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“I can see the necessity for assuming such,” Tommy said, nodding affirmatively. “I guess most people live and act on that.”
“You’ve started thinking quite a lot about crime recently,”
Ruddy said.
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“Dunno.”
“Did it have anything to do with what happened to Marie?”
“No. Why? What has Marie done?”
“Nothing.”
“She was just a victim, Dad.”
“I went to see her, Tommy.”
“Oh!” Tommy stared at his father, than sat down. “How was she?”
“Pretty bad, emotionally. Look, I let her have some money—”
“She hates me, doesn’t she?”
“No. I wouldn’t say that. She’s just hurt, crushed.”
“Dad, I did wrong about her.”
“I wouldn’t say that.”
“I did wrong, but I couldn’t help it,” Tommy said with a quavering voice. “That was the crazy part about it. I never thought your deepest feelings could make you do wrong. I just dropped her. Killed her.”
“Killed her? ”
“It was like killing, Dad.”
“What do you know about killing, son?”
“I know something about it from what I did to Marie. I left her when she needed me most. I said I loved her. Then I threw her to the dogs.”
“I don’t think of that as ‘killing,’” Ruddy said, his voice full of scared wonder.
“It was killing,” Tommy insisted, his voice breaking. He
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bent forward and buried his face in his hands. “I don’t ever want to see her again.” He sobbed. “I can’t help it.”
“God, but you’ve dramatized this much too much,” Ruddy said.
“You saw her,” Tommy said, lifting his eyes. “You said she was crushed. Her life is blighted. And I did it.” He swallowed. “You see, I was told in school and church that love was the greatest thing on earth, that it could conquer all. . . . Hell, it didn’t and it can’t. What can and will conquer are fear and hate. You can be fearful before you know it; you can hate without thinking.”
Ruddy was moved. No, the poor boy was suffering. How had he ever suspected him?
“You mustn’t get morbid, Tommy,” Ruddy chided. “You’re a man, you know.”
“What is a man?” Tommy asked of the whole huge offi ce.
“Tommy, you’re letting this throw you,” Ruddy accused with compassion.
“Maybe. I’m just human . . .”
“You’ve got to forget this.” Ruddy was stern.
“I can forget,” Tommy said. “I can forget Marie. But I cannot forget what it meant to me to drop her. Dad, there’s in us something more powerful than love. That was the shock. I left that poor sweet girl like I’d lift a flyswatter and kill a fl y.”
“No, no. You didn’t,” Ruddy pointed out. “You have been brooding over her.”
“No, not about her. But about how easy it is to be disloyal,”
he cried.
“There’s no goddamn disloyalty involved,” Ruddy stormed.
“Now, stop that goddamn nonsense.”
“It’s all right just to drop people and leave ’em?” Tommy asked, caressing his tennis racket with nervous fi ngers.
“Tommy, sometimes there are things too big for men,”
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Ruddy began. “That’s why we have friends. One can’t stand alone in life in everything. One needs help. Especially in matters like this. You’ve commited no crime.”
“I feel I have,” Tommy insisted.
“Look, play tennis, swim—hell, have a good time and get that morbid rot out of you,” Ruddy advised again.
“That’s easy to say,” Tommy murmured.
“Say, why don’t you talk to Father Joyce?” Ruddy suggested.
Tommy lifted his head with a jerk, stared at his father with tear-wet eyes, then broke into a snickering laugh.
“What the hell are you laughing about?”
“I know what he’s going to say.”
“What?”
“He’s going to forgive me.”
“Right. And that’s what you need.”
“I don’t want to dodge anything,” Tommy growled. “Hell, what I’d like for him to tell me is what law I violated.”
“Law?” Ruddy asked with an echo.
“Yeah. You admit that it was wrong. Then what made it wrong?” Tommy demanded. “I feel it was wrong. I willingly and passionately did a wrong thing.”
There was a long silence. Tommy stared at his father and the father stared at the son.
“Tommy, you and I must talk,” Ruddy said.
Tommy stood and wiped his eyes, then playfully swung his racket to and fro.
“There’s nothing to talk about,” he said in a normal voice.
“I’m late for my game. I’ll be all right.” He forced a smile. “See you later—today, tonight?”
“Yeah, son.”
“And get some sleep, Dad,” Tommy called gaily, going out the door.
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“Okay,” Ruddy said. He bent forward and bit his lips.
“Something’s wrong and I don’t know what to do.”
He started as the phone tingled at his elbow.
“Yeah?”
“Professor Redfield is here to see you, Chief.”
“Send ’im in in about ten minutes,” Ruddy said.
“Yes, sir.”
He wanted a few seconds in which to get himself together.
