By Reason of Insanity (67 page)

Neither man was Thomas Bishop.

The third was of more interest. Age twentyfive, lived alone in a downtown tenement. Claimed to be an artist of sorts, no visible means of support. In town about a month. Previous address: Venice, Florida. Name: Curtis Manning.

Kenton told Grimes to have the agency check Manning out with Florida right away. The particulars of his leaving there, and a picture. He wanted it by the morning.

When would the last four photos be ready?

Early afternoon.

One possibility out of twentythree. And only four more to go. Kenton decided not to panic yet.

IN THE
Daily News
building on East 42nd Street the package arrived in the mail room and was routinely sent upstairs to the seventh-floor editorial offices, since it was addressed to the Editor. There an editorial assistant opened it because no individual name was specified. Under the wrapping was a white cake box. A rubber band held the cover down. The editorial assistant removed the rubber band and lifted the cover. Her split-second impression was that they were some strange little cakes or—

As her hand automatically reached into the box, the scream had already begun somewhere deep in her throat …

JOHNNY MESSICK slowly awakened to the most wonderful feeling all over his body. For a moment he thought he might be in heaven and he wondered how he had made it. He slowly opened his eyes, not daring to move. As focus returned he saw Dory’s head bobbing up and down in front of him. She was kneeling between his legs, facing him. Her silky hair brushed against his belly. Goddam! She was giving him a blow job, and just the way he liked it too. Waking up to it. She hadn’t done that since the first few weeks they got together. He closed his eyes and relaxed, trying not to think of anything.

Dory had made herself wake up before him. She had given him sweet sex the night before, tired as she was, without complaints, with much forced passion. Lulled him to sleep with the soft syrupy slurping of body on body. And now this. She slid her tongue along the shaft of his penis to the head, then pursed her lips over the crown, tightening them as she accepted him fully into her mouth. Slowly she ran her taut lips up and down the stem, holding the skin back with her thumb and index finger. As she worked her movements into a rhythm she could already begin feeling the tightening of the scrotum, which would soon send the milky white substance shooting into her waiting mouth.

At least he came quicker than some others she had known in her young life. Which was a blessing, Dory thought wearily, as his breathing grew heavier. But fast or slow, she would make him so mellow he would tell her anything she wanted to know. And what she wanted to know was worth ten thousand dollars.

The thought excited her so much she forgot to close her throat muscles as his sperm slammed into her tonsils and sluiced down past pink tissue and all recall.

IT WAS 12:30 when the news came through from Red Bluff. They sounded excited, both literally talking at the same time. Most of Sunday had been spent in Justin. The nephew had been very cooperative, allowing them to browse through the cartons in the shed at their leisure.

First they found the usual household junk, all of which could have belonged to anybody. Kitchen utensils, old clothes and linen, a few rusted tools, a Strongboy leather strap, well worn. Stuff like that. A lot of books too, mostly all yellowed with age and falling apart. After a while they looked among the books and found some handwritten notes on sewing, a child’s school notebook, a few drawings. And plenty of papers with figures added up, like somebody going over what money was left.

Finally they came to a book called
The Face of Justice
by Caryl Chessman—

Kenton’s heart quickened.

—and inside the book were about a dozen pages folded in half, all of them filled with writing about a young girl growing up and all the things that went wrong in her life—

Had she been raped?

More than once, it seemed.

Did she name Caryl Chessman?

She talked a lot about him.

Was there someone called Harry Owens?

He was the guy she married.

Kenton knew the author, though he had never met her. It was Sara Owens, mother of Thomas Bishop.

He had found the Chessman connection. The last link, the final piece of the puzzle. It was just as he knew it would be. Through the parents. Except he had thought it was the father, by way of Don Solis. But it had been the mother all along. Sara Bishop Owens.

He told Red Bluff to send him the pages immediately. Also the other writings. One of them was to go back to Justin and buy the cartons from the nephew and send them on to New York too. And they were not to mention their assignment to anybody. That meant nobody.

