Lawrence Block: A Stab in the Dark

God knows mine did. Nine years ago I was a detective on the NYPD. I lived on Long Island in a house with a lawn and a backyard and a barbecue grill and a wife and two sons. I had moved, all right, though it was sometimes difficult to determine the direction. Surely my life had changed.

I tapped the file folder. "Pinell," I said. "How sure is it he didn't kill Barbara Ettinger?"

"Gilt-edged, Matt. Bottled in bond. He was in Bellevue at the time."

"People have been known to slip in and out."

"Granted, but he was in a straitjacket. That hampers your movement a little. Besides, there's things that set the Ettinger killing apart from the others. You only notice them if you look for them, but they're there."

"Like what?"

"Number of wounds. Ettinger had the lowest number of wounds of all eight victims. The difference isn't major but maybe it's enough to be significant. Plus all the other victims had wounds in the thighs. Ettinger had nothing in the thighs or legs, no punctures. Thing is, there was a certain amount of variation among the other victims. He didn't stamp out these murders with a cookie cutter. So the discrepancies with Ettinger didn't stand out at the time. The fewer wounds and the no wounds in the thighs, you can look at it that he was rushed, he heard somebody or thought he heard somebody and he didn't have time to give her the full treatment."

"Sure."

"The thing that made it so obvious that it was the Icepick guy who cooled her, well, you know what that was."

"The eyes."

"Right." He nodded approval. "All of the victims were stabbed through the eyes. One shot through each eyeball. That never made the papers. We held it back the way you always try and hold one or two things back to keep the psychos from fooling you with false confessions. You wouldn't believe how many clowns already turned themselves in for the slashings down the street."

"I can imagine."

"And you have to check 'em all out, and then you have to write up each interrogation, and that's the real pain in the ass. Anyway, getting back to Ettinger. The Icepick guy always went for the eyes. We kept the wraps on that detail, and Ettinger got it in the eye, so what are you going to figure? Who's gonna give a shit if she got it in the thighs or not when you've got an eyeball puncture to run with?"

"But it was only one eye."

"Right. Okay, that's a discrepancy, but it lines up with the fewer punctures and the no wounds in the thighs. He's in a hurry. No time to do it right. Wouldn't you figure it that way?"

"Anybody would."

"Of course. You want some more coffee?"

"No thanks."

"I guess I'll pass myself. I've had too much already today."

"How do you figure it now, Frank?"

"Ettinger? What do I figure happened?"

"Uh-huh."

He scratched his head. Vertical frown lines creased his forehead on either side of his nose. "I don't think it was anything complicated," he said. "I think somebody read the papers and watched television and got turned on by the stories about the Icepick guy. You get these imitators every now and then. They're psychos without the imagination to think up their own numbers so they hitch a ride on somebody else's craziness. Some loony watched the six o'clock news and went out and bought an icepick."

"And happened to get her in the eye by chance?"

"Possible. Could be. Or it could be it just struck him as a good idea, same as it did Pinell. Or something leaked."

"That's what I was thinking."

"Far as I can remember, there was nothing in the papers or on the news. Nothing about the eye wounds, I mean. But maybe there was and then we squelched it but not before this psycho read it or heard it and it made an impression. Or maybe it never got into the media but the word was around. You got a few hundred cops who know something, plus everybody who's around for the postmortems, plus everybody who sees the records, all the clerks and all, and each of them tells three people and those people all talk, and how long does it take before a lot of people know about it?"

"I see what you mean."

"If anything, the business with the eyes makes it look like it was just a psycho. A guy who tried it once for a thrill and then let it go."

"How do you figure that, Frank?"

He leaned back, interlaced his fingers behind his head. "Well, say it's the husband," he said. "Say he wants to kill her because she's fucking the mailman, and he wants to make it look like the Icepick Prowler so he won't carry the can for it himself. If he knows about the eyes, he's gonna do both of them, right? He's not taking any chances. A nut, he's something else again. He does one eye because it's something to do, and then maybe he's bored with it so he doesn't do the other one. Who knows what goes through their fucking heads?"

"If it's a psycho, then there's no way to tag him."

"Of course there isn't. Nine years later and you're looking for a killer without a motive? That's a needle in a haystack when the needle's not even there. But that's all right. You take this and play with it, and after you've run the string you just tell London it must have been a psycho. Believe me, he'll be happy to hear it."

"Why?"

"Because that's what he thought nine years ago, and he got used to the idea. He accepted it. Now he's afraid it's somebody he knows and that's driving him crazy, so you'll investigate it all for him and tell him everything's okay, the sun still comes up in the east every morning and his daughter was still killed by a fucking Act of God. He can relax again and go back to his life. He'll get his money's worth."

"You're probably right."

"Course I'm right. You could even save yourself running around and just sit on your ass for a week and then tell him what you'll wind up telling him anyway. But I don't suppose you'll do that, will you?"

"No, I'll give it my best shot."

"I figured you'd at least go through the motions. What it is, you're still a cop, aren't you, Matt?"

"I suppose so. In a way. Whatever that means."

"You don't have anything steady, huh? You just catch a piece of work like this when it comes along?"

"Right."

"You ever think about coming back?"

"To the department? Not very often. And never very seriously."

He hesitated. There were questions he wanted to ask, things he wanted to say to me, but he decided to leave them unsaid. I was grateful for that. He got to his feet and so did I. I thanked him for the time and the information and he said an old friend was an old friend and it was a pleasure to be able to help a pal out. Neither of us mentioned the hundred dollars that had changed hands. Why should we? He'd been glad to get it and I was glad to give it. A favor's no good unless you pay for it. One way or the other, you always do.

It had rained a little while I was with Fitzroy. It wasn't raining when I got back outside, but it didn't feel as though it was through for the day. I had a drink around the corner on Third Avenue and watched part of the newscast. They showed the police artist's sketch of the Slasher, the same drawing that was on the front page of the Post . It showed a round-faced black man with a trimmed beard and a cap on his head. Mad zeal glinted in his large almond-shaped eyes.

"Imagine that comin' up the street at you," the bartender said. "I'll tell you, there's a lot of guys gettin' pistol permits on the strength of this one. I'm thinkin' about fillin' out an application myself."

I remember the day I stopped carrying a gun. It was the same day I turned in my shield. I'd had a stretch of feeling terribly vulnerable without that iron on my hip, and now I could hardly recall how it had felt to walk around armed in the first place.

I finished my drink and left. Would the bartender get a gun? Probably not. More people talked about it than did it. But whenever there's the right kind of nut making headlines, a Slasher or an Icepick Prowler, a certain number of people get pistol permits and a certain number of others buy illegal guns. Then some of them get drunk and shoot their wives. None of them ever seems to wind up nailing the Slasher.