He was much too fatigued to think clearly. And Tommy was still worrying him. Had that boy come to see him for some reason other than to say hello? He was sure of one thing: he had to “get at” that boy, find out what was seething deep down in him and why. Above all, he had to turn that boy’s mind from too deep and constant a preoccupation with morbid matters. “He’s all right,”
he mumbled half aloud. “It’s what happened to Marie that upset
’im.” Yet, in some way, Tommy had seemed to manage to get him to talk of matters relating to the murder of Janet Wilder—things that only the police knew so far. “No harm’s done. He’s not involved in this. God, I’m actually thinking and feeling as though I really suspected Tommy!” The more he thought of Tommy’s reflections on the Janet Wilder case, the more he felt that maybe the boy was right. Why had Ed not mentioned the possibility of the role of “accident” in the three murders that had taken place—the Hindricks-Landsdale, the Byrnes-Karn, and the Heard cases? After all, far-fetched coincidences like that did happen now and then. Didn’t a four-year-old child, only last week, fall out of a ten-story window and survive, with only slight bruises?
Why then could there not be four different murderers who had struck, for various reasons, at four different times and places in the woods east of Brentwood Park? Aw, no. He was now, and he knew it, trying to build up a case in which it would be impossible for Tommy to figure! Hell . . . and there was yet another thing
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that made the role of “accident” impossible: there was that .38!
A .38 had figured in the first three cases and was figuring in this most recent one. Of course, it had to be proved that it was the same .38 in all four instances. But he was almost persuaded that it was. Yep. The four damned cases seemed linked by that gun.
But in the Janet Wilder case, couldn’t some poor fool of a boy have stolen a gun, a .38 and, when he read in the papers that an intensive investigation into the Brentwood Park murders would take place, have gone and buried that gun, and then, in a panic, thinking that somebody would stumble upon it, have rushed out there and dug it up, and Janet Wilder comes upon him while he’s doing so? No. That was much too far-fetched. Tommy had been right. The best thing for the murd
erer was to have left the gun alone, left it where it was, buried in those high weeds where there was one chance in a million that anybody would find it. Aw, hell . . . I don’t get it.
The door pushed in. Ruddy rose, smiled.
“Good morning, Professor. It was good of you to come.”
“Good morning, Chief,” Professor Redfield said. “Really, I must apologize. I didn’t know you were the head of our police department in Brentwood Park. I must have acted kind of silly to you last night.”
“Forget it, Professor,” Ruddy said. “I just wanted to chat with you.”
“I feel honored to help in any way I can,” the professor said.
“That’s kind of you,” Ruddy said.
“I see that you’ve thrown up roadblocks,” the professor said.
“You’re really on the job. We could never get Branden excited about this thing. He was a good officer but kind of placid.”
“Well, Professor, don’t expect too much from those roadblocks,” Ruddy said with a wry smile. “Just between you and me, it’s done more to reassure the public than anything else.”
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“I suspected that,” the professor said, nodding. “But it has helped. The people feel that something is happening.”
“You say that you’ve studied this town, Professor?”
“Yes. Extensively.”
“I don’t want to ask too much of you,” Ruddy said, smiling apologetically, “but I wanted to get an idea of how you see this place. You see, it would help us in trying to track down a solution to these crimes and give us a bird’s-eye view of the town for general purposes.”
“Well, I’ll share with you what we know,” the professor said.
“Just what do you wish to go into?”
“Since we are at present clueless about these crimes,”
Ruddy began, “I’m anxious to find out, if possible, whether the criminal is from Brentwood or not. It’d help to narrow down our search.”
“I couldn’t tell you that exactly,” the professor said cautiously. “But I could give indications—”
“Signposts, general directions,” Ruddy told him hastily.
“That’s all we need. Before you speak, let me tell you something about criminal investigations. In general, people have very high-flown and romantic notions about criminal investigations. But that kind of stuff is for books, not life. Criminals and crimes run to types, like diseases. A competent officer can usually tell in ten minutes what kind of crime and criminal he’s dealing with. Now, criminals do not realize this. If they did, we would be hard put to it to catch them. Each little crook, when he hatches out a job in his stale brain, thinks that it has never been thought of before. Usually, it has, many times. And we know at once in what direction to go to look for him. Maybe, like the measles, there may be complications in this or that crime; then we take that into consideration, and we make the necessary deductions or inductions. Now, our law-enforcement machinery and our criminal investigation network
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is geared to do just this. And it does it very efficiently. We know, for example, that certain crimes stem from various social groups.
We know that ‘bushwhacking’ is a poor man’s way of robbing. We don’t look for a millionaire’s son for ‘bushwhacking.’ Criminal assaults on children are a bit more complex; there we have got to take into consideration a set of bizarre psychological factors that might lead us into any social layer. Housebreaking stems almost always from a floating population, paroled convicts, young punks, etc. And we know where to look for them. Bank robbery is highly specialized, and the known number of crooks who can do it well are few; and we have our nets already spread to sniff out traces of them when they try to spend the stolen money.
