Dell Shannon - Mark of Murder

You could kill from a ways oft with a gun. With guns. It wouldn't be as good, there wouldn't be as much blood, but you could kill more of them and still keep safe… He'd laughed and laughed excitedly, thinking about it, how it would be, do it like that. Slip out at night, and he could be maybe half a block away, and get them maybe two, three at a time, and then while they were running around like a flock of scared chickens, hunting him, all the time he'd be back in his secret place-waiting for the dark and to go out again. It would be like that.

And he knew where he could get the guns. There was a place not far away, guns in the window.

Vague memory stirred in his mind, about guns… He'd been a lot of places, but mostly country places, because he couldn't do many city jobs. Country places, where people hunted things. Rabbits and birds. Going out rabbit hunting, a man would say, passing along the fence by where you were. That's a nice stand of corn-and you with a day's work ahead… Going out people hunting, he thought to himself, and shook with laughter again. So he'd started up through his secret place, to go there and get the guns. This was a big, dark, strange place, with him the only one in it. He came out from where he'd made a kind of bed from an old broken-down sofa left there, and he was in a vast empty underground room cement-floored and walled. There were shapes against the walls, a big square furnace, pipes disconnected and rusty, a row of ancient refuse barrels, and empty shelves all along one wall. At the far end of the big room were stairs.

He'd drifted up them silently, though he knew there was none to hear anywhere around. At the top he was on a little square landing and there was a door, but it was half off its hinges, hung drunkenly open so he could see beyond. He stepped past the door, onto bare dusty flooring, to an irregularly shaped wide corridor. There was another door to the right there: it had something painted on it but a couple of letters were partly worn away and he didn't know what it meant-it said L D ES. Down at the middle of the corridor it widened out and there was something like a bar standing there.

He didn't go that way. He turned to the left and went through an open arch into another vast dark place: but he knew the way. He felt along carefully by the wall, until his feet told him he was nearing the door. The door was very heavy and had an iron bar across it inside; he pushed against that hard, and reluctantly the door creaked open and he came out into the night.

There was no moon, but he knew where he was. He was standing at the side, almost at the very end, of a big brick building, and ahead of him was a steep cement ramp leading to the street. He went up it.

It was late; he'd lain a long while thinking about all this, before deciding. There wasn't anybody around at all, streets dark and empty, and he walked quickly. After he'd got the stuff, he thought, he'd like to do one tonight, but it was too late-nobody around, nobody at all…

And he'd had a little job, to get it all back to the safe place. Because he was going to kill, and kill, and kill…

They'd never find him, and he'd need lots to kill so many… But he had it all there at last, and he was satisfied. Only, too late to go out and hunt any of them tonight. Have to wait for the dark again…

All day he had lain here, waiting for the dark. Now he was hungry, and what he'd got at that store last night was gone. He sat up, thinking about that slowly. For the dozenth time he picked up the newspaper and carried it to a place under the ventilation grill in the ceiling where light came in. He'd spelled out the words under the picture. Artist's sketch of the Slasher from his description. Have you seen this man?

It didn't look an awful lot like him, he thought. Except there was the mark-the terrible red mark-right across the face… They'd laughed at him, they'd called him – And there had been a pretty girl named Ellen, who had screamed and run. In sudden red fury, he crumpled up the paper and flung it away into a corner.

It wasn't dark yet. It wouldn't be dark for a while. But he was hungry. But they mustn't hunt him down. He was going to After hesitation, he started up through the dark, for his door to the outside. He had his hat pulled low over his eyes, and he thought he could pretend to have a cold, keep his handkerchief up.

There was a hamburger joint a block up where you could take it away with you, didn't have to eat there. He walked up to it fast. There were some other people there, eating or waiting for their hamburgers. He asked for two; when they were shoved across the counter at him he put down a silver dollar.

"Buck an' ten cents, mister."

He found the extra dime. He walked back quickly, carrying the food. Down in his safe place he ate slowly, enjoying the greasy hot flavor of beef and onions and pickle… Now he was lying here hungry for something else. For the dark. For the dark to come down, so he would know it was time. The right time to go out and start his night's hunting.

He held a gun on his lap, and now and then he touched it almost lovingly. The knife was good, but the gun would be good too. Better, now. Better for him. I'm a people hunter, he thought, and laughed. Most important guy in the whole Goddamned town. In all the papers. Everybody talking about him. The Slasher. Be the hell of a lot more important before he was done…

Laughing at him. Not wanting to look at him. Stupid, they said. The girls, the pretty girls looking at him and-He was on his feet, pacing excitedly, cradling the gun. A pretty girl named Ellen, screaming when he tried to kiss her…

Suddenly he yelled in a high savage voice, " What d'you think of me now, you bastards? All you Goddamned bastards-show you-show all of you- "

Nobody heard him at all, and after a while he stopped. Jesus God, wouldn't it ever get dark tonight?

Dwyer and Scarne came in while Palliser was still talking. Nothing had shown up, of course. Palliser had been a little excited to find a button missing from Cliff Elger's topcoat. "But it was a bigger button, and a different color, and who'd be wearing a topcoat in July?" And as for asking whether anybody had given away any clothes for salvage lately, you couldn't expect anything on that. If X had belatedly realized he'd left that button behind, and couldn't replace it on the jacket or cardigan, and gave it away to be rid of it, he wouldn't say so. The canny way he'd got rid of the gun…

Mendoza agreed inattentively. He had a county guide open in front of him and was studying the big detailed map of the downtown area.

"I only dropped in to report no progress too," said Dwyer. "I'm on my way down to Santa Monica to have a look at the wardrobe of a fellow named Ross. Don't know how well he knew Nestor-he's just there in the address book. And you'll likely be getting a formal complaint from a Wall Street type by the name of Marlowe. He wasn't home when I got there-seems he has a butler who also acts as his valet, all veddy-veddy, but it was his day off; the maid was scared of me and my warrant, and let me in. The master arrived just as I was looking over his second-best evening jacket, and he didn't like me at all. He said so. Police, he said, and it was a dirty word coming from him, pawing over his clothes-very highhanded, and the idea of trying to connect him to a sordid crime- Quite a little pile there, I'd say."

"Money and family," said Mendoza, sounding faintly amused. "But you're not going anywhere else. All that can be put off-our Slasher is the hell of a lot more important. That one we've got to get, and in a hurry."

"You have any bright ideas how to do it, beyond what we're doing? Somebody'll recognize him and say so-he's got to eat, he'll be showing somewhere-”

"Eventually!" said Mendoza. "It's not good enough. Yes, I've got a bright idea. Jimmy! Call down to Traffic and ask Fletcher to come up here. Now look." He pointed at the map. "He's stuck to the downtown area up to now, and never above Third. This is his part of town. Incidentally, remembering what we got from up north, the part of any town where that sort does land-the drifters, the almost bums. On and around Skid Row. All right. We had one quite promising lead, you remember, from that leg work on men with scarred faces. A man like that had rented a room over on Boardman, said his name was John Tenney. Had, we subsequently found, paid the landlady partly in silver dollars. Only he skipped before we laid hands on him. He could have skipped because he heard our man questioning the landlady-we don't know."