Kolchak The Night Strangler (3 page)

Fourth stop: the floating premises of Louise Harper, the last of the belly-dancing trio at Omar’s Tent. Miss Harper’s was one of hundreds of houseboats built on cedar-log floats on Lake Washington, just across from the University of Washington. From her place one could gaze toward the western slope of the narrow strip of land separating Elliott Bay from Lake Washington and see the skyscrapers of the business district. A canal with the second largest locks in the world raises ships from salt to fresh water here. Miss Harper’s was a small houseboat but homey, with radiant heat and a tiny, lightweight fireplace inside. (But that is getting ahead of my story.)

I got as far as her door and just had my fist raised to knock when it swung open and Louise Harper ran out, stumbled, and landed in my arms, spilling an armload of books on the deck.

As I scrambled to help her retrieve them she blurted, “Oh, hi. I’m sorry I can’t talk to you. I’m late for class. Come back later if you want to sell me something, although I should warn you that I really don’t have money for extras so you’d just be wasting your time, but that’s all right ’cause it’s nice to have visitors to break up the monotony of…”
“I…” was as far as I got.

“I’d like to talk to you but I’m so late for class. Professor Graham will kill me, and my assignment isn’t finished and my grades are none too good as it is so I’ve really got to run, and I don’t mean to be rude but you see how it is, so if you…”

“I’m from…”

All the while she kept moving. She was tall. Taller than Gladys Weems and, from what I could tell, under her green turtleneck sweater and pants, similarly built, but better proportioned. Brunette, with a turned-up nose, laugh lines and freckles. She sprinted to the edge of the deck, jumped into a small rowboat, dropped the books and picked up the oars.

All the while she kept muttering: “How I’m going to graduate, I’ll never know. There simply isn’t time enough to do the things I have to do so why don’t you write your congressman for me and have him introduce a bill to make the days 40 hours long or, lacking that, to make the weeks nine days long; ten or twelve would be better the way my schedule is, if you know what I mean.”

She started to row away.

“Hold it!” Keeping up with her already had me winded. “Kolchack.
Daily Chronicle
. When can I talk to you about Ethel Parker?”

She kept on rowing.

“I just don’t have the time. You’ll have to come and see me at the club; I dance there from nine to two five nights a week and that’s just about the only time I’d have to talk to you, and even then I don’t have much because I try to do whatever homework I can squeeze in between shows.”

She was moving rapidly away and her voice was fading.

“Oh, God, I’m late, I swear he’s going to flunk me. Graham’s a real bear and he can’t stand tardiness. He’ll skin me alive.”

Just like Vincenzo’d skin me. I shouted out to her, “Thanks for the information!”

“That’s all right!” she yelled, a bright green dot bobbing on the waters, making for the far shore.

“You
do
know there’s been a muurrr-derrr, don’t you?”

“Yes, Mr. Kopak.”

“Kolchak! Kolchak!”

“Yes, Mr. Kolchak. I also know Seattle is the largest seaport in the Northwest. Men come and go like the tide! The murderer is probably in Yokohama by now!”

• • •

Thursday, April 6, 1972

Louise Harper was wrong, which was unfortunate for Gail Manning. The murderer was still in Seattle, working up his list of victims with a cocktail waitress—Gail Manning: 26, five-foot five-inches tall, 118 pounds, auburn-haired, employed at the Tavern in the Square on Yesler near Washington. Sometime shortly after 2 a.m. she was neatly disposed of not a block and a half from the site of the first murder. Strangulation. Neat and quick.

“No new elements” was all they told us … .

Poor Gail Manning. Like Ethel Parker, she passed from this best of all possible worlds without causing so much as a squeak. She was even robbed of her headline, being knocked out of the box by a tornado that smashed into Vancouver scant hours before she died. The killer storm drew its death’s finger down a mile-long, 1,300-foot-wide path through homes, schools, farms and shopping centers, killing six and injuring more than 200. Gail Manning’s story ran next to an item telling Seattleites that Superior Court Judge Robert Winsor had ruled that go-go girls could dance topless as long as the show was neither “good enough nor bad enough” to create a clear and present danger of riot.

Seattle Police Chief George Tielsch was understandably upset. He said the ruling would open the door to further (shudder) nudity or “live sex acts.” About Gail Manning, there was no comment.

“No new elements” was all they told us… until the medical examiner’s report the next afternoon.

Chapter Three

Friday, April 7, 1972

2:00 pm

There are those who will argue that Seattle’s hills are nothing compared to those in San Francisco. I do not choose to contradict them. Pardon me, please, if my legs have their own way. Some of the hills in Seattle’s downtown area are so steep one might well wish for ski lifts. And most of Seattle is built on or around hills. For those who survive the climb to the top of one of these tiny mountains, the view, on a clear day, is rewarding. For one who has nourished himself for years on a steady diet of spaghetti, beer, and Scotch—not necessarily in that order—and who hates any exercise more strenuous than getting up in the morning; for one long used to the flat expanses of Las Vegas and the luxury of travel by car, the struggle up to the top of Queen Anne, the highest of all Seattle’s hills, is excruciating. It is also rewarding, if a view is what you’re after. You can look out to the harbor and to Elliott Bay from Smith Cove to the mouth of the Duwamish River. You can look out across Puget Sound and see Vashon Island and Bainbridge Island. You can turn east and see the University of Washington and Lake Washington. With luck and a powerful pair of binoculars you might even spot Louise Harper’s houseboat.

Or you can do what I did. Turn around. Walk a ways. And look at 108 Crockett. This structure, once the old Orthopedic Hospital, is now the location of the King County Medical Examiner’s office and morgue. With Charley horses in both legs I hobbled inside to attend the Medical Examiner’s report.

