Эд Макбейн: Lady, Lady, I Did It!

But all of the cops of the 87th, and many of the citizens who lived in the precinct territory, understood that Kling was one of them.

Oh, there was none of that condolence-card sentiment about their understanding, none of that “your loss is my loss” horse manure. Actually, Kling’s loss was not their loss, and they knew it. Claire Townsend was only a name to most of them, and not even that much to some of them. But Kling was a policeman. Every other cop in the precinct knew that he was a part of the club, and you didn’t go around hurting club members or the people they loved.

And so, whereas none of them agreed to it, whereas all of them discussed the crime but none of them discussed what he personally was going to do about it, a curious thing happened on October 14. On October 14 every cop in the precinct stopped being a cop. Well, he didn’t turn in his badge and his service revolver — nothing as dramatic as that. But being a cop in the 87th meant being a lot of things, and it meant being them all of the time. On October 14 the cops of the 87th still went about their work, which happened to be crime prevention, and they went about it in much the same way as always. Except for one difference.

They arrested muggers, and pushers, and con men, and rapists, and drunks, and junkies, and prostitutes. They discouraged loitering and betting on the horses and unlawful assembly and crashing red lights and gang warfare. They rescued cats and babies and women with their heels caught in grates. They helped school children across the street. They did everything just the way they always did it. Except for the difference.

The difference was this: their ordinary daily chores, the things they did every day of the week — their work — became a hobby. Or an avocation. Or call it what you will. They were doing it, and perhaps they did it well, but under the guise of working at all the petty little infractions that bugged cops everywhere, they were really working on the Kling Case. They didn’t call it The Bookstore Case, or The Claire Townsend Case, or The Massacre Case, or anything of the sort. It was The Kling Case. From the moment their day started to the moment their day ended, they were actively at work on it, listening, watching, waiting. Although only four men were officially assigned to the case, the man who’d done that bookshop killing had 202 policemen looking for him.

Steve Carella was one of those policemen.

He had gone home at midnight the night before. At 2:00, unable to sleep, he had called Kling.

“Bert?” he had said. “How are you?”

“I’m fine,” Kling had answered.

“Did I wake you?”

“No,” Kling had said. “I was up.”

“What were you doing, kid?”

“Watching. Watching the street.”

They had talked a while longer, and then Carella had said goodbye and hung up. He had not fallen asleep until 4:00 that morning. The image of Kling in his room, alone, watching the street, had kept drifting in and out of his dreams. At 8:00 he had awakened, dressed and driven down to the squadroom.

Meyer Meyer was already there.

“I want to try something on you, Steve,” Meyer said.

“Go ahead.”

“Do you buy this guy as a fanatic?”

“No,” Carella said immediately.

“Me, neither. I’ve been up all night, thinking about what happened in that bookstore. I couldn’t sleep a wink.”

“I didn’t sleep well either,” Carella said.

“I figured if the guy is a fanatic, he’s going to do the same thing tomorrow, right? He’ll walk into a supermarket tomorrow and he’ll shoot four more people at random, am I right?”

“That’s right,” Carella said.

“But that’s only if he’s a lunatic. And it sounds like a madman doesn’t it? The guy walks into a store and starts blasting? He’s got to be nuts, right?” Meyer nodded. “But I don’t buy it.”

“Why not?”

“Instinct. Intuition. I don’t know why. I just know this guy is not a madman. I think he wanted somebody in that store dead. I think he knew his victim was going to be in that store, and I think he walked in and began blasting and didn’t give a damn who else he killed, so long as he killed the person he was after. That’s what I think.”

“That’s what I think, too,” Carella said.

“Good. So, assuming he got who he was after, I think we ought to—”

“Suppose he didn’t, Meyer?”

“Didn’t what?”

“Get who he was after.”

“I thought of that, too, Steve, but I ruled it out. It suddenly came to me in the middle of the night — Jesus, suppose he was after one of the survivors? We’d better get police protection to them right away. But then I ruled it out.”

“I did, too,” Carella said.

“How do you figure?”

“There were three areas in that shop,” Carella said. “The two aisles, and the high counter where Fennerman was sitting. If our killer wanted Fennerman, he’d have shot directly at him, at the counter. If he’d wanted somebody in the far aisles, where the other three survivors were standing, he’d have blasted in that direction. But, instead, he walked into the shop and began shooting immediately into the nearest aisle. The way I figure it, his victim is dead, Meyer. He got who he was after.”

“There’re a few other things to consider, Steve,” Meyer said.

“What?”

“We don’t know who he was after, so we’ll have to start asking questions. But remember, Steve—”

“I know.”

“What?”

“Claire Townsend was killed.”

Meyer nodded. “There’s a possibility,” he said, “that Claire was the one he was gunning for.”

The man in the seersucker suit was named Herbert Land.

He taught philosophy at the university on the fringes of the precinct territory. He often went to The Browser because it was close to the school and he could pick up secondhand Plato and Descartes there at reasonable prices. The man in the seersucker suit was dead because he had been standing in the aisle closest to the door when the killer had cut loose with his barrage.

Herbert Land...    D.O.A.

Land had lived in a development house in the nearby suburb of Sands Spit. He had lived there with his wife and two children. The oldest of the kids was six. The youngest was three. Herbert Land’s widow, a woman named Veronica, was twenty-eight years old. The moment Meyer and Carella saw her standing in the doorway of the development house they realized she was pregnant. She was a plain woman with brown hair and blue eyes, but she stood in the doorway with a quiet dignity that belied the tearstreaked face and the red-rimmed eyes. She stood and asked them quietly who they were, and then asked to see their identification, standing in the classic posture of the pregnant woman, her belly extended, one hand resting almost on the small of her back, her head slightly tilted. They showed their shields and their ID cards, and she nodded briefly and allowed them to enter her home.

The house was very still. Veronica Land explained that her mother had come to take the children away for a few days. The children did not yet know their father had been killed. She would have to tell them, she knew, but she wanted to be composed when she did, and she had not yet adjusted to the fact herself. She spoke in a low, controlled voice, but the tears sat just behind her eyes, waiting to be released, and the detectives picked through the conversation delicately and cautiously, not wanting to release the torrent. She sat very stiffly in an easy chair, carrying her unborn child like a huge medicine ball in her lap. She did not take her eyes from the detectives as they spoke. Carella had the feeling that every shred of her being was furiously concentrated on what they were saying. He had the feeling that she was clinging to the conversation for support, that if she once lost its thread she would burst into uncontrollable tears.