The Night People (3 page)

Fleming grunted. “Did you find any clues in the room?”

“Just some traces of the dead man’s blood in the shower. As you suspected, the killer had to wash it off his raincoat before he left the room.”

“Yeah…. But that puts us no nearer to him than before. And soon it’ll be night again.”

Carter lit a cigarette and stood looking at the map with its four red pins.

Fleming walked to the window and gazed out at the rain. Wouldn’t it ever stop? Suppose it didn’t, he wondered. Suppose it rained forever….

Old woman, business man, hoodlum, salesman….

Kratch, Mitchell, DeLuca, Rothman….

He looked out at the rain again….

“You know. Carter, those four did have one thing in common.” But Carter had gone. He was alone in his office.

He sat down to think about it. The more he thought about it the more fantastic it seemed. His head was beginning to hurt again. This damn dampness….

He put on his raincoat and went downstairs and walked across the street to the morgue. Doc Adams was just starting the autopsy on Harold Rothman.

“Find anything, doc?”

“Nothing yet, except that he was killed with an axe, and I guess you know that.”

Fleming leaned against the wall as the doctor worked. It was not a pretty thing to watch. “This the first axe killing you’ve examined, doc?”

“Yeah. The other three were on Doctor Perry’s side of the river.”

“Tell me, doc, have you had any natural deaths around the same section this week?”

“Sure, plenty of ’em. People die every day. Now stop asking me questions while I’m working.”

“Okay, doc.” Fleming moved toward the door. “I was especially interested in a death that maybe wasn’t quite natural….”

The doc didn’t answer for nearly a minute, and Fleming started out the door.

“Well, I suppose that one on First Street wasn’t really natural.”

“Which one was that?”

“The girl that died from an overdose of morphine….”

It was shortly after six that evening when Fleming knocked on the door of an apartment on Smith Street, just a few doors away from Sadie Kratch’s house. He was back now, back where it had all started.

Maybe he should have told Carter or the Commissioner. Maybe he shouldn’t have come here alone….

But this was his last case…. And this would be the end of it, something to remember when there was nothing else.

When there was nothing else….

The door opened slowly, and he faced the killer, the man who had murdered Sadie Kratch, and James Mitchell, and Tony DeLuca, and Harold Rothman….

They had been just names to Fleming, just as their killer was just a name. Names at the end of a lifetime of this sort of thing. He had not been scared when he captured the two holdup men on that day forty-five years ago. And he was not scared now.

Even when he saw the axe rise in front of him and begin its slow, deadly arc….

He simply brushed it aside with his arm, and, surprisingly there was no resistance. The axe clattered to the floor, and the killer of four people, sat down in a chair and began to cry….

Sometime, for everyone, there is an end. And for the murderer sometime there must be an end to the killing….

Fleming looked at the man in the chair, still clad in his white druggist’s coat, and felt a little sorry. “Yes, Mr. Wagner,” he said quietly, “I know why you killed all those people….”

“… you killed them, Mr. Wagner, because they were going to die anyway, because you had made a mistake, the single mistake that every man is entitled to. But the mistake that would have meant the end, for all time, of your profession as a druggist.

“That’s what I noticed first, of course. That all four of them had a cold when they died. And I began thinking about the cough medicine in Sadie Kratch’s house and the cough medicine that the killer might have removed from Harold Rothman’s hotel room.

“I thought about the morphine in the old woman, when none was found in the house, and then I learned about the morphine death a few days ago in the same neighborhood….

“The rest wasn’t too hard to imagine. A lot of people in town had colds, a lot of them called their doctors. And quite a few got prescriptions for cough medicine. So during the past few days, five people came to you for cough medicine. And that was where you made the mistake. You gave them morphine instead of the milder codeine that most cough medicines contain. Morphine’s good for a cough, too, but not in the amount you put in the medicine.

“The first to die from it was a young girl, and when you saw it in the papers it scared you. You realized you’d made a mistake, and you were afraid the other four would die too, or at least get sick from it. The death of the girl had somehow passed more or less unnoticed, but a series of morphine deaths would be quickly traced to you.

