Kolchak The Night Strangler (14 page)

“How about Benny’s?” he said

“Benny’s it is. Proceed, cabbie, and don’t spare the petrol.”

I turned to Louise. “What was that last bit?”

“I said, this does not look much like a knight’s charger.”

“So?”

“So when I was a little girl, I liked to read a lot. And at just the right age, I fell in love. I’ve never gotten over it.”

I had, too, with a tiny, beautiful dancer, who would never say yes to the big question.

“I suppose he was big, brawny, and very good looking.”

“No, as a matter of fact he was tall, skinny, and the saddest-looking man imaginable. He was a lot like you.”

“Who? Your father?”

“No, stupe. Don Quixote.”

Chapter Fifteen

Saturday, April 15, 1972

Benny’s turned out to be a typical “jewelry & loan” establishment, neither Seattle’s largest nor smallest. It is the kind of place indigenous to all major American cities where, for a price, almost anything can be found. In this case, the shop was in a dingy section of Second Avenue and the proprietor was more interested in “earnest money” than he was about licenses… or the lack of them.

Thus, armed with an Iver-Johnson .38 snub-nose, generally classified as a “Saturday Night Special” by police, we started out: one belly-dancing undergraduate and one reporter, who, despite his air of spit-in-their-eye bravado, hoped to God (in whom he didn’t and doesn’t particularly believe) that he wasn’t hastening said undergrad to her doom.

It didn’t help my conscience any that Louise Harper had insisted on helping me, angered as she was by the death of both her co-performers. But it did wonders for my morale.

The set-up was simplicity itself: By mutual agreement, Louise was offering herself up as a Judas Goat. She’d walk the streets of the Pioneer Square area from the South King Street side of the train station northward to Columbia and from Third Avenue to just past Western, moving in a tightening radius while I trailed along behind in the shadows, gun ready at the first sign of danger. It was scary work, watching my girl out there loping along, an inviting victim. It was cold work, too, and I’d never bothered to get that top coat. Temperatures were near freezing and when it wasn’t raining there was fog. Jack the Ripper would have felt right at homer in this district.

The first three nights passed without any particular incidence. Most of our time was spent trying to duck the police, who had persisted in maintaining a very tight control over those who passed through the area. We’d walk down a street, Louise almost a block ahead of me. We’d hear a noise. A car without lights. She’d duck into the nearest doorway... alleys were strictly verboten … and I’d hide wherever I could. The car, invariably a blue and white cruiser, or sometimes an unmarked patrol car, always with two men inside—big men—would pass and turn a corner, and we’d be off about our business again.

Then we’d go home again. Always to her place. We’d talk. Make love. And try to pretend we were two happy, normal people who just happened to like our nocturnal adventure close to home.

Time was running out for us. Three nights and… nothing. Not even a common drunk. But time was also running out for the killer

• • •

Tuesday, April 18, 1972

11:45 pm

Louise, to my surprise, had lost none of her spirit for the chase. In fact, if anything, she seemed more determined than ever. I had a hard time keeping up with her as she went loping along on those lovely, long legs. There was an overcast sky, a threat of rain as usual, and fog which continued to get thicker until I found I had trouble keeping her in sight.

It was stupid of me not to map out the area more thoroughly in my mind. I had a very general idea of which direction we were heading in at any given moment but the names of streets were meaningless to me. Half the time the signs were all but invisible anyway.

I think we were on Washington, and Louise had turned the corner northward on First, when I realized I lost her. Suddenly I felt the cold. I started running. What I didn’t realize was that she was moving at right angles to me. We were getting farther and farther apart.

Suddenly I was in the middle of a street… it may have been First, but I wasn’t sure. The only thing I was sure of was that I was alone. I listened for her footsteps. Any footsteps.

Then I heard the squeal of brakes and running feet. I took off, following the sound.

I came racing around the corner of an old brick building and skidded to a halt, almost falling over and dropping both the gun and my camera. I ducked back into a doorway.

A block away, its red lights flashing angrily, was a squad car… and Louise. The police had caught her. She walked toward the headlights, stood a moment talking to the officer riding shotgun, then got in the car and it moved off.

That tears it! I thought in disgust as I threw my hat down in the street. The police car turned a corner and I moved out to retrieve my hat.

A
blinding glare hit me, and before I could duck back into the shadows again, a car almost ran me down. Its tires screaming, the car careened to a halt. It was a squad car.

Busted. Again!

And while Louise and I were being taken for a ride by Seattle’s finest, the cashier of Trattoria Aversano was fighting for her life, backing away from the killer, stumbling over small tables with red-checked tablecloths in a hopeless effort to stay alive a few seconds longer.

The killer
had
his final victim. And the ball game was over.

Chapter Sixteen

Wednesday, April 19, 1972

Louise and I had been booked, separated, and taken to our cells. I figured anything could happen from here on in, but that most likely I’d get a light sentence for interfering with an officer (or officers) in the performance of his (or their) duty and afterwards be run out of town on a rail. I couldn’t blame them. Not truly. My meddling had accomplished absolutely nothing. On the other hand, they had
not
listened to me and the results were: Dead. Michelle Briand, Manager of Aversano’s. Tall. Young. Lovely. But dead. (I didn’t know of this when I was still in the slammer, but it made no difference to Mlle. Briand. Dead is dead.) Then I remembered I’d been carrying a concealed weapon.
That
was going to keep me in Seattle a long,
long
time.

