By Reason of Insanity (59 page)

Much later, just before his departure, Bishop stuck his finger in a pool of thickening blood and printed his latest public name on the dresser mirror. Then he disappeared into the gloom of Gotham like a bat out of hell.

On Tuesday morning he had returned to Jersey City, going right to the Driver Qualification Center at Roosevelt Stadium. He presented his birth certificate and driver’s permit, and quickly passed the written examination and eye test. With his permit stamped for practice driving, he made an appointment to take the road test the following week.

In Journal Square he stopped at an auto school and paid thirty-five dollars to have a licensed instructor accompany him in a registered New Jersey vehicle when he took the road test. He was told to be at the school 7:30 on the morning of his appointment.

Back in New York by early afternoon, Bishop walked from the underground train terminal to 630 Fifth Avenue at 50th Street, across from St. Patrick’s Cathedral. He rode the escalator to the government passport office on the mezzanine, where he filled out a passport application and paid his money. The lines were long, including one for pictures in the building’s basement. He didn’t like the idea of having his picture taken but there was nothing to be done. At least, he kept reminding himself, with the glasses and beard he didn’t look much like Thomas Bishop.

By the time he had finished everything it was after four but he considered the afternoon well spent. Barring acts of God or war, his passport would be ready for him within a week.

That night at home Bishop was jubilant. He already had the birth certificate and would soon possess a driver’s license and Social Security card and passport. With them he would be safe anywhere.

But more than that, they would form the basis of the first new identity that was truly his own. All the others had either belonged to people still living, like Daniel Long and Jay Cooper, or were complete fabrications, like Alan Jones and David Rogers. Each carried with it a certain danger, a clear and present reminder that he was merely imitating someone who might discover the impersonation, or else be asked to present proof of the existence of someone who never existed at all.

But Thomas Wayne Brewster did exist, was once alive, and lived no longer. The records were there for all to see.
His
records now.

Long live Thomas Wayne Brewster!

TWB.

Bishop suddenly stopped, startled by the thought.

TWB.

Thomas William Bishop.

No!

That life was over too. Finished. Dead and buried the night he escaped from Willows. The night he became Vincent Mungo. And a dozen other men in the past four months, including the infamous Chess Man.

Chess Man frowned in delight. He had been glad to get rid of Thomas William Bishop. Even that name had not been really his. It was still another creation for someone who didn’t live, who had never lived at all.

No one had been Thomas Bishop, least of all he.

He was Thomas Chessman.

That was his true identity. He was Caryl Chessman’s son, and the world knew it because he had told them. And he would go on telling them.

He was also Thomas Brewster.

But no one would ever know that.

In his ecstasy over his new existence Chess Man promised himself a party, a real celebration at home with just the two of them. Himself and the very first photographer’s model who came to his house to pose for detective magazines.

By Wednesday the neighborhood newspapers with his classified ad were on the stands, and he called his answering service. Someone had already left her number. He phoned immediately. Could she come that afternoon? An assignment was overdue and required about three hours’ work. Prevailing rates of course. Paid at the end of the session.

She needed the money, had modeled only once before for a clothing catalogue, and didn’t know how the game was played. The furthest thing from her mind was treachery and death. At twenty she was immortal. She agreed to meet him at a local restaurant, from whence they would go to his downtown studio. He would be carrying a copy of
True Detective
so she would know him.

At three o’clock he arrived back home, the model by his side. For an hour he took pictures of her bound to a chair, gagged and trussed on the floor, roped in a kneeling position and generally appearing distressed. Bishop had bought the ropes earlier that day in a discount store on Canal Street. Much to his surprise, he liked the feel of rope in his hands and the pleasure it gave him when he tied knots. And most especially when he was tying them around a female body.