“So you had to kill the other four, because by confessing your mistake in time to save them, you’d have ruined yourself for life. Your profession was more important than a few lives. It was everything to you.

“And somehow I understand it. I understand what was in your mind better than anyone else could….

“Because it’s in my mind, too….

“Why the axe? I suppose that was some fantastic bit of misdirection to keep attention away from the body, from the stomach, where traces of the morphine could be quickly found. But actually only the old woman took enough for us to notice. Or perhaps you didn’t make the same mistake with the other three after all….

“My head is aching again. It’s taken me a long time to find you….

“You tried to make us think it was the work of an insane fiend, but I know you aren’t mad….

“You just wanted to keep your job.

“Like I do….

“Because you know when I bring you in, I’m all through. They’re going to retire me then, like an old horse.

“There isn’t anything else for me, but they’re going to retire me and this is my last case….

“Inspector Fleming’s Last Case….

“Perhaps that’s what the newspapers will call it.

“Perhaps….

“My head aches.

“You killed four people to keep your job … four people….

“But this doesn’t have to be the end, does it? I’m the only one who knows….

“Suppose the axe fiend kept on killing….

“Then I couldn’t retire. Then they’d keep me. Then….

“Suppose you were to die, Mr. Wagner, the way the others did. Suppose I were to pick up the axe like this and….

“Suppose….”

H
E FIRST NOTICED THE
new man in the neighborhood on a Tuesday evening, on his way home from the station. The man was tall and thin, with a look about him that told Ray Bankcroft he was English. It wasn’t anything Ray could put his finger on, the fellow just looked English.

That was all there was to their first encounter, and the second meeting passed just as casually, Friday evening at the station. The fellow was living around Pelham some place, maybe in that new apartment house in the next block.

But it was the following week that Ray began to notice him everywhere. The tall Englishman rode down to New York with Ray on the 8:09, and he was eating a few tables away at Howard Johnson’s one noon. But that was the way things were in New York, Ray told himself, where you sometimes ran into the same person every day for a week, as though the laws of probability didn’t exist.

It was on the weekend, when Ray and his wife journeyed up to Stamford for a picnic, that he became convinced the Englishman was following him. For there, fifty miles from home, the tall stranger came striding slowly across the rolling hills, pausing now and then to take in the beauty of the place.

“Damn it, Linda,” Ray remarked to his wife, “there’s that fellow again!”

“What fellow, Ray?”

“That Englishman from our neighborhood. The one I was telling you I see everywhere.”

“Oh, is that him?” Linda Bankcroft frowned through the tinted lenses of her sunglasses. “I don’t remember ever seeing him before.”

“Well, he must be living in that new apartment in the next block. I’d like to know what the hell he’s doing up here, though. Do you think he could be following me?”

“Oh, Ray, don’t be silly,” Linda laughed. “Why would anyone want to follow you? And to a picnic!”

“I don’t know, but it’s certainly odd the way he keeps turning up….”

It certainly was odd.

And as the summer passed into September, it grew odder still. Once, twice, three times a week, the mysterious Englishman appeared, always walking, always seemingly oblivious of his surroundings.

Finally, one night on Ray Bankcroft’s way home, it suddenly grew to be too much for him.

He walked up to the man and asked, “Are you following me?”

The Englishman looked down his nose with a puzzled frown. “I beg your pardon?”

“Are you following me?” Ray repeated. “I see you everywhere.”

“My dear chap, really, you must be mistaken.”

“I’m not mistaken. Stop following me!”

But the Englishman only shook his head sadly and walked away. And Ray stood and watched him until he was out of sight….

“Linda, I saw him again today!”

“Who, dear?”

“That damned Englishman! He was in the elevator in my building.”

“Are you sure it was the same man?”

“Of course I’m sure! He’s everywhere, I tell you! I see him every day now, on the street, on the train, at lunch, and now even in the elevator! It’s driving me crazy. I’m certain he’s following me. But why?”