The fox looked around the empty office. Slowly he changed back into the hound.

INSPECTOR ALEX DIMITRI stared at the female parts in the box. From at least two women, as near as he could tell, maybe more. How the devil could anybody tell? He rubbed his eyes, trying to pull himself together. He had three daughters of his own.

There was no note, just a name scrawled on the box.

Chess Man.

Two questions concerned him at the moment. Did they come from women already found? Parts had been taken from the bodies, so it was possible. But somehow he doubted that. Then where were the new victims? In their homes, not yet discovered? Or—

He suddenly was chilled to the bone. If Chess Man had a secret place where he not only lived undisturbed but to which he could bring victims unnoticed, he was practically invisible. A rat in a hole. A bat in a cave. He could go on forever storing bodies away. Cutting them up for packages or maybe Christmas gifts—

Dimitri felt his own sanity slipping away. The boys were right. There was no way the maniac would ever reach a courtroom. He was too dangerous. And not just because of what he was doing. But he touched the insanity in everyone, he fed it. Fed the monster that was in each person from the very beginning, that had been pushed down over millions of years but was always and forever waiting to be released.

The inspector closed the cover on the cake box. He hoped the forensic people would come soon.

KENTON HEARD the news of Chess Man’s latest mailing at 1:20, a call from a
Daily News
friend. At 1:50 he was given the last four photographs from the mail-drop investigation. Four young white men, one of them bearded, all of them clean-cut and strong-eyed. Typical American youth.

Unfortunately none of them looked anything like Thomas Bishop.

Kenton groped for his chair, stunned. Something had gone wrong. How could he be so mistaken, so off base? Bishop needed a mailing address. Too dangerous wherever he was living. So he would get a mail drop. And his psychology would prompt him to get it right away.

It made sense.

Except Bishop wasn’t there.

And he probably wasn’t Curtis Manning of Florida.

That left nobody.

For much of the afternoon Kenton stared at the blank wall nearest him. After a while he didn’t see it any more as he returned in time to his own painful childhood. His foster parents had been older people who had no children of their own. They were bitterly poor and knew little about raising a boy. It was not their fault. They were not cruel and he loved them while they lived, but he had suffered terribly in ways he would never get over.

As he became the lost boy again his eyes slowly filled with tears and his mind eventually turned to another boy who had once suffered desperately, inconsolably, and who had finally found a certain peace in madness.

Nor were the two boys so very far apart, except in degree.

AT HOME now on this dark and fearful night, with a torrential rain hammering at every exposed nerve, Bishop put on the TV, prepared to be entertained until he fell asleep. Instead he received the shock of his young life. The show was a police detective series from San Francisco in which a youthful killer was finally captured through his telephone-answering service. To Bishop the similarities were startling.

He leaped off his pallet bed, badly frightened. He had made a major mistake, a serious error that could destroy him. It was already too late. They knew all about him and were outside his door even now, waiting to pounce. He looked toward the door, imagining them on the other side. Dreadful demonic shapes out of hell itself.
Them!

His fright quickly turned to rage, the involuntary frenzied rage of the caged beast. His features contorted, his body shook in spasms. Soon he was howling like a wounded animal maddened by pain. He rolled on the floor, unmindful of his head banging on the cement. He tore at his own limbs. He punched himself and beat himself without direction, all the while shrieking in total derangement. Were he not alone in the house he could easily have been heard from above. Were the wind and rain not thunderous he would surely have been heard from the street.

After a long time the rage was spent and he lay on the floor in peaceful stupor, his clothes shredded, his body lacerated and bloodied. No longer did the animal howl as the glazed eyes closed in merciful sleep.

KENTON DREAMED of a time of coldness and hunger; of his boyhood, helpless, isolated, unable to act or even understand. Of the white rabbit of his youth, and the black cat. As he lay in bed now, safe against the ravages of night but not those of the past, he was not at all sure whether it was a time of waking or sleeping. Or if the boy was real. Or even the man.

