Part 2

He sat down at the oak typewriter desk. The typewriter was already raised into typing position. There was a sheet of paper in it, blank except for a numeral 3 at the top; it was to be the third page of a letter he'd started early in the afternoon.

Before resuming the letter he picked up the two pages of it he'd already written and reread them rapidly.

Dear Perry:

It was wonderful to hear from you again after lo, these many years (almost ten of them, isn't it?) since we roomed together at college. I'm so glad you happened to run into Walt, that he was able to give you my address.

Congratulations on having gone on to a Ps.D. And on having opened your own office as a consulting psychologist--in New York and on Park Avenue, no less; it must be really a happy hunting ground and if you're not coining money already you will be soon.

No, I have not continued my formal education. Nor do I intend to, any more. By now I yam what I yam, a Goddam Greek who runs a restaurant. But I read a lot, study some; I'm not letting my mind stagnate completely. I try to keep up with things. For instance I subscribe to and read the _Journal of Psychology_, even though--I realize now--I'll never be more than a layman in that field. And although about half of my reading is escape reading, the other half isn't; I read classics too. My knowledge of and taste in literature is far ahead of what it used to be in our college days.

As for keeping in shape, I go to a gym two, sometimes three, mornings a week. I still go in for Graeco-Roman wrestling, when I can find an opponent, and I haven't found one here who can take me at it.

You want a description of my restaurant, what it's called, everything about it. _Everything_ about it would be a large order and wouldn't interest you unless you think you might start one of your own, and I doubt if you have that in mind. But I'll give you a rough idea.

First, it's called _Mikos'_; I don't go in for fancy names and have no intention of trying to hide the fact that a Greek runs it. It's small--but not tiny. Between counter and tables it will seat thirty people, and during rush hours, usually does seat that many or almost that many.

It'll never make a Duncan Hines's rating, but neither will anyone ever call it a Greasy Spoon; it's clean. Our forte is good food at reasonable prices.

I employ an average of ten people. Not that many all at once, of course; they work varying shifts, since we're open from 7 A.M. till 11:30 P.M.

I myself come in at about 11 A.M., before the lunch hour, and stay until closing time. That sounds a long working day--twelve and a half hours--but don't let it fool you because I actually work only about half of the time. There's a fair-sized room off the kitchen which I've converted into a combination office and den. I do my bookkeeping here, write checks for bills and salaries, type menus, all that sort of thing--but that doesn't take over an average of four hours a day.

Another two or three hours a day I spend in the kitchen or up front, helping out wherever needed. Some days more than that if someone fails to show up and we're short handed. But other days things go smoothly and I'm not needed at all. Call it an average of two hours a day.

So you see my actual working day is about six hours; the rest of the time I'm around, in case of emergency or to solve problems if any arise, but in general my time is my own. I read or study or think. If for any reason I'm short on sleep I take naps. Or I write letters, as I'm doing now.

And so much for the restaurant, except for the most important thing about it: it makes money. More than I, as a bachelor with relatively simple tastes, can spend. I've been investing in land just outside the city limits to the west, and as the city is growing in that direction, and rapidly, the land is equally rapidly appreciating in value. So, within another five years--but I'm beginning to sound as though I'm bragging and I'll stop. Suffice it to say there is no wolf at my door.

You ask me how my love life is doing. Probably your question was facetious, but I'm going to give it an honest answer.

That was where the second page of the letter had ended. George Mikos turned to the typewriter to go on and then decided, before starting page 3 to take a look to make sure Ruth Fleck had shown up; it was just five-thirty, her starting time.

He went to the door and opened it wider, and had to look no farther. She was just about to pass it, coming from the closet where the employees hung their coats.

"Hello, Ruth," he said. And then, "Ruth, you've been crying. Is something wrong? Is there anything I can do? Can you come in and talk a moment?"

She hesitated. "I--There _is_ something I'd like to ask you about, George. But please not now. Later, after the dinner rush, I'll be calmer and much more sensible."

She went on, without giving him a chance to say anything more, through the swinging door into the restaurant. George watched until it had swung shut behind her. Then he pushed his own door partly shut again and went back to the desk. This time he started typing.

Now, and for the first time in my life, at least since late adolescence, I am in love, deeply in love, and with a woman with whom I have not had an affair and with whom I don't want or intend to have an affair, even if I could. At least I have found the right woman for me and I want everything or nothing. I want to marry the girl.

There is a fly in the ointment; the fly is the husband she already has. I am trying to convince her to divorce him and to marry me. Offhand, this may sound reprehensible, but I do not think that it is, really. Her husband is, if I may change my entomological metaphor, a louse.

