by Robert Bloch
“When was that? Before the second murder?”
“Four hours. I was thinking the same thing, myself.” He stared at me. “You’re Tom Kendall, aren’t you? I thought I recognized you from your pictures in the paper. That’s why I’m telling you. I wasn’t going to tell the cops.”
“Why not?”
“Well,” and his eyes fell, “I mean I was going to, maybe tomorrow. Except that I didn’t want it to get out in the papers the way it would if I told them. Because then Bruno might come looking for me.”
“This Bruno—what do you know about him?”
“Well, he’s a big guy, bigger than Calgary was. Awful bad temper. I don’t even know why he bought the knife except that he seemed to like Calgary. They were two of a kind, you might say. Even had the same women. Bruno used to visit Trixie Fisher.”
“You’re sure of that?”
The young bartender shrugged. “I got no reason to lie to you, Mr. Kendall. I want to help, if you’ll keep my name out of it. But that night, when we closed up at one, Bruno said something about maybe dropping around to see the little redhead. That would be Trixie.”
“Did he carry a knife of his own, do you know?”
The bartender gave me a long, slow smile. “That’s why I was so surprised he bought one from Calgary,” he said. “Bruno went around with a stiletto about a foot long.”
Kit had been poking me for over a minute. I turned around.
“Please,” she said. “Tell Lieutenant Cohen or Mr. Howard. Let them handle it. You’ve done enough.”
I looked at the bartender. “Do you know where Bruno lives?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Can’t help you there. The boss would know, but he’s gone until tomorrow. Comes in around noon. I know he tried calling Bruno’s place, but nobody answered.”
“Well, they should be able to locate him,” I said. “And thanks a lot. You’ve been a great help.”
“It’s okay, Mr. Kendall. I don’t like this business any more than you do. Take me, I got a wife, a kid on the way. Things aren’t safe with a guy like that prowling around. I always did think Bruno was a little nuts, even before this.”
I nodded. “I’ll see that your information goes to the proper sources, right away.”
He hesitated, leaned forward again. “Please. You won’t say who told you? I’m not yellow, but if you knew this ape—”
“Sure. I’ll handle it.” I reached into my pocket for my wallet, then remembered I was broke. “Kit,” I said. “You got any money?”
The bartender put his hand on mine. “No, Mr. Kendall. This is—this is on the house.”
We walked out of there.
Going back to my place, Kit was silent.
“What’s wrong, honey?” I asked.
“You know what’s wrong. You promised to quit, and now you’re starting out all over again. You’ve been too lucky, Tom—it can’t last! Please, don’t get mixed up in it any more.”
I didn’t answer her. When we got upstairs I went right to the phone and called Homicide. Cohen wasn’t there, but I talked to Henley. I told him everything I’d heard. He assured me they’d get on it right away. I assured him I’d be down in the morning. We exchanged mutual goodnights. Parting is such a sweet sorrow.
Then I put down the phone. “That what you wanted me to do, Kit?”
She nodded, smiled.
“Partly.”
I stood up and took her in my arms. “I’ve got a feeling we’re going to be out of the woods soon,” I said. “Just my dumb hunch, my dumb luck—stumbling onto something like this. A character like this Bruno, now, seems to be just what they’re looking for. If they can find him, and find the reason—”
“Shut up about Bruno,” Kit told me. “Here, help me unhook this thing.”
I helped her.
I helped her, and she helped me. She helped me to forget Bruno, forget the shadows, forget the knives and the wounds they made, the wounds you can never cut out. She took me down into the dark, but it was the pleasant darkness, the good darkness where you’re never alone but always together.
Then, at last, we weren’t together any more. She was sleeping, and I was lying there.
And the other darkness came back. This was the darkness where the Ripper lurked, and I saw him. He didn’t see me, but I saw him. For the first time everything fell into place, and what was in the subconscious came up to the conscious level, and I had my answer.