Sometime around 3 a.m. (I’m not sure, because they took my watch and other personal belongings at the booking desk) an officer unlocked my cell door and told me to follow him. I was taken down a maze of hallways and suddenly bumped into Louise, looking fit to be tied, on the arm of a stout matron. We were brought back to the booking desk, which was the center of a three-ring circus of activity; a madhouse of reaction to the sixth and final kill.

Schubert was charging around like an enraged bull, bellowing orders, taking phone and radio communications. Even he, it seemed, gave every indication of knowing the jig was up and that, barring a miracle which I did not believe would occur, the killer had gone to ground again and wasn’t going to show his corpselike (or handsome) face again for twenty or twenty-one years.

This reporter knew it too. And was fit to be tied. Let alone handcuffed.

Schubert came bustling by me with officers trailing like streamers from both arms.

“Hey, Schubert! I…”

He didn’t even stop. Goddamn idiot! Bravery citations! But no brains.

“Kolchak!

The voice was familiar. The tone was familiar. The face was Vincenzo’s. Red. Like a danger flag. He was stuffing a handful of Maalox pills down his throat.

I turned to Louise, who just shook her head.

An officer ran by, and I grabbed at his shirt. “What the hell’s going on here?”

“The strangler got another one.”

He tried to pull away but I tightened my grip.

“Who? Where? When?” I already knew how and why.

He filled me in and then broke free.

“I
told
him it was gonna happen! But did he listen? Oh, No!”

“Carl, not
now!”

“
Kolchak, you…”

Schubert the battleship came cruising down the hall again, officers and secretaries in his wake.

“’I’ve been a policeman for thirty years’… and a
moron
for fifty! Hah!”

Vincenzo grabbed me and hauled me over to the side of the booking desk, near the elevators. He looked like he was in the first stages of a coronary.

“You were supposed to be admiring daffodils in Puyallup. I… uh… Christ, my guts are
killing
me! I would like to leave you in here forever! I would like to see you in a jail cell for a million years.”

“Now, Tony…”

“Don’t you start, Kolchak. So help me, if you don’t button up that satchel mouth of yours, I’ll…”

“You don’t look so good, Vincenzo. You ought to see a doctor.”

“Sign here, please,” said the desk sergeant.

Vincenzo pressed down so hard he snapped the ballpoint in half.

“Damn!”

The sergeant handed him another pen which he punched clean through the receipt form trying to get it to write. He threw it across the office.

Another officer began giving me my things as Louise collected hers from a clerk. I extended my pen to Vincenzo, who grabbed at it savagely.

I moved off with Louise toward the elevators. She grabbed my arm. “What have you done to that poor man? I’ve never seen a human being so close to coming apart at the seams before. Carl… listen to me!”

I pulled away from her. Something had caught my attention. Two officers were leaning against a wall nearby, talking in hushed tones. But Louise wouldn’t let up.

“Can’t you see he really cares? For God’s sake, thank him and get out of…”
”Shhh!”

“We had him cornered! In those alleys in back of the Richards Clinic. And then he just… disappears!” The officer snapped his fingers. “Like that!”

I turned to Louise. “Bingo!”

The ride down in the elevator with Vincenzo was made in total silence. The noise started when we got to his car, an aging T-Bird convertible. It started as a low rumble and built to a roar which lasted all the way to my apartment where he dumped me off with the promise that I go straight to bed. I got Louise to stay with me. I tried to thank him but I couldn’t get a word in edgewise. All he kept muttering as he drove away was, “Never again… never again…”

By 4 a.m. Louise and I had managed to get down to the Richards Free Clinic. This time, she wasn’t so anxious to be in on the hunt. But I was. I could smell blood. Maybe no one else knew what was going on, but I was damned sure I did. Our quarry had to have a way in and out of that clinic which was built over the old hospital, and undoubtedly connected up with the main part of the Underground. I became another crime statistic when I broke a basement window and started inside.

“Carl, enough is enough. You said you were just coming down here for a look. Let’s get out of here.”

“No… I want a good look. Wait here and keep an eye peeled for the fuzz. Give me the flashlight.”

I crawled through, putting yet another tear in my coat, and passed through a boiler room. It took almost ten minutes, but I finally found what I’d been looking for. A trap door, hidden under some boxes.

I tugged and it opened. Smoothly. It had been in recent use. It was well-oiled and made no sound. I ducked my head through it.

What I saw was absolutely incredible. I blinked my eyes but it was no mirage. It was really there.

Chapter Seventeen

I scurried back to the window.

“Louise… c’mere. We’ve hit pay dirt! The whole hospital’s down there. Just like it was described in the old news articles I read in the morgue. Fire-scorched but intact! What’s more, the gas lamps are working! They’re lit! I’ll bet he’s got his lab down there and it’s in working order too!”

“Are you out of your mind? What if
he’s
down there?”

“I’ll worry about that problem when I come to it. Besides, I’m a pretty fast runner.” (I lied.)

“Listen… give me thirty minutes, then phone the police and tell them where I am. Tell them to surround this damn building and to move in from the trap door in the basement boiler room and also from the Underground.”

“Carl… you are not going back in there.”

“Yes I am, sweetie. Now hustle your bustle and get out of here before you’re spotted.”

“What do you need thirty minutes for? Why don’t we call them now?