He is a liquor salesman; that's nothing against him, but there is plenty else that is. He is a compulsive, congenital gambler, mostly on the horses; he's the type of horse player who does his own handicapping and thinks he can beat the game, which of course he can't. He probably earns at least a hundred a week but spends, or rather loses, at least half of that gambling, for which reason his wife has to work--and works for me as a waitress. Most of the time he's broke and in debt, living on his next week's commission check.

I don't think he's brutal to Ruth (that's her name; his is Ray Fleck) physically. I almost wish he were, because I think that if he ever struck her she would leave him, which, of course, is what I want to happen.

I know quite a bit about him, including the fact that he is at least occasionally unfaithful to her--which in itself justifies to me my breaking up their marriage if I can.

No, I didn't tell Ruth anything about what I heard. I was afraid that, whether or not those reports would decide her to divorce Fleck, she'd be angry at me for having had the presumption to tell her. Besides for all I know she may already know or at least suspect that Fleck cheats on her. Wives, I am told, can usually tell. What's the opinion of a consulting psychologist on that?

But that's not what I really want to ask you about. It's about something that doesn't concern me personally.

We have among us here a rapist-killer, obviously a psychotic, who has already raped and killed two women. Raped and killed in that sequence; he is not a necrophile. His first rape-killing was about four months ago, his second two months ago. The interval between two crimes is hardly sufficient to establish a time interval. But if it does, if it takes him about two months to build up pressure to make him kill again, then he is about due to strike a third time. His method--

But wait. Before I give the details, such as they are, I'll tell you where I come in, and where you come in. The captain in charge of our homicide department is a friend of mine. He is understandably a very worried guy. He's been under pressure from the chief of police, the police commissioner, the newspapers and the public to get friend psychopath. He may get demoted if he doesn't. And he hasn't a single clue or lead.

He knows, of course, that I majored in psychology and every time we see one another he heckles me to make deductions about the killer. Or even guesses. I've made a few, but I'm afraid that, whether they are correct or not, they're not very helpful on the practical level of police work.

Maybe you can do better. You've studied a lot more abnormal psychology than I have. Anyway, I'm going to toss you the few known facts about our psycho and ask if you can make any suggestions that I haven't already made. I'll pass them on to the captain. If you can come up with anything at all helpful, it may save a life, or several lives. Here goes:

Both victims were young housewives. Both were attractive. Each was home alone (home was a house in one case, an apartment in the other) at the time of the attack. In one case the husband was out of town on business, in the other working a swing shift at an airplane parts factory.

In neither case was there any sign of forcible entry; the woman herself must have admitted him or at least opened the door for him.

Both women were knocked unconscious with a blow to the chin, then carried to a bed; their clothes were torn off them and they were raped, then strangled to death. Still, from the lack of anything indicating a struggle, unconscious from the knockout. (Don't ask me how the autopsies could prove or even indicate that the rape preceded the strangling but my friend tells me that the medical examiner is absolutely certain, so I'm willing to take his word for it.)

Both crimes occurred in the evening. We happen to know the exact time of one of them, ten o'clock. This was the one who lived in an apartment. The couple who lived in the apartment under hers heard a thud at that hour; they're certain of the time because the husband was just switching channels on the television to get their favorite ten o'clock program. Knowing that their upstairs neighbor was home alone they looked at one another, each wondering whether she might have had a fall and need help. But before either spoke to the other they heard footsteps moving around and decided she was all right, that she'd either dropped something fairly heavy or had a fall that hadn't hurt her.

That was the first of the two murders. We don't know the time of the second one so accurately. The woman's body wasn't found until early the next afternoon when her husband returned from his business trip. After so many hours the M. E. could only say that death had occurred late the previous evening, probably between nine o'clock and midnight.

We know him to be a man of considerable strength, not only from the steam behind the knockout blows he struck but from the way in which he ripped the clothes from his victims after carrying them to a bed. One of the women was wearing a quilted house coat that zipped open about halfway down the front; he tore it the rest of the way, and quilted material does not tear easily.

From the speed and accuracy with which he struck the police theorize that he may be or may have been a boxer. Also, from his strength, they believe he is more likely to be a laborer than a white collar worker. I'll go along with both of these deductions as possibilities or probabilities and not as certainties. A man with no boxing experience but with good coordination and a little luck could have struck those blows. And if he has a good mind (except for its warp) and/or a good education he'd certainly be doing something better than manual labor.

