Fletch and the Man Who (25 page)

“How long ago was that?”

“God.” Fletch looked at his watch. “More than a half hour ago. Man can’t fly.”

“I haven’t seen Flash.” She started to get up. “I haven’t seen either of them.”

Fletch stood up. “I told him to stay by the phones at the back of the auditorium. He’s not there.”

Fletch’s eyes were running over the audience below him. The aisles had been pretty well cleared, except for firemen and policemen.

Freddie leaned to her left and spoke with Roy Filby and Tony Rice.

Below Fletch, Betsy Ginsberg was sitting in about the middle of the audience.

Roy and Tony were standing, too.

“They’ll help,” Freddie said. “I told them about Bill.”

Fletch stood aside to let the three of them out the row of seats. “Just fan out and look for him anywhere,” he said. “Check the rest rooms, I guess. He sounded real bad.”

“Could the police have taken him out?” Roy asked.

“I don’t think they had by the time I came in.”

As they were leaving the box, Fletch took one more fast look at the audience seated on the floor of the auditorium.

Betsy had risen from her seat and was working her way along the row to the aisle.

Shit!
Fletch said to himself.
Betsy!

Fletch ran out of the press box so fast he tripped against Tony Rice.

“Fletch!” Freddie called after him. “Did you see him?”

“No!”

He ran down the corridor behind the balcony and down the stairs to the auditorium lobby.

There was a bigger crowd of people in the lobby, grumbling about having been removed from the aisles. Some were angrily refusing to leave the building.

Fletch pushed through them. Some shoved back.

“Wheel along with Wheeler,” Fletch said.

Fletch glowered at the big stomach of a policeman standing in the main doorway to the auditorium.

“Get out of my way, please,” Fletch said. He pushed past the policeman.

“Trying to start a riot?”

“Sorry,” Fletch said over his shoulder.

The fireman who had stopped him outside the auditorium and yelled at him inside the auditorium saw Fletch push past the policeman from the lobby. “Stop him!” he yelled. “Hey! Get that guy!”

He pushed past the policeman, too.

Over the heads of the people seated in the auditorium, Fletch saw Betsy at the right of the auditorium, near the stage, going through a door marked EXIT.

Moving as fast as he could, dodging people standing at the back of the auditorium, Fletch went to his right along the wall at the rear of the audience. He was passing behind Hanrahan.

Hands grabbed both of Fletch’s shoulders and turned him around.

“Wait one minute,” the fireman said. He was crouched a little, as if to swing. “You’re causin’ one hell of a lot of trouble.”

“Sorry,” Fletch said, taking a step backward.

Michael J. Hanrahan had turned around.

The fireman grabbed Fletch’s arm.

Fletch did not resist.

“You’re comin’ with me,” the fireman said.

With his grin/grimace, Hanrahan said, “Trouble, Fletcher?”

“I’m in an awful hurry, Michael.”

“That’s fine.” Hanrahan lurched forward onto his right foot, and sent his left fist into the fireman’s coat.

The fireman dropped his grip on Fletch.

In a second, he had twisted Hanrahan into a half-Nelson wrestling hold.

Fletch said, “Thank you, Michael.”

Hanrahan’s face quickly turned crimson. “That’s all right, Fletcher. Always glad to slug a cop.”

“Michael!” Fletch said, backing away. More uniforms were appearing in the dark at the back of the auditorium. “You slugged a fireman!”

“Listen,” Hanrahan was saying in a choke to the gathering uniforms. “Don’t you guys read
Newsbill?
I’m Hanrahan, for Chris-sake!”

Fletch walked fast down the aisle under the balcony. He pressed his weight against the metal bar-release of the door marked EXIT and found himself in a bright, empty corridor.

To his left was a door that obviously led to the stage area.

To his right the corridor had to run back to the lobby of the auditorium.

Down a short corridor straight ahead was a sign: EXHIBITION HALL, TUESDAY-SATURDAY, 10-4.

In the auditorium, the speaker roared at the audience, “The man who will be the next President of the United States,” and the audience was roaring its approval.

Fletch went down the short corridor and turned right into the entrance to the Exhibition Hall. Massive, double, polished wooden doors. Locked, of course.

He turned around.

Across the corridor, in the reciprocal alcove, was a small service door. The sign on it said: STAFF ONLY. Over it a sign said: NOT A FIRE EXIT.

