Billie Mosiman - Wireman

“Nick, I want you to calm down…”

All the drawers in the chest and dresser were yanked out and turned upside down on the floor, clothes and socks spilling around the two brothers.

“Where is it? I want to know where it is!”

“Nick, you’re deluding yourself. You have the garrote.” Daley stood apart from his brother.

The dresser was pulled away from the wall and tumbled forward, the mirror cracking on the foot-board of the bed. Nick threw open the closet door and furiously jerked clothes off hangers.

Nick rushed down the hallway to the workroom.

“Where are you going?” Daley asked, trying to stop his brother.

“You’ve got it hidden in here,” Nick said, pounding on the locked door.

Nick looked at Daley, then without hesitation stepped back and ran into the door with his shoulder. The door burst open and smacked the wall behind it.

“Don’t break up this room, Nick. You’ve lost your mind.”

“It’s here somewhere. I know it.”

Daley stepped back into the doorway, and watched sorrowfully as Nick methodically demolished the antique pieces that would have been worth thousands when refinished. Before Nick was through, Daley turned away and went down the stairs, his shoulders drooping. There were no solutions, no help.

In Nick’s bedroom Daley got the wooden box from beneath the bed and opened the lid. The garrote lay coiled on the velvet inside.

The destruction upstairs finally ceased. The house filled with silence. Daley sat waiting, holding the box.

Nick appeared at the bedroom door. His face glazed over when he saw what his brother held in his lap. It was as if a film of clear, tough plastic suddenly coated Nick from head to foot. He was frozen in the doorway for long moments while the two brothers stared at each other in silence.

Finally Nick spoke. “You put it there,” he whispered in total disbelief.

Daley shook his head slowly. Nick was totally mad. His mind was shattered.

“You did,” Nick insisted. “You put it in my room.”

Again, Daley shook his head. Still without expression, Nick crossed the space between them, reached out both hands, and took Daley’s throat in his hands.

Daley looked up into his brother’s eyes with a silent plea.

The box fell to the floor and the garrote dropped from Nick’s hands into a spiraled loop, one of the handles resting on Nick’s shoe.

Outside thunderheads covered the sun and a shivering cold rain deluged the city.

SAM BARTHOLOMEW sat in an unmarked car across the street from the Ringer residence. Next to him in the driver’s seat was Officer Trumbine, who after three days had confessed his nickname on the force was “Patty” and it was all right if Bartholomew called him that. Patty barely made the five-ten height requirement for the department, and weighed, soaking wet and with his clothes on, a slight hundred and thirty pounds.

In the backseat, against Garbo’s direct orders, Jack DeShane reclined smoking a cigarette. He slept in the car during the eleven-to-seven shift and after a brief run home to shave, shower, and eat, he climbed back into a police car to take up vigil. The officers assigned to watching the Ringer residence understood Jack’s involvement and were charitable about his constant presence, though it would have been easier if he were not around. He made them all feel as fidgety as hot grease popping in a skillet.

Sam always took the evening shift. Out of the four murders, two were committed at night, two during the day, so he wasn’t working percentages. He was responding to gut-level instinct. He felt convinced the next attempted murder would occur during the evening.

All three men were weary and disgruntled. Since the evening Sam talked Garbo into a seven-day, twenty-four-hour surveillance on the Ringers, there had not been a single movement from the house. There were plenty of boring hours used up on suppositions, none of them very logical. The fact was no one understood why neither Ringer brother had come out of the house.

The 1970 navy Chrysler Imperial registered in Daley’s name had a tracking device clamped beneath the back bumper. But they had not been tracking the car anywhere. The door of the house stayed closed, the shades drawn, and there was nothing to do on the eight-hour rotating shifts but sit and watch the street.

Garbo did not like it. Earlier in the morning he complained to Sam, “I’m using thirty men, and I’m shifting everyone in the precinct for this. If they don’t move soon, I’m afraid I’ll have to call it off. We can’t afford it. Around here they’re referring to these three days of do-nothing as the ‘Dead Ringer Runaround.’ I can’t justify the cost and time if something doesn’t happen soon.”

“Something’s brewing, Garbo. Trust my instincts. They can’t stay locked up in there forever,” Sam pleaded.

“Screw forever. If they don’t come out within the next twenty-four hours, I’ll have to call my men off, and let you bring this Nick to the station for questioning.”

“If you do that, Garbo, you’ll be making a mistake. We only have circumstantial. You’re not going to close down this case on what we have.”

“I also have some tired men who’d rather be at home with their wives to say nothing of a commissioner who’s going ape-shit every three seconds.”

“He’ll come out,” Sam promised. “And when he does he’ll go after number five.”

“Sam, if it was anyone else but you telling me this I’d have him hauled off to a fantasy island. I hope to Christ you know what you’re doing. I know it all sounds right, but thirty men!” Garbo shook his head.

Sam peered through the closed window at the dark house and refused to believe he was wrong. They had Nick Ringer’s record from the reconnaissance division he was in during his time in Vietnam. They had the information from the Tacoma, Washington, V.A. It all fit. Not perfectly, not so close the edges dovetailed, but it fit. Nick was a mental case. He had used a garrote in the war. Not only used it, but beheaded his enemies with it. He had a job where he was free to do as he pleased while in the company van. He had the background, the time available, the expertise, the intelligence, and the training to be a killer.

Whether other people knew it or not, Sam realized the veterans of Vietnam were different from the veterans like himself who had lived through World War II and Korea. He expected in the decades to come these differences would make themselves known more and more, and some of these men would need a lot of therapy.

“Maybe they’re playing Parcheesi in there,” Patty remarked, slurping coffee from a Styrofoam cup.

“We’ve already gone over the possibilities of what they might be doing” Weariness had taken Jack’s voice hostage.

A light pattering of rain fell onto the car. Sam stared into the dismal night. He could no longer referee for his two companions. Let them argue, he thought. It passed the time.

“You want to play another hand of solitaire with me?” Patty asked of Sam.

Sam turned swollen eyes on him and blinked slowly. Had he ever been as young as Patty and Jack? He sincerely doubted it. “No, thanks, Patty. I’ll pass this time.”

“What about you, Jack? Try your luck?” Patty asked.

“What the hell. Climb back here and let me beat you.”

Patty crawled over the front seat, head first.

“Why don’t you get out and go around sometimes?” Sam asked testily. “Why you always crawling over the damn seat?”

“Aw, fuck, Sam, lay off, will ya? It’s raining out there.”

Sam slid across the seat to sit behind the steering wheel just in case Nick came out of the house.

“I’ll deal ’em,” Jack said, more amicable than he had been for the previous four hours. “After this hand, let’s play blackjack.”