Legion (2 page)
Now Stedman was alone and he stood there staring at the woman, unmoving. Kinderman observed his expression with interest. So you feel something, Alan, he thought; all the years of mutilations and violent endings, and still there is something within you that feels. Very good. Me, too. We are part of the mystery. If death were like rain, only natural, why would we feel this way, Alan? You and I in particular. Why? Kinderman ached to be home in his bed. The tiredness sank to the bones of his legs and then into the earth beneath him, heavy.
“Lieutenant?”
Kinderman turned and said, “Yes?”
It was Atkins. “It’s me, sir,” he said.
“Yes, I see that it’s you. I can see that.”
Kinderman pretended to eye him with distaste, casting dismal looks at the coat and the cap before meeting his gaze. His eyes were small and the color of jade. They turned inward a little, and gave Atkins a perpetual look of meditation. He reminded Kinderman of a monk, the medieval kind, the kind that you saw in the movies, their expressions unsmiling and earnest and dumb. Dumb, Atkins was not, the lieutenant knew. Thirty
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two and a Vietnam naval veteran out of Catholic University, behind that deadpan mask he hid something bright and strong that hummed, something wonderful and fey that he hid not from deviousness, in Kinderman’s opinion, but because of a certain gentility of soul. Although slight of build, he had once pulled a dope–crazed, knife–wielding giant from Kinderman’s throat; and when Kinderman’s daughter had been in that near–fatal automobile crash, Atkins had spent twelve days and nights in the visitors’ room of her hospital ward. He had taken his vacation time to do it. Kinderman loved him. He was as loyal as a dog.
“I am also here, Martin Luther, and I’m listening. Kinderman, the Jewish sage, is all ears.” What was there to do now, otherwise? Cry? “I am listening, Atkins, you walking anachronism. Tell me. Report the good news from Ghent. Did we find any fingerprints?”
“Plenty. All over the oars. But they’re smeared pretty badly, Lieutenant.”
“A shame.”
“Some cigarette butts,” offered Atkins hopefully. This was useful. They would check them for blood type. “Some hair on the body.”
“This is good. Very good.” It could help to identify the killer.
“And there’s this,” said Atkins. He held out a cellophane envelope. Kinderman delicately grasped it at the top and frowned as he held it up to his eyes. Inside it was something plastic and pink.
“What is it?”
“A barrette. For a woman’s hair.”
Kinderman squinted, holding it closer. “There’s some printing on it.”
“Yes. It says, ‘Great Falls, Virginia.’ “
Kinderman lowered the packet and looked at Atkins. “They sell them at the souvenir stand at Great Falls,” he said. “My daughter Julie, she had one. That was years ago, Atkins. I bought it for her. Two of them I bought. She had two.” He gave the envelope to Atkins and breathed, “It’s a child’s.”
Atkins shrugged. He glanced toward the boathouse, pocketing the envelope in his coat. “We have that woman here, Lieutenant.”
“Would you kindly remove that ridiculous cap? We’re not doing, Dick Powell in Here Comes the Navy, Atkins. Stop shelling Haiphong; it’s all over.”
Dutifully, Atkins slipped off the cap and stuffed it into the other pocket of the peacoat. He shivered.
“Put it back,” said Kinderman quietly.
“I’m okay.”
“I’m not. The crew–cut is worse. Put it back.”
Atkins hesitated, then Kinderman added,
“
Come on, put it back. It’s cold.”
Atkins fitted the cap back on. “We have that woman here,” he repeated.
“We have who?”
“The old woman.”
The body was discovered on the boathouse dock that morning, Sunday, March thirteenth, by Joseph Mannix, the boathouse manager, on his arrival to open for business: bait and tackle, and the rental of kayaks, canoes and rowboats. Mannix’s statement was brief:
STATEMENT OF JOSEPH MANNIX
My name is Joe Mannix and—what?
(Interruption by investigating officer,) Yes. Yes, I’ve got you, I understand. My name is Joseph Francis Mannix and I live at 3618 Prospect Street in Georgetown, Washington, D.C. I own and manage the Potomac Boathouse. I got here at half past five or so. That’s when I usually open up and set out the bait and start the coffee. Customers show up as early as six; sometimes they’re waiting for me when I get here. Today there was nobody. I picked up the paper from in front of the door and I–oh. Oh, Jesus. Jesus.
(Interruption; witness composes himself.) I got here, I opened the door, I went in, I started the coffee. Then I came out to count the boats. Sometimes they rip them off. They cut the chain with a wire cutter. So I count them. Today they’re all there. Then I turn to go back in and I see the kid’s cart and this stack of papers and I see—I see …
(The witness gestures toward the body of the victim; cannot continue; investigating officer postpones further questioning.)