In closed session were Captain Raymond Schubert of the Seattle Police Department and several members of his staff. Holding forth was Dr. Christopher Webb, King County Medical Examiner: “… and checking underneath the victim’s hairline, we located what appears to be a needle puncture near the base of the skull through which a small amount of blood had been removed.”

A small voice in my head said brightly, “The game’s afoot!”

“Kolchack.
Daily Chronicle
. Dr.… uh…”

“Webb.”

“Dr. Webb… did Ethel Parker have a similar puncture and/or a similar loss of blood?”

Webb was young and polite. “We haven’t had a chance to check on the puncture yet, but there
was
apparently a slight decrease in the normal blood content.”

I was getting more interested by the minute. “How slight?”

“It’s hard to say,” Webb replied. “Six… maybe seven cubic centimeters.”

I saw a pattern forming. God knows I’d had enough experience. So I opened my big mouth and probed in the best tradition of journalism: “Why wasn’t it reported?”

This did not exactly drop like a pearl among swine, but those assembled turned to gaze upon my battered visage with sometimes less than bright approval. Webb remained unruffled. “The amount of loss seemed insignificant at the time.”

Hah! At the time, indeed. “But now… it doesn’t.”

Schubert gave me a curious glance. He was big. In his early fifties at least, with that cold, hard, flat look of the career cop who plays his cards close to his chest. And his chest was an ample one. As were his arms and shoulders.

“What did you say your name was? I don’t believe I’ve seen
your
face around here before.”

Well, so much for my protective anonymity in a new town.

“Carl Kolchack.
Daily Chronicle.
”

“How nice,” said Schubert without warmth. “May we continue, Mr. Kolchack?”

“By all means,” I answered. “If we’re going to get
all
the facts this time.”

I had made another friend. “Who is this clown? Who let him in here?
I wondered if he might be a distant branch of the Paine family.

“KOLCHACK.
DAILY CHRONICLE
!”

“I heard you the
first
time,” he graveled back.

I was chuckling. “Thought maybe you didn’t…
Captain
.”

“Kolchak, this is an official Medical Examiner’s Report. You want to sit in?” I nodded. “Good. Then shut up.” I did. And listened patiently and heard nothing. There was that phrase again and again: “No new elements.” With the meeting still underway, I eased out and wended my way down to the morgue where I had a little talk with one of the dieners. What I found out made chopped liver of Webb’s report.

Back outside, the temperature had struggled up to about 45 degrees and it was drizzling, a southerly wind of about 25 miles an hour whipping the drizzle into little stinging slaps and cutting through my old seersucker. I swore and made a mental note to get myself a raincoat out of my first paycheck.

Descending Queen Anne was almost as painful as the climb had been. By the time I got back to the office I looked like a wreck. I was heading back to Vincenzo’s glassed-in cubicle when a mountain in the general shape of a woman knocked me flat on my can.

“One side, little man!” It was getting to be like old home week around this office. Yet another Vegan on the scene. “Janie!” I shouted, trying to regain my feet.

The mountain turned slowly. “Oh, Christ! I thought we were rid of you.”

“And nice to see you, too, dear heart. What are you doing here in Seattle… working for Vincenzo? That’s got to be the story of the century. What gives? I thought you two weren’t talking.” I remembered the time she’d almost broken Tony’s neck with a headlock because of some comment he’d made about one of her pet projects.

“Well, it might interest you to know, sonny boy, that our esteemed editor actually sent for me. The weather’s lousy but the pay is good. Besides, I’m only here temporarily… but I’ll bet I outlast you. Watch it, buster. Vincenzo’s acquired another ulcer since you were last with us.”

With all the dignity a 200-pound woman in khaki and size 11 EEE shoes could muster, she swept on back to her desk. Janie Carlson. One of the toughest most obstreperous and thoroughly professional reporters I’ve ever known. Labor is her special forte and Seattle, long-time home of such luminaries as Dave Beck, could offer her plenty of grist for her mill.

I staggered into Vincenzo’s office, handed him my copy, and slumped into a soft chair.

“You look terrible. Been climbing hills?”

“Ho, ho,
ho!
”

Vincenzo was displeased. As usual. “What’s this stuff about a possible ‘link’? You know we can’t link the two killings until we know whether or not Ethel Parker had a needle puncture too.”

I had him. “Ah, but she did.” Vincenzo’s left eyebrow went up a notch. “But that’s not all she had.”

“Oh, yeah? You know something the M.E.
doesn’t
know?”

“You owe me $7.50 for a quart of Scotch.”

“What? Now wait just a goddamn minute, Kolchak. Crossbinder warned you.
I
warned you…”

“… bought for one very anecdotal morgue technician. Ethel Parker definitely has a needle puncture at the base of her skill
and
loss of blood. But that’s just for openers.”

Vincenzo’s eyebrow climbed another notch.

“She also had a broken neck.”

“So what?” But Vincenzo couldn’t conceal his surprise. It hit him in his less-than-sturdy gut, which had filled out in the past two years and was threatening to overlap his belt.

“So… Gail Manning had a broken neck, too.”

Vincenzo’s other eyebrow began to climb. My pint-sized Sicilian was caught off guard. He reached into a small refrigerator and withdrew a quart of milk and began drinking from the carton, the white skim settling on his moustache—yet another new development since 1970.

I pushed on. “Maybe I ought to describe it the way the guy at the morgue did. He said the killer must have been ‘plenty strong.’ Their necks weren’t just broken… they were virtually crushed. Cervicals squeezed all out of position, larynges crushed, ruptured in the esophageal tissue. Just check my copy. Read it and weep.”

Vincenzo did and continued to drink the milk. Suddenly he choked and spewed out a mouthful of spray. “Now wait just a goddamn minute!”