“Have you spoken to him?”

“I’ve spoken to him, cursed at him, threatened him. But it doesn’t do any good. He just looks puzzled and walks away. And then the next day there he is again.”

“Maybe you should call the police. But I suppose he hasn’t really done anything.”

“That’s just the trouble, Linda. He hasn’t done a single thing. It’s just that he’s always around. The damned thing is driving me crazy.”

“What—what are you going to do about it?”

“I’ll tell you what I’m going to do! The next time I see him I’m going to grab him and beat the truth out of him. I’ll get to the bottom of this….”

The next night, the tall Englishman was back, walking just ahead of him on the train platform. Ray ran toward him, but the Englishman disappeared in the crowd.

Perhaps the whole thing was just a coincidence, and yet….

Later that night Ray ran out of cigarettes, and when he left the apartment and headed for the corner drugstore, he knew the tall Englishman would be waiting for him along the route.

And as he came under the pale red glow of the flickering neon, he saw the man, walking slowly across the street from the railroad tracks.

Ray knew that this must be the final encounter.

“Say there!”

The Englishman paused and looked at him distastefully, then turned and walked away from Ray.

“Wait a minute, you! We’re going to settle this once and for all!”

But the Englishman kept walking.

Ray cursed and started after him through the darkness. He called out, “Come back here!” But now the Englishman was almost running.

Ray broke into a trot, following him down the narrow street that led along the railroad tracks. “Damn you, come back! I want to talk to you!”

But the Englishman ran on, faster and faster. Finally Ray paused, out of breath.

And ahead, the Englishman had paused too.

Ray could see the gleaming glow of his wristwatch as he raised his hand in a gesture. And Ray saw that he was beckoning him to follow….

Ray broke into a run again.

The Englishman waited only a moment and then he too ran, keeping close to the edge of the railroad wall, where only a few inches separated him from a twenty-foot drop to the tracks below.

In the distance, Ray heard the low whistle of the Stamford Express, tearing through the night.

Ahead, the Englishman rounded a brick wall that jutted out almost to the edge of the embankment. He was out of sight around the corner for a moment, but Ray was now almost upon him. He rounded the wall himself and saw, too late, that the Englishman was waiting for him there.

The man’s big hands came at him, and all at once Ray was pushed and falling sideways, over the edge of the railroad wall, clawing helplessly at the air.

And as he hit the tracks, he saw that the Stamford Express was almost upon him, filling all space with its terrible sound….

Some time later, the tall Englishman peered through a cloud of blue cigarette smoke at the graceful figure of Linda Bankcroft and said, “As I remarked at the beginning of all this, my darling, a proper murder is the ultimate game of skill….”

“Y
OU MEAN YOU’VE NEVER
met Ida Spain?” Hastings asked with an incredulity that was rare for him. “Man, she’s slept with everybody in town. How did you get left out?”

Crandell sipped his drink and smiled. “I’m a happily married man, Foster. I’d have no reason to know Ida Spain.”

Foster Hastings shook his head sadly. “I thought everybody knew her. I can’t understand it. You really mean you’ve never even heard the name before?”

Jim Crandell’s smile broadened. “I told you, Foster. That stuff isn’t for me.”

“Not even when you’re away, man? I’ve heard stories about traveling salesmen.”

“And farmer’s daughters, I know. I guess I’m just different.”

“Well, you come around to one of our parties and meet her, anyway. It’ll make you feel young again.”

Jim Crandell chuckled. “I’ve got someone at home who makes me feel young every weekend. I’ll be seeing you, Foster.”

“So long, Jim….”

Home was a little ranch house in the suburbs, with roses in the yard and good food in the kitchen. And Doris waiting there by the door as she always was.

“How was the trip, dear?”

He kissed her lightly on the cheek and peeled off his topcoat. “Good trip, but the weather was terrible up there. I’ll swear it must have been down to forty in Toronto.”

“I’ve got supper all ready.”

“Good.” He glanced at the evening newspaper briefly and then for some reason his mind returned to the conversation with Foster Hastings.