At about ten-fifteen, neighbors heard shots from the Higgins residence, a two-story one-family pink stucco affair in the middle of a block of similar hones. Mr. Higgins, it was learned later, had suddenly erupted from his bedroom, brandishing a .30-.30 hunting rifle and, being annoyed at the shrieks of his wife and sister, had fired seven shells at them, killing his wife on the spot and wounding his sister in the hand and shoulder.
Mrs. Stodbetter, wounded and scared out of her wits, raced screaming out the front door of the house, crying for the police and shouting, “Murder! Murder!” At this point, neighbors called the police. One neighbor additionally phoned three newspapers and two television stations, thereby earning forty dollars in “news-tips” rewards.
By chance, a mobile television unit was at that moment on the Belt Parkway, returning from having seen off a prime minister at Idlewild Airport. This unit was at once diverted to Canarsie, where it took up a position across the street from the scene of carnage and went to work with a Zoomar lens.
In the meantime, Mister Higgins had barricaded himself in his house, firing at anything that moved.
The two cameramen in the mobile unit worked their hearts out. One concentrated on the movements of the police and firemen and neighbors and ambulance attendants, while the other used the Zoomar lens to search for Mr. Higgins. He found him occasionally, offering the at-home audience brief glimpses of a stocky balding man in brown trousers and undershirt, stalking from window to window on the second floor of the house.
The show lasted for nearly an hour. There were policemen everywhere, and firemen everywhere, and neighbors milling around down at the corner, where the police had roped the block off, and occasionally Mr. Higgins would stick his rifle out a window and shoot at somebody. The police used loudspeakers to tell Higgins he might as well give up, they had the place surrounded and could eventually starve him out anyway. Higgins used his own good lungs to shout obscenities back and challenge anyone present to hand-to-hand combat.
The police fired tear gas shells at the house, but it was a windy day and all the windows in the Higgins house were either open or broken. Higgins was able to throw all the shells back out of the house again.
The show lasted for nearly an hour. Then it ended, suddenly and dramatically.
Higgins had showed himself to the Zoomar lens again, for the purpose of shooting either the camera or its operator. All at once he yelped and threw the rifle away. The rifle bounced onto the porch roof, slithered down to the edge, hung for a second against the drain, and finally fell barrel first onto the lawn.
Meanwhile, Higgins was running through the house, shouting like a wounded bull. He thundered down the stairs and out, hollering, to fall into the arms of the waiting police.
They had trouble holding him. At first they thought he was actually trying to get away, but then one of them heard what it was he was shouting: “My hands! My hands!”
They looked at his hands. The palms and the palm-side of the fingers were red and blistering, from what looked like severe burns. There was another burn on his right cheek and another one on his right shoulder.
Higgins, thoroughly chastened and bewildered, was led away for burn ointment and jail. The television crew went on back to Manhattan. The neighbors went home and telephoned their friends.
On-duty policemen had been called in from practically all of the precincts in Brooklyn. Among them was Detective-Sergeant William Stevenson. Stevenson frowned thoughtfully at Higgins as that unhappy individual was led away, and then strolled over to look at the rifle. He touched the stock, and it was somewhat warm but that was all.
He picked it up and turned it around. There, on the other side of the stock, burned into the wood, were the crudely-shaped letters, “The Scorpion.”
You don’t get to be Precinct Captain on nothing but political connections. Those help, of course, but you need more than that. As Captain Hanks was fond of pointing out, you needed as well to be both more imaginative than most — “You gotta be able to second-guess the smart boys” — and to be a complete realist — “You gotta have both feet on the ground.” If these were somewhat contradictory qualities, it was best not to mention the fact to Captain Hanks.
The realist side of the captain’s nature was currently at the fore. “Just what are you trying to say, Stevenson?” he demanded.
“I’m not sure,” admitted Stevenson. “But we’ve got these two things. First, there’s the getaway car from that bank job. The wheels melt for no reason at all, and somebody burns ‘The Scorpion’ onto the trunk. Then, yesterday, this guy Higgins out in Canarsie. He says the rifle all of a sudden got too hot to hold, and he’s got the burn marks to prove it. And there on the rifle stock it is again. ‘The Scorpion’.”
“He says he put that on there himself,” said the captain.
Stevenson shook his head. “His lawyer says he put it on there. Higgins says he doesn’t remember doing it. That’s half the lawyer’s case. He’s trying to build up an insanity defense.”
“He put it on there himself, Stevenson,” said the captain with weary patience. “What are you trying to prove?”
“I don’t know. All I know is it’s the nuttiest thing I ever saw. And what about the getaway car? What about those tires melting?”
“They were defective,” said Hanks promptly.
“All four of them at once? And what about the thing written on the trunk?”
“How do I know?” demanded the captain. “Kids put it on before the car was stolen, maybe. Or maybe the hoods did it themselves, who knows? What do they say?”
“They say they didn’t do it,” said Stevenson. “And they say they never saw it before the robbery and they would have noticed it if it’d been there.”
The captain shook his head. “I don’t get it,” he admitted. “What are you trying to prove?”
“I guess,” said Stevenson slowly, thinking it out as he went along, “I guess I’m trying to prove that somebody melted those tires, and made that rifle too hot, and left his signature behind.”
“What? You mean like in the comic books? Come on, Stevenson! What are you trying to hand me?”
“All I know,” insisted Stevenson, “is what I see.”
“And all I know,” the captain told him, “is Higgins put that name on his rifle himself. He says so.”
“And what made it so hot?”
“Hell, man, he’d been firing that thing at people for an hour! What do you think made it hot?”
“All of a sudden?”
“He noticed it all of a sudden, when it started to burn him.”
“How come the same name showed up each time, then?” Stevenson asked desperately.
“How should I know? And why not, anyway? You know as well as I do these things happen. A bunch of teen-agers burgle a liquor store and they write ‘The Golden Avengers’ on the plate glass in lipstick. It happens all the time. Why not ‘The Scorpion’? It couldn’t occur to two people?”
“But there’s no explanation—” started Stevenson.
“What do you mean, there’s no explanation? I just gave you the explanation. Look, Stevenson, I’m a busy man. You got a nutty idea — like Wilcox a few years ago, remember him? Got the idea there was a fiend around loose, stuffing all those kids into abandoned refrigerators to starve. He went around trying to prove it, and getting all upset, and pretty soon they had to put him away in the nut hatch. Remember?”
“I remember,” said Stevenson.
“Forget this silly stuff, Stevenson,” the captain advised him.