by Robert Bloch
Homicide covered that pretty thoroughly in the days which followed and came up with—
“Zilch!” Romberg muttered, pacing the floor in front of my desk. “We asked the right questions but all we get are wrong answers. Tate was a family man, good solid reputation. Sure, he hit the bottle after losing his job, but he wasn’t an alcoholic. No police record, no known enemies, not the kind of a guy who went around picking fights. Just walked out of that bar and disappeared. You got the coroner’s report. Some kind of sharp weapon, a knife most likely, punctured the femoral artery. And—”
“Cut off his left hand at the wrist.” I leaned forward in my chair. “Doesn’t that suggest something to you?”
“Look, there’s no connection. Believe me, we touched base on the possibility of something in common between Mrs. Lamb and Tate, but I swear there couldn’t be a link.”
“Yes there is. The missing link. Missing head and missing hand.”
“But the MO is different this time.”
“Never mind the MO. Remember that series of murders down in Los Angeles? Methods differed, but there was only one killer. I’m afraid we’re stuck with that fact. And if there are any more—”
Romberg stopped pacing and gave me a hard look. “Okay,” he said. “You might as well know. There was another homicide last night. A Mrs. Haskell, over on Robinson Avenue. Somebody bludgeoned her to death in her own garage, hit her with a tire-iron as near as we can figure, when she came home after a Bingo game.”
“That’s all you know?”
“Almost all.” He stared at me. “But one thing else is certain. It wasn’t a tire-iron that chopped off her right leg.”
I have supped full of horrors. That’s how Shakespeare put it, in Macbeth, and I understand exactly what he meant. To put it bluntly, in the weeks that followed I got a belly-full.
To spare you indigestion, I’ll avoid details.
The body of Homer Cary, a record shop clerk, aged thirty, was found in the ravine beside a freeway ramp with a puncture—probably made by an ice-pick—in his neck. Most of him was found, that is, but not his left arm.
Two nights later a retired legal secretary, Miss Irma Sokoloff, died in bed in her suburban home. She’d made the same mistake which cost Mrs. Lamb her life—leaving a window open or unlocked. But the killer made no mistake; he or she left no fingerprints, no clues, and no right hand of the victim.
In the following week three men died—James, Innes and Wade. One was discovered stuffed into the trunk of his own car in the parking-lot behind the building where he worked as an industrial draftsman. He was a big man but his body fitted quite neatly into the trunk, for his own trunk—the pelvic area—had been removed. The actual cause of death was strangulation.
Stab-wounds killed another in the alleyway adjoining his own back yard. Very possibly the same weapon sliced off his left leg just below the kneecap.
The third man died in the dressing-room cubicle of a bath-house, with a towel stuffed down his throat—and without a right arm.
Of course none of this happened in a vacuum. A vacuum is soundless, and now there was noise. Noise from the media, trumpeting lurid details and screaming for a quick solution to the crimes. Noise from politicians demanding “action.” Noise from a hysterical public rushing forth to buy hand-guns, purchase guard-dogs, and installing security measures. Some of them even began to lock their doors and windows.
There was a mounting echo of response from the police and sheriff’s department—announcements of special investigation task-forces being mounted, assurances that a massive manhunt was under way, a daily mix of threats and reassurances. But it was all—to quote Shakespeare again—sound and fury, signifying nothing.
Romberg admitted as much to me in private. He visited me regularly, bringing transcripts and descriptions obtained from friends, family-members, co-workers and chance acquaintances of the victims, everything he could lay his hands on. But it wasn’t enough, and I told him so.
“What more is there?” he countered. “I’ve read your notes—all they do is confirm what our own investigations tell us. These people had no enemies, and there’s nothing to tie them together in their past histories.”
“Then we’ll have to go back further,” I said. “Get me high-school annuals, medical records, birth-certificates—”
Romberg blew cigarette-smoke in my face. “Waste of time. Most serial killers specialize in one class of society—usually prostitutes or winos. But from the looks of it what we’ve got here is someone who just kills at random. Cuts them up at random, too. You listen to those shrinks who come up with personality-profiles on the talk-shows? According to them, the killer is a ghoul who eats human flesh.”
“Do you believe that?”
“I don’t know what to believe anymore. But I’d sure as hell feel better if we could turn up those missing body-parts. And I still can’t get a handle on why the MOs are different.”
I nodded. “In multiple murders where there is no similarity of method, we must look instead for a similarity of motive.”
“Meaning you think this nut is a cannibal?”
“Only one way to find out. Get me that data I asked you for.”
He got me the data, but it took time. And during that time three more people died. Names, dates and circumstances aren’t important; what mattered to me is that one lost his left arm, one his right arm, one her left leg above the kneecap. I got the records on them too, and while the public outcry rose to new heights I huddled over a miscellany of high-school yearbooks, doctors’ and dentists’ reports dating back to early childhood, birth records, and parental histories where obtainable. There was no discernible pattern. Were we dealing with a cannibal after all?
Or was it a ghoul?
