Fanatics (19 page)
Authors: Richard Hilary Weber
9:58 P.M.
The resident at 9 Garden Place, William Everdell, high school history teacher and author, took his pipe from his mouth and called up to his wife.
“I'll get it, Barbara.”
He rose from his cozy rabbit hutch of an office built under the building's stoop and went into the hall to answer the doorbell.
The sight of a burly man outside holding up a police detective's shield for him to see clearly startled William Everdell.
“Can I come in?” Frank Murphy said in a low voice.
“What for?”
“It's an emergency, please.”
“Well, yes, if you can explainâ”
As soon as Everdell closed the ground-floor door, Frank Murphy got right to the point.
“You know the assassination threats? That Aryan Committeeâ”
“Of course, they're insane. What have I got to do with them?”
“You're right across the street from the killer.”
“The old professor, Mr. McLaughlin? I think you're very mistaken, Officer. He's ancient.”
“No, I don't know who McLaughlin is. This man isn't so old.” Frank Murphy pulled out the identity drawing. “This one. Recognize him?”
“No. But that doesn't mean anything. I'm finishing a book and I'm up to my eyeballs in work. Maybe Barbara might, my wife.”
Frank stood at the ground-floor window and surveyed the building on the opposite side of the narrow street. He saw lights on the parlor floor and the top floor.
“Could you ask your wife to come down, please? Discreetly. Don't upset anyone.”
“Barbara?” Everdell called. “There's a gentleman down here wants to talk with you.”
Barbara Everdell came down from the parlor floor. “What's the mystery? A gentleman caller for me?”
“This is detectiveâI didn't hear your name.”
“Murphy. You recognize this man?”
“Nice drawing,” Barbara Everdell said. “Looks almost like a snapshot.”
“Computer generated.”
“And actually, you know this one does kind of look like that new tenant right across the street. I saw him. I'm pretty sure it was him and Professor McLaughlin coming home from church this evening.”
“Barbara,” her husband said. “You're really sure?”
“Bill, my eyesight's fine. And that's a good picture. What do you want him for?”
“Murder,” Frank said.
“In Garden Place?” Barbara Everdell sounded incredulous. “Go on. In Professor McLaughlin's house? That poor old man, he's half-gaga. Who got killed?”
“The bombing at the school,” her husband said. “Up in Park Slope.”
“My God, he's here? It's him?”
“Can I go upstairs?” Frank said. “Can I look from your windows? Just for a minute.”
“Of course.” William Everdell was eager to help. “Let me go up and pull the blinds down.”
Barbara Everdell was less enthusiastic than her husband. “You're not going to start shooting now, are you? Bill, you be careful up there.”
10:06 P.M.
Homicide detective Florence Ott ordered the police cruiser to stop on Joralemon Street just before Garden Place.
Three cruisers were already closing off this end of the quiet, narrow street, and four more were stationed at the other end on State Street.
Flo ordered two cars from each corner to proceed at once to number 8 and train their searchlights on the building.
She followed in her car.
As soon as all the police vehicles were in position and their lights illuminated number 8, she activated the car's megaphone speaker.
“Out! Out now!” she said. “No weapons! Hands over head. Out the front door. Out! Out!
Out!
”
10:08 P.M.
The bitchâ¦
she's down there.
Zanonovich cursed her and cursed himself. He should never have returned to this old fart's house. He was betrayed. Intentionally or by stupidity, it didn't matter now. He should have waited in front of that nursing home. He should have waited and waited in the cold and dark until she appeared, and then simply killed the bull dyke.
Armageddon
. He immediately turned out the apartment lights and removed the rifle from the sports bag. In the dark, he mounted the scope above the action.
Out of the depths, I have cried unto Thee, O Lord. O Lord, hear my prayer. Let my cry come unto Theeâ¦
He walked deliberately to the front window and, with his rifle barrel, parted the curtains a couple of inches.
In the street below, police were positioned everywhere.
10:08:50 P.M.
From his prone position at the front of the roof of 9 Garden Place, Frank Murphy saw the curtains moving in a top floor window across the street at number 8.
He saw a rifle barrel raised, and he immediately opened fire. Three rounds in rapid succession from his Glock .375.
In an explosion of splintering glass, the window at number 8 blew apart, and the body of the aristocratic-looking man flew backward, holes the size of soup bowls blasted through his spine and out his back.
And all this while, the dead man's collaborator landlord, the thickly bespectacled, monk-like retired law and politics professor, Gerald F. X. McLaughlin, stayed sitting by a parlor room front window, his face a ghostly image frozen in astonished grief. When he saw homicide detective Lieutenant Flo Ott mounting the stoop to his house, he shuffled over closer to the window, furiously shaking his silver supper bell.
“I ain't coming!” Winona his caregiver shouted back from the kitchen. “I stay late to clean up and I ain't going nowheres, Professor, nowheres there's shooting. No way!”
On his own steam, Professor McLaughlin struggled into the vestibule and opened the front door for Flo Ott. He looked at her questioningly.
“That man upstairs?” she said to him. “He was delusional, a killer.” Old man McLaughlin frowned at her.
“He thought he was some kind of god,” Flo said, her voice hoarse with exhaustion.
Professor McLaughlin's frown deepened.
He can't hear me,
Flo realized. He doesn't understand a word I'm saying.
“He killed,” she said slowly, her voice straining. “As if he was absolutely sure of himself. He killed like he was doing God's work.”
She placed her right index finger to her temple and made a small circular motion.
This the professor understood. Sorrowfully, the old man bowed his head, and homicide detective Lieutenant Flo Ott did the same.
Poor old man.
8:03 A.M.
The next day in Moscow, Kremlin lights dimmed for five seconds in commemoration of five fallen comrades from the organization.
And at that still-dark hour, few passersby noticed.
Y
R
ICHARD
H
ILARY
W
EBER
In Flames
F Train
Fanatics
R
ICHARD
H
ILARY
W
EBER
is a native BrooklyniteâPark Slope born and bredâand a Columbia grad. He's been a scriptwriter for French and Swedish filmmakers and now lives in Provence, France. His other books for Alibi include the Brooklyn Crimes Novel
F Train
and a thriller,
In Flames.
Every great mystery needs an Alibi
eOriginal mystery and suspense from Random House
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