The victim was Thomas Joshua Kintry, a twelve–year–old black and the son of Lois Annabel Kintry, widowed, thirty
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eight, and a teacher of languages at Georgetown University. Thomas Kintry had a newspaper route and delivered the Washington Post. He would have made his delivery that morning at the boathouse at approximately five a.m. Mannix’s call to police headquarters came in at five thirty–eight a.m. Identification of the victim was immediate because of the nametag–with address and telephone number–embroidered on his green plaid windbreaker: Thomas Kintry was a mute. He’d had the paper route for only thirteen days, or else Mannix would have recognized him. He didn’t. But Kinderman did; he had known the boy from police club work.
“The old woman,” Kinderman echoed dully. Then his eyebrows gathered in a look of puzzlement and he stared away at the river.
“We’ve got her in the boathouse, Lieutenant.”
Kinderman turned his head and fixed Atkins with a penetrating look. “She’s warm?” he asked. “Make sure that she’s warm.”
“We’ve got a blanket around her and the fireplace going.”
“She should eat. Give her soup, hot soup.”
“She’s had broth.”
“Broth is good, just be sure that it’s hot.”
The dragnet had picked her up about fifty yards above the boathouse, where she was standing on the grassy southerly bank of the dried
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out C & O Canal, a now
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disused waterway where horse
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drawn wooden barges once carried passengers up and down its fifty
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mile length; now it had been given up mainly to joggers. Perhaps in her seventies, when the search team picked her up the woman had been shivering, standing with her arms tightly akimbo and staring all around her with tears in her eyes as if lost and disoriented and frightened. But she could not or would not answer questions and gave the appearance of being either senile, stunned or catatonic. No one knew what she’d been doing there. There were no habitations nearby. She wore cotton pajamas with a small flower pattern underneath a blue woolen belted robe, and pale pink wool–lined slippers. The temperature outside was freezing.
Stedman reappeared. “Arc you through with the body yet, Lieutenant?”
Kinderman looked down at the bloodstained canvas. “Is Thomas Kintry through with it?”
The sobbing came through to him again. He shook his head. “Atkins, take Mrs.’ Kintry home,” he breathed. “And the nurse, take the nurse with you, too. Make her stay with her today, the whole day. I’ll pay the overtime myself, never mind. Take her home.”
Atkins started to speak and was interrupted.
“Yes, yes, yes, the old lady. I remember. I’ll see her.”
Atkins left to do Kinderman’s bidding. And now Kinderman stooped to one knee, half wheezing, half groaning with the effort of bending. “Thomas Kintry, forgive me,” he murmured softly, and then lifted off the drape and let his gaze brush lightly over the arms and the chest and the legs. They’re so thin, like a sparrow, he thought. The boy had been an orphan and had once had pellagra. Lois Kintry had adopted him when he was three. A new life. And now ended. The boy had been crucified, nailed through the wrists and feet to the flat end sections of kayak oars arranged in the form of a cross; and the same thick three–inch carpenters’ ingots had been pounded through the top of his skull in a circle, penetrating
dura
and finally brain. Blood streaked down in twisted rivulets over eyes still wide in fright and into a mouth still gaping open in what must have been the mute boy’s silent scream of unendurable pain and terror.
Kinderman examined the cuts on the palm of Kintry’s left hand. It was true: they had a pattern–the sign of the Gemini. Then he looked at the other hand and saw that the index finger was missing. It had been severed. The detective felt a chill.
He replaced the canvas and slowly heaved himself to his feet. Then he stood looking down with a sad resolve. I will find your murderer, Thomas Kintry, he thought.
Even if it were God.
“All right, Stedman, take a walk,” he said. “Take the body and get out of my sight. You stink of formaldehyde and death.”
Stedman moved to get the ambulance team.
“No, no, wait a minute,” Kinderman called to him.
Stedman turned. The detective moved toward him and spoke to bun softly. “Wait until his mother is gone.”
Stedman nodded.
The dredge had docked. A police sergeant wearing a fleece–lined black leather jacket jumped lightly to the dock and came over. He was carrying something wrapped in cloth and was about to speak when Kinderman stopped him. “Wait a minute, hold it; not now; just a minute.”
The sergeant followed Kinderman’s gaze. Atkins was talking to the nurse and Mrs. Kintry. Mrs. Kintry nodded and the women stood up. Kinderman had to look away as for a moment the mother stared over at the canvas. At her boy. He waited a while and then asked, “Are they gone?”