The next victim was already dead of natural causes when a horrified mortician entered his slumber-parlor on the morning of the funeral to find the coffin open and his professional arrangements profaned. The entire thorax of the deceased was missing.
“It’s a ghoul all right!” Romberg muttered. “Can’t you come up with anything? The D.A. just got a call from the governor’s office—he’s crying for blood!”
And blood is what he got. While I reviewed the material on the deceased there was a further crime. This one, however, did not occur in the city or its suburbs. The male victim had been struck down with a blunt instrument while walking his dog at night in Jackson, a town seventy-five miles away. But portions of his abdomen had been slashed away and removed from the scene of the crime.
I write these words with reluctance, though I can understand the reason. Whenever life leaves a body we confront a mystery. What was once a person, perhaps even a loved one, has suddenly been transformed into a thing—a corpse, something strange and hideous which, if it began to move and live again, would inspire nothing but fear and loathing.
This corpse didn’t move, but Romberg did. When he slapped the documentation on this victim down on my desk he was shaking with uncontrollable rage.
“Here’s your damned data, Professor,” he muttered. “But I’ve had it. I’m sick and tired of digging up all this lousy paperwork for you, fighting with county clerks and making Xerox copies. Shires and a hundred men are out ringing doorbells and tracking leads from every crank call or letter that comes in. They’re sweating their butts off while you sit on yours. You haven’t even bothered to see the bodies, go to the scene of the crimes, attend the inquests. What makes you think you can find an answer just from reading kindergarten reports?”
“Never mind that,” I told him, pawing through the sheaf of papers he’d put before me. “Did you bring the victim’s birth-certificate?”
“It’s in there somewhere. What difference does it make when he was born?”
“All the difference in the world,” I said. “To an astrologer.”
“Holy—” Words failed him for a moment and he took another deep drag on his cigarette. “Don’t tell me you’re into astrology now?”
“Perhap
s the killer is.”
“What are you driving at?”
“I’ve gone over everything you brought me again and again, looking for a connection, tracing the lives of the victims right back to birth. And that’s the only point where I’ve been able to find anything in common.”
“Sure,” he said. “All of them were born.” He jammed his cigarette into the ashtray. “But that doesn’t tell us why all of them were murdered.”
“Perhaps it does.” I reached for and found a page of notations. “Just as a matter of routine I jotted down the birth-dates of the victims. Here’s the list.”
Romberg squinted at it quickly, then shook his head. “So what?”
“Nothing, on the face of it. But just on a hunch I made a second list. This time I put down the astrological sign under which each victim was born. See for yourself.”
Reluctantly he inspected the second sheet of paper I handed him, losing the squint as his eyes widened. “You’re right. Eleven victims, eleven different signs. But it could be coincidence.”
“What if it’s not? What if we’re dealing with someone with a fixation on astrology, a serial killer out to murder a victim born under each sign of the zodiac?”
“Why? It doesn’t make sense.”
“We’re not dealing with a normal mind here. But there does seem to be a possible pattern.”
“Aren’t there twelve signs in the zodiac?”
“Right.” I rummaged through the Xeroxes he’d brought me. “And we have twelve killings now. If the last victim was born late in December or before the twenty-second of January—”
I located the birth-certificate as I spoke and scanned it eagerly.
“Well?” Romberg murmured.
My own voice faltered as I read aloud. “Date of birth—April first, 1945.”
“April Fool’s Day,” he said. “So much for astrology!”
“Some of these certificates go pretty far back,” I said. “There could be a mistake—”
“The only mistake was bringing you into this case in the first place,” Romberg muttered. “You and your crazy theories.” He turned and headed for the door.
“But—”
“I’ve had it with you. From now on you can go to hell.”
The slam of the door closing behind him was a final punctuation-mark. I sat there with shattered nerves, staring down at the results of my shattered hypothesis.
Romberg was right; it had been coincidence. Two Aries and no Aquarian. And in spite of my suggestion, I knew there weren’t any errors in the birth-certificates; it was too much to hope for. As Romberg said, it didn’t make sense—just because there were twelve victims wasn’t enough to link the crimes to astrology. For all I knew, the maniac responsible for their deaths may have thought he was murdering the Twelve Apostles, or the twelve—
It hit me then.
It hit me, and I acted. No sense trying to get further cooperation from Romberg; he was finished. But I wasn’t.
This time I had to do it all myself, all the legwork, all the ferreting. For the next three days I didn’t even see the inside of my office. But on the fourth I had what I wanted, and this time I took it to Shires.
He wasn’t exactly easy to get to, and he certainly wasn’t delighted to see me.
“Look,” he said. “I’m up to my neck here. Like I told you on the phone, you’ve got five minutes, no more, and unless you’ve got something this time—”
“I think I have,” I told him. “It’s the name of the murderer.”
His look reminded me of Romberg’s, and so did his tone of voice. “And just who might that be?”
My notebook was already out and open.
“His name is Joseph Vestro. Joseph Alacorn Vestro, aged thirty-one; height, five-eight; weight, one-sixty. Black, curly hair, brown eyes, small mustache. Upper left incisor missing. Appendectomy scar, lower abdomen. No other distinguishing body-marks or defects.”
