The May Day Murders (19 page)

“
Let’s go over to the
K&L, then,” Roger said as he walked around to the other side of
the Jeep and got in.

Roger fumbled for a cigarette in his
coat pocket, lit one up and looked over at Sam grimly. “Before you
start grilling me, I’d better level with you first. Thompson’s in a
real fucked up mood and just ordered me, in so many unpleasant
words, to refrain from leaking police business to the
press—referring of course to your ass. He’s at the end of his rope
with the Bradley case and has decided to take it out on yours
truly—like I’ve been just sitting around with my finger stuck up my
ass all this time or something. Anyway, he has somehow managed to
find out that I’ve let you have copies of the police reports and
he’s ultra-pissed about that too. The chief is a real prick when he
gets into this mode, as you well know. So, to make a long story
short, we’re going to have to start being a little more discreet
from here on out before the son of a bitch decides to fire my
ass.”

“
Great,” Sam groaned as he
pulled out onto Court Street.

What Roger had just told him didn’t
surprise him—it had happened a few times before in the past. The
chief of police usually gave Roger Hagstrom considerable slack as
far as Sam’s tagging along was concerned, but he had his limits.
Especially when things weren’t going particularly well, as they
apparently weren’t now.

“
At any rate,” the detective
continued, “I’ll start at the beginning. New York was a real bitch,
any way you look at it. I met with the infamous Lieutenant Mancuso
at his precinct and you might say that the two of us didn’t exactly
hit it off together. The guy’s one of those arrogant Italian
Stallion types who gets off on bossing everybody around, if you
know what I mean. So here I am, Mister Small-Town Cop in the Big
City, and Mancuso is constantly reminding me of my minor existence
in the huge scheme of things—not in his words so much as in his
goddamn condescending demeanor.

“
Anyway, once we finally got
down to business, he lightened up on me ever so little. I guess my
natural charm and charisma eventually wore him down, eh? We went
over our respective reports and theories on the Bradley and Hunt
murders and then interrogated the witness who had claimed that he’d
seen a man on the fire escape outside of what he believed to be
Sara Hunt’s apartment on the night she was murdered. This guy lives
across the alley from Sara’s apartment building—about a hundred
yards away. He told us that he just happened to be looking out his
window when he noticed a man climb out of the window and stand on
the fire escape for a couple of minutes. He couldn’t see very
well—it was late and pretty dark then—but he was able to make out
some of the guy’s features.

“
The man was fairly tall,
about six-two, Caucasian, medium build, and had long, dark hair and
a beard. He was wearing an overcoat, like a London Fog, and had a
small carrying case of some kind slung over his shoulders—possibly
a camera or binocular case. The man looked real suspicious, the guy
said, because it seemed more than obvious that he didn’t want to be
seen by anyone. He kept looking around nervously and kept his back
glued to the wall. After a couple of minutes, the man went back
inside and closed the window, then pulled down the
blinds.

“
The witness kept watching
after the man had gone back inside. About a minute or so later, he
saw several bright flashes of light come from the window—like a
camera flash going off. He said that he observed five or six
flashes within the span of a couple of minutes, then no more after
that.”

“
I knew it!” Sam exclaimed.
“The bastard was taking pictures of the body, wasn’t
he?”

Roger eyed him curiously. “Yeah, I’d
say that’s a very strong possibility. Are you going to tell me now
that you already had that figured out?”

Sam nodded excitedly. “I was comparing
the crime scene photos of Marsha’s and Sara’s bodies yesterday
evening and noticed how the positions were practically identical.
Then it suddenly dawned on me that the killer had purposely
arranged their bodies that way because he wanted an identically
composed shot of each victim. I must admit that I was a little
surprised nobody had noticed it before,” Sam added just a little
too smugly.

