“Going to give it a try.”
“The answer’s simple: there’s been a murder.”
“That was after you arrived, Ms. Arbuthnot. Not even you, I think, awesome reporter that you are, can predict where and when a murder is going to happen a week before the event.”
“Oh, dear,” she said. “You don’t know.” She leaned over and began rummaging in the yellow and blue sports bag at her feet. “I didn’t think you did.” She sat up with a damaged notebook in her hand. And out of it she took a newspaper clipping. She handed it to him. “Almost a week ago,” she said. “Another murder. Very similar.”
He read the item from The Chicago Sun-Times:
Chicago—The body of a woman was found by hotel employees this morning in a service closet off a reception room at the Hotel Harris. Police say the woman was brutally beaten about the face and upper body before being strangled to death.
The night before discovery of the body, the reception room had been used by the press covering the presidential campaign of Governor Caxton Wheeler.
Chicago police report the woman, about thirty, wearing a green cocktail dress and high-heeled shoes, was carrying no identification.
Fletch’s desire for a cup of coffee was becoming acute. He handed the clipping back to her. “The press,” he said. “How did you pick up an item like that?”
“You don’t know about Newsworld’s fancy new electronic systems.”
She was putting the clipping back into the falling-apart notebook, and the notebook back into the sports bag.
Fletch was having the sensation of thinking without thought. “Up-to-date?”
“So fantastic they take out each other’s plugs and then say good night to each other.”
“That’s up-to-date.”
Still leaning over, Freddie appeared to be reorganizing her sports bag. “Be kind to your office computer,” Freddie said. “It may be related to someone high up in the National Federation of Labor.”
“We’re being overcome by machines.”
Freddie sat up again. “They’ll have their day. Or so they predict. And they’re always right. Right?”
“No. Freddie, how far have the Chicago police got with this other murder?”
“Talked with my friend Sam Buck this morning. They still haven’t identified the woman.”
“Fingerprints on the neck?”
“She was strangled with a cord.”
“Oh. Have the Chicago police assigned anyone to this campaign?”
“They can’t. Different jurisdictions. They have to treat it as strictly a local matter. They’re concentrating on hotel staff.”
Fletch looked at what he could see of the other people on the press bus, their heads tipped to read, a man’s leg extended into the aisle. “It’s a pretty safe bet the murderer isn’t a member of the Hotel Harris staff.”
“I’d take that bet,” Freddie said. “I reported the details of the murder last night to Detective Buck in Chicago this morning.”
“Will they assign someone to the campaign now?”
“He said the ways in which the women were murdered are not similar enough.”
“Two women beaten and then murdered? I see a similarity.”
“One was fully clad, the other naked. One was strangled, the other pushed to her death. Stranglers seldom use any other method of doing people in.”
“Was the woman in Chicago raped?”
“No.”
Across the aisle, one row ahead of them, sat a heavy man in a bulky overcoat. He was staring straight ahead, expressionless. His eyes bulged. He looked like a frog on a pod.
“Freddie, most likely we have a murderer traveling with us.”
“It’s that possibility, old man, that has me here. Any reporting I do on the campaign itself, I will consider just routine.”
Fletch nodded toward the frog-on-the-pod across the aisle. “Is that the Russian?”
“Solov,” said Freddie. “Correspondent from Pravda. Here to report on the campaign, get a line on The Man Who for the Kremlin. Wonderful free country, we have here.”
“Does he always stare that way?”
“I don’t know if he always has,” Freddie laughed. “He does now. He’s fixated.”
“On what?”
“He discovered certain channels on American cable television. The pornographic ones. He’s up all night, every night, watching it. Don’t ever get the hotel room next to him. Electronic slap-and-tickle all night long. They say he’s been catatonic since he arrived.”
“I wonder if he builds up enough of a head of steam to beat women to death.”
“Oh, not Boris. I understand he’s written several articles on the moral degeneracy of America. He thinks we all look at that stuff.”
“Would you say he’s sexually aberrant?”
“Yes, he’s sexually abhorrent.”
“I said aberrant.”
“Who cares?”
Roy Filby came down the aisle and stopped by Fletch’s chair. “Hey, Fletcher. Going to give us the real lowdown on the Mooney murder?”
A huge factory was looming on the flat, snowy horizon.
Fletch said, “Great stuff you’re writing these days, Roy.”
Roy laughed and banged Fletch on the shoulder. “Great house parties you give, Fletch. Someday invite me to one.”
“I’ve given my last house party in Key West,” Fletch said.
Roy continued down the aisle. There was a rest room in the back of the bus.
“I suppose these murders could be coincidences,” Fletch said.
“Could be,” said Freddie. “Not likely.”
“I hope so,” said Fletch.
Studying his face whimsically, Freddie asked, “So how do you like your new job now?”
“Not much. Freddie, let’s you and I agree not to be adversaries on this matter. Tell me what you know as you find out.”
“Okay,” she said. “If you tell me what you know.”
“I will. At least I think I will.”
“And you know downright well, Fletch, that the moment’s going to come when I have to print what I know.”
“Sure. But I know you won’t go off half-cocked. I’m not too keen on people who beat up women.”
The bus was beginning to slow. There was an enormous metal tire standing on the roof of the factory.
“What are you thinking now?” she asked.
“It’s your job to report. It’s my job to protect the candidate and his campaign as much as I can. If the murderer is a member of the press, then it’s no problem for the candidate. The press is assigned to the campaign. If the murderer is a volunteer”—Fletch waggled his hands just above his lap—“then it’s not so bad. The candidate didn’t necessarily have anything to do with his selection. If the murderer is a member of his immediate staff, then it’s very, very bad. It would mean his judgment of people isn’t too reliable. People would say, ‘If he put such a person on his staff, think whom he might name Secretary of Defense.’”
Still studying him, Freddie asked, “And if the murderer is the candidate himself?”
Fletch was looking at his still hands in his lap. “Then you’d have one helluva story,” he said quietly.
8
By the time he got off the bus, Fletch could see the governor’s nose was already red with cold. Snow was blowing from the northwest and there was a fresh inch or two on the ground. Lights were on in the old red-brick factory. Not a bit dwarfed by the big factory, the governor stood in the main gate, shaking hands with most of the factory workers as they arrived. He was wearing a red-and-black checked, wool hunting jacket over his suit vest, and thick-soled black workers’ boots. To the workers who shook his hand as they passed by, the governor said such things as “Mornin’, everything okay with you? Gimme a chance to be your President, will ya?” and the workers answered such things as “Mornin’, Governor, like your stand on the waterway.” “Got to make more jobs, you know? My brother hasn’t found a job in over two years.” “With ya all the way; my aunt’s runnin’ your campaign over in Shreve, ya know?” “Hey, tell Wohlman we don’t want a strike, okay?” Some of those who did not shake hands waved as they passed by and said such things as “How’re doin’, Caxton? Good luck! You’ll never make it!” Others were too shy to shake the governor’s hand, or say anything. And others scowled at him or at their boots as they went through the gate.