The Night People (2 page)

The rooms where the old woman had spent her last days were nothing. Bare, dirty walls, cluttered closets, dirty dishes…. Perhaps Sadie Kratch was better off dead. She’d taken drugs shortly before her death, but he found no trace of them in the tiny house.

The medicine cabinet, with a mirror cracked down the middle, yielded only a half-empty bottle of cough medicine from a neighborhood drug store. The prescription had been filled three days earlier, according to the date on the label. Fleming dropped the bottle into his raincoat pocket and went back out to the car. He had to start someplace, and this was as good as any.

Wagner’s Drug was the kind of place he knew it would be. Small, quiet, neighborly, with a window display showing the history of medicine through the ages. Inside, there was Mr. Wagner himself, with white coat and tired smile, waiting expectantly for the next customer.

“Good afternoon, sir. Anything I can do for you?”

Fleming showed his badge and the bottle of cough medicine. Mr. Wagner began to turn pale with the citizen’s eternal fear of police.

“What … what do you want?”

“Just some information. You filled this prescription for Sadie Kratch three days ago?”

The druggist took the bottle and studied it for a moment before replying. “That’s correct. I remember now, I was just getting ready to close when she came in. She was coughing something awful.”

“Who was her doctor?”

“Oh, Sadie couldn’t afford a regular doctor. Whenever she wasn’t feeling good, she went up to the city hospital, to the outpatient department. They’d give her something to fix her up, or else send her to me.”

“Did you know she was taking narcotics?”

“Sadie? No, I can’t believe….”

“Well, she took some shortly before she was murdered, anyhow. We found some morphine in her.”

“Poor Sadie,” Mr. Wagner said and shook his head sadly. “Poor old Sadie….”

No, Sadie Kratch had no enemies. No friends, but no enemies, either. It had taken Fleming all afternoon and ten more interviews with neighbors and shopkeepers to establish that. He was tired by the time he finished, tired and cold and wet.

All afternoon the rain had kept coming down, not hard, but with that irritating drizzle that seemed like it would never let up. How many days was it now? Seven. Seven days with hardly a break in this miserable rain.

It was nearly suppertime when he stopped the car in front of the funeral parlor where James Mitchell rested in peace. Last night at just about this time he had been alive and happy. Now, he was dead, and his future fame would be only in the true crime magazines, where he would be known as the killer’s second victim.

Fleming went in, and looked around until he found Mrs. Mitchell, a young, good-looking woman, who seemed somehow very small and helpless in the black dress she wore.

“Mrs. Mitchell, I’m very sorry to bother you again….”

“That’s … that’s all right, Inspector. Anything I can do to help….”

“Mrs. Mitchell, I want you to keep a special watch for strangers. Oh, I know the newspaper stories will attract a lot of the curious, but there’s a chance the killer might come, too. I’m going to leave a man here with you, just in case….”

“Anything you say, Inspector. Anything to find the man who did this to Jim….”

Fleming nodded and went over to say a brief prayer before the sealed coffin. Then he left the funeral home and drove back to Headquarters….

The Commissioner was there and Carter, and a dozen more. They were listening to Fleming as he stood before a wall map of the city.

“These three pins show the scenes of the three murders. You’ll note that all the killings took place on the east side of the river, and all within the same general area.”

“Do you have any leads yet?” the Commissioner asked.

“Nothing yet, sir. But it won’t be long.”

“I hope not. The papers are screaming for action.”

The papers were always screaming for action, Fleming thought. He passed a hand over his forehead. His head was beginning to ache, and he felt very tired. Maybe he was getting old, after all.

“What I can’t figure out,” Carter said, “is how the killer could walk through the streets, even at night, covered with bloodstains. And he couldn’t have killed them like that without getting some blood on him.”

Fleming closed his eyes and thought about it. Finally he said, “All he had to do was wear one of those plastic raincoats that all the stores sell. The rain would have washed the blood right off.”

“Yeah,” Carter said. “I guess you’re right.”

The Commissioner smiled. “He’s always right. We’re going to hate to lose him after this case.”

