His tone as he made the last statement struck me as odd. “What do you mean by that?” I asked.
But the sergeant ignored my question. “Hummel didn’t carry a gun then either. Matter of fact, it was as a result of the incident that he applied for a permit. He didn’t have trouble getting one, because he’s an antique and rare coin buyer and carries large amounts of cash.”
“You’ve been doing some detailed checking on the man,” I remarked.
“Yeah. But it doesn’t add up.”
I eyed him narrowly for a moment, then signaled the bartender for two more beers. I said, “Now give me the pipe dream.”
“Pipe dream?” he asked.
“You mentioned your interest in the case was a kind of pipe dream. You think there’s some connection between the two cases?”
Nels took a sip of his fresh beer and shook his head. “I’m sure there isn’t. Not between the two muggers anyway. Maybe a kind of psychological connection.”
“What does that mean?”
“Well,” the sergeant said slowly, “I figure the case twelve years ago was just what it seemed to be. A guy unexpectedly jumped Hummel, and Hummel killed him defending himself. So was the case today, I guess. With a slight difference. Maybe this time Hummel killed deliberately when he was jumped.”
“You mean he deliberately lured Garcia into attacking him?”
“Think back over the testimony,” Nels said. “Remember how surprised the great lawyer looked when the witness said Hummel had followed Joe in?”
“There was even something about Garcia remarking he had run into Hummel in another tavern. But why? What would be Hummel’s motive?”
Nels was silent for a moment. Finally he said, “I checked back over unsolved homicides for the past twelve years, and seven of them were guys with records as muggers. They were found dead in alleys, some strangled, some broken necks.”
“My God!” I said.
“That makes nine he could have killed.”
For a moment I couldn’t speak. “But why, for God’s sake?”
Without inflection Nels said, “Twelve years ago I imagine Robert Hummel was just a normal guy. Or at least I imagine any abnormal urges he had were merely latent. Then he killed in self-defense. My pipe dream is that maybe he discovered he enjoyed it. You’ve heard of psychopathic killers.”
“But... but...” I stuttered.
“But what? A guy flashes a roll in dives. There any law to stop him? A mugger tails him for an easy roll. The guy kills the mugger, and if nobody sees it, he just walks away. If he gets caught in the act, he merely tells the truth and the law gives him a pat on the back for defending himself against attack by a criminal. It’s a psychopath’s dream. He’s figured a way to kill legally.”
“But...” I whispered. “But... he couldn’t possibly again...”
“The law says you can use whatever force is necessary to resist attack on your person or property. If you use more than necessary, theoretically you’re guilty of manslaughter. In the case of a farmer shooting a kid stealing watermelons, we can prove unnecessary force, but how do you prove it in a case like today’s? And even if we established beyond reasonable doubt that Hummel deliberately enticed a robbery attempt... which we couldn’t do without a confession, no matter what we suspect... he still has a legal right to defend himself.”
“You mean you intend to do nothing about a homicidal maniac?”
“Sure,” Nels said calmly. “Next time we’ll put a white light in his face and hammer questions at him until Marcus Prout walks in with a writ of habeas corpus. But unless we get a confession that he used more force than necessary to protect himself, he’s safe even if he kills a man every week.”
He laughed without any humor whatever, “Beyond picking him up and questioning him every time he kills, there isn’t one damned thing in the world we can do to stop him.”
Kid Kill
by Evan Hunter
Willis hated the assignment: a routine tragic accidental shooting of one kid by another. He hated it more when he turned up an odd newspaper clipping.
It was just a routine call. I remember I was sitting around with Ed, talking about a movie we’d both seen, when Marelli walked in, a sheet of paper in his hand.
“You want to take this, Art?”
I looked up, pulled a face, and said, “Who stabbed who now?”
“This is an easy one,” Marelli said, smiling. He smoothed his moustache in an unconscious gesture and added, “Accidental shooting.”
“Then why bother Homicide?”
“Accidental shooting resulting in death,” Marelli said.
I got up, hitched up my trousers, and sighed. “They always pick the coldest goddamn days of the year to play with war souvenirs.” I looked at the frost edging the windows and then turned back to Marelli. “It was a war souvenir, wasn’t it?”
“A Luger,” Marelli said. “9 m/m with 3⅝ inch barrel. The man on the beat checked it.”
“Was it registered?”
“You tell me.”
“Stupid characters,” I said. “You’d think the law wasn’t for their own protection.” I sighed again and looked over to where Ed was trying to make himself small. “Come on, Ed, time to work.”
Ed shuffled to his feet. He was a big man with bright red hair, and a nose broken by an escaped con back in ’45. It happened that the con was a little runt, about five feet high in his Adler elevators, and Ed had taken a lot of ribbing about that broken nose — even though we all knew the con had used a lead pipe.
“Trouble with you, Marelli,” he said in his deep voice, “you take your job too seriously.”
Marelli looked shocked. “Is it my fault some kid accidentally plugs his brother?”
“What?” I asked. I had taken my overcoat from the peg and was shrugging into it now. “What was that, Marelli?”
“It was a kid,” Marelli said. “Ten years old. He was showing his younger brother the Luger when it went off. Hell, you know these things.”
I pulled my muffler tight around my neck and then buttoned my coat. “This is just a waste of time,” I said. “Why do the police always have to horn in on personal tragedies?”
Marelli paused near the table, dropping the paper with the information on it. “Every killing is a personal tragedy for someone,” he said. I stared at him as he walked to the door, waved, and went out.
“Pearls from a flatfoot,” Ed said. “Come on, let’s get this over with.”
It was bitter cold, the kind of cold that attacks your ears and your hands, and makes you want to huddle around a potbelly stove. Ed pulled the Mercury up behind the white-topped squad car, and we climbed out, losing the warmth of the car heater. The beat man was standing near the white picket fence that ran around the small house. His uniform collar was pulled high onto the back of his neck, and his eyes and nose were running. He looked as cold as I felt.
Ed and I walked over to him, and he saluted, then began slapping his gloved hands together.
“I been waitin’ for you, sir,” he said. “My name’s Connerly. I put in the call.”