The film in the camera came from a nearby photography supply shop. Bishop had decided to use real film since he wanted pictures of his model victims bound and gagged. While he couldn’t have the films developed commercially, he thought someday he might learn how to set up his own darkroom facilities. Meanwhile he had the clerk show him how to load the film and operate the camera. He also bought a book on photography as a hobby.

When he had shot several rolls of legitimate pictures and they had taken a break he again tied the model to the chair, this time tightly, and gagged her. She suspected nothing of course, since these were the kind of photos wanted and it was all part of the session. She was trying to be very professional. As he hovered over her she thought he was merely gauging distance and light. He arranged her hair differently, he opened her blouse a bit to show more cleavage. She blinked. Suddenly he ripped the blouse down the front and yanked it off her. She wore no bra. He then feverishly slit apart her brief skirt with a single-edged razor blade and struggled it from her body. As the now terrified girl strained against the ropes he photographed her from various angles, acting the complete artist, shouting at her to do this or that in mock imitation, smiling all the while.

Finally tiring of the camera and his own frantic efforts, he surreptitiously got out his knife and approached the still struggling girl from behind and calmly cut her throat, left to right, with one swift stroke. He quickly loosened the ropes as the lifeless body slumped to the concrete floor gushing blood fiercely. With a short sob of triumph he removed the girl’s panties and then disrobed himself. Kneeling over the corpse he wallowed in the blood, scooping some in his hands and forcing it into the dead mouth, now no longer gagged. After a while he placed his streaked penis in the reddened mouth and moved rhythmically until he climaxed.

For a long time he lay with the body, joined to it by blood. When he again moved it was with knife in hand, preening over his prey.

Eventually he showered and slept, a long, luxurious sleep free of the demons that normally prowled his dreams. A twelve-hour sleep of the innocent—or was it the damned? Bishop knew only that he felt rested and at peace.

Now on this Thursday morning of the first day of November, he sat with his coffee and gazed at the girl’s remains. The blood had long since dried on the cement floor but water would wash it away. The body would be taken upstairs and dumped there. The place was empty; even the stairway was mostly boarded up. A perfect grave. He would put all of them upstairs. Drain the bodies of fluids so there’d be no foul smell and bury them up there.

Just like
Arsenic and Old Lace
, which he had seen so many times on television. Except upstairs was much better than down in the basement. Safer too. Sometimes people dug up basements for one reason or another but nobody ever dug up a top floor. Teddy Roosevelt was crazy in the movie so he didn’t know any better. But this wasn’t the movies and he wasn’t at all crazy. Unless maybe like a fox.

Bishop’s only regret was that the world wouldn’t know of his deeds at home, since the bodies would never be discovered. At most it would simply be a matter of a growing number of women missing. Eventually certain suspicions might be entertained by the authorities but they’d never give him the credit without proof. They were all secretly jealous of him. He was doing what they couldn’t do, what they longed to do if only they weren’t so cowardly. He was fulfilling all their deepest desires, their unconscious cravings. And why not? They were men and had the same chance he had. Only he took his chances. He showed them all up, and so they were angry with him. He would have to be very careful.

After breakfast he carried the remains of the corpse upstairs, where he threw it in a storeroom filled with old cartons and assorted junk. He heard scratchings in the room and caught a glimpse of a large rat diving under a pile of rubble in one corner. Rats didn’t scare him, he had seen too many of them over the years. Huge institutional rats, the biggest kind there were. Backing out, he found a metal swivel chair which he carried downstairs.

In his apartment again he washed the blood off the floor and put the rope in the closet, coiled and ready for the next photographic session. The gag, a piece of towel, went on the shelf He took the film out of the camera and placed the several used rolls in a smooth cardboard box he had brought home from some store. The lid was snapped on. Inside was room enough for at least a dozen more rolls of film. He left the box on the floor by the tripod.

When he rang his answering service he was given two more names but he decided to wait a day before calling. There was no hurry. He would get around to them, to all of them sooner or later. He was the demon hunter and he would never die as long as even one woman lived. Like the vampire, he was the undead. He could not be killed. And if, strangely, he were killed, he would still somehow return to his work. Of that he now was certain.