So much for the physical side, and to the mental. First, I do not believe he is a moron. He must have cased those jobs and known that the woman would be alone at the time he came. Otherwise he had incredible luck--and I refuse to credit the incredible. Also, he left no fingerprints at the scene of either crime; he either wore gloves or avoided touching any surface that would take them. A moron wouldn't think of fingerprints.

But to a more important point, the nature of his psychosis. I have a theory; I hope you'll be able to expand on it if you agree or to offer a better one if you disagree.

I believe that he fears women to a psychotic degree, and hates them because he fears them. Call him a womanophobe. And because of his fear of women he is self-conscious in the presence of one to the point of complete impotence, even if the woman is willing; only with an unconscious woman can he find an outlet for his sex drive. His reason for killing women after he has used them can be sheer psychopathic hatred, flaring to highest pitch with or immediately after the orgasm. Or it can be caution; a dead woman can't describe him or identify him. My guess is that his reason for killing is a mixture of both those reasons.

If this description of his psychosis is correct it is almost certain that he is a bachelor. I use the "almost" because he may have been married once; an early very bad marriage might have been the starting point of his psychosis. But, whether once married or not I'd say it's certain that he is not currently living with a woman.

And I'd say that it's probable that, if he has any choice of occupations, he's working at a job that brings him into as little contact with women as possible. And living at a Y.M.C.A., a men-only hotel or--if he makes enough money--in a bachelor apartment.

Those are only probabilities, though. He may be smart enough, and actor enough, to have perfectly normal business and social contacts with women. If that's true he's going to be a lot harder to catch.

Speaking of how smart he is, we'll have a strong indication of that if and when he attempts a third crime. If he tries the same _modus operandi_ he used the first two times he'll show himself to be much more stupid than I think he is. Because that method simply won't work a third time.

The women of this city are scared, have been scared ever since the second crime. Women alone in a house or flat simply don't open the door, even by day, until and unless they're damned sure who's on the other side of it. Chain bolts have been selling so fast that the hardware stores keep reordering by air express and still can't quite keep up with the demand. And from the number of speakeasy-type peepholes that have been made in doors you'd think we were back in the days of Prohibition again.

The scare has had an odd incidental effect on our economy. Normally, in a city this size, there are several hundred house-to-house salesmen and canvassers working. Here and now there are none. For the past two months, since the second rape-killing, they have been able to gain entry into such a small percentage of homes that they simply can't make a living. They've all had to move on elsewhere to greener pastures or switch to some other occupation. Even big outfits like Fuller and Watkins have closed their local offices--temporarily, they hope. And not only salesmen are affected, but mailmen--if they have a C.O.D. or a registered letter that must be signed for--bill collectors, deliverymen, meter readers, collectors for charity drives, what have you.

It's amazing what strange effect two crimes by a....

George Mikos paused to think out the rest of the sentence and in the pause heard his cook's voice. "Hey, George, better come out and give a hand."

"Coming," he called back. And came.

6:15 P.M.

He wasn't hungry, but Ray Fleck decided that he'd better eat. He'd slept late and had only coffee for breakfast, and only a light lunch. And this evening he'd had two drinks already in his quest for money to get him into the poker game; like as not he'd have to take at least a dozen more in the course of the evening, and if he wanted to be able to play good poker he'd damn well better lay a foundation of food under that dozen drinks.

The bad thing about the two drinks he'd already had was that he'd taken them in vain. Worse than in vain because instead of helping him raise money they'd cost him the ten bucks he'd borrowed from Benny and had put his slender capital back where it had been before. He'd seen through the window of the Palace Bar that Dick Johnson was there; Dick was usually a soft touch and he went inside and bellied up the bar beside Dick. He tried to buy him a drink, but Dick beat him to it by signaling the bartender with two upraised fingers, so Ray waited until he'd had a chance to buy back before he put on the bite, for twenty. And, because he'd genuinely forgotten, he was startled when Dick reminded him that he already owed him ten dollars from three weeks before. "My God," Ray said, "I clean forgot. Why the hell didn't you remind me sooner?" And then, because it was the only way out, he laughed and made a joke of it, pulled a ten out of his wallet and handed it to Dick. "Now we're all even; let's start over. Can you lend me twenty, just till Saturday?" He'd still come out ten ahead, he thought. But Dick Johnson had shaken his head. "Sorry, Ray-boy, I'm short this week myself. Need all I've got, and this ten comes in handy too." And there went the ten he'd just got from Benny.

