Death trick

22

Blount traveled as Bill Mezereski, thinking the airline manifests were still being monitored. This was smart of him. For purposes of keeping Ned Bowman out of my hair, and to act cute, I traveled as Alfred Douglas-I figured Bowman had given up on that phantom-and as soon as we landed in Albany at 2:27 in the afternoon, I was taken into custody.

When the plane halted on the parking apron, the captain asked that passengers remain in their seats for just a moment; everyone sullenly obeyed. Two bulky lads in blue entered the aircraft and walked directly to seat 9-C. One said, "Would you come with us, please, Mr. Douglas?

Detective Bowman would like to speak with you for a moment."

"Why, certainly," I said, shrugging cheerfully to the passengers around us. Blount sat frozen in his seat. I said to one and all, "Ah, what would Timmy say." As I got up, I kicked Blount's ankle.

"Ah, Timmy"

They led me down the ramp and into the terminal wing. As we passed Timmy standing wide-eyed at the gate, I shook my head and rolled my eyes back toward the plane.

My escorts and I trudged up the corridor, past the metal detector, through a doorway, and up a concrete stairwell. In the airport security office I was shown a metal chair and instructed to sit in it. I smiled, and sat. Bowman arrived twenty minutes later.

"His name's not Douglas! That's Strachey! That's the asshole who-!"

Bowman turned and told a man in a gray suit and blue tie that he wanted the airport sealed off immediately.

"Sealed off?" the man said. "Why?"

"I'll explain later, Pat. There's a murder suspect who came in on that American flight from Chicago. I'll bet my mother's sweet name on it. He came in with this guy. Al Douglas!" He shoved at my chair with his foot and it scraped a few inches across the floor.

I said, "As I explained to you last night, Ned, the killer is in Loudonville. Or in Albany. Stuart Blount knows where, and so do the killer's parents. Their name is Storrs. Billy Blount was with me in Denver last night. We can both prove it; we were both seen there by a Denver police officer. Frank Zimka was killed in Albany last night by the same man who attacked Huey Brownlee and killed Steve Kleckner. His name is Eddie Storrs."

The man in the gray suit said, "Ned, we can't just seal this place off-not just like that. There's just me and two officers here. We'll need help from the sheriffs office or from your department. Jeez, I'm sorry, but____________________ " He made an apologetic face.

Bowman had been watching me. I was trying to look confident and earnest but not too smug. He said, "Then let me use your phone, Pat. Can you do that this week, or will you have to make arrangements with the governor's office?"

The gray-suited man nodded toward the phone, turned, and stomped off.

Bowman phoned the DA's office and made noises about a "possible break in the Kleckner case" and asked that the assistant in charge of the case remain on call for the next twenty-four hours.

Bowman said, "The Blount kid is back in town."

Then he called Stuart Blount and asked for a meeting. One was set up for half an hour later at the Blount abode on State Street. I was instructed to accompany him. I didn't object.

During the ride into Albany I repeated in detail what I'd told Bowman on the phone the night before, as well as everything else I'd found out over the past seven days and the conclusions I had drawn.

He said, "You misled me. You held out on me. You've committed a number of very serious offenses."

I said, "You are not just incompetent, you are willfully incompetent. I may file a taxpayer's suit. I haven't decided yet."

"You'd better redeem yourself in a hurry, Strachey. Your time has run out."

"So had you. So has yours. I have only your prejudices and intransigence to contend with. You've got a killer loose in your city."

"Thanks to you," he said. But he was only going through the motions. He'd listened to my story, and he hadn't questioned it.

I said, "Where is Eddie Storrs?"

Bowman was beside me on the sofa, a foot of clean air between us so our thighs wouldn't touch and Bowman wouldn't have to arrest me for lewd solicitation. The Blounts faced us from their beautiful chairs and looked at me suspiciously.

"Have you found our son?" Blount said. "We'll tell him all about Eddie just as soon as he's in the sergeant here's custody. Is Billy in Albany, Mr. Strachey? I should think that for the expenses you've incurred in the past week-"

Now Bowman said it. "Mr. Blount, where abouts is this Eddie Storrs fellow? It might be helpful if I had a talk with him. Now I said might" He glanced at me. "I won't trouble the boy, just ask him a few questions that have been raised and are troubling my mind."

The missus gave me a steely look and went for her Silva Thins. Blount said, "Well, truth to tell, Sergeant, Eddie Storrs is in the process of rebuilding his life following many years of difficult psychological counseling. And in point of fact, I can't imagine a worse time to drag him into a complicated matter that can only, I should think, upset him and perhaps undo some of the good work that's been accomplished in regard to Eddie's life-style and much-improved mental outlook."