On the way home he bought a
Daily News
. They had finally found the Third Avenue and 12:30 girl.

ROBERT ARTHUR GARDNER sat motionless behind the specially designed desk, his arms tightly folded, and stared out of steel-gray eyes across the broad expanse of his White House office toward the great central hallway and the President’s quarters beyond. In the hushed corridors men moved softly on thick carpet, their manner subdued, their voices low. Only an occasional self-conscious cough betrayed the excitement some still felt at being on such hallowed ground.

Now on this Friday morning, Dean Gardner reached for the twopage report on his desk as the buzzer from the outer room sounded.

“Yes?”

“Franklin Bush is here.”

“Have him come in.”

Gardner glanced over the report quickly as the door was opened to allow entrance to the spacious office, When he had finished his perusal he returned the document and looked up as though caught unawares, an automatic smile creasing his bland features.

“Good of you to drop in, Frank. Sit down.” He indicated the grained-leather chair nearest him. “Cigar?”

Bush shook his head. “Gave ‘em up years ago. Thanks anyway.”

Dean Gardner picked one out of the burnished humidor. “Good idea,” he said as he unscrewed the aluminum cap and pulled the cigar out of its silver container. “Going to have to try it myself sometime.” But there was no conviction in his voice.

The younger man watched the veteran aide light up, sending swirls of bluish smoke toward the ceiling. He noted his report on the desk. There was another sheet next to it.

“What do you make of this Chessman business?” asked Gardner when he had the cigar lit to his satisfaction. “I mean, do you really believe an executed convict could in any way damage the President of the United States?”

Bush thought that an odd question. Why else would he have submitted the damn thing? Or be called here now?

“What interests me most about your report is not so much the possibility of such an occurrence but that you saw fit to involve a reporter in something that was, and is, essentially an administration matter. A
private
matter, if I may say so. And not just a reporter but one from the
Washington Post
, of all papers! Don’t you think that a bit strange under the circumstances?”

Bush suddenly understood why he had been summoned upstairs. To his superior it must have appeared that he had consorted with the hated enemy and given it privileged information. An unpardonable sin.

“It wasn’t that way at all, Bob. I didn’t tell Pete Allen anything he couldn’t have found out for himself”

“Didn’t you, now? Then what exactly did you tell him?”

“Only what everybody in California and New York already knows.
Newstime
is preparing some kind of story on Chessman that will most probably end up attacking the President.”

“It seems we already know about that, thanks to you.” Dean Gardner had often found sarcasm effective in dealing with recalcitrants. “What we don’t know is why you find it necessary to sit down with the
Washington Post
and discuss our affairs. Do you have dinner with them often?”

“It was just a couple of beers.”

“Then the price has gone down.”

Bush felt his anger rise. He had done nothing wrong, nothing to warrant a charge of betrayal. If he had used bad judgment in talking to a reporter, then that was the worst of it. Gardner should have known how dedicated he was to the administration, how motivated he had become in the past year.

“I did what I thought best,” he said sharply. “Pete Allen’s helped me before and I’ve helped him. We’re friends.”

Dean Gardner puffed furiously on his cigar. He did not intend to engage in a shouting match with a subordinate. Certainly not in his own office, where he had most meetings taped.

“There is no such thing as friendship with the news media,” he said between clenched teeth. “You know what the
Post
is doing to us. The lies it prints day after day.”

“I’m aware that most of the press seeks to destroy this administration but I hardly think one man is such a threat to us. He doesn’t even handle political news.”

The senior staff member sought to restrain himself as his anger mounted. One man indeed! What would this newcomer know about the dangers of the press and how much one man could do? History was full of just such examples, single men bringing down whole governments. Look at Emile Zola and the wretched Dreyfus affair! He shuddered in indignation.