Fleming went into his office and closed the door behind him. Yes, they’d hate to lose him. Then Carter and the Commissioner could sweat the cases out between them, while he did nothing all day but rest and relax….

He stretched out on his couch for a few minutes to think about it, to think about a life without the clatter of teletypes and the screech of sirens in the night. But even as he thought, he knew there could never be such a life for him. He had been a man-hunter for forty-five years, and he couldn’t stop now. After the axe murders, there would be other crimes to be solved. They would need him. Didn’t they understand that? They would need him….

“Fleming, wake up!”

“I’m not asleep, Carter. Only resting my eyes. What is it?”

“One of those nuts we pulled in just confessed to the murders.”

Fleming grunted. “Let’s go see him.”

His name was Ralph. Even he didn’t know what his last name was. Fleming had seen him around town from time to time, selling newspapers or doing odd jobs. He was big, well over six feet, with strong, powerful hands.

“Tell us about it again, Ralph. Tell us again.”

“I killed them, I tell you. I killed them all.” He clutched his big hands together as he talked.

Fleming left the room and returned in a minute with a long kitchen knife. “Is this the knife you used, Ralph?”

“Yes, yes, that’s it. I killed them all with that.”

Carter sighed and followed Fleming from the room….

“There’s always a dozen nuts ready to confess after every murder, Carter,” Fleming told him. “That doesn’t mean you have to believe them all.”

“I know. I just thought maybe….”

“Well, hold him for examination. In the meantime, have you got any other ideas?”

“One, Arnold, but I don’t know what you’ll think of it.”

Fleming sighed. The headache was getting worse. “Let’s hear it, anyway.”

“Well, suppose that this Mrs. Mitchell was having an affair with another man. Suppose they decided to get rid of her husband without directing suspicion toward themselves.”

“You mean the first and third murders would be necessary only to hide the real motive for the second murder?”

“Yes. I read something like that in a book once.”

Fleming smiled slightly. “I read the same one. Christie, I believe. Well, personally I have strong doubts that Mrs. Mitchell is anyone who would plot to kill her husband in such a brutal way, but if you can find another man in the picture, I might listen to you.”

“Good. I’ll give it a try, anyhow, Arnold.”

Fleming watched him walk quickly away, full of that usual youthful drive, the ability to overcome the fantastic odds, that had once been the mark of Arnold Fleming as well. Carter was in many ways much like a son to him. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad giving the department to Carter.

But then what would he do, when the long nights rolled in across the river….

And the world was silent except for the clatter of the Teletype and the screeching of the sirens….

What would he do …?

The Fey Club was alive with midnight activity when Fleming pushed open the door and stood looking over the line of men and women at the bar. A few familiar faces nodded toward him and then turned to whisper among themselves.

The Fey Club had been Tony DeLuca’s hangout. Why? Fleming had heard there was a singer here….

The lights dimmed, even as the thought crossed his mind, and then a sudden flickering pink spotlight picked out the girl leaning against the white piano….

“… the … night … is mine….”

The voice, the voice of a thousand nightclubs from Broadway to Frisco, sang out across the crowded room. It was not a good voice, but it had that quality, that thing about it that excited younger men and disturbed even Fleming. This, then, was Rhonda Roberts, the girl in Tony DeLuca’s life.

And possibly the girl in his death, as well?

Fleming watched, bewitched, for twenty minutes, as the spotlight wove a fabric of beauty around her face, her body, her silken legs. She never moved from that spot, and when the light would drop away from her entirely, there was a feeling that the voice must have been coming from another world.

Then, suddenly, it was over, and the house lights grew bright again. Fleming stayed to watch part of the next act, a young Negro playing something very fast on a set of silver drums. Then he walked backstage to the dressing rooms.

She was just finished changing when he knocked on the open door and stepped inside.

“Well? What do you want, pop?”

“Police. I have a few questions,”

“About Tony?”

“That’s right.”

“He was a bum.”

“I understood you two were friendly.”

She slipped a dressing gown over the brief pink costume she’d changed to, and lit a cigarette. “That was a long time ago, believe me. He was a joker that just wouldn’t give up trying, that’s all.”