I caught Bowman's eye. He had the look of a man with a headache coming on. He said, "Where is the Storrs boy's family? Loudonville? Their names, please."

Jane Blount let loose. "Oh, really, Stuart-" She ignored Bowman and me and addressed her husband as if he were the one who was ruining her afternoon. "Stuart, I can't imagine what this is all about, but I have to insist that that boy's privacy be respected. After all these years of struggle and pain, and now with a new job and a lovely young wife-to have it all disrupted by dragging Eddie into this-kettle of fish! Well I, for one, will not abide it, and neither, I'm sure, will Hulton and Seetsy. It's all just too-deplorable!"

Bowman blithely pulled out a pad and wrote it down. Hulton Storrs. And Seetsy. Or Tsetse.

I said, "Eddie is married?"

"You wouldn't know about such things," Jane Blount snapped.

"I've read widely."

"You see, the thing is," Blount explained in his mild way, "Eddie Storrs has become a young man whom Jane and I are rather hoping will serve as a role model for our Billy, an example to emulate. Eddie is extremely happy and well adjusted in his new life, and we thought perhaps a short visit by Billy with Eddie and the nice girl he's married to would demonstrate to Billy just how fulfilling family life can be. It's not too late for Billy, and it's a life he might want to work toward. With professional help, of course. Jane's and my own example has never served that purpose, unfortunately, because we're older. It's the generation gap, if you get my meaning."

Bowman's words were, "The family is the bedrock of Christian civilization," though he looked at the Blounts in a way that suggested he might come to consider them exceptions to his rule.

I said, "Eddie Storrs killed Steven Kleckner. Last night he killed another man. He could probably will-kill again. It's possible-likely-he's planning an attack on his next victim at the moment. Where is he?"

Bowman didn't move. Jane Blount gripped her ashtray. Stuart Blount looked at Bowman for help, saw that none was forthcoming, cleared his throat, and leaned toward us gravely. He said,

"Hulton Storrs has invested forty thousand dollars a year for ten years in that boy's recovery.

That is four hundred thousand dollars, only partially tax-deductible. Are you suggesting, Mr.

Strachey, that in return for nearly half a million dollars, one of the finest rehabilitative institutions in America has turned Edwin Storrs from a faggot into a killer?"

"Your pal Hulton should have put most of his bucks into krugerrand," I said. "For a lesser amount he could have turned his son from a faggot into a wretched zombie with most of his memory blotted out. Mainly that's what those outfits manage to accomplish. But for four hundred grand-sure, that kind of money might come up with a killer. Apparently it has."

"Where's your evidence?" Blount said.

I explained. Blount scowled at his lap. Jane Blount sat bug-eyed.

When I'd finished, Bowman said, "It adds up. Where is he? Do you put us in touch with the boy's family, or do I waste thirty seconds tracking them down on my own?"

Stuart Blount removed an address book from his inside breast pocket and opened it. His wife got up abruptly and left the room.

Before we left for Loudonville, I used the Blounts' phone and called Timmy's apartment. No answer. I called his office; he was "out for the day." I checked my service and was given this message: "We're at a certain fitness center on Central Avenue." The tubs. Timmy probably had Blount locked in a cubicle with him and was reading aloud from Teilhard de Chardin.

I called Huey Brownlee, who was safe and just leaving the machine shop for my apartment, and then, at her office, Margarita Mayes, who said she was still staying with a friend in Westmere.

Sears Automotive Center said Mark Deslonde had taken the day off and wouldn't be in until Monday. I phoned his apartment and got no answer; I thought, fine, he's still with Phil. I almost dialed Frank Zimka's number, and then I remembered.

During the fifteen-minute drive up Route 9 to Loudonville, Bowman was silent. I asked him if his police radio picked up Disco 101, but he ignored me. He'd phoned Hulton Storrs before we left Albany and arranged a meeting, but he'd held off explaining to Storrs the exact nature of the

"serious matter having to do with your son Edwin" that Bowman said he wanted to "sift through." He sat in the driver's seat beside me, eyes fixed on the tarmac strip ahead of us. Once he said, "Goddamn Anglicans," and then he was quiet again. I supposed he was going to add Episcopalians to his long list of dangerous types.

Hulton and Seetsy Storrs lived in a commodious neo-Adamesque brick house on Hickory Lane overlooking a field of goldenrod. We parked on the gravel drive and rapped the silver knocker on the big white front door with a rising-sun transom over it.

"Chief Bowman, so good of you to drive all the way out here. I'm Hulton Storrs."

"It's Sergeant, thank you. This is Detective Strachey. Pleased to meet you."