“But, Professor, now and again there comes a crime with all kinds of elements wrapped into it,” Ruddy explained, “and we are at a dead end. These Brentwood forest murders are like that. They resemble ‘bushwhacking,’ but they manifestly are not. Nothing is ever stolen and we can’t trace any goods taken from the victims. The opportunity for sexual molestation was present in three of the cases out of four, yet it did not take place. And we cannot, as yet, find any traces of marital jealousy, of blackmail, etc. No political motives seem to be implied. And though two victims were churchmen, we have absolutely no clue in that direction. All we know is that our victims were shot at point-blank range with a .38. The murderer vanished. Now, to begin with, could you make a guess as to whether that murderer came from Brentwood Park or outside of it?”
The professor sighed. He opened his briefcase and began spreading out a folding sheet that held huge outlines of city streets.
“I don’t feel (I emphasize feel, because no real proof is at hand) that these are Brentwood Park crimes,” the professor began. “I’m not trying to defend Brentwood Park just because I
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live in it. I’m a scientist and try to be objective. If I say these crimes do not smack of Brentwood Park, it is because of the population structure and function here.”
“That’s exactly what I want to hear about,” Ruddy said.
“I’ll show you how this town grew up, and out of what it grew,” the professor said, spreading out and smoothing his long maps. “First of all, there are no natural resources here except fresh air, sun, water, sand, hills, and pine trees . . . And that does not account for this being a town at all. You might say that no sensible person would make a town here. This town is a surplus, something artificially made by people with too much money.”
The professor laughed. “That does not include me. I just sneaked into the place to take advantage of it after it was built.
“Now, back in the early twenties, this used to be a kind of rough-and-tumble camping area—Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, Nature Friend groups, etc. In fact, this place didn’t even have a name, except that that jutting point of rock on the lake front was called Brentwood Point. Then bootleggers started using this spot to take their wares ashore. Again, the choice for Brentwood was purely accidental. That jutting rock was a good place to lay in a ship so that prying eyes couldn’t see it too easily.”
“Bootleggers, eh?”
“That’s right, sir.”
“Do many people know that?”
“Don’t know,” the professor said. “Maybe some of the old-timers remember it.”
“Hummmn . . . that rook touches onto that path, doesn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“The contraband angle hasn’t been looked into,” Ruddy said, jotting upon his pad.
“You think that could—”
“I’m not thinking at all, Professor,” Ruddy said quickly.
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“You’ve just brought in another angle that we had not thought of. It’s possible that somebody’s still contrabanding, not liquor now but other things. They could have been surprised and had to eliminate those who had glimpsed them. But go ahead, Professor.”
Professor Redfield pointed his forefinger to a shaded sector of a map showing an oblong strip along the coast of Lake Michigan.
“Right after World War I, a real estate shark, Stanton by name, came up here and bought up an area twice the size of what is now Brentwood Park. That area then included the forest that rises to the east of the town. (I’ll talk about that forest later.) Stanton had surveyors up and a town was mapped out.
Even the streets, more or less as they now run, were plotted out.
The main highways were projected; the present railway track was indicated; a water system was designed; even a site for an electric power station was designated; and then lots were put up for sale. A lot of ballyhoo accompanied all this. You know the kind: whispered rumors that fortunes were to be made if you got in on the ground fl oor and—”
“Was there much actual cheating done?”
“Str
angely, no. Stanton was a shark, but he always kept just within the law,” the professor explained. “At first, the sales of lots for houses were brisk. Brentwood Park was advertised as a summer colony, and some building actually took place. Then came the Depression and, almost overnight, Brentwood was a ghost town. Stanton, who was operating on a shoestring mar-gin, went into bankruptcy—”
“Aw,” Ruddy exclaimed, “how did that work out?”
“Not badly,” the professor replied. “You know how those things ago. Stanton lost everything and so did a few others who did not have enough cash on hand to tide ’em over. Stanton’s
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outfit went into receivership and was taken over by a moneyed crowd who felt that they could make a going concern of it in the future.”
“What happened to Stanton?”
“He’s dead. Died about five years ago,” the professor declared. “There was a lull of about five years during which Brentwood rose and fell. There was a huge turnover in land and houses. But many of the original buyers hung on; they liked it here. Then the group that bought Stanton out was in turn bought out by a group that eventually set up the Brentwood Park Bank and Trust Company. They had capital, and they had water, electricity, and gas brought in. Brentwood Park was on its feet at last—and that was when I bought me a lot here. But Brentwood Park showed nothing exceptional in growth; in fact, compared to other new settlements, it lagged. Then came World War II and a lot of easy money gotten out of war contracts. A boom hit Brentwood and it hasn’t stopped yet.”
“Were there any outstanding claims against Stanton that went unsettled or were settled in a way that left sour memories?”
Ruddy asked.
“No. You see, Chief, the Brentwood Park Bank crowd changed the idea of Brentwood Park. Instead of a summer colony, it was turned into a fashionable suburb. Everybody was happy. Over here”—he tapped a red sector—“one big house after another went up, one family trying to outdo the other. Then word got around about the advantages of anchoring yachts off Brentwood Point—and that did it. The big money came.
“Then came the erection of a whole series of big apartment hotels along the shore. Skyscraper studios were talked of, and Scottwood, the painter, came. A whole army of other artists of all descriptions followed him. Almost overnight, Brentwood