I could wait until morning, wait until daylight, but the answer wouldn’t let me. It had been locked away, buried away, too long.
I got out of bed very quietly. I knew what I was going to do. I was going to do the sensible thing. I meant to pick up the phone and call Lieutenant Cohen. That’s what I’d promised him, that’s what I’d promised Kit, that’s what I’d promised myself.
As I stood up I remembered thinking of another promise I’d made. A promise not to run any more, a promise to go through with anything I started.
Then the blackout came, and I don’t remember anything for a while. Sometimes the blackouts lasted for a day, sometimes for hours, sometimes less. This one must have been very short.
When I came to again, I was running once more. Fully dressed, and running through the park. I carried something in my hand—something I must have picked up out of the kitchen drawer as I’d finished dressing in the dark. I’d let myself out quietly, and picked this up because I knew I might need it where I was going.
It was a flashlight. I stared at it, but my feet kept on moving forward. I was out of the park now and there wasn’t far to go. He’d told me himself where he lived.
I came to the place and found the side stairway. The lights were out, but I had the flashlight. The same thing in my subconscious that supplied the answer now told me what to do.
I went up the stairs very quietly. There was only one door, and I wouldn’t be disturbing anyone else if I knocked.
I rapped once, twice, three times. I pounded on the door loud enough to wake the dead.
No one answered. The dead won’t wake.
The blackout had been short this time. I came to, knowing who I was, where I was going, and why. There was no answer to my knock, but I couldn’t stop now.
I put my hand on the doorknob and prepared to brace my shoulder against the panel. The doorknob turned. The door swung open. It hadn’t been locked.
Then I stepped inside. I could have groped for the light switch, but it was easier to flick on the flashlight. The beam flooded forward, focused on the left hand corner of the small room.
I’d expected to peer and pry, to ransack and search, before I found what I was looking for. But there was no need. It hadn’t been hidden. The flashlight found it for me now.
It was lying right there on the table, next to the bed. It was long and thin and shining. I recognized it right away. My poniard.
I moved toward it and the door swung shut behind me, blocking out the light from the hall. It clicked and seemed to lock. I turned to grab it, and something hit my hand.
The door closed as my flashlight fell and went out.
I stood there in the dark.
“You forget I don’t need any light,” said Blind Bill.
SEVENTEEN
Everyone’s walk has a rhythm, and he must have been sitting there in the dark waiting ever since he heard me come and pause before the grocery store downstairs. He must have planned while he waited, planned swiftly. I knew, now, that he could plan swiftly.
“Don’t move,” he said softly. “I can hear you when you move. And I’m armed.”
I wondered if he’d been able to come around and grab the poniard. Then I heard a scraping sound, followed by a clatter as something fell to the floor. He had another weapon. And in just a moment he’d come tap-tap-tapping toward me.
No, he wouldn’t bother to tap. The realization came with chilling quickness. Here in the dark he needn’t grope to find his way. He knew every inch of the room and his ears were trained to sense and search out a presence
. We were both in the darkness, and now I was the blind man. I was blind and he was armed.
I edged back quietly, very quietly, trying to reach the door. The frame was tight, and no light shone through. But if I could only get my hand on the knob—
“I told you to stand still,” Bill said. “That’s better.”
I gulped, searching for my voice. There wasn’t much left of it when I found it, but I did the best I could.
“Don’t go getting any ideas,” I said. “I phoned the police before I came. They’ll be here any minute now.
“Will they?” said Blind Bill. “All right, let’s wait for them.”
Did he believe me? His voice didn’t betray anything. There was neither mockery nor fear in him.
But there was fear in me.
“While we’re waiting,” said Bill, “you might as well keep talking. Because I want to hear you. Then I’ll know where you are.”
“Sure, anything you say.” Was his voice coming closer? Would he sneak up in the dark as I talked, and . . .
“Tell me something,” Blind Bill said. “Tell me what gave you the idea of coming here.”