Roger cast him a wry grin. “Hate to
rain on your parade, buddy, but Mancuso had already made that very
same observation prior to our interview with this guy. Gotta admit,
I was pretty pissed off at myself for letting it slip by, but what
the fuck? It gave Mancuso another feather in his cap while helping
to boost my ratings as Mister Small-Town Cop at the same time,”
Roger added acidly. “At any rate, this witness’s account more or
less corroborated both yours and Mancuso’s hunch that the murderer
might have taken some pictures at the scene.”

Sam could tell that his friend was
taking his own oversight a little too hard, so he chose not to
gloat. “The important thing is that we’re finally starting to get
somewhere with this thing. But why in the hell did this witness
take so long to come forth? This information surely would have
helped a lot more a month ago,” Sam said as he pulled into the
K&L Restaurant parking lot.

“
Apparently he didn’t want
to get involved at first, but his conscience eventually got the
best of him. So he finally called the police—anonymously, I might
add—and Mancuso managed to talk him into coming into the station to
talk about it. You know, it never ceases to amaze me how people
never want to get involved in a criminal investigation. One of the
tenants in Sara Hunt’s apartment building also came forward with
some pertinent information just recently, as a matter of
fact.”

Sam pulled into a parking space and
turned off the engine.

“
What do you mean? Another
late witness?”

Roger nodded. “Better late than never,
I reckon. Anyway, Sara Hunt apparently had a nasty habit of turning
up her stereo really loud whenever she listened to music, according
to this neighbor of hers. On the night she was murdered, it had
been cranked up to the max, so this guy, some crotchety old-timer
who lived on Sara’s floor, started beating on Sara’s door and
threatened to go tell the super if she didn’t turn it down. Sara
had had run-ins with him before over her music and it soon became
obvious to this guy that she wasn’t going to comply since she never
responded and the music kept on blasting. So, he finally informed
her through her door that he was going to get the super.

“
As it turns out though, the
old geezer had just been bluffing. He returned to his apartment
instead of blowing the whistle on Sara. A few minutes later,
however, someone did finally turn down her stereo.”

“
Someone?” Sam
said.

“
We think it was the
murderer who turned it down.”

Sam stared intently at his friend.
“What makes you think that?”

Roger opened the car door. “Let’s go in
and order some grub, then I’ll tell you. I’m famished.”

Sam nodded. They went inside and chose
a table near a window away from the small lunch crowd. After
placing their orders, Roger resumed the conversation, keeping his
voice low.

“
We’ve come up with a theory
of what might have happened the night that Sara was murdered,” he
said as he lit up another cigarette. “When the neighbor came to
Sara’s door complaining about the loud music, we think the murderer
just so happened to be in the process of strangling her at that
very moment. The music of course probably drowned out any sounds of
a struggle. And because of the murderer’s preoccupation with Sara,
he was unable to turn down the stereo and avoid a possible
confrontation by the super if and when he arrived. Once he had
strangled Sara to death, the murderer ran over to the stereo and
turned it down, then made a quick exit through the window onto the
fire escape; no doubt praying that the neighbor had only been
bluffing about calling the super. Once he was fairly certain that
the super wasn’t going to show up, he went back inside and wasted
little time in taking a few quick shots of Sara’s body before
splitting the scene. We’re fairly sure that he fled through Sara’s
door, just as he had entered, because the first witness said that
he had continued watching the fire escape for at least an hour or
so and never saw him again. Gutsy son of a bitch, eh? You’d think
her assailant would have tried to make it out by the fire escape
instead of risking being seen by the tenants.”

Sam shook his head slowly. “No shit.
This bastard is as lucky as he is gutsy. What about the lipstick
mark? Do you suppose he was unable to finish his little message on
Sara’s body because he started getting a little
panicky?”

Roger nodded. “Yup, that’s my guess.
Everything sort of all falls into place when you think about it. Up
until the moment when the neighbor knocked on Sara’s door
complaining about the music, this guy evidently had everything
pretty much under control. But once that happened, it threw the
murderer’s game plan off and forced him to hurry up the
process.”

“
So this guy isn’t quite as
slick as he must think he is,” Sam declared.

