Ричард Деминг - The Second Richard Deming Mystery MEGAPACK®

“Hi, Nose,” he greeted me with dour friendliness. “Sit down and rest your bones.”

Taking the chair alongside his desk, I said, “How would you like to wrap up the Stocking Killer case?”

His expression became alert. “I’d love it.”

“I can give you a strong lead. It may not pan out, but I kind of think it will. There’s a condition, though.”

“Okay,” he said impatiently. “You get an exclusive.”

I shook my head. “That’s not the condition. I want a guarantee that you’ll never disclose to anyone where you got the tip and that I won’t be called as a trial witness.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Will we need your evidence to convict?”

“No.”

“Okay. You got it.”

I told him the whole story.

On the basis of what I had told him, Sergeant Burmeister requestioned the husbands of all six victims. Three of them reported that TV repairmen had been called to their homes. Unfortunately in two cases, arrangements had been made by their wives, the husbands were out when the repairman arrived, and they had no idea who had been called. The two men who had been out of town when their wives were murdered both had traveling jobs. Neither knew of any TV repair work being done in their homes, but both conceded it was possible their wives had called repairmen and had just neglected to mention it. The sixth man was sure no TV repairman had been to his home, but the man who had arranged for the service call himself said he had called Lyle Barton, and had a canceled check to prove it.

No response resulted from a subsequent public appeal, after Lyle’s arrest, for whoever had made the TV service calls to the two homes where the husbands didn’t know who their wives had engaged, but a number of things transpired before that.

On Friday, Sergeant Burmeister descended on Martha with a search warrant. In deference to me he explained he was there because it had been learned her husband made a TV service call on one of the victims of the Stocking Killer, and may have called on others, and that the police wanted a look at his repair-service records. However, along with authorizing the look at Lyle’s records, the warrant authorized search for tools that might have been used for illegal break-in and for “items which may have been illegally removed from the premises of any of the victims.”

Martha was considerably upset by the search, but she had no idea that I had instigated it.

The leather case and tin box were found where I had told the sergeant they would be, but Lyle’s records showed no repair calls to any of the victims’ homes other than to the one Burmeister already knew about.

Six of the stockings found in the tin box matched those used as murder weapons. The police lab stated there was no way to establish them as definite mates, because similar stockings were manufactured by the millions, but at least they were established as possible mates. The other two stockings were sent respectively to Kansas City and Chicago.

Monday afternoon Lyle was arrested when he stepped off the plane from Chicago.

Martha nearly fell apart. I thought she was going to have a nervous breakdown. Deciding she shouldn’t be left alone, I continued to stay with her instead of moving back to my own apartment.

Naturally I had myself taken off the story, because it was too close to home, but I kept in close touch with Fritz Burmeister so that I would know what was going on.

The sergeant was convinced Lyle was guilty, but his case was far from airtight. One thing that bothered him was Lyle’s records showing a service call to only one victim. Burmeister was morally convinced he had made at least the two other calls known about, and perhaps had also made calls to the homes of the two traveling men. He thought Lyle had been cunning enough not to enter anything about those calls in his records, but to enter the one where he had been paid by check because the visit could be proved.

He wouldn’t be able to make that sort of speculation from the witness stand, though.

Another setback was the reports from Kansas City and Chicago. Neither stocking matched the ones used to strangle the victims in those cities. It was also established that Lyle had arrived back in St. Louis from Kansas City the day before the murder there. So apparently the original police theory that those murders had been imitations of the Stocking Killer by other psychos was right after all, if Lyle actually was the Stocking Killer.

Burmeister had a possible explanation for that setback too, but it would never have been admissible as evidence. He theorized that Lyle had broken into a couple of places, intending to commit murder, had gotten as far as locating a stocking to use, then had somehow been frightened off and had carried the stocking away with him.

Despite these loopholes, Burmeister thought he had a pretty strong case. It was going to be difficult for the defense to explain that miniature burglar kit and the cache of stockings that included six exactly matching the six used as murder weapons. Then a second search warrant turned up a pair of black slacks, a black long-sleeved sweater and a matching black cloth cap in Lyle’s closet. The witness who had once seen the Stocking Killer from the rear, and had described him as wearing similar clothing, was asked to view him wearing the outfit from behind. She couldn’t identify him as the man she had seen that night, but she was willing to testify that he was of the same height and general build. On top of all that, Lyle’s psychiatric history was bound to influence the jury.

It was a boon to the prosecution that Lyle had no alibi for any of the murder dates. There is little question in my mind that Martha would have sworn he was never out of her sight on any of the occasions, except it was a matter of record that he was.

Because Tod was so young, Martha didn’t care to work regularly, preferring to be at home with her son, but she filled in at Barnes Hospital when nurses went on vacation, or simply wanted nights off. She was on call only for night duty, so that Tod could be left with Lyle, thereby saving baby-sitter costs.

It just happened that Martha was on nursing duty every night that the Stocking Killer struck—except Sergeant Burmeister surmised that it hadn’t “just happened” at all. He suspected Lyle had deliberately chosen those nights to commit murder because his wife was away.

Despite my concern over her, Martha rather quickly recovered from her initial emotional collapse. By Tuesday she had regained full control of herself, although she remained pale and drawn and refused to eat anything. Meantime a friend had taken Tod into her home until Martha could completely quiet down.

Even in the face of the devastating circumstantial evidence against her husband, Martha fiercely denied any possibility of his guilt. She hired George Brinker, St. Louis’ top criminal lawyer, to defend him.

I accompanied her when she went to see the man for the first trial-strategy conference after he had interviewed Lyle and had studied the evidence against him. He was a plump, smooth-looking man in his mid-forties with considerable personal charm.

He started off by saying, “The evidence against your husband is entirely circumstantial, of course, Mrs. Barton. And the prosecution must establish guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. It’s not up to us to disprove his guilt. All we have to do is cast doubt on it.”

“How do you plan to do that?” I inquired.

“Let’s start with the so-called burglar kit. That’s what the prosecution is calling it, but we’re calling it an emergency repair kit for electronic appliances. Your brother-in-law has explained to me how that so-called picklock is used as a tool to test electrical contacts, and how, when it is used that way, the gloves are necessary for insulation.”