Finally he pulled on his overcoat and hat again and went out to find a different phone booth. He had to wait almost fifteen minutes before Deputy Inspector Ivar Thorsen got back to him, a period during which three would-be phone users turned away in disgust. One of them kicked the phone booth in anger before he left.
“Edward?” Thorsen asked.
“Yes. I’ve got something. Something I don’t think Broughton has.”
He heard Thorsen’s swift intake of breath.
“What?”
“Lombard was a licensed driver. He owned two cars. His wife has sold them, incidentally. She’s leaving town.”
“So?”
“She says he carried his driver’s license in his wallet. That makes sense. The percentages are for it. The license wasn’t in the wallet when it was found. I checked the inventory.” There was a moment’s silence.
“No one would kill for a driver’s license,” Thorsen said finally. “You can buy a good counterfeit for fifty bucks.”
“I know.”
“Identification?” Thorsen suggested. “A hired killer. He takes the license to prove to his employer he really did hit Lombard.”
“What for? It was in all the papers the next day. The employer would know the job had been done.”
“Jesus, that’s right. What do you think? Why the driver’s license?”
“Identification maybe.”
“But you just said-”
“Not a hired killer. I have two ideas. One, the killer took the license as a souvenir, a trophy.”
“That’s nuts, Edward.”
“Maybe. The other idea is that he took the license to prove to a third party that he had killed. Not killed Lombard, but killed someone, anyone. If the stories were in the papers, and the killer could present the victim’s driver’s license, that would prove he was the killer.”
The silence was longer this time.
“Jesus, Edward,” Thorsen said finally. “That’s wild.”
“Yes. Wild.” (And suddenly he remembered a sex killing he had investigated. The victim’s eyelids had been stitched together with her own hairpins.)
Thorsen came on again: “Edward, are you trying to tell me we’re dealing with a crazy?”
“Yes. I think so. Someone like Whitman, Speck, Unruh, the Boston Strangler, Panzram, Manson. Someone like that.”
“Oh God.”
“If I’m right, we’ll know soon enough.”
“How will we know?”
“He’ll do it again.”
Part IV
1
He thought she was wearing a loose-fitting dress of black crepe with white cuffs. Then he saw the cuffs were actually bandages about both wrists. But he was so inflamed with what he wanted to tell her that he didn’t question the bandages, knowing. Instead, he merely held up before her eyes Frank Lombard’s driver’s license. She would not look at it, but took him by the arm and drew him slowly, step by step, to the upstairs room. Where he was impotent.
“It’s all right,” she soothed. “I understand. Believe me, I understand and love you for it. I told you sex should be a ritual, a ceremony. But a rite has no consummation. It’s a celebration of a consummation. Do you understand? The ritual celebrates the climax but does not encompass it. It’s all right, my darling. Don’t think you’ve failed. This is best. That you and I worship the fulfillment-a continuing celebration of an unknowable finality. Isn’t that what prayer is all about?”
But he was not listening to her, so livid was he with the need to talk. He snapped on that cruel overhead light and showed her the driver’s license and newspaper headlines, proving himself.
“For you,” he said. “I did it for you.” Then they both laughed, knowing it was a lie.
“Tell me everything,” she said. “Every detail. I want to know everything that happened.”
His soft scrotum huddled in her hand, a dead bird.
He told her, with pride, of the careful planning, the long hours of slow thought. His first concern, he said, had been the weapon.
“Did I want a weapon that could be discarded?” he asked rhetorically. “I decided not, not to leave a weapon that might be traced to me. So I chose a weapon I would take with me when I left.”
“To be used again,” she murmured.
“Yes. Perhaps. Well…I told you I’m a climber. I’m not an expert; just an amateur. But I have this ice ax. It’s a tool of course, but also a very wicked weapon. All tempered steel. A hammer on one side of the head for pitons, and a tapered steel pick on the other. There are hundreds just like it. Also, it has a leather-wrapped handle and a rawhide thong hanging from the butt. Heavy enough to kill, but small and light enough to carry concealed. You know that coat I have with slits in the pockets, so that I can reach inside?”
“Do I not!” she smiled.
“Yes,” he smiled in reply. “I figured I could wear that coat, the front unbuttoned and hanging loose. My left hand would be through the slit, and I could carry the ice ax by the leather throng, dangling from my fingers but completely concealed. When the time came to use it, I could reach inside the unbuttoned coat with my right hand and take the ax by the handle.”
“Brilliant,” she said.
“A problem,” he shrugged. “I tried it. I practised. It worked perfectly. If I was calm and cool, unhurried, I could transfer the ax to my right hand in seconds. Seconds! One or two. No more. Then, after, the ax would disappear beneath my coat again. Held by my left hand through the pocket slit.”
“Did you see his eyes?” she asked.
“His eyes?” he said vaguely. “No. I must tell you this in my own way.”
She leaned forward to put her lips on his left nipple; his eyes closed with pleasure.
“I didn’t want to travel too far,” he said. “The farther I went, carrying the concealed ice ax, the greater the danger. It had to be in my own neighborhood. Near. Why not? The murder of a stranger. A crime without motive. What difference if it was next door or a hundred miles away? Who could connect me?”
“Yes,” she breathed. “Oh yes.”
He told her how he had walked the streets for three nights, seeking the lonely blocks, noting the lighting, remembering bus stops and subway stations, lobbies with doormen, deserted stretches of unattended stores and garages.
“I couldn’t plan it. I decided it would have to be chance. Pure chance. ‘Pure.’ That’s a funny word, Celia. But it was pure. I swear to you. I mean, there was no sex connected with it. I mean, I didn’t walk around with an erection. I didn’t have an orgasm when I did it. Nothing like that. Do you believe me?”
“Yes.”
“It really was pure. I swear it. It was religious. I was God’s will. I know that sounds insane. But that’s how I felt. Maybe it is mad. A sweet madness. I was God on earth. When I looked at people on shadowed streets…Is he the one? Is he the one? My God, the power!”
“Oh yes. Darling, oh yes.”
He was so tender with her in that awful room…so tender. And then, the memory of the two times he had been unfaithful to his wife…He had enjoyed both adventures; both women had been his wife’s superior in bed. But he had not loved her the less for that. Instead, unaccountably, his infidelity had increased his affection for and kindness toward his wife. He touched her, kissed her, listened to her.
And now, telling this woman of murder, he felt the same thaw: not increased sexuality but heightened sweetness because he had a new mistress. He touched Celia’s cheek, kissed her fingertips, murmured, saw to her comfort, and in all things acted the gentle and parfait lover, loving her the more because he loved another most.
“It was not someone else doing it,” he assured her. “You’ve read these stories where the killer blames it on someone else. Another him. Someone who took over, controlled his mind and guided his hand. It was nothing like that. Celia, I have never had such a feeling of being myself. You know? It was a sense of oneness, of me. Do you understand?”