He crossed to the door and tried the ordinary doorknob. Not locked. He pushed the door open.

Overamplified, the voice of Doris Wheeler was bursting from the auditorium. “My husband, son, and I are glad to be in Melville. Years ago, when we were first married …”

On the other side of the door were stairs falling to a basement. The small landing was lit by an overhead light. The stairs themselves were lit by occasional, dim, baseboard safety lights. The basement itself was dark.

“… and the friends we made around here then …”

From the basement came a woman’s shout: “No!”

The sound sent a pain searing from Fletch’s left ankle through his back to his neck.

As he started down the stairs he heard what sounded like a slap of skin against skin, a hard slap. A scuffling of feet on cement.

Near the bottom of the stairs, he stopped to detect were the sounds where coming from.

There was the sound of a light piece of wood falling on the cement floor.

There was then the sound of a woman’s outraged, frightened scream. “Stop!”

“Betsy!” Fletch shouted toward his right.

A few safety lights were on here and there throughout the vast space of the basement. Everywhere in the basement were large, bulky objects, crates and counters and stands from the Exhibition Hall, he guessed, and scenery flats from amateur productions in Public Auditorium. Facing him was the tranquil scene of an English garden.

“… my husband and I listen to you, have known your problems …”

Fletch moved forward toward the center of the basement, around the English garden scene.

“Betsy …?”

Doris Wheeler’s amplified voice was coming through the ceiling like so many nails. “We know what you have paid into your schools, your farms, your stores, your families, your lives.” Each phrase came through the ceiling hard, bright, penetrating, scratchy.

In the basement there was a flubbery cry.

“Betsy!” Fletch bellowed.

Again there was the sound of feet scuffling on cement.

Fletch’s eyes finally were adjusting to the dim light.

And then there was what sounded like a hard punch.

There was an explosion of air from lungs, a gasp, a shrill, hysterical scream.

“Walsh!” Fletch yelled.

He threw his weight against a huge packing crate, which must have been empty. Lightly it skidded across the floor.

Fletch fell. He rolled over on the floor and looked up.

His back to Fletch, a man had a woman pinned into a corner of the basement.

Sitting on the floor, quietly Fletch said, “Walsh.”

Walsh twisted his neck around to look at Fletch. Walsh’s face was wild.

He had one hand behind Betsy’s head. The other was over her mouth.

Her fingers were against his biceps. She was trying to push him away. Her eyes were bulging.

“Hey, Walsh,” Fletch said. “You’re out of your mind. You don’t know what you’re doing.”

“… you will have a friend in the White House, a man who …”

Walsh looked up at the ceiling of the basement. The low safety lights lit the whites of his eyes.

Fletch stood up. “I’m here, Walsh. There’s nothing more you can do.”

After a moment of applause, Doris Wheeler’s voice again penetrated the ceiling. “Someone in the White House …”

Walsh’s left hand pushed Betsy’s head forward from the wall. He looked her in the face. He raised his left hand from behind her head.

Walsh’s right fist slammed into Betsy’s face.

Her head banged into the corner of the walls and bounced out. Her eyes became entirely white.

“Walsh! Let go!”

Standing behind Walsh, Fletch raised his own arms as high as they would go, and brought the sides of his hands down full strength onto the muscles between Walsh’s neck and shoulders.

Walsh dropped his arms.

Betsy’s knees jerked forward. Bleeding from her nose, chin on her chest, Betsy slumped forward.

Fletch tried to catch her.

Walsh staggered into him.

Betsy fell into the corner on the floor.

Walsh backed along the wall. His head was lowered. He was trying to raise his hands.

“Take it easy, Walsh. Just stay still.”

Walsh turned. He stumbled along the wall.

Fletch grabbed him by a shoulder. Spun him around. Hit him hard, once, in the face. Once in the stomach.

Walsh fell. He could not raise his arms to protect himself as he fell. He landed flat.

He gasped for air. He brought one hand, slowly, to his bleeding face.

“Stay there, Walsh,” Fletch said.

Betsy was unconscious. Her nose was broken and pouring blood. Her left cheekbone was bruised blue. There was a bleeding gash at the back of her head.

Gently, Fletch pulled her out of the corner. He put her on her side on the floor, against the wall. He put his suit jacket under her head. Some blood ran out of her mouth.