“
Not in Sara’s case, at any
rate. But don’t forget Marsha Bradley. Not a single slip-up there… so far,” Roger reminded Sam.

“
That’s true,” Sam
agreed.

“
But he sure is one scary
son of a bitch. What keeps going through my mind is that he had to
take pictures of Sara Hunt’s body—like he was going to do it no
matter what the risk might be. Couldn’t let it slide…”

“
I know what you’re saying,”
Sam said. “You’d think he wouldn’t have bothered. Apparently, those
pictures meant a lot to the sick bastard.”

The waitress came with their drinks.
Roger took a gulp of his coffee and said, “The times all match up
with our theory, by the way. The man across the alley spotted the
murderer on the fire escape at approximately the same time Sara’s
neighbor knocked on her door bitching about the music. That’s how
we came up with the theory in the first place. But of course it is
only a theory and we’re still no closer to catching the perp than
we were before. All we really have is a vague description of the
guy, and that’s pretty damn weak at best. I mean, how many tall
white guys with long dark hair and a beard are there in this
country, you reckon?”

Sam nodded as he sipped. “I see what
you mean.”

“
So all of this information
is for the most part useless, unfortunately. So imagine how
Lieutenant Mancuso is going to feel when he learns that Mister
Small-Town Cop just may have a suspect in mind.”

Sam nearly choked on his coffee.
“What?”

The detective grinned smugly. “That’s
right, Bucko. Like I told you earlier, there’s a lot more happening
here in tiny Smithtown than there is in The Big City.”

Roger Hagstrom certainly had a flair
for the dramatic, Sam thought to himself. It was just like him to
wait until the last possible moment to divulge the crux of a
matter. “What in the hell are you talking about, Rog?”

His friend ceremoniously stubbed out
his cigarette and said, “One of my men called me at my hotel room
early this morning. It seems that our little Smithtown Class of ‘70
yearbook investigation has yielded a possible suspect after
all.”

Sam mentally raced through the senior
pictures in the yearbook, wondering who it would be. “Who, Roger?”
he asked.

“
You ain’t gonna believe it,
I can tell you that,” his friend replied.

“
Who is it, goddamn it!” Sam
snapped impatiently.

Roger stared directly into his eyes.
“Stanley Jenkins.”

Sam pictured the horn-rimmed
bespectacled geek with the 4.0 average and laughed out loud.
“You’ve got to be kidding! Stanley Jenkins?”

“
That’s right, buddy. And
please, hold off on your understandable skepticism until I’ve
finished. Because even if Stanley ends up not being the man we’ve
been looking for, I’m sure that you will at least be appreciably
impressed with his rather interesting and colorful past since
graduating Smithtown High.”

Just then, the waitress came with their
food. Sam waited until she had served them then said, “Let’s hear
it.”

Roger took a gargantuan bite of his
hamburger and washed it down with coffee before speaking. “After
graduation, Stanley Jenkins enrolled at a little college in Indiana
called Fountainhead Institute of Technology. I’ve never heard of
the place before, but apparently it’s somewhere near the Ohio
border, not far from Dayton. Anyway, as you recall, Stanley was a
bona fide egghead and this college has a rather impressive
engineering department. So Stanley chose to go there, as
engineering was his major.”

Roger paused for another bite, then
added dryly: “Stanley never made it past his freshman
year.”

Sam took a half-hearted bite of his
BLT. “Go ahead.”

“
Well, Stanley was anything
but a model student at Fountainhead, believe it or not. He
apparently turned over a new leaf after high school and decided to
go the full hippie route: grew his hair long, discovered
psychedelic rock music, and took lots and lots of drugs. Acid
seemed to be his drug of choice. Not unlike us, he partied a lot
and studied very little—became a regular guy on campus in the early
70’s, in other words. That is to say, Stanley tried to become a
regular guy, but of course it never really happened. You know that
old saying: ‘once a nerd, always a nerd.’ Stanley Jenkins was
really only a hip and cool guy in his own mind but that persona
never really came across to anyone else who knew him, if you catch
my drift.