Night-World (11 page)

“Scared the living Jesus out of me. They started barking when I went over the wall, and I almost changed my mind.” The man wheeled over to the left-turn lane at Lookout Mountain. “Good thing she keeps them chained.”

“You’ve got to, with Dobermans. But guard dogs are a good idea, up in the hills. Of course both of them know me, and they’re used to my old lady, too, but any stranger comes around—look out!”

“They kept howling all the time I was in the house. Figured they were hungry, so I got a can of dog food from the kitchen and took it out to them. But believe me, I didn’t get too close.”

“When they see us together, they won’t give you any trouble. Like I say, they’re just like puppies with me and my old lady.”

The MG was climbing up Lookout now, past Horseshoe Canyon to the school, then taking the fork-off on Wonderland Avenue. Even in the darkness the route was familiar to Tony, and suddenly, for the first time, he had this coming-home feeling. He realized how much he’d been missing being in his own pad, seeing Tiger and Butch.

“You say your mother stops by several times a week?” the man asked.

“Don’t worry, she won’t be around again until Thursday.”

“How do you know?”

“I told you—she called the san day before yesterday. Said she was going to Vegas for a couple of days.”

“What if she taps out? Wouldn’t she come back earlier?”

“She doesn’t go there for the action. When there’s a big convention at the Flamingo, she runs up and works the tables. Cocktail waitress.” Tony nodded. “Look at her, you’d never figure she had a grown son. Why, a couple of years ago, over on Western, she was working topless.”

“I saw a real topless waitress once,” the man said.

“Real topless?”

“That’s right.” The man smiled. “Somebody had cut off her head.”

Tony smiled, too, even though the gag was old. Or was it a gag? With this cat you never knew. One minute he was making funnies, the next he was rapping philosophy. But he was the one who could put it all together, and that’s what counted.

The MG turned onto Wonderland Park, still climbing. The road was narrower here, and darker; the higher you went, the narrower and darker it got. No yard lights, no lights in the hillside houses. Hard to believe it was only ten minutes’ driving from here to the Strip. Living up here, you were really hiding out. Most of the time you were above the smog and it was usually a lot cooler than down below. The people were cool, too. That’s why Tony went for it in the first place.

It would be good to be home again, even for a little while. Only for a little while, of course, because once the fuzz got organized, there’d be too much heat from below.

Tony glanced at his companion. “What happens next?” he asked.

“I’ve got a few ideas about that. Wait until we get inside where we can relax.”

Tony noticed that the MG was crawling along in low now, making the turns that led up to the house at the very top almost in slow-motion. And the man was keeping an eye on every shadow, every parked car, making sure no one was watching, no one was waiting. A damn good thing, too; this was no time to start talking about futures. Play it by ear.

Now his ear told him that the dogs had heard the car coming. They were growling behind the wall. The MG pulled up in front of the driveway and halted, motor running.

The man reached into his jacket pocket and tossed a keychain into Tony’s lap. “You won’t have to go over the wall,” he said. “I found these inside your desk.”

Tony opened the door and slid out. He could hear Tiger and Butch whining and sniffling, hear their claws scratching and scraping the wall as they got excited. Well, he was excited, too; just seeing the house was enough after all this time. He must have missed it more than he’d known.

Tony glanced at the man. He still sat behind the wheel. “Aren’t you coming in?”

“Not until I put the car in the garage. Somebody sees it parked on the street tomorrow, they might get ideas.”

Good thinking. Tony circled his approval with thumb and forefinger, and the man nodded.

“You go ahead in and see if you can keep those dogs quiet.”

Tony walked over to the gate and opened it. Even the feel of the key turning in the lock was somehow comforting and familiar.

He moved inside the patio, closing the gate behind him as the dogs snarled. Over the noise he heard the sound of the MG’s motor, revving up and pulling away. But before he could think about it, Tony turned and saw Tiger and Butch. To his surprise, they were unchained, and they were racing towards him, fangs bared and dripping, red eyes glaring in the moonlight. Then the moonlight was blotted out as they leaped. Tony screamed and turned, but it was too late.

