Masters of Noir: Volume 4

Face of Evil by David Alexander

It was noon and the stocky detective with the swarthy face waited in the corridor of the City Hospital. He was a middle-aged man with heavily defined features. His coarse dark hair was salted with gray and a little string of sweat beads glistened on his forehead. His heavy shoulders drooped from fatigue. His eyes were large and dark and there was weary compassion in them as if they had looked upon the thousand faces of human life, neither with despair nor hope, but only with a patient acceptance. The whites of the eyes were filamented with bloody threads. He had not slept the night before. He had stayed on duty because the psychopathic killer the papers called The Butcher was loose again.

The detective’s name was Romano. He was a lieutenant of Homicide, Manhattan West.

A doctor in a white coat came out of a nearby hospital room and closed the door after him. He was accompanied by a nurse. The nurse was dark and young and pretty and Romano thought of his own daughter who was a student at Marymount College. Romano rose slowly from the hard chair in the corridor, sighing with exhaustion. His feet had begun to throb and ache. That was always the first sign that his body was rebelling against the demands he made of it. Soon his nervous stomach would start acting up and he’d feel the painful little twinges of rising blood pressure. He was getting old. He would have to take his pension soon. Years ago he would have been driven and sustained by excitement, when a big squeal was this close to the break. He felt nothing like that now. He was just dead-tired.

The man in the hospital room was the only living person who could identify The Butcher, who had murdered five women and dismembered their bodies in a manner horrible enough to justify the name the papers had awarded him.

Romano lumbered slowly toward the doctor, his big feet slapping heavily on the rubber linoleum of the floor.

“Has he come out of it, Doc?” Romano asked.

The doctor was a thin man with high cheekbones and a small mustache. His slim, white fingers toyed with the stethoscope that dangled around his neck.

“He’s out of coma, if that’s what you mean,” the doctor answered. “But he’s hardly rational. I would say he’s still suffering from shock. He has a heart condition, we’ve determined that. The experience he went through last night — well, it’s a wonder he’s alive under the circumstances. It might be better to wait awhile, Lieutenant.”

Romano said, “It’s pretty urgent, Doc. It’s about as urgent as it can get. Time may mean a lot.”

The doctor hesitated. The pretty nurse looked disapprovingly at Romano. She does look kind of like my daughter Ellie, Romano thought. She doesn’t like me. Maybe she hates me, even, because she thinks I’m callous, that I want to torture a poor, sick man.

The doctor said, “I suppose you can go in for a little while, if you insist. But try to be considerate. Don’t press him too much. You have to realize what he’s been through.”

Romano nodded. “I know,” he said.

It sounded false, perhaps. But he did know. That was the tough part about being a cop. You saw all the violence and sadness and suffering there was and unless you were made of rock it became a part of you and you understood it and shared it. You understood afresh each time you saw the wild anguish in a woman’s face, each time you looked into a man’s dazed eyes and saw his quivering lips.

The doctor drew aside, said, “Just a few minutes, then. A very few minutes, please.”

Romano opened the door and walked into the hospital room. He closed the door behind him.

The man on the bed stared wide-eyed at the ceiling. His name was Lester Ferguson. The Butcher had murdered his wife the night before. Ferguson had found her body on the floor of their bedroom when he returned from choir practice.

Romano stood quietly by the bed for moment. The man did not even look at him.

Romano said, “Do you remember me, Mr. Ferguson?”

With an obvious physical effort, Ferguson turned his head toward the detective. He said, “I–I’m not quite sure.”

“I’m a police officer, Mr. Ferguson. Lieutenant Romano, Homicide. I talked to you a moment last night at your house before you collapsed. You told me you saw his face. You said you could identify the man.”

Ferguson’s voice was a whisper. “The face,” he said.

Romano waited. Ferguson said nothing else. He was off in a world of his own again.

“You told me you saw the murderer’s face, Mr. Ferguson,” Romano persisted. “When I asked you if you could identify it, you answered, ‘Yes, yes, I will remember it forever.’ It was right after that you became ill. Can you describe the face to me, Mr. Ferguson? I hate to do this. I know what you’ve been through. But this man is an insane killer. Your wife was the fifth woman he has killed. The same sadist, the same psychopath committed all the murders, because his method was always the same. He’ll kill again, Mr. Ferguson, unless we find him first. And you’re the only person on earth who can identify him.”

Ferguson had drifted off again. Finally, he said, “The face.”

“Yes, sir,” said Romano eagerly. “The face you saw last night. The face at the window. Can you describe the face, Mr. Ferguson?”

Ferguson’s voice was husky. “It — it was the Face of Evil,” he said.

Romano sighed heavily and seated himself on the edge of a straight chair beside the bed.

“It was an evil face,” he prompted. “Can you tell me a little more, Mr. Ferguson? Was it a young face or an old one? Was it broad or thin? Were there any scars or other distinguishing marks, perhaps?”

Ferguson said, “You cannot describe the Face of Evil in such terms.”

Romano wiped the sweat beads from his face with the edge of his hand. Why were hospitals always such stuffy places? Sick people should have fresh air.

