you.”

  I don’t know how I remained so outwardly calm as premonitory alarm made my hands shake. When the door closed, I tore open the envelope. In block print script it said:

  IF YOU WANT TO SEE YOUR PRECIOUS DI AGAIN, OLD MAN, BE HERE PRECISELY AT NOON TOMORROW, ALONE. WE’LL TRADE. HER LIFE FOR THE TAPE. ANY WHISPER OF THIS TO THE AUTHORITIES AND SHE’LL BE DEAD MEAT.

  At first I did not know what to do other than call Lieutenant Tracy and leave the matter in his competent hands. But I knew Manfred Bannerhoff and what he was capable of. I knew I was dealing with a psychopath. I also knew that if I simply went there, he would probably kill us both. The hopelessness of the situation made me fall into a lethargy of despair. The only real recourse was to call the police and take the chance that they would find her and rescue her before this maniac could wreak his revenge on her. But I could not bring myself to do it.

  I struggled for some time with these demons. Poor Diantha, I thought. What terrors she must be going through! And I helpless to help her. Half of the time I was on the verge of calling Lieutenant Tracy; half, on the verge of making a big pitcher of martinis and rendering myself insensate.

  Then the determination to rescue her myself fired me with resolve. Absurd, yes. But in nightmares begin responsibilities. I had my father’s trusty gun. I am physically in shape thanks to my daily walking back and forth to work. It’s true that I’m not particularly fearless. But love and desperation gave me courage, however phantasmal. Like one of those revelations that make you into another person, I realized I was willing to die for Diantha.

  But also, I’d like to think I’m smart, smarter than Freddie Bain, anyway. So how to go about it? How to storm that fortress-like den of depraved absurdity? After a few moments of pacing and thinking, I drove out to an older mall located on the south side of the city. There, as I remembered, was an establishment called Things for the Wild. It’s been taken over by a chain, clearly, but it still had most the items I needed.

  “Camping,” I said to the young lady who approached and asked if she could help. “I’ll need rugged hiking boots, thermal underwear, some climbing rope.”

  For rescue purposes, I suppose, much of the outerwear came in bright colors. I managed to find some that were nearly white. We spent a good hour and a half at it. I bought crampons, an ice ax, a wrist compass. By the time we finished, I could have ascended Mount Everest, especially if Diantha were up there for me to fetch. I doubted my chances at the Eigermount would be any better.

  My final item was the US Geological Survey map of the area. “Near Tinkerton,” I told her. It took us a while, but we finally found one. It was the last copy. Fate, I thought, was on my side. I paid at the register and took my considerable bundles out to the car. Standing there in the innocent parking lot, quotidian life bustling all about me, I wondered if I was simply indulging a silly fantasy. Then I thought of Diantha, of the suffering she must be going through, and my determination returned stronger than ever.

  At home I laid out the map on the kitchen table. It was relatively easy, starting in Tinkerton and following the road to where it crosses Alkins Creek, to locate the wretched place even though there was no little black square to indicate its existence. From the contour lines, I determined that the building was set against the west side of a high long hill, as much a ridge as a small mountain. The approaches from the other side of the rise were steep, forming two mounts with a dip in between, a saddleback. Below that, down a short, steep slope, I would find the back of the structure. I saw how I could drive in on another road from the east to within two and a half miles. I could arrive at dawn, climb through the woods to the back, and take them by surprise.

  By surprise? Wouldn’t he have some kind of security system? Those awful lights that go on when they detect movement? Video cameras that see in the dark? All of the above as well as dogs? The thought of dogs daunted me the most. Dogs like me, but I have never been comfortable around them. Dogs, I thought, pacing the kitchen lengthwise. Then I remembered how, in some film I had watched with Elsbeth, the good guys had neutralized the vigilant canines with doped meat.