“He have any enemies?”

“Yeah. Me.”

“You kill him?”

“With a hatchet? Are you kidding? What do you think I am, a damn Indian or something? I’d have shot him. Right between the eyes.”

“You don’t go with your voice, Miss Roberts.”

“What?”

“I heard you sing out there. I was expecting something quite different.”

That shut her up for a minute while she thought over his remark and its meaning. Finally she gave up and said, “Well, he was no good, anyway.”

“He ever give you any presents?”

“Tony?” she laughed. “The only thing he ever gave me was this cold I’ve got. He was just a cheap punk, always hanging around, always bothering me. I’m glad he’s dead.”

Fleming nodded in sympathy. Somehow, Rhonda Roberts reminded him of another girl he’d once known, a girl he’d almost married. At the time he’d been glad he hadn’t, but now sometimes when the nights were long and lonely he wished it had turned out differently.

He said goodbye to Tony DeLuca’s ex-girlfriend and left the Fey Club’s smoky haze for the foggy dampness of the outside world….

Three people.

An old woman, a married man, and a young hoodlum, all with their skulls split open.

Three pins on a map of the city….

Had it just happened that way? Had they just been the first persons he’d seen, or did the madman find some link between them?

“Nothing on Mitchell’s wife. I checked all the neighbors, everything. If she was playing around with another guy, she was keeping it mighty quiet.”

“Don’t worry about it, Carter. I never thought too much of that idea, anyway.” Fleming lifted himself from his chair and stared out the window at the gloomy mist. “Isn’t this rain ever going to stop, Carter?”

“I guess not, Arnold.”

Fleming sighed and looked away. His head was still hurting him….

“Have you been getting enough sleep, Arnold?”

“No, damn it! Do you expect me to sleep with this thing going on? How do we know he wasn’t out again last night, with his axe?”

The Teletype came to life then, and Carter walked over to read it. “Here’s something….”

Fleming joined him and they read it together. BODY OF MAN FOUND IN ROOM OF STAR HOTEL, APPARENT HOMICIDE.

“Do you think …?”

“No,” Fleming said, “not in a hotel room. The others were all outside. And besides, it’s on the wrong side of the river.”

“We’d better get down there, anyway.”

“Yeah.”

They drove across town to the Star Hotel, one of the best in the city. Already there was a crowd in the lobby, and they had to fight their way through to the elevator.

Upstairs, Fleming took one look at the cops’ faces and knew what they would find inside.

The man’s name had been Harold Rothman. He was a salesman for an electric switch company. He had been in town only four days. He’d been dead about twelve hours when the chambermaid found him, and there was no doubt that he was the fourth victim of the axe murderer….

“You were right, Arnold,” Carter told him, sometime later. “I checked the calls he’d made while he was in town. One of them was in the same section as the other murders.”

Fleming grunted and went back to studying the map. “But of course now, Carter, the problem is somewhat different. Before there was always the possibility that our killer had picked people at random, striking whoever happened to be near. But now he has entered a hotel room, murdered this man, and escaped past dozens of people with an axe probably hidden under his coat. Why did he take such a chance, when the streets and alleys and parks of the city offer him thousands of victims?”

“Yeah, that does seem off-base for a regular nut.”

“It means that he didn’t kill these four people at random, Carter. It means that he had a motive all along, something that linked these people, at least in his twisted mind.”

“But this last one, Rothman. He’d never been here before. And he only got in town four days ago.”

“But during those days he visited this section of the city,” Fleming pointed at the map. “And he must have met the killer.”

Carter produced a list from his pocket. “Here’s everything he did, as near as I can check. He flew in from New York four days ago, checked into the Star. Was seen at the hotel bar that night. Next morning stopped by the hotel physician to get something for a cold. Made three calls the rest of the day, the last one being in our area here. Spent that night in the bar, too. Made four calls the next day, and phoned New York. That night went to two nightclubs, but not to the Fey Club, in case you’re wondering. Yesterday made three more calls, returning to the hotel around six. Shortly after that, the killer apparently visited his room.”