He stopped at the corner of Fourth and Main, the middle of downtown, to make up his mind where to eat. Feratti's seemed like a good bet; they put out good dinners for two-fifty--unless you ordered steak or lobster or something fancy--and he wouldn't be tempted, as he might be in some of the other good restaurants, to waste some of his drinking capacity on a cocktail or two before dining; Feratti's didn't have a liquor license. He turned on Fourth and headed for Feratti's.

And, as he walked, found himself thinking about Benny again. He never should have laughed like that at Benny. Especially now that he'd learned Benny was good for a sawbuck in an emergency once in a while. Of course maybe he was worrying about nothing; maybe Benny's feelings hadn't been hurt at all. But if he passed Benny's stand again this evening he ought to stop, buy a paper as an excuse, and see how Benny acted. If Benny was mad or had been hurt, he'd know easily and now, the same evening, would be the time to square things. And he wasn't a salesman for nothing; he could convince Benny that he hadn't been laughing at _him_ but at a joke he'd just thought of, and tell Benny a joke. Some simple joke that even a moron couldn't help getting.

And then, if he could figure out a way to do it, try to talk Benny out of going to the cops to give himself up as the psychopathic killer. Not that the cops would really believe Benny, but they might keep him out of circulation for a while and maybe work him over a bit for details, until they were sure.

Because the cops couldn't eliminate Benny as readily and surely as he, Ray Fleck, could. The cops didn't know what the psycho looked like, and he did. At least enough to be positive that he didn't look even remotely like Benny.

It had been about two months ago, the night of the second murder--although he hadn't known that until the next day. It had been somewhere around ten o'clock in the evening. And it had happened in the nineteen hundred block on Eastgate. Howie Borden lived at 1912 Eastgate and Ray had agreed to pick him up around ten that evening; Howie was going to take him to a stag party at Howie's lodge, and Ray was to provide the transportation since Howie had a badly sprained right wrist and couldn't drive.

He'd got there just about ten and had parked in front of Howie's house and beeped the horn. Howie had raised a window and called out, "Be about five minutes yet. Come on in." But he'd called back that he'd wait in the car. He didn't want to go in because Howie's wife might be around, and she always made him feel uncomfortable.

Since he knew that five minutes might easily mean fifteen or twenty, he turned out his car lights for the wait. He was sitting there staring at nothing through the windshield a few minutes later when he saw the man.

The man came through the gate in the fence in front of a house on the other side of the street and three or four houses away. Ray noticed the man at all for only two reasons. One was the fact that in an otherwise completely static vista the eye is drawn to the only moving object. The other was the fact that as the man stood there just outside the gate he looked both ways and while he did so his hands at his sides were flexing and unflexing, as though they were cramped from gripping something very tightly and for quite a while. The gesture an oarsman might make when he unclamps his hand from the oars after rowing a mile or so, or a lumberjack when he lets go his ax to rest his hands after a bout of chopping. Or that a strangler might make--But Ray Fleck didn't think of that at the time. The man went the other way and was out of sight and out of mind by the time Howie came out and got in the car.

It wasn't until late the following afternoon, when he read the mid-afternoon edition of the evening paper, that he knew he had seen the murderer leaving the scene of his second crime. The address was 1917 Eastgate, on the opposite side of the street from Howie Borden's, and about three houses away in the direction in which Fleck's car had been facing. If the address had left any doubt in his mind that the house was the one he'd seen the man leaving, the doubt was dispelled by a picture of the house's exterior that was published with the story. It showed a three-foot iron fence in front; the house the man had left had been the only house on that side of the short block that had been fenced in. And that flexing and unflexing of the hands....

Give him credit. He considered going to the police to tell them what he had seen, considered it seriously. He was home and alone at the time, as Ruth had just left for work, so he had all the time to think that he wanted. He paced the apartment for all of twenty minutes before coming to a decision. The decision was negative on three counts.

First, he couldn't give them a description that would really mean anything and he couldn't--or he was fairly sure he couldn't--identify the man if he ever saw him again. He'd seen him at a distance of about a hundred feet and in pretty dim light; the nearest street light had been behind Fleck's car, farther from the man than Fleck had been. His impression had been of a man of average height and average build--or maybe a little heavier than that. It could have been his own description, except--Except what? Thinking back, he decided that, although their weight was probably about the same, the man had been a bit narrower in the waist, a bit broader in the shoulders. But he could have been wrong even about that, the nearest to a positive point he could think of; after all he was trying to describe a vague and illusive memory, something he'd hardly noticed at the time. He thought the man had worn a dark suit and a dark hat, but he wasn't sure of those things either. The face had been a white blur in the instant it was turned toward him, before the man had turned and walked the other way.