Walsh had rolled over and was lying on his back.

Fletch stood over him. “It’s over now, Walsh.”

Walsh was breathing hard. His face was bloody, too.

“… Caxton Wheeler, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue …”

“Can you walk, Walsh? Betsy’s hurt. We’ve got to get an ambulance for her.”

Walsh’s glazed eyes were staring at the ceiling.

Through the ceiling Doris Wheeler’s voice came, insistent, demanding: “… the White House … the White House … the White House …”

Walsh said: “God, damn Mother.”

“It’s open,” said Governor Caxton Wheeler. “Come in.”

Fletch had knocked softly on the ajar door to the governor’s suite. He had not known if the governor might be asleep. He doubted it. On the other hand he did not know the full magic in Dr. Thom’s little black bag. He had not even known if the governor was still in town.

“ ’Mornin’,” Fletch mumbled.

The electric lamps in the living room of the suite were still on. Their lights were fading fast in the dawn light coming through the windows.

Dressed as they had been onstage at Public Auditorium the night before, Doris and Caxton Wheeler were sitting on a divan. On the cushion between them they were holding hands. Two out-sized people, ridiculously dressed for that hour of the morning; two world-famous faces now wearing new expressions of utter dejection; two human beings devastated by tragedy.

“Is Walsh all right?” Caxton asked.

“Broken collarbone. Cut on his face,” Fletch answered. “Dazed. Deep in shock, I guess.”

“And the woman? Ms Ginsberg?”

“Severe concussion. No skull fracture. Cut on the back of her head. Broken nose. Some loss of blood. She’s in shock, too, of course.”

“I’m in shock,” said Doris Wheeler. Numbly, she was staring at the floor. “Do you believe Walsh killed all those women?”

“Yes,” Fletch said. “I believe he did.”

Fletch had to sit down. His legs ached with exhaustion.

“What in God’s name did we do wrong?” Doris Wheeler asked. “How could he do these things?”

Silently, Fletch waited for the governor’s reaction. Caxton Wheeler looked sympathetically at his wife.

Doubtlessly the two of them had been asking themselves those questions all night.

Finally, Fletch said: “We all thought Walsh was seamless. There is no such thing as a seamless human being. All the pressures of the campaign were coming down on him. Too much. Too long. He had to play Mister Competent, Mister Cool, take all the punches, roll with them, understand and forgive everybody else, but never forgive himself. He had no outlets himself, no way of blowing off steam. He was the one guy who couldn’t yell at anybody,” he said, looking at Doris Wheeler. Then he looked at the governor. “He wasn’t even getting any sleep. Everybody kept packing it into him. He had to blow off. Everybody has to, sooner or later, one way or another.”

“How did you know Walsh was doing these things?” the governor asked. “How did you know enough to find him last night in the basement, stop him?”

“I didn’t know, until just before. He had given me a stack of newspaper clippings to go through, to acquaint myself with the Wisconsin reporters. Out of the stack fell five articles, pinned together, reporting the deaths, the murders, of the five women.”

“Five …” Doris Wheeler said.

“Five. There was a woman in Cleveland, apparently, and a woman in Wichita, we didn’t know about.”

The governor said, “My God.”

“Up to that point, Walsh had been pretending to know nothing about these murders, the three he was questioned about. He said he didn’t know anything about them, didn’t care. He was aloof from all that. When I found his private collection of clippings, I realized he
knew more than he was saying, more than we did. That he had a very real anxiety about them.”

“He knew he was committing these murders?” the governor asked.

“I’m not really sure,” Fletch said. “I think he had sort of a nightmare knowledge of them. I don’t think he really knew what he was doing. But the mornings after, he had enough knowledge, or nightmare sense of them, to tear these articles from the newspapers.”

The governor leaned forward, elbows on his knees, hands over his face. “My God.”

“When I saw his collection of articles,” Fletch said, “it suddenly dawned on me he hadn’t been wearing a necktie all day. He told me he had left it in a car somewhere. The woman the night before, Mary Cantor, had been strangled with some kind of a soft cord, such as a necktie. When I thought it might be Walsh doing this, doing these things, I felt perfectly sick.” Sitting in the chair, Fletch felt sick again. He waited for the moment to pass. “And there had been that incident overseas, I understand, of threatening a superior officer. A female superior officer.”