Up until that time I’d thought it was all my subconscious. Now, as I spoke, I realized I’d known some things for a long time. “You made some slip-ups,” I told him.
“I was in a hurry,” Bill said. “What, for instance?”
“Please,” I said. “The cops are coming. Turn on the light or they’ll get ideas.”
“That’s their worry,” Bill murmured. “Let them turn on the lights. Lights mean nothing to me. Where I am, it’s always dark.” Yes, his voice was closer. I moved back, back against the wall. I couldn’t go further.
“What slip-ups?” Bill asked. “Talk fast.”
“First of all, when you stole the poniard. You broke the glass on the store door, and it was a clumsy job. It was the kind of job that would either be done by a man in a hurry or a man who couldn’t see.”
“That proves nothing,” Bill answered. “Keep talking.”
“Then, in the line-up, when you told the District Attorney about my footsteps, you passed a remark about Trixie. You didn’t like her. You had more to say about her, and about Joan Schuyler too, when you came to my store afterwards. I remember when Trixie and I passed you in the park that night, she said you gave her the creeps. And I wondered why. Wondered why she disliked you, why you disliked her. And I wondered about other things.”
“What things?”
“Why you told me, at the store, that you’d heard Joe Calgary the night before. That was a lie, Bill. I found it out tonight. Calgary went straight to Mingo, and he must have been dead long before that second killing.”
“Go on.”
“Just one thing more, Bill. You told one more lie at the store. You said you had cataracts. I was in a veteran’s hospital. A guy I met in there had cataracts—with that milky film over his eyes. Cataracts didn’t blind you, Bill.”
“You haven’t said anything yet that makes sense.” He was close enough now so that I could hear breathing—but where did it come from, the right or the left? “Get on with it, fast. There won’t be much time.” I heard another sound, a swishing sound. I edged to one side.
His voice followed me. “How do you figure it? Tell me, I want to know.”
I told him. I told him, hoping he’d get excited, hoping he’d make a move so I could find him in the dark before he came for me. If I could only get my hands around his throat—
But waiting for the chance, I had to keep talking.
“I figure it this way, Bill. You killed Trixie because you were jealous of her. You tried to make her and she turned you down.”
He made a sound in his throat. I went on.
“Lots of guys get turned down by girls, it wasn’t quite that simple in your case. You couldn’t shrug it off. You brooded about it, didn’t you? You turned it over in your mind for a long time, standing on the corner night after night while you heard her go by with other men. Men like Joe Calgary.
“Maybe you had a different plan. Maybe it was only a dream, a fantasy of revenge you worked out over and over again in your head. But then, the other night, things happened. First of all, you must have met Joe Calgary when he came out of Dick’s, drunk. He talked to you, told you about Trixie, made the same kind of threats he’d made to her and to me at Swanee’s. And he sold you that stamp album he’d stolen—for twenty dollars.
“You bought it with a plan already in mind. Knowing Joe had threatened Trixie with a knife, you figured on killing her and planting the album on her body. Wasn’t that it, Bill?”
“You’re talking,” Bill said. “This is all your show. So far.”
“Then I came out of Swanee’s with Trixie, and you recognized my walk, and that looked like a still better setup. You’d heard I had knives in my store and from somebody in the neighborhood—maybe Art Hughes—you’d picked up that story about my blackouts. I’d be an even better suspect than Joe.
“Maybe you weren’t sure about going through with it, but it was worth a try. You stole the poniard and came over to Trixie’s. The window was open. You waited until there were no sounds. And then you came inside.”
He made that sound in his throat again. I didn’t like it, tried to drown it out with my voice.
“But when you finished—what you did—you found you weren’t the only one. Joe Calgary was prowling around there. My guess is he started to climb in just as you came out. He didn’t see you, or he’d have hollered copper and given your name—but he must have seen a man with a weapon. So he ran, but not before you’d recognized his footsteps.”
