“Like a whodunit.”
“Exactly like a whodunit. Only for real. And that’s it, Aclass="underline" That’s the whole thing. The chase, the game, the puzzle. Solving the puzzle. The whole thing.”
“Aren’t you forgetting something?”
“Huh?”
“Putting the guy away.”
“Putting the guy away,” Tully repeated scornfully. “No, Al, the game ends when you solve the puzzle. What goes on over in court is something else . . . another world. You go to court and you don’t recognize the bum you took off the street. The defense has gotten the guy a haircut and a shave and a three-piece suit. He just sits up straight all during the trial and doesn’t take the stand. And the jury asks, ‘How could that nice-lookin’ man do all those horrible things?’ So he walks.
“Or the defense finds a legalistic loophole, and the guy walks. You know—I mean, you know—he did it. But he walks.
“Or one of your witnesses doesn’t show. And the judge goes out of his way to make you feel like a fool ’cause he was your witness and he didn’t show.
“No, Al, what happens in court is another world. It might go good, or it might go bad. It might be justice, or it might be a farce. No; the game ends when you catch him, when you solve the puzzle.”
“And that’s what’s going to happen to the guy who got El, eh? You’re going to solve the puzzle.”
“Damn right! Only this one’s not gonna end there. I’m gonna nail him.” He was unnaturally truculent. “Nobody does that to one of my people; nobody does that to me and walks.”
“Well, Zoo, there’s lots of people out there want you to do just that.”
Alice got up, walked behind Tully’s chair and began kneading his shoulders. He groaned as she found one taut muscle after another.
“You’ve had a rough day.” She continued to dig her fingers into his back. “I’ve had a rough day. We’ve had a rough day. What say we go to bed?”
Tully hesitated. He seemed to be weighing the pros and cons. Finally, he shook his head.
“No, Hon; you go ahead. I want to go through my files again. Someplace in there is the guy who did this—or had it done. I gotta find him. And I gotta find him quick. There’s a whole day gone and we’re not even close.”
Alice slowly climbed the stairs—alone. Maybe Zoo’s first wife had a point in leaving. The chase, the game, the puzzle. Maybe it was just impossible for a woman to compete with a real-life whodunit. Maybe it wasn’t even worth the try. She slid between the cold sheets and curled into a ball.
Tully went into the den. He poured a generous glass of inexpensive Gallo wine and opened the private files of cases he’d worked on. He would stay at it until the early hours of the morning when he could no longer keep his eyes open. Even under the steady pressure of precious elapsing time, there were limits beyond which even he could not push himself.
5
Meanwhile, in an area of Detroit much closer to the center city, Arnold Bush was awake and alert. He was busy in his efficiency apartment. By anyone’s standards, it was not much. A cot, two chairs, a small table, a hot plate, and a sink. The bathroom, shared by everyone on the second floor, was down the hall. It was a poor apartment, in a poor complex, in a poor section of the city. It was all Bush could afford.
With his pay as an autopsy attendant, he could have been a bit more kind to himself. But he needed money for some of his exotic habits and hardware. Such as these pictures he was mounting on one of the apartment’s walls. He had paid an exorbitant amount to the morgue technician for enlargements of the exhaustive series of pictures of the late Louise Bonner.
The pictures had been shot at every conceivable angle. There were close-ups of the head, showing clearly the marks a belt had made on her neck. Her torso had been photographed over and over, with particular emphasis on the breast that had been branded.
One by one, Bush affixed them to the wall. After hanging each photo, he would step back to judge the overall effect, the balance of one photo with another. Frequently, he would rearrange them to achieve a more satisfying grouping. He kept returning to the small table where a cigarette smoldered. Taking a deep drag, he would exhale slowly through his nostrils. The table held several ashtrays, all overflowing with the remains of cigarettes that had been smoked as completely as was humanly possible.
These were by no means the only pictures on the walls. But they were the first pictures of their ilk. On two other walls were pictures taken from pornographic magazines. And, while many of the posed photos were sado-masochistic, none approached the brutality of the photos taken at the morgue.
Only one of the four walls in this apartment was not covered with pictures of tortured, nude, or nearly naked women. The wall at the head of Arnold’s bed also held pictures. But they were the sort traditional Catholics called “holy” pictures. Mostly individual pictures of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph depicted as blond, blue-eyed Anglo-Saxons in maudlin poses reeking of insincere sincerity. In the midst of these pictures were two crosses and one crucifix.
Arnold Bush was at least nominally a Catholic. In infancy, he had been baptized as a Catholic, and that religious designation had been permanently attached to his record as he was shifted about as a child. He managed to make his First Holy Communion, but was never confirmed—a conjunction of sacrament and nonsacrament that indicated his religious training had been spotty at best. As an adult, his personal brand of Catholicism was superficial and highly superstitious. Thus he saw no incongruity in decorating his room with a mixture of pornography and pietistic art.
Finally! All the Bonner photos were now arranged to his satisfaction. He moved a chair to the opposite wall and sat down to appreciate his handiwork.
Arnold Bush, of moderate height but powerful build, blond, and unmarried, was fifty-three. He looked much younger. Orphaned early in life, he had resided in a series of foster homes, some of them better than others, but none approximating a secure haven with loving parents.
By far his most traumatic experience in growing up occurred when he was twelve. The foster couple he was placed with at that time had to leave the state abruptly; a matter of bouncing checks. They left him with the woman’s sister, who happened to be the madam in a house of prostitution.
He watched, he listened, he absorbed. It left an indelible impression.
After two years of this, the state bureaucracy found him again and, after entering this latest misfortune in his record, the state shipped him off to an institution for young men.
Arnold never recovered from his years of residence in the whorehouse. The experience marked him for life. Several times, mostly at the insistence of another man, he tried to strike up a normal relationship with a woman. He was never successful. There were too many memories of the hard, emotionless brief encounters that he’d witnessed. He knew how the women talked about the men they’d been with. He would not let that happen to him.
So Arnold cut himself off from almost all human contact. He worked very hard. He had to. He had no one to help him with anything. He had isolated himself from everyone. He grew physically strong. From time to time, he amazed even himself at how strong he was.
Take this morning, for instance, when his fellow worker had tried to take Louise Bonner away from him. Arnold had grabbed the man roughly. When the man pulled away, angry red marks—Arnold’s handprints—appeared on his arms. Arnold had been genuinely surprised. And with surprise came renewed pride. He felt—for at least a little while—that he could do anything.
This was a time of change for Arnold Bush. No longer would anyone take advantage of him. He would be in control. And these pictures on the wall were but a sign of what was to come.