“Where did you get all this?”
“Matter of record.” I continued to read. “A little over five years ago Joseph Vestro was convicted of armed robbery with intent to do great bodily harm. It could have been a murder charge, but the coroner finally decided the victim had died of a heart attack rather than as a direct result of Vestro battering him with a length of iron pipe.
“As it was, Vestro served five years in state prison. He could have gotten out earlier, but he refused parole. They released him in July, and nothing has been seen or heard of him since then. Presumably he’s living on the proceeds from past crimes; he has a long list of involvement in previous strong-arm robberies and suspected assaults, but no convictions.”
Shires shook his head. “What’s so different about all this? There must be a thousand other guys doing time who have the same kind of record.” Sarcasm shaped his smile and lent a sharp edge to his voice. “How did you pick out this one—did you use a crystal ball, or was it astrology?”
“He’s a Scorpio, and vindictive,” I said. “But no, I wasn’t influenced by his horoscope. It’s his psychological profile.”
Again I consulted my notations. “Preliminary tests established he was sane enough to stand trial, but his personality-pattern indicated violence and aggression. After he started serving his term the prison psychiatrist conducted his own interviews. According to his findings Vestro exhibited both sociopathic and borderline psychopathic traits—paranoid fixations, delusions of persecution, a grandiose self-image, with fantasies of revenge, directed against the prosecutor and the judge presiding at his trial.”
“Who sat on the case?”
“Judge Amos B. Kelly,” I told him. “But that doesn’t matter now. Kelly died of natural causes shortly after the trial.”
“What about the prosecutor?”
“Charles Beckford, an assistant D.A.—and he passed away last year.”
Shires frowned. “So the threats didn’t mean anything.”
“That’s what the prison authorities must have thought. They didn’t realize Vestro would go after the others.”
“What others?”
I glanced up from my notebook. “The number twelve has more than astrological significance. It’s also the number of persons who make up a jury.”
“Are you serious?”
“That’s the common denominator I was looking for. When it occurred to me I checked it out. And sure enough, each of the victims had done jury duty. That in itself could be coincidence, but there was nothing coincidental about the fact that all of them served at the same trial—the trial of Joseph Vestro. It was then that I looked up his record—”
“Now wait a minute, Professor! Jurors are picked from local citizens. And the last victim came from out of town—”
“But according to the court file he was a resident here five years ago.”
“I still don’t see—”
“Then open your eyes. Vestro refused parole for an obvious reason. He meant to carry out his intentions free of supervision. His release came in July, but the first killing didn’t occur until October. That’s because he needed time to track down the addresses of his victims, learn something about their habits and life-styles, make his plans accordingly. Then, when he was ready, he acted. It all makes sense now.”
“Sense isn’t proof,” Shires murmured.
“And criminology isn’t a science,” I said. “It’s an art.”
“Like astrology?”
“Or psychiatry, for that matter. But if I were you—”
“I know what to do,” Shires told me.
And he did. He put out an APB on Joseph Vestro.
Unfortunately his description wasn’t of much use. There are too many men of approximately the same height and build, too many small mustaches adorning the upper lips of would-be Burt Reynolds look-alikes.
But the real problem wasn’t appearance; it was disappearance. Nobody could come up with a last known address for Vestro since his release from prison over four months ago.
“Where’s he holed u
p?” Shires muttered. “He’s got to have someplace to live.”
Once again art took precedence over science. “You law enforcement people know a great deal about guns, knives, poisons and blunt instruments,” I said. “But you seem to pay no attention to the greatest weapon of modern times.”
“What’s that?”
“The van.”
Shires got that disgusted look again, but I ignored it as I spoke.
“It’s the van that transports stolen goods, carries drug-caches, shelters criminals who want to avoid detection. But that’s not all. Take a look at the sensational cases of the last dozen years or so, the ones involving multiple rapes, tortures and mass murders. Think about how many of these atrocities were committed by psychos driving vans. Vans were used to locate victims, vans picked them up off the street, vans concealed the attacks that killed them, vans carried their bodies to hiding-places.
“Not everyone who owns a van is a vandal. But the percentage of crimes connected with their use tells its own story. People die in vans. And people live in them, too. Loners, like Joseph Vestro. I suggest—”
“Gotcha,” Shires said.
But he didn’t get Vestro.
The people he contacted—auto dealers and owners of used-car lots—had no record of a van sale, new or second-hand, to anyone answering to the name or description of the wanted man.
“Because he stole the vehicle,” I said.
“Could be.” Shires’ look of disgust seemed permanent now. “Do you know how many stolen vans have been reported here in the last four months?”
“A dozen?”
“Sixty-three.” He nodded. “About half have been located and recovered. That leaves over thirty still missing. We’ve got descriptions, but no leads on where to find them, nothing to tie any particular van to Vestro.” He sighed. “Believe me, we gave it our best shot. But there’s nowhere to go from here.”
“Then don’t go anywhere,” I said. “Stay put and wait.”
“What do you mean, wait? This is an ongoing investigation, I’ve got a job to do.”