CHAPTER 15

T
he earth rotates on its axis in four minutes less than twenty-four hours. It orbits around the sun at approximately eighteen and a half miles per second, while at the same time whirling through space at a speed of more than ten thousand miles an hour.

Lieutenant Franklyn Barringer accepted all this because the scientists said it was so. Accepted, but did not truly believe.

Sitting behind his desk with both feet firmly on the floor, he could not completely comprehend he was actually spinning around in a circle on a ball that was simultaneously revolving around another sphere at a dizzying pace, while at the same time whizzing up or down or sideways. And yet, he told himself,
it’s happening, it’s a demonstrable fact even if it seems incredible.
So one accepts the evidence and dismisses it.

The trouble is, there’s some evidence, equally incredible, which can’t be disposed of so easily. Such as the portfolio accumulating on Barringer’s desk this morning; the memos of phone calls, the taped transcriptions, the reports.

“All right,” he muttered. “So I’ve got to accept it. I still can’t believe—”

“And you want me to convince you, is that right?” said Dr. Vicente.

“Not necessarily.” Barringer poured himself a cup of coffee. “You’ve gone over this stuff. I want your opinion.”

“In other words, an educated guess.” Vicente reached for the coffee urn and refilled his own cup. “To begin with, could one man possibly commit all of these murders within the space of about four hours? Under certain conditions, the answer is a qualified yes.”

“What are the conditions?”

“That he had the names and addresses of the victims—which he could have obtained, either from them directly, or from Griswold’s files before he burned them. That he had the means of transportation—and we know from the tire-marks at the house he was driving Tony Rodell’s car, or at least a car which had occupied Rodell’s garage. Lastly, that he had some reasonable assurance these people would be turning up at their homes or places of business at various times yesterday evening—”

“Edna Drexel told her parents they scattered in all directions out in Sherman Oaks.”

“She also said she felt someone was following her.”

“You forgot—only two hours earlier, Jack Lorch was killed in Culver City.”

“From Culver City to Bel Air is only a half hour’s drive.”

“But how did he know Edna Drexel would be going home?”

“For the same reason he knew he’d find Jack Lorch at his office. These people had nowhere else to go. No money, no food.”

“Sounds as if he was pushing his luck.”

“He didn’t have any choice in the matter. I think originally he planned to dispose of them
en masse,
that night when he had them all together in Griswold’s car. Again, according to the Drexel woman’s story, Tony Rodell was holding them all at gun-point. He might have intended to drive the whole group up to Rodell’s house and finish them off there, with Rodell’s help. But when they made a break for it, he had to track them down individually and take his chances.”

“You keep saying ‘he.’ Don’t forget, there’s two men still at large.”

“I know. But one of them was part of the group that ran off. And he’s still hiding somewhere, unless our man got to him, too, and we haven’t heard about it yet.”

“We don’t know a damned thing, except that two men are loose somewhere, and one of them is named Bruce Raymond. He’s either the killer or a potential victim. Take your choice.”

Vicente gulped coffee, then set his mug down on the desk top. “From what we know about Raymond, he could be either. I read that report from the VA. Marked instability, but cooperative, responsive to therapy—a lot of cautious phrases, all of which adds up to a lame excuse for releasing him and giving his bed to another patient. No definite prognosis, just something to protect the doctor making the decision.”

“Who handled his case out there?”

“A Major Fairchild. I tried to contact him yesterday, but he’s long gone. They had an address in Seattle—something called the Trade Clinic—but when I phoned, I was told he’d left for a vacation in Japan. You could probably reach him through—”

“No time.” Barringer shook his head. “And even if we did, how the hell is some army medico in Japan going to tell us if one of his former patients might have gone berserk here?”

“He can’t, and neither can I.” Dr. Vicente pushed his chair back. “But I can tell you something about the type of man who did commit these killings.”

“Another educated guess?”

“Not entirely. We’ve got certain facts to go on. Number One, as I told you, he’s undoubtedly a sociopath—”

“Can you give it to me without the psychiatric jargon?”