It was hot in that little room, very hot. And I felt the sweat ooze along my spine as I tried to remember how far it was to that table with the poniard on it. I turned my head, moving an inch at a time, and I kept on talking as I moved.
“Well, you left and I came to and called the cops. They picked you up, along with the other neighborhood characters, and you tried to cinch the deal by identifying me. It worked, too.
“Except that while you were in the D.A.’s office, you overhead them say they were going to question Joan Schuyler. And Joan Schuyler had been Trixie’s roommate. Maybe you made a pass at her, too. More likely, it was just that you figured Trixie must have told Joan about your advances, and maybe about how you threatened her. Joan could put the finger on you, fast.
“So you waited until dark, followed her home, sneaked in, and killed her. That would take the heat off me, but you had still an out. You still had Calgary’s stamp album, the one you’d planned first to use as a plant when you killed Trixie. That would work, you figured, because Calgary also was intimate with this girl. It was a clumsy device, too obvious, but it might work. And you had to move fast.”
I had to move fast now, but I couldn’t. My foot hit a floorboard and a creak started. I stood stockstill and once again I heard a swishing sound, quite close.
“Then you came around to me, like a good friend, and said you’d made a mistake—it was Calgary all the time. And from that point on you figured you were in the clear. The police would be looking for Calgary, and Calgary had obviously run away. It almost worked, Bill. It almost worked.
“But there was still a chance of somebody else knowing. Helen Calgary, Joe’s wife. You got to thinking, didn’t you? Maybe he’d run to her before he left town. Maybe he’d told her about seeing you at Trixie’s—if not that, he might at least have told her that you were the one who bought the stamp album. You couldn’t take the risk, could you, Bill? You were in so far already that one more wouldn’t matter. And maybe, by this time, it was getting easier for you.”
This time there was the sound in the throat and the swish. But I was getting nearer to the table. I had to be. Just a few more feet, a few more words—
“Certainly there was no trouble in killing Helen Calgary. You were even able to take your time, do what you’d wanted to do to Trixie and Joan. Because you didn’t just murder those girls, Bill. You butc
hered them. You ripped them.”
I felt the edge of the table against my legs. And I heard Bill’s voice come close now, from behind me. He was already standing by the table. Maybe he had the poniard in his hand. That swish—
“Yes,” he said. “I ripped them.” He made a sound that was something like a laugh. I’d never heard such a sound before and never wanted to again. “Looks like your police aren’t coming, after all,” he said. “I don’t even think you called them. So let’s get it over with.”
I didn’t ask him what he meant. I knew.
“So you admit it,” I said. “And I’ve got the story straight.”
“Yes. You’ve got it down almost perfect.”
“All but the most important part, Bill. The one thing I don’t know. The thing that made you rip as well as kill. The reason. What was the reason, Bill?”
I heard his feet move toward me, and then they stopped. “You were right,” Bill said. “It wasn’t cataracts that blinded me. It was acid. Nitric acid. She burned my eyes out with the stuff, threw it in my face and burned me and took away my eyes. The dirty little bitch—”
“When was this, Bill? When did it happen?”
“In the carny, the sideshow. Years ago. I was swallowing swords. She worked in the act. Her name was Thelma. We was like man and wife for three years. And then I caught her with this razorback, this dumb bum of a boss canvasman, and I beat hell out of him. I come back to our trailer, and I guess I was kind of out of my head, because I picked up a sword and went after her. I wasn’t going to kill her, honest I wasn’t. But she saw me coming and she threw the acid.”
His voice held a curious whine. He wasn’t talking to me now, or even to himself. He was talking to the darkness. I stood there and listened to the real voice of the Ripper.
“It burned and burned. Sometimes I can still feel it burning now. That’s all I got left, that and the dark. The dark never goes away, but they took everything else. They locked Thelma up. They took away my job. They took away my eyes and left me alone in the dark. And when I ask for what a man needs, when I even beg for it from a little floozie like Trixie or Joan, they laugh at me and tell me to go away, I give them the creeps.