"No."
I waited, but he seemed willing to leave it there. I said, "Why did you kill her, Burt?"
He looked at me for a moment, then looked down, then looked at me again. "You can't prove anything," he said.
I shrugged.
"You can't. And I don't have to tell you anything." A deep breath, a long sigh. "Something happened when I saw the Potowski woman," he said. "Something happened."
"What do you mean?"
"Something happened to me. Inside of me. Something came into my head and I couldn't get rid of it. I remember standing and hitting myself in the forehead but I couldn't get it out of my mind."
"You wanted to kill Barbara Ettinger."
"No. Don't help me out, okay? Let me find the words by myself."
"I'm sorry."
"I looked at the dead woman and it wasn't her I saw on the floor, it was my wife. Every time the picture came back to me, the murder scene, the woman on the floor, I saw my wife in the picture. And I couldn't get it out of my head to kill her that way."
He took a little sip of beer. Over the top of the can he said, "I used to think about killing her. Plenty of times I thought that it was the only way out. I couldn't stand being married. I was alone, my parents were dead, I never had any brothers or sisters, and I thought I needed somebody. Besides, I knew she needed me. But it was wrong. I hated being married. It was around my neck like a collar that's too small for you, it was choking me and I couldn't get out of it."
"Why couldn't you just leave her?"
"How could I leave her? How could I do that to her? What kind of a man leaves a woman like that?"
"Men leave women every day."
"You don't understand, do you?" Another sigh. "Where was I?
Yeah. I used to think about killing her. I would think about it, and I would think, sure, and the first thing they'd do is check you inside and out, and one way or another they'll hang it on you, because they always go to the husband first and ninety percent of the time that's who did it, and they'll break your story down and break you down and where does that leave you? But then I saw the Potowski woman and it was all there.
I could kill her and make it look like the Icepick Prowler had one more on his string. I saw what we did with the Potowski killing. We just bucked it to Manhattan South, we didn't hassle the husband or anything like that."
"So you decided to kill her."
"Right."
"Your wife."
"Right."
"Then how does Barbara Ettinger come into this?"
"Oh, God," he said.
I waited him out.
"I was afraid to kill her. My wife, I mean. I was afraid something would go wrong. I thought, suppose I start and I can't go through with it?
I had the icepick and I would take it out and look at it and-I remember now, I bought it on Atlantic Avenue. I don't even know if the store's still there."
"It doesn't matter."
"I know. I had visions of, you know, starting to stab her and stopping, of not being able to finish the job, and the things that were going through my mind were driving me crazy. I guess I was crazy. Of course I was."
He drank from the beer can. "I killed her for practice," he said.
"Barbara Ettinger."
"Yes. I had to find out if I could do it. And I told myself it would be a precaution. One more icepick killing in Brooklyn, so that when my wife got murdered three blocks away it would be just one more in the string. And it would be the same. Maybe no matter how I did it they'd notice a difference between it and the real icepick killings, but they would never have a reason to suspect me of killing some stranger like the Ettinger woman, and then my wife would be killed the same way, and-but that was just what I was telling myself. I killed her because I was afraid to kill my wife and I had to kill someone."
"You had to kill someone?"
"I had to." He leaned forward, sat on the edge of his chair. "I couldn't get it out of my mind. Do you know what it's like when you can't get something out of your mind?"
"Yes."
"I couldn't think who to pick. And then one day I took Danny to the day-care center and she and I talked the way we always did, and the idea came to me. I thought of killing her and the thought fit."
"What do you mean, 'the thought fit'?"
"She belonged in the picture. I could see her, you know, on the kitchen floor. So I started watching her.
When I wasn't working I would hang around the neighborhood and keep tabs on her."
She had sensed that someone was following her, watching her.
And she'd been afraid, ever since the Potowski murder, that someone was stalking her.
"And I decided it would be all right to kill her. She didn't have any children. Nobody was dependent upon her. And she was immoral. She flirted with me, she flirted with men at the day-care center. She had men to her apartment when her husband was out. I thought, if I screwed it up and they knew it wasn't the Icepick Prowler, there would be plenty of other suspects. They'd never get to me."
I asked him about the day of the murder.
"My shift ended around noon that day. I went over to Clinton Street and sat in a coffee shop at the counter where I could keep an eye on the place. When she left early I followed her. I was across the street watching her building when a man went into it. I knew him, I'd seen him with her before."
"Was he black?"
"Black? No. Why?"
"No reason."
"I don't remember what he looked like. He was with her for a half-hour or so. Then he left. I waited a little while longer, and something told me, I don't know, I just knew this was the right time. I went up and knocked on her door."
"And she let you in?"
"I showed her my shield. And I reminded her that she knew me from the day-care center, that I was Danny's father. She let me in."
"And?"
"I don't want to talk about it."
"Are you sure of that?"
I guess he thought it over. Then he said, "We were in the kitchen.
She was making me a cup of coffee, she had her back to me, and I put one hand over her mouth and jabbed the icepick into her chest. I wanted to get her heart right away, I didn't want her to suffer. I kept stabbing her in the heart and she collapsed in my arms and I let her fall to the floor."
He raised his liquid brown eyes to mine. "I think she was dead right then," he said. "I think she died right away."
"And you went on stabbing her."
"When I thought about it before I did it, I always went crazy and stabbed over and over like a maniac. I had that picture in my mind. But I couldn't do it that way. I had to make myself stab her and I was sick, I thought I was going to throw up, and I had to keep on sticking that icepick into her body and-" He broke off, gasping for breath. His face was drawn and his pale complexion was ghostly.
"It's all right," I said.
"Oh, God."
"Take it easy, Burt."
"God, God."
"You only stabbed one of her eyes."
"It was so hard," he said. "Her eyes were wide open. I knew she was dead, I knew she couldn't see anything, but those eyes were just staring at me. I had the hardest time making myself stab her in the eye. I did it once and then I just couldn't do it again. I tried but I just couldn't do it again."
"And then?"
"I left. No one saw me leave. I just left the building and walked away. I put the icepick down a sewer. I thought, I did it, I killed her and I got away with it, but I didn't feel as though I got away with anything.
I felt sick to my stomach. I thought about what I had done and I couldn't believe I'd really done it.
When the story was on television and in the papers I couldn't believe it. I thought that someone else must have done it."
"And you didn't kill your wife."
He shook his head. "I knew I could never do something like that again. You know something? I've thought about all of it, over and over, and I think I was out of my mind. In fact I'm sure of it.
Something about seeing Mrs. Potowski, those pools of blood in her eyes, those stab wounds all over her body, it did something to me. It made me crazy, and I went on being crazy until Barbara Ettinger was dead. Then I was all right again, but she was dead.