Storrs was tall, thin, and stoop-shouldered in a tweed jacket, black turtleneck, and brown woolen slacks. He had a long face with dark vertical lines of age, and the eyes behind his horn-rimmed glasses were red with fatigue. He walked like a man working hard not to topple. Storrs led us into a large sitting room that ran the depth of the house, with french doors at the far end opening onto the back lawn. Three chintz-covered couches formed a U in the center of the room around a cream-colored rug. On one of the couches two women sat together, the older holding the younger one's hand.

"I've asked my wife and daughter-in-law to join us," Storrs said and introduced us to Seetsy Storrs and Cloris Haydn Storrs.

Bowman said, "Coricidin?"

In a high, sweet, little girl's voice, the young woman spelled it. She had on a pretty blue dress, pink lipstick, and yellow hair tied in a bun with a white velvet ribbon. A rumpled Kleenex stuck out of her clenched fist. The older woman looked up at us out of a worn, tight, politician's wife sort of face with frightened eyes.

We sat.

"My son has left home," Hulton Storrs said. "Have you found him? Is he dead?"

The women froze.

"No," Bowman said. "Why do you ask that?"

The women closed their eyes in unison and exhaled.

"Eddie sometimes suffers from a loss of memory," Storrs said. "He forgets who he is and where he is."

Bowman said, "That shouldn't be fatal."

"Oh, it isn't that," Storrs said. "The difficulty is, when Eddie has his spells, he sometimes ends up in the company of bad characters-people who might do God knows what. Hurt the boy. This has occurred in the past-once in Indianapolis and on another occasion in Gary, Indiana."

I said, "Your son's no boy. He's twenty-seven years old. He's a man."

"You don't know Eddie," Storrs said. "Eddie has only just begun to mature. You see, his development was retarded somewhat, slowed down, by a mental problem. You may or may not be aware that Eddie has spent most of the past ten years in a psychiatric rehabilitative center in Indiana. The boy has had his troubles, I'm afraid."

These people would have called the tiger cages at Con Son Island a correctional facility.

Bowman said, "Eddie may have committed a crime. It's urgent that I speak with him. Do you have any idea where he's gone? When did he leave?"

The two women clung to each other, looking wounded and well groomed, like a couple of Watergate wives. Storrs said, "Committed a crime? What do you mean by that, Captain?"

"Sergeant. It's Sergeant, thank you."

Bowman laid it out. As he spoke, the women wept and shook their heads. Hulton Storrs sat slumped with his chin on his chest, like another victim of the son he had "cured."

When Bowman had finished, there was a silence. Then Storrs looked up and said quietly, "Our plans seem not to have worked out."

Bowman said, "It sure looks like they haven't, Mr. Storrs. You and your loved ones have my deepest sympathy, I want you to know that. Now, sir, would you please tell me when your son left home, as well as the circumstances of his leaving?"

Hulton Storrs told us that his son had arrived home from his job as an "accountant-in-training" at Storrs-Lathrop Electronics in Troy the previous evening at six-thirty. He dined with Cloris in their "cottage," a converted stable on the grounds of the Storrs's estate. After dinner Eddie said he was "going for a ride" and drove off in his new gold-colored Olds Toronado. He'd "gone for rides" often in the past month, Storrs said, sometimes returning in the early-morning hours.

Eddie's wife reported tearfully that the Olds was a wedding gift from the Haydns and that her husband "was just out of his gourd over that ace car of his."

Eddie Storrs had not returned at all on this morning, though, and the family had been discussing notifying the police when Bowman telephoned. They thought Bowman would be bringing news of Eddie's whereabouts and condition, and feared that Eddie might have been harmed by "persons with masochistic tendencies," persons of the sort to whom he had been drawn during two month-long escapes from the Lucius Wiggins Psychiatric Rehabilitation Center in Kokomo, Indiana.

How these "masochists" were going to harm his sadistic son, Storrs didn't make clear. Maybe Storrs thought that in Indiana water went down the drain counterclockwise. It was the self-delusion wrought by love-or some grotesque permutation of love that I'd run into before but guessed I'd never understand.

At Bowman's request, the Storrs family led Bowman and me out to the young couple's cottage, where we discovered two knives missing from a velvet-lined wooden box of Sheffield cutlery.

We also found-in a cardboard box full of Eddie Storrs's Elwell School mementos-a photograph of Billy Blount. The picture was taped to the front cover of Blount's phone book, the one stolen the previous weekend from his apartment.

Of the four phone numbers handwritten by Billy Blount on the back cover of the book, two-the first and second names, Huey's and Chris's-had penciled checkmarks after them, apparently signifying unsuccessful attempts on their lives. The third name, Frank Zimka's had been Xed out.

The fourth name on the list, circled in red, was Mark Deslonde's.