Twice in July Roth was alone at the site in the late twilight. The first time a group of young boys would not leave the site even when Roth himself tried to chase them away, swore at them in fury as they defied him.
The second time Castro was sure it was the moment. As he walked up the empty street, Roth was alone. The younger man went inside the unfinished shell out of sight from the street. Castro moved quickly to the opening without a door. He bent to pick up the brick. Roth suddenly came out of the building again.
Roth was too young, too big. Castro couldn’t attack when Roth was facing him. So he smiled, talked to Roth casually as he had done before, then walked away along the street as usual.
His heart pounded, and his head throbbed. But he calmed himself again. He had to wait, be sure...
I felt the blood pound in Max Castro’s head, heard his voice tell himself he had to wait. In his killer’s mind I heard him say it over and over: Wait... be patient. Haste, that was the greatest danger. Impatience. I heard his mind tell himself day after day: Slow, careful; don’t panic, don’t rush it; slow and careful and wait and there’ll be no mistakes...
All the weeks I’d spent digging, checking Castro’s routine and route past Norman Roth’s building, were on Captain Pearce’s desk.
“He could have gone along other streets,” I said. “He could have driven. But he was a known walker, and the route was logical enough. Stopping at that drugstore became a routine. He talked to Roth whenever Roth was at the site, casual and hiding nothing.”
Pearce nodded. “They all remember seeing him often.”
“But not one damned person is sure they saw him the day of the killing,” Schatz said.
“He planned it just that way,” I said.
“He walked right onto that building site and straight up to Roth,” Pearce said. “And no one saw anything.”
Schatz swore again. “A reasonable doubt all the way. Any jury would buy it.”
I felt Castro’s mind that last day. Eager, the adrenaline pumping. Time pressed in on him. The day had to come soon. Would it be that day? He couldn’t hold himself back much longer, the adoption proceedings would be before the judge soon. I felt the thin thread of tension, his mind fighting... go slow... follow the routine...
He dressed for the twentieth, thirtieth, nth time in the cheap suit, checked the buttons again to be sure they were on tight. His fingernails had been cut and filed to the quick for months. He left all his jewelry in his office once more. His hair had been washed every day, all the labels had been removed from his clothes long ago. He carried nothing on his walk past Roth’s site that could be dropped, not even his cigarettes or matches.
In the drugstore he browsed, bought a new razor, had his cherry ice-cream soda. He talked to the counter boy about the books he had lent the boy. That, he thought, was an especially good touch. A smart lawyer could make a lot of the books, with his nameplate in the front, as a sure sign that he couldn’t have been planning a murder that day.
A noisy group of juveniles slouched into the store and engaged the counter boy with multiple orders. He was held up a few minutes, with dusk settling outside. He didn’t think it would be serious, Roth always remained at the site at least five minutes to make his inspection, usually longer, but he decided not to stop and talk to the owner this time as he paid his check.
On the street he walked a little bit faster. He bought his newspaper, spoke briefly to the newsstand man, and continued briskly on to the site. Fast, but not so fast as to attract any attention, and it was just dusk as he reached Roth’s building.
The street was deserted as usual, the other buildings dark, the twilight gloomy, the site itself silent. He stood back in the shadows and waited. His plan had always been rigid: Walk away instantly if even possibly seen by anyone, and, if unseen, five minutes’ wait and not a second more.
He had one minute to go when the car drove up. Norman Roth stepped out, seemed to search the twilight for a moment. Castro tensed, ready to follow the younger man into the empty building shell. Roth leaned back into the car to speak to someone.
The car was Susan’s car! She was dropping Roth off on her way to her Thursday Junior League meeting. Not even Roth’s car would be on the street to attract anyone’s attention!
Roth leaned in for a kiss, turned and walked across the sidewalk and the dirt to his partly finished building.
Susan drove off around the next corner.
The street was empty.
It was at just that stage of dusk when it is harder to see than in full night, and no one was in sight anywhere.
Castro hurried across the debris of the building site. As he neared his enemy he slowed, became casual. He made a small smile play across his face. Roth heard him, turned.
“Don’t you ever give up?” Roth said.
“No, Norman, never,” Max Castro said.
“Go away, Castro. You’re beaten,” Norman Roth said. “I’m getting the boys, there isn’t a fucking thing you can do.”
With a gesture of contempt, Roth turned his back and walked into the interior of the unfinished building.
The hate surged through Max Castro. He looked around once more. He was totally alone in the dusk, all but invisible.
He bent, picked up the brick, stepped through the open doorway into the hidden interior of the unfinished building. He looked for Norman Roth, the brick raised.
Norman Roth struck viciously.
Pain hammered through Max Castro’s head.
Something dusty, smothering, covered Castro.
The brick in Norman Roth’s hand smashed... smashed...
I felt the crushing pain as Norman Roth bludgeoned Max Castro with the brick. The shock, and the fear, and the horror, and the final agony of all — the moment of realization that he, Maxwell Castro, had, after all, lost. A loser. A dead man. The horrible agony as Castro realized he was not the hunter but the hunted. Not the predator but the prey. Outwitted. Dead...
I sat in Captain Pearce’s dim, silent office behind its drawn shades that seemed to make the city outside light-years away.
“It was the only way they could have gotten Castro to that building site under those conditions at that time. He would never have gone there alone, at dusk, unarmed, unprotected, unless he was planning to kill Roth.”
“Theory, Fortune,” Schatz said. “That’s all you’ve got.”
“It’s the only answer,” I said. “Castro set up the conditions, and Roth and his wife used them to murder him. They manipulated him like Pavlov’s dog, goaded him until they were sure he would decide to kill Roth. That was their plan, and Castro walked into the trap like a sheep to the slaughter.”
Pearce said, “Roth waited inside that building shell.” His voice had a tone of wonder. “He hit Castro once with the brick, covered him with a canvas tarpaulin, and hit him four more times. No blood except under the canvas. No witnesses. No fingerprints on the brick or canvas. No clues. The debris on Roth from the building site is useless, he went there every day. Only not that day, he says, and we can’t prove he did. No evidence at all.”
“Except,” I said, “Castro’s little mistake.”
Schatz shook his head in even more wonder. “Both of them, Castro and Roth, stripped of everything. No labels, no jewelry, no hair or skin under fingernails, nothing. Zero.”
“Yeah,” I said, “that’s what got me thinking. Castro had nothing in his pockets — not even cigarettes, and he was a smoker. No labels. A cheap suit. Fingernails cut to the quick. With Castro the victim, those things made no sense. But if Castro had been the killer, then it made a lot of sense. So I put myself in his mind, dug into what had made him decide to commit murder. Then I did the same for Roth and the woman, imagined how they planned to make Castro try to kill Roth, how they rigged it.”