BISHOP SLEPT into the morning on the cold cement floor and awoke ravenous. He washed his animal body and soothed it with ointment and then ate breakfast. Fearful no longer, he set his mind to work on his problem.

He had made a fatal error in getting the answering service. Several in fact. The photography idea itself was valid but not his execution. To have the women leave their names with his service meant someone had a list of them. Sooner or later the service would become suspicious, and that list would be matched against the list of missing women. All had called Jay Cooper just before they disappeared. How odd. But the police would find it more than odd.

Also sooner or later a model would leave his name as her destination in a note to a friend or relative, or become suspicious beforehand and report him to the police. Granted no one knew where he lived, which was why he always met them in public places and took them home only when he was certain they had come alone. And granted they were all amateur models, half-crazed artistic types and semiprostitutes and desperate women needing money or kicks or both, none of whom would know enough to first check prospective clients and always leave full information on appointments. Still, something would eventually go wrong. Maybe already had for all he knew. They could be after him right now, knowing his name and the mail-drop address.

That was his third mistake. The answering service had the mail drop on Lafayette Street as his address, to be given to the police. He could not go there again. At least there he had given the Chicago address, so that wouldn’t help them. But they could get to his home through the owner of the building. He had rented to Jay Cooper. When he saw the name in the paper he would call the police. So the apartment was no good anymore either.

Bishop frowned in disgust. He blew it all on a bad move. All his work, his plans, his New York identity. All gone. He had no doubt they would expose him in another week. Maybe only a matter of days if any more women disappeared. And he had an appointment for that very evening!

He added up the score. The apartment, the mail drop, the telephone, the photography. He had lost it all. New York held nothing more for him.

But what if he hadn’t watched that show? Thank God for television!

He went to work quickly and efficiently, destroying his Jay Cooper identity, refilling the wallet with Thomas Wayne Brewster’s driver’s license and birth certificate. In the pocket with the wallet also went his new passport. At the local bank he closed out his savings account, pointedly saying he was returning to Chicago. Home again, he removed the money hidden behind the bricks. An hour later he had over $21,000 rn the New Jersey bank. It was only temporary, he assured himself on the way back. Half would be returned to New York when he found another place to live in his new identity. Until then at least the money was safe. No one knew of Thomas Wayne Brewster, and he would make no more mistakes.

FRED GRIMES had the bad news when Kenton finally got to the office. Curtis Manning was straight out of Florida. Family still lived there. He was sensitive, artistic, different from other local young men, and he had decided New York would be more responsive to his needs, whatever they might be. The pictures matched. It was Manning all right.

Kenton already knew it. Not factually, not the specific details, but in his gut instinct where he lived. Manning would have been too perfect. Madman, Chess Man, Bat Man, Manning. Everything was Man. Bishop had a problem identifying as a man. It would have been an incredible piece of irony for him to take over the identity of someone named Manning. Maybe in novels or in the movies they could get away with things like that, where everything was planned in perfect circles and things always seemed to fit exactly. But not in real life. Nothing ever worked out perfectly in real life because there was no director or central casting or even stage manager. It was all hit or miss.

And this time he had missed. That was it and that was all. Somehow he blew it. He had spent half the night trying to figure what had gone wrong, and he still didn’t know. It was a valid idea—that much was certain. He couldn’t compete with the cops in checking hotels and public places. Nor could he put thousands of men on the streets.

Instead he had studied his prey until he felt things, knew things about the man. Bishop lived in New York, in Manhattan. He would want to stay near his kills. He found Manhattan exciting, all those millions of women at his fingers, all around him. A madman’s dream. He would find a place to live, But he wouldn’t want to call attention to himself so he’d get his mail elsewhere. What mail? Pieces of identification mostly. Part of his pattern was a constant search for new and safer identities. Apparently he would not, could not stop.