  Why not do the same? I drove out immediately to a local grocery store and purchased two pounds of very lean hamburger. I also bought myself some of those high-energy snacks. On the way home I stopped to fill my little rental car with gas and check the oil and tires. Back in the kitchen, I retrieved some of the pain medicine, a potent form of synthetic morphine, that Elsbeth had taken in her final illness. I took all but one of the pills and rendered them to a white powder in the small stone mortar and pestle my father had brought back decades ago from Central America. This I mixed with about three-quarters of the hamburger. I then wrapped the doped meat in a plastic bag and put it in the rugged little knapsack I had purchased.

  I also fetched the tape of Corny’s death from an old safe I have here in the house. I wrapped it twice in plastic bags and secured it in a side pocket of the parka.

  For a meal I took the remainder of the meat and made myself a big hamburger, which I slathered with mustard and ketchup, put between two pieces of bread, and ate with a beer.

  I moved as if in a dream. I laid out my kit — boots and crampons, thermal underwear and socks made of something called polypropylene, the long-handled climbing ax, the wrist compass, my revolver with an extra box of steel-jacketed rounds, the high-energy snacks, a headlamp of the kind miners wear, Gore-Tex overalls and hooded jacket, insulated gloves, and an old hunting knife I received one Christmas as a teenager.

  It was late afternoon when I unplugged the phones and set a couple of alarm clocks to ring at two the next morning. I went upstairs, took the morphine pill with a glass of water, and got into bed. To my surprise, in retrospect, I fell asleep not long afterward.

  The two clocks brought me up from an energizing nightmare about dogs and darkness. Fully conscious within seconds, I turned off the alarms and went downstairs. I dressed effectively and quickly while the coffee brewed. It was snowing when I opened the door to load the car. It had been snowing for some time, and I wondered if the roads into the mountains would be passable. It didn’t matter. I would get there one way or another.

  How warm and comfortable I felt in my mountaineering clothes! How snug the revolver felt just under the jacket, under my arm in its leather holster. I also tucked in the small portable phone Diantha had left on a bureau upstairs. I thought it might come in handy.

  I had not counted on a real nor’easter, blowing and snowing like the end of the world. The rented car, wearing snow tires, did very well in the snow. We poked our way out into the ghostly swirl, the streetlights glowing through the moving veils of the storm, the chunk, chunk of plows sounding along the bypa
ss.

  Nibbling at a snack, sipping coffee from the thermos cup, I got in behind one of those rumbling monsters and let it lay down a swath of sanded salt for me to follow. It all seemed both dreamlike and very real. I was nearly hyperconscious. I knew I could take the interstate to an exit not far from Tinkerton. I would walk from there if I had to!

  Surprisingly enough, I was able to drive relatively close to my projected destination. I didn’t do anything theatrical like try to hide the car. I simply found the inlet to a logging road, stopped, backed up, and gave the vehicle enough momentum to plow its way well in off the road.

  In the dark and the silent snowfall, I sat in the car, the lamp on my forehead playing a spot of light over the survey map. I estimated I was just short of two miles on the Remsdale Road from where it crossed Biggins Brook, a tributary to Alkins Creek. The map showed the logging road as a track. If I followed it about a mile and then turned north, it would bring me to the foot of the hill I needed to ascend to get to the back of the house.

  Wondering again if I wasn’t demented, I started into the dark along the logging road. The wind blew, and the snow bit into my face. The illumination from my headlamp played feebly but adequately over the terrain ahead. I realized I should have bought a pair of those small snowshoes because in places my boots broke through the crust, and I found myself struggling, floundering, and almost foundering several times. I should also have carried a GPS device. I nearly lost heart several times, my progress seemed so slow even while on the remnant road. How could I surprise anyone if I arrived in full daylight?

  I became so warm I had to open my coat. The wind picked up high in the trees, and the snow deepened the farther I penetrated into the wilderness. I stopped to rest several times. I finished the coffee and put the thermos into my backpack. The whirling snow grew so thick at times, I had difficulty keeping on the road. But I kept going. I kept thinking of Diantha. Even if I were to fail, it might be of some comfort to her to know I had tried.