Show of Evil

'Look here, ma'am, we know you're Rene Hutchinson. Wouldn't you like to tell us where Fox is?' He took a step towards her. 'We need to talk to you and Fox.'

'I taught him everything he knows,' she whispered suddenly and with pride.

'What was that?' St Claire asked.

'I taught him everything he knows.'

Meyer moved sideways to the table. He took out a pencil and punched the play button of the recorder.

'Stop that!' she shrieked.

'Order. Order in the courtroom.' The hollow sound of a gavel rapping. Then:

'The prince who keeps the world in awe;

 The judge whose dictates fix the law;

The rich, the poor, the great, the small,

Are levelled; death confounds them all.

Greetings from Daisyland, Judge.'

Vail immediately recognized the voice on the tape. It was Vulpes.

'Miss Hutchin - ' St Claire started to say, but the woman suddenly charged out of the darkness. She rushed straight towards Vail. The knife glittered in her hand.

St Claire moved quickly in front of him, aiming his gun at Hydra as she charged.

'Hold it!' he ordered, but she didn't stop.

The rookie cop panicked and shot her in the chest.

She screamed. The knife twirled from her hand and she was knocked backward, landing flat on her back on the floor. She lay there, gasping for breath, staring at the ceiling.

'Thank you,' she whispered. 'Thank you…'

The rookie lost it. He stared down at her in horror. 'Oh God! Oh sweet God, why didn't you stop when I told you?' he screamed at her.

'Shut up, Ritch. Call the medics.'

'She charged us with a knife,' the rookie babbled. 'I didn't… didn't…'

His cheeks suddenly ballooned. He clasped his hand over his nose and mouth and raced to the bathroom.

'I got eighteen years in, never fired my gun except on the range,' Bohane said disgustedly. 'He's on the street two months and shoots a woman.' He shook his head. 'I'll call an ambulance.'

'Use this,' Vail said, handing him the portable phone. The cop dialled 911.

St Claire kneeled down beside Hydra.

'Rene Hutchinson?' he asked.

'I am Hydra,' she said faintly.

'Who named you that?'

'Fox. Fox knows everything. But I taught him everything he knows.'

St Claire's 'kinda' nudge suddenly became a reality. He was remembering some notes he had read among the files on Stampler. Notes that Tommy Goodman had written ten years before after his return from a trip to Kentucky, to do background on Stampler.

'How did you meet him?' St Claire asked Hydra.

'I have known him forever.'

'You're Rebecca, aren't you?'

'I am… Hydra.'

'Before that. You were Rebecca?'

Her voice faded to a whisper. 'Taught him every… thing he knows,' she said.

'Jesus, you're his teacher, ain't ya?'

She didn't answer.

'When did you first contact him, Rebecca?'

For just an instant her memory streaked back to the young boy with the brutal strap marks on his buttocks who sat in the corner of her living room, devouring her books and the passages she had marked for him; to a time when it had been just the two of them, alone in the sanctuary of her house, sheltered from the brutal world around them as they made love in front of the fire. Then, suddenly, the moment dissolved into a clear, hot, white light.

As St Claire stared at her, her eyes suddenly crossed slightly. Life blinked out of them and they turned to stone. St Claire held his fingers against her throat, but he knew there would be no pulse.

'She was Stampler's schoolteacher, Marty,' said St Claire. 'I remembered readin' the notes Goodman wrote when he came back from Kentucky. It's the last entry in the report. She told him, "I taught Aaron everything he knows." She was as crazy as he is.'

'He isn't crazy, Harve. He's a cold-blooded killer, that's all he ever was. Call Morris. Tell him to go across the street and take the son of a bitch down.'

 'My pleasure.'

The rookie staggered to the doorway of the bathroom, wiping his lips with a washcloth.

'Mr Vail, there's something in here for Major Stenner.' Vail went into the bathroom. There was a box addressed to Stenner sitting in the bathtub. Below the name was scrawled:

What are fears but voices airy, whispering harm where harm is not.

And deluding the unwary, until the fatal bolt is shot.

Vail opened the box and stared into the face of Harry Shoat.

Thirty-Six

Morris and Soloman banged on the door of the halfway house until a young man with long hair tied back in a ponytail stumbled down the stairs and cracked open the door.

'Huh?' he said.

Morris showed him his ID. 'Police, open up,' he said.

'Police!' the young man said in a panic.

'We're just checking on the new man,' Morris said as he and Solomon brushed past him and went up the stairs. Through the door, they heard Vulpes's raspy voice singing a duet with Durante.

'Make someone happy…'

'Open up, police!' Morris demanded. He tried the door. It was unlocked. The titles of the movie were rolling as they burst into the room. Morris froze when he saw the tape recorder.

'Make just someone happy…'

Solomon stared bleakly into the empty room. 'Shit, he bluffed us out, Bobby,' he moaned.

Vail was just leaving Rebecca Hutchinson's apartment when the phone rang. He listened while Morris babbled on the other end. His mind raced ahead of the conversation.

'Get the Chicago PD over there right now and give them a full report,' he said. 'I'll be back at the office.'

The question now: Where was Vulpes?

Shock Johnson answered that question with more bad news.

'Where are you?' the police lieutenant asked.

'In the car heading back to the office,' Vail answered.

'Go straight to the hospital, Marty. Stampler got Jane Venable and Abel. They're alive but just barely. Should be arriving in Emergency about now. He killed our house guard.'

'Goddamn! Goddamn him!' Vail cried. 'What happened?' he asked Johnson.

'He killed our man and jumped Abel and Jane when they arrived at her house. She got a couple of shots off and sent him packing in Stenner's car. That's all she told us before she passed out. Some neighbours heard the shots and called it in. We have an APB out on him now, but our pictures are all ten years old.'

'Get your artist to put twenty pounds and ten years on him and get it to the media. Also I suggest a five-state alarm. If he breaks out of Chicago, God knows how long it may take to track him down.'

'Done. I heard about what happened with the woman. We found the rest of Shoat out at his place. She must've been doing Shoat while Stampler was doing his dirty work at Venable's house.'

'Stampler faked my people out,' said Vail. 'Sneaked out of the halfway house.'

'Christ, what the hell's goin' on, Marty?'

'Stampler is what's going on. He's on the loose and who knows what he's got in mind.'

'What do we tell the press?'

'You tell them the truth, Shock. How's Eckling reacting to all this?'

'He's at a convention in Atlanta. I haven't talked to him yet.'

'Well, we've got three dead people, including a cop and a judge, two people in the hospital, and a mass murderer on the loose. You better break the news before he sees it on TV.'

'See you at the hospital.'

'Yeah.' Vail hung up.

Meyer, not a cowboy behind the wheel by any means, took off like an antic teenager, threading through traffic with his hand on the horn.