“Okay, no cautious phrases.” Vicente smiled, then sobered. “To repeat what we already know, our man isn’t recognizable as a nut. He looks and behaves like a rational human being. It’s an act, of course, but a convincing one—we know that because he managed to organize his whole break from the sanatorium without arousing the suspicions of the staff or his fellow patients. In fact, he was able to get the other patients to accompany him. He’s probably accustomed to taking over, to giving orders—”

“Raymond was an officer.”

“Noted.” Vicente nodded. “Another thing. From the nature of the crimes, we must assume we’re dealing with someone who has great physical strength. Even if we accept Tony Rodell as his accomplice, it’s apparent that force was involved as well as the element of surprise. Griswold was strapped into a chair, Jack Lorch was struck over the head, an orderly stabbed, two women strangled, Dorothy Anderson’s throat was cut—”

“That’s another thing that bothers me,” Barringer said. “Each killing was different. Usually there’s a pattern.”

“We’re not dealing with a compulsive murderer. There’s no fetishism, apparently, no overt sadomasochistic component.” Vicente paused, aware of his lapse into forensic phraseology. “On the conscious level, this man is killing merely to cover his tracks, using whatever means is practical at the moment. On the unconscious level, of course, it’s another story. Anyone who would plan the kind of death meted out to Tony Rodell—”

“We don’t know that he planned it,” Barringer interrupted. “It could have been accidental. Granted, those Dobermans were vicious, but they knew their master.”

“So do we.” Dr. Vicente riffled through the papers on Barringer’s desk. “You talked to his mother this morning.”

“And got absolutely nothing.” Barringer shook his head. “Aside from identifying her son as one of the missing patients, everything she told us was an obvious falsehood. Tony was a good boy, maybe a little disturbed, but no real problems.”

“She’s the victim’s mother. What do you expect her to say under the circumstances?”

“It doesn’t matter. We’ve got his record.” This time it was Barringer who pawed through the documents on the desk until he found a sheet and scanned it. “High school dropout. Stolen-vehicle charge at sixteen, suspended and probation. His mother swears he was always clean, but we’ve got two counts here involving narcotics.”

“Before or after he organized his rock group?”

“After. Apparently he was making it big in music—big enough to buy that house and maintain it. I got the mother to admit she hadn’t seen her son for almost a year before he went into the sanatorium, but she refused to talk about the commitment. I think he went in because he was hooked. Freaked out on speed.”

“Any reason to support that theory?”

“Two thousand reasons.” Barringer took a last gulp of coffee. “Two bottles, each containing a thousand amphetamine capsules, stashed away under the meat packages in the freezer. Turned up this morning when they went through the house. One of the bottles sealed, the other open.”

Dr. Vicente’s eyes narrowed. “What does that suggest to you?”

“That Rodell and the murderer arrived at the house together, possibly planning to spend the night there. They probably had Rodell’s car—for all we know, they’d been together during the evening, when the murders were committed.”

“You think Tony Rodell was involved in the slayings?”

“Could be. Particularly if he’d located his supply of capsules earlier, when they came to pick up the car. I don’t have to tell you what a speed freak is capable of when he’s really turned on.” Barringer shifted his empty coffee mug on the desk top. “Let’s say he was still high when they returned to the house, really flying. High enough to mistreat those dogs. They attacked him, and his companion got scared, took off in the car.”

“Any evidence that the dogs were mistreated? Did your people turn up a stick, or a whip at the scene?”

“No, nothing but a wrapper from one of the meat packages. Perhaps he was just teasing the dogs, showing them the meat and then snatching it away, that sort of thing.” Barringer shrugged. “When you’re dealing with a speed freak, anything’s possible.”

“Let’s stick to what’s probable,” Dr. Vicente said. “You say there’s no pattern in these slayings. What you really mean is there’s no consistency of
method.
But the pattern is plainly visible in the
motive.
One by one, the murderer is killing all the people who could identify him. We both agree that Tony Rodell could have identified the murderer. Which makes his death part of the pattern.”

“How did the murderer get those dogs to attack Rodell?”

“I don’t know.” Dr. Vicente stood up. “Any more than you really know whether or not Rodell was under the influence of amphetamine at the time of his death.”