Think of some other killers, especially mass murderers. Charles
Starkweather. Richard Speck. Albert DeSaivo. All of them were
psychotic. All of them were driven by psychoses that had grown and
festered in them, that had slowly corrupted them since childhood. In
Leopold and Loeb, there were apparently no serious childhood traumas
that could have led to psychotic behavior. No black seed to bear fruit
later."
"So if the Butcher is two men," Preduski said forlornly, "we've got a
new Leopold and Loeb. Killing to prove their superiority."
Enderby began to pace. "Maybe. But then again, maybe it's more than
that. Something more complex than that."
"Like what?"
"I don't know. But I feel it's not exactly a Leopold and Loeb sort of
thing." He went to the table and stared at the remains of the meal that
had never been eaten. "Have you called Harris?"
Preduski said, "No."
"You should. He's been trying to get an image of the killer.
Hasn't had any luck. Maybe that's because he's focusing on a single
image, trying to envision just one face. Tell him there are two
killers. Maybe that'll breit open for him. Maybe he'll finally get a
handle on the case."
"We don't know there are two. That's just a theory. "Tell him anyway,"
Enderby said. "What harm can it do? "
"I should tell him tonight. I really should. But I just can't,"
Preduski said. "He's gotten behind in his work because of this case.
That's my fault. I'm always calling him, talking to him, pressuring him
about it. He's working late, trying to get caught up.
I don't want to disturb him." In the foyer by the front door, the
grandfather clock chimed the half hour, five minutes late again.
Preduski glanced at his wristwatch and said, "It'll soon be ten o'clock.
I've got to be going."
"Going? There's work to do here."
"I'm not on duty yet."
"Graveyard?"
"Yeah."
"I never knew you to hesitate about a bit of overtime."
"Well, I just got out of bed. I was cooking spaghetti when Headquarters
called me about this. Never got a chance to eat any of it. I'm
starving."
Enderby shook his head. "As long as I've known you, I don't believe
I've ever seen you eat a square meal. You're always grabbing sandwiches
so you don't have to stop working to eat. And at home you're cooking
spaghetti. You need a wife, Ira."
"A wife?"
"Other men have them."
"But me? Are you kidding?"
"Be good for you."
"Andy, look at me."
"I'm looking."
"Look closer."
"So?"
"You must be blind."
"What should I see?"
"What woman in her right mind would marry me?"
"Don't give me your usual crap, Ira," Enderby said with a smile.
"I know that under all of that selfdeprecating chatter, you've got a
healthy and proper respect for yourself."
"You're the psychiatrist."
"That's right. I'm not a suspect or a witness; you can't charm me with
that blather."
Preduski grinned.
"I'll bet there have been more than a few women who've fallen for that
calculated little-boy look of yours."
"A few," Preduski admitted uncomfortably. "But never the right woman."
"Who said anything about the right one? Most men are happy to settle
for half-right."
"Not me." Preduski looked at his watch again. "I really have to be
going. I'll come back around midnight. Martin probably won't even have
finished questioning the other tenants by then. It's a big building."
Dr. Enderby sighed as if the troubles of the world were on his
shoulders alone. "We'll be here too. Dusting the furniture for prints,
vacuuming the carpets for hairs and threads, finding nothing, but
working hard. The same old circus."
*Dim Graham's foot slipped off the rung.
Although he was still holding tightly with both hands, he panicked. He
struck out at the ladder with his feet, scrabbling wildly, as if the
ladder were alive, as if he had to kick it into submission before he
could regain his foothold on it.
"Graham, what's wrong?" Connie asked from her position on the ladder
above him. "Graham?"
Her voice sohered him. He stopped kicking. He hung by his hands until
he was breathing almost normally, until the vivid memories of Everest
had faded.
"Graham?"
With his feet he probed for a rung, found one after several seconds that
seemed like hours. "I'm all right. My foot slipped. I'm okay now."
"][)on't look down."
"I didn't. I won't."
He sought the next rung, stepped to it, continued the descent.
He felt feverish. The hair was damp at the back of his neck.
Perspiration beaded his forehead, jeweled his eyebrows, stung the
corners of his eyes, filmed his cheeks, brought a salty taste to his
lips. In spite of the perspiration, he was cold. He shivered as he
moved down the long ladder.
He was as much aware of the void at his back as he would have been of a
knife pressed between his shoulder blades.
On the thirty-first floor, Frank Bollinger entered the maintenance
supply room.
He saw the red door. Someone had put down the doorstop that was fixed
to it, so that it was open an inch or two. He knew immediately that
Harris and the woman had gone through there.
But why was the door ajar?
It was like a signpost. Beckoning him.
Alert for a trap, he advanced cautiously. He held the Walther PPK in
his right hand. He kept his left hand out in front of him, arm extended
all the way, to stop the door in case they tried to throw it open in his
face. He held his breath for those few steps, listening for the
slightest sound other than the soft squeak of his own shoes.
Nothing. Silence.
He used the toe of his shoe to push up the doorstop; then he pulled open
the door and walked onto the small platform. He had just enough time to
realize where he was, when the door closed behind him and all the lights
in the shaft went out.
At first he thought Harris had come into the maintenance room after him.
But when he tried the door, it was not locked. And when he opened it,
all the lights came on. The emergency lighting didn't burn twenty-four
hours a day; it came on only when one of the service entrances was open;
and that was why Harris had left the door ajar.
Bollinger was impressed by the system of lights and platforms and
ladders. Not every building erected in the 1920s would have been
designed with an eye toward emergencies. In fact, damned few
skyscrapers built since the war could boast any safety provisions.
These days, they expected you to wait in a stalled elevator until it was
repaired, no matter if that took ten hours or ten days; and if the lift
couldn't be repaired, you could risk a manually cranked descent, or you
could rot in it.
The more time he spent in the building, the deeper he penetrated it, the
more fascinating he found it to be. It was not on the scale of those
truly gargantuan stadiums and museums and highrises that Hitier had
designed for the "super race" just prior to and during the first days of
World War Two. But then Hitler's magnificent edifices had never been
realized in stone and mortar, whereas this place had risen.
He began to feel that the men who had designed and constructed it were
Olympians. He found his appreciation strange, for he knew that had he
been restricted to the halls and offices during the day, when the
building was full of people Dew R Kooniz and buzzing with commerce, he
would not have noticed the great size and high style of the structure.
One took for granted that which was commonplace; and to New Yorkers,