“Yes, they’re getting in the car,” said Stedman.
“Yes, Sergeant,” said Kinderman, “let’s see it.”
The sergeant silently undid the brown cloth wrapping and disclosed what appeared to be a kitchen meat–pounding mallet; he was careful not to touch it with his hands.
Kinderman stared and then said, “My wife has a thing like that. For the schnitzel. Only smaller.”
“It’s a type used in restaurants,” Stedman observed. “Or in large institutional kitchens. I saw them in the Army.”
Kinderman looked up at him. “This could do it?” he asked.
Stedman nodded.
“Give it to Delyra,” Kinderman instructed the sergeant. “I’m going inside to see the old lady.”
The boathouse interior was warm. Logs burned and crackled in a massive fireplace faced with large gray rounded stones, and mounted in the walls there were crew racing shells.
“Could you tell us your name, please, ma’am?”
She was sitting on a torn yellow Naugahyde sofa in front of the fireplace, a policewoman close beside her. Kinderman stood before them, wheezing, his hat held in front of him clutched by the brim. The old woman didn’t seem to see or hear him, and her vacant stare seemed fixed on something inward. The detective’s eyes crinkled up in puzzlement. He sat down in a chair that faced her and gently put his hat on some old magazines that lay torn and coverless and neglected on a small wooden table in between; the hat covered up an ad for whiskey.
“Could you tell us your name, dear?”
There was no response. Kinderman’s eyes threw a silent question to the policewoman, who immediately nodded and told him quietly, “She’s been doing that continually, except for when we gave her some food. And when I was brushing her hair,” she added. Kinderman’s stare returned to the woman. She was making curious, rhythmic motions with her hands and arms. Then his eye fell on something he had missed before, something small and pink near his hat on the table. He picked it up and read the small print:’ ‘Great Falls, Virginia.” The n was missing from Virginia.
“I couldn’t find the other one,” the policewoman said, “so when I brushed her hair I left it off.”
“She was wearing this?”
“Yes.”
The detective felt a thrill of discovery and bafflement. The old woman was conceivably a witness to the crime. But what had she been doing on the dock at that hour? And in this cold? What had she been doing for that matter up above by the C & O Canal where they had found her? It occurred to Kinderman immediately that this sickly old creature was senile and perhaps had been walking a dog. A dog? Yes, maybe he ran off and she couldn’t find him. That would account for the way she was crying. A more terrible suspicion then occurred to him: the woman might have witnessed the murder and it might have unbalanced and traumatized her; temporarily, at least. He felt a mixture of pity, excitement and annoyance. They must get her to speak.
“Can’t you tell us your name, please, ma’am?”
No response. In the silence, she continued her mysterious movements. Outside a cloud slipped past the sun, and thin winter sunlight fell like an unexpected grace through a nearby window. It softly illuminated the old woman’s face and eyes and gave her a look of tender piety. Kinderman leaned forward a little; he thought he’d detected a pattern to the movements: her legs pressed together, the old woman would alternately move each hand to her thigh, make a slight, odd movement, and then draw the hand high into the air above her head, where she finished the sequence with several minute and jerky pulls.
He continued to watch for a while, men stood up. “Keep her in the holding ward, Jourdan, until we find out who she is.”
The policewoman nodded.
“You brushed her hair,” the detective told her. “That was nice. Stay with her.”
“Yes.”
Kinderman turned and left the boathouse. He gave various instructions, closed his mind and then drove home to a small, warm Tudor house off nearby Foxhall Road. It was only six years since he’d broken the habit of apartment living to please his wife, and he still called this mildly rustic area “the country.”
He entered the house and called, “Dumpling, I’m home. It’s me, your hero, Inspector Clouseau.’’ He hung up his hat and coat on a coat–tree in the tiny foyer, then unstrapped his revolver and holster and locked them in the drawer of a small, dark chest beside the coat–tree. “Mary?” No one answered. He smelled fresh coffee and shuffled toward the kitchen. Julie, his twenty–two–year–old daughter, doubtless was sleeping. But where was Mary? And Shirley, his mother–in–law?
The kitchen was colonial. Kinderman cast a glum eye at the copper pots and various utensils hanging from hooks affixed to the stove hood, trying to picture them hanging in somebody’s kitchen in a Warsaw ghetto; then he sauntered heavily and slowly to the kitchen table. “Maple,” he muttered aloud, for when alone he often talked to himself.
“What Jew would know maple from cheese? They wouldn’t know, it’s impossible, it’s strange.” He saw a note on the table. He picked it up and read it.