Ричард Деминг - The Second Richard Deming Mystery MEGAPACK®

I noticed he made no mention of the glass cutter and rubber suction cup. I said, “How are you going to explain the stockings?”

“Ah, but we don’t have to, Mr. Conner. It’s up to the prosecution to prove they are the mates of the ones used in the murders, and the two extra stockings are certainly going to confuse that issue. We don’t have to explain why the defendant kept nylon stockings in a locked box. I don’t care if the jury thinks he’s eccentric; I just don’t want them to think he’s a murderer.”

He similarly felt that he could cast doubt that Lyle had met his victims by making service calls to their homes. He planned to block any reference by the prosecution to the two service calls where it had not been established who the repairman was, which would leave them with only the one call Lyle had admitted making to present to the jury. The lawyer felt he could convince the jury that was pure coincidence.

When we left Brinker’s office, I came away with the feeling that he really didn’t have much hope of acquittal, but had been optimistic merely for Martha’s benefit. From her pinched expression, I suspected she had gotten the same impression, but I didn’t mention it.

By now Martha seemed well enough not to require me underfoot any longer. She moved Tod back home and I returned to my apartment. Periodically I dropped by to check on her, and while she seemed terribly depressed, she was holding up well enough to function.

Trial had been set for six weeks after the arrest, which put it in mid-May. A week beforehand I happened to be in the city room when a call came in that there was a murder on Dover Place, down on the south side. I volunteered to go out on it, and thus got the assignment.

I didn’t realize until I got down there that Dover Place was the street just south of Bellerive Boulevard. The house was the one whose back faced the rear of Lyle’s and Martha’s.

There were several people inside in the front room: a couple of uniformed cops, a man from the police lab, a dazed-looking man of about thirty seated in an easy chair, and Sergeant Fritz Burmeister. The lab man was just leaving, apparently having finished his work.

When I glanced curiously at the seated man, Burmeister said, “Husband. Come on upstairs.”

I followed him up the stairs. In the same bedroom I had once looked into from Martha’s kitchen window, the same blonde I had watched undress lay on the bed wearing a filmy nightgown. Her face was purple and was horribly bloated because a nylon stocking had been knotted tightly around her throat.

“Husband found her when he came home this morning,” the sergeant said wearily. “He works nights. Same old story. No sexual assault, no prints. Both doors have inside bolts. A small square was neatly cut out of the glass pane in the back door, right next to the bolt. As usual, the second stocking is missing.”

I tore my gaze away from the dead woman. “What’s this do for Lyle?” I asked.

“Clears him,” he said in the same weary voice. “How the hell could he be the Stocking Killer when he’s locked in a maximum security cell?”

That’s almost the end of the story. Lyle was released with full apologies and again he and Martha seem radiantly happy.

There have been no more Stocking Killer murders, but recently I’ve been thinking. I keep remembering Martha saying, “The way I feel about Lyle, I’d continue to love him even if he became a raving maniac. I’d do anything in the world for him.”

I also keep remembering that Martha had judo training when she was an Army nurse. An hour a week for twelve weeks, I think she said, certainly not enough to win her a black belt, but maybe enough to handle another woman not much larger than herself.

Anybody can buy a glass cutter. They’re on sale in every dime store.

Martha doesn’t work at the hospital nights anymore either. Now she’s on call only for days, and arranges for a baby-sitter when she’s called in.

The last time they had me down to dinner, little Tod took me down to the basement to show me something. The partition had been taken down and there was no longer a television repair shop there.

I was afraid to ask why Lyle had gotten out of the TV repair business, but I can’t help wondering if Martha insisted on it, just to remove future temptation.

Originally published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine , March 1975.

I was working the four p.m.-to-midnight trick out of Homicide when the call came in from the Carondelet Precinct, way down on the south side of St. Louis.

I logged the call as coming in at 6:02 p.m., but it was 6:30 by the time I got to the scene, a good ten miles from headquarters.

The address was a two-story frame house, probably fifty years old, but in good condition. In front of it was a police car, a black sedan with MD license plates, and a crowd of onlookers.

Harry Dodge, who had gone through the Police Academy with me a quarter of a century ago, opened the door. I had forgotten that Harry now worked out of the Carondelet Precinct. He had never made it beyond the rank of patrolman and was still in uniform, but one several sizes larger than he wore when we graduated from the academy.

“Hi, Sod,” he said in a pleased voice as I moved inside past him, then poked a finger into my belly. “Hey, you been putting it on, buddy.”

“If I was a pot, I wouldn’t comment about a kettle,” I growled at him.

A lean, leathery-looking man in a tan jacket and a plump woman in a house dress sat in the front room, the man probably fifty, the woman perhaps ten years younger. After closing the door behind me, Harry introduced them as Henry Crowder and his wife Emma, then added that Mrs. Crowder had discovered the body.

I asked both of them how they did, and asked them to please stand by until I could get to them. Then to Harry I said, “Where is it?”

“In the kitchen.”

He led the way into a central hall where we met a tall, graying man just emerging from the kitchen. He was carrying a medical bag.

Coming to a halt, Harry said, “This is Dr. Lischer, Sod, the victim’s doctor. Mrs. Crowder called him instead of us when she discovered the body. After talking to her, he phoned the precinct before he came over.” To the doctor he said, “Sergeant Sod Harris of the Homicide Squad, Doc.”

Shifting his medical bag from his right hand to his left. Dr. Lischer shook hands with me. “Glad to know you, Sergeant. Terrible thing. She was only twenty-eight.”

“They’re all terrible,” I said. “Mind sticking around a few minutes until after I’ve had a look at the body?”

“No, of course not.”

He went on into the front room. Harry and I continued into the kitchen. Another uniformed cop was in there, leaning against the back door. He was in his mid-twenties and looked vaguely familiar.

There was also a corpse in the room. It belonged to a fairly attractive blonde, slim and pleasantly contoured. She was wearing a light cloth coat, unbuttoned and wide open, over a street dress, no hat and an expression of surprise. She lay flat on her back in the center of the kitchen with the handle of what appeared to be a butcher knife protruding from between her breasts. On the floor to the left of her body was an open purse from which a number of items had fallen when it dropped to the floor. To her right was an old-fashioned iron door key. It seemed apparent that she had been stabbed just after entering by the back door, apparently as she was in the act of replacing the key in her voluminous purse.

The young patrolman said, “Hi, Sarge.”

“Hi,” I said. “I know you, but I can’t place from where.”

“Carl Budd. You were on the first homicide call I ever answered, back when I was a rookie. The Thursday-night Strangler.”