The possibility that Carella and Meyer had fastidiously avoided was the possibility that Anthony Forrest had been killed by a sniper.
The sniper is usually a rare breed of murderer who is related to his wartime counterpart only in the methods both employ. The wartime sniper and the peacetime sniper both are hidden, both wait in ambush for their prey. Their success is based on the element of surprise, in combination with a swiftness of action and an accuracy that must be unerring. A wartime sniper hidden in the trees can effectively debilitate and cripple an entire squad, killing several members of it before the squad disperses for cover, pinning down the rest in helpless immobilization. A team of good snipers working in concert can change the outcome of a battle. They are fearful enemies because they rain sudden death from the skies, like the angry wrath of God.
Wartime snipers are trained to kill enemy soldiers. If they kill enough of them, they get medals. A good wartime sniper can even earn the grudging admiration of the men he is trying to kill. They will play a silent game of wits with him, trying to find out where he is, and then trying to discover how they can dislodge him from his vantage point before he slaughters them all. A wartime sniper is a dangerous expert.
A peacetime sniper is anything.
He can be a kid trying out his new BB gun by taking potshots at passersby from his bedroom window. He can be a man who shoots at anything wearing red. He can be a Jack the Ripper type who fires at any shapely blonde who passes. He can be an anticleric, an antivegetarian, an antioctogenarian, an anti-Semite, an antipacifist, an anti-any-human-being. The one clear fact about a peacetime sniper would seem to be that he is anti. And yet the police have often arrested snipers who were shooting people for fun, who had disconnected the act of murder from what they considered to be the sport of shooting. To many snipers, the deadly game is only target practice. To others, it is a hunt, and they will sit in ambush the way some men will sit in a duck blind. To some, it is a form of sexual release. The wartime sniper has a reason and a purpose; the peacetime sniper will most often have neither. The wartime sniper is usually pinned to one spot, lashed to a tree, crowded into a bombed-out attic room. If he moves, he will be spotted and hunted down. Lack of mobility is his tactical weakness. The peacetime sniper can shoot and then vanish. He can do this because his victims are almost always unarmed and never expecting violence. Confusion will generally follow the shooting, and in the confusion he will disappear. There is no one to shoot back at him. He has left a dead man, and now he can take a casual stroll like anyone else in the city.
War is dishonorable, but wartime snipers are only trained technicians doing a job.
Peacetime snipers are wholesale murderers.
Neither Carella nor Meyer wanted their man to be a sniper. The 87th Squad had caught the original squeal, which made the case theirs, a nice, fat, snarling baby left in a basket on the doorstep. If their man was a sniper, and if he decided to shoot up the entire city, the case was still theirs. Oh, yes, there would be additional detectives assigned from other precincts—maybe—and the department would offer whatever help it could—maybe—but the sniper was theirs, and there were ten million people in the city, and any one of them could be either the murderer or the next victim.
How do you play a game without rules?
How do you apply logic to something illogical?
You try.
You start from the beginning.
“If he’s a sniper,” Meyer said. “We’re not even sure of that yet. There’ve only been two so far, Steve. You want my opinion, I think this guy at the 65th—what’s his name?”
“Di Nobile.”
“Yeah, I think he dumped this into our laps prematurely.”
“Same m.o.,” Carella said.
“Yeah, yeah.”
“Same cartridge.”
“All men are bipeds,” Meyer said cryptically, “therefore, all bipeds are men.”
“So?” Carella said.
“So it may be too early to assume that because two guys were shot from two different rooftops, and the same kind of slug was used in both cases, that…”
“Meyer, I wish to God these guys were both shot by my Aunt Matilda because she’s named in their insurance policies as beneficiary. It doesn’t look that way so far. So far, there’s a pattern.”
“What pattern?”
“The obvious one, to begin with. The way it was done, and the weapon used.”
“Could be a coincidence.”
“Could be, I’ll grant you that. But the rest seems to add up.”
“It’s too early for anything to be adding up,” Meyer said.
“Yeah? Then try this.” Carella picked up a typewritten sheet from his desk. He glanced up at Meyer once, and then began reading. “Anthony Forrest was almost forty-five years old, married, with three children. Held an important position, vice president, salary forty-seven thousand dollars a year. Religion Protestant, politics Republican. You got that?”
“Go ahead.”
“Randolph Norden was forty-six years old, married, with two children. Held an important position, junior partner in a law firm, salary fifty-eight thousand dollars a year. Religion Protestant, politics Republican.”
“So?”
“So change their names, and they could almost be the same guy.”
“Are you trying to tell me you think a sniper is after all middle-aged men who are married, with children, and holding important—”
“Maybe.”
“Why not carry it further and isolate some of the facts then?” Meyer said. “Why don’t we simply say our sniper is after anybody in this city who is more than forty-five years old?”
“He might be.”
“Or maybe all married men with a couple or more children, huh?”
“Maybe.”
“Or maybe anybody who earns more than forty thousand a year, huh?”
“Maybe.”
“Or all Protestants? Or all Republicans?”
Carella dropped the typewritten sheet on the desk and said, “Or maybe only people who have all those characteristics.”
“Steve, I imagine that description would fit at least—at the very least—a hundred thousand people in this city.”
“So? Who says our sniper hasn’t got all the time in the world? He just may be out to get each and every one of them.”
“Then that makes him a nut,” Meyer said.
Carella stared at him. “Meyer,” he said, “that’s exactly why I was hoping this wouldn’t turn out to be a sniper.”
“It isn’t yet,” Meyer said. “Just ‘cause that guy from the 65th jumps the gun…”
“I don’t think he jumped the gun. I think he was a smart cop who made the only logical deduction. I think this is a sniper, and I hope it isn’t a nut, and I think we’d better start tracking down both Forrest and Norden to find out what other similarities existed or did not exist. That’s what I think.”
Meyer shrugged and then put his hands in his pockets and said, “All we needed right now was a sniper.”
4
The president of Indian Exports, Inc., the firm with which Anthony Forrest had been connected, was a balding man in his sixties, somewhat stout, somewhat pompous, somewhat German. He was perhaps five feet eight inches tall, with a protruding middle and a flat-footed walk. Meyer Meyer, who was Jewish, felt instantly uncomfortable in his presence.
The man’s name was Ludwig Etterman. He stood before his desk in what seemed to be genuine despair and he said, with only the faintest German accent, “Tony was a good man. I cannot understand why this happened.”
“How long had you been associated with him, Mr. Etterman?” Carella asked.