“Please try to help me, Mr. Ferguson,” he pleaded patiently. “We’ll have to have a little more than that to go on.”

“What did you say your name was?” Ferguson asked.

“Romano. Lieutenant Romano. I’m a detective assigned to investigate the murder of your wife.”

“Are you a religious man, Lieutenant?” Ferguson asked.

Romano winced. His wife Rosa and Father Riordan were always needling him about missing Mass. A cop’s hours were so unpredictable. A cop got so damned tired.

“I believe in God, Mr. Ferguson,” he said. “I’m a member of the church.”

“All religious men have looked upon the face of God,” Ferguson declared, his voice suddenly clear, animation coming into his dead-white face. “But how can you describe the face of God? You cannot describe the face of God as old or young or broad or thin or scarred or smooth.”

The effort seemed to have exhausted the man on the bed. He fell back on the pillow, breathing heavily. Romano waited. Finally he said, “It was a human face you saw last night, Mr. Ferguson. You said you saw it staring at you through the window. It was the face of the man who murdered your wife.”

Ferguson seemed exasperated at the detective’s obtuseness. “Who can say if the Face of Evil is a human face?” he asked. “I mean no blasphemy, but it is like the face of God, because it is so many things. It is the face of a wanton woman who waits in shadows. It is the face of a soldier who is killing his enemy. It is the face of a maniac who runs amok with a flaming torch. It is the broad, red face of a lecherous sot who mouths obscenities. And it is the pinched, white face of a narcotics addict. Does that answer you? The Face of Evil is all these things.”

Romano said, “Then it wasn’t the face of a person you saw last night. It wasn’t a real face, after all.”

Ferguson lurched upright in the bed. His voice rose to shrill hysteria and Romano glanced apprehensively toward the closed door. “Of course it was real! It was a murderer’s face. It was the face of the man who killed my wife!”

Romano sighed. He decided to try another tack. The doctor or the nurse would be in any second to tell him that his time was up.

“About the window, Mr. Ferguson,” he said, consulting scribbled notes. “Your apartment is on the first floor. There is a bedroom window that opens on the little garden. It is quite probable the murderer entered and left through the window. It was not locked. But you told us you stood in the bedroom doorway and saw the face in the window directly opposite you. You were mistaken there, weren’t you, Mr. Ferguson? There is no window directly opposite the doorway. The window is some fourteen feet to the right of the door. You would have to walk into the room, past your wife’s body, and turn to the right to see the window. You were a little confused on this point. Under the circumstances, that is understandable.”

“No! No!” Ferguson exclaimed. “I came home from the church. I was feeling ill. I have been having these little spells. It is my heart, they say. I sank down into a chair, exhausted. I tried to call my wife. I wanted the medicine in the bathroom cabinet. She did not answer. I must have dozed off, lost consciousness. When I came to, I called my wife again. She did not answer. I opened my bedroom door. Her body was there at my feet, with the knife beside it. I looked up and there was a window directly above my wife’s body, directly opposite the door, and the naked Face of Evil was staring at me through the window.”

Romano said, “I see.” The door was opening quietly. The nurse had come to summon him. He said, “Thank you, Mr. Ferguson. I hope I haven’t tired you. We’ll talk again when you are feeling better.”

Romano nodded politely to the nurse and left the room. He had learned never to hope too much when a break was in the making. Now he was not too disappointed. He had to work on the theory that Ferguson had actually seen a face, because that was the only possible lead to the madman who had butchered five women. When Ferguson’s mind cleared he might be able to describe the face in recognizable terms. He might be able to go over the mug shots of the hundreds of psychopaths in the I. D. room and pick out one and say, “That is the face.” Romano had to hold to that. The Butcher had killed five times in seven months. He would kill again if they failed to find him.

Romano returned to Manhattan West, the old precinct house on the edge of Hell’s Kitchen that was the clearing house for all the crimes of violence committed west of Fifth Avenue. He mounted a flight of worn stairs and entered the cubbyhole that served him as an office. A green-shaded bulb burned above the desk night and day, for no light came through the small window on an air-shaft. A large, young detective named Grierson, Romano’s assistant, lay sleeping on the cracked leather couch. Grierson was a detective first-grade, which meant he drew lieutenant’s pay, even though he did not have the permanent rank on the Department rolls. And he’s only been a cop for seven years, Romano thought. Grierson was the new type of cop. He had been graduated from City College and on his nights off he studied law at N. Y. U. Romano sank down in the creaking swivel chair and sighed heavily. He reached down and loosened the laces of his shoes. As he had expected, his nervous stomach was acting up. He took a small bottle of soda tablets from a drawer, shook out two. He poured water from a thermos jug on the desk and swallowed the tablets.

Grierson awakened and sat up on the couch, smoothing down his black hair with a big hand. He hadn’t been to bed either, since The Butcher’s latest kill had broken. Grierson yawned and said, “How is it?”

“My feet hurt,” Romano answered.

Grierson said, “Did Ferguson come to? Did he identify The Butcher?”

Romano covered his mouth with his hand and belched. He said, “Ferguson came to. I talked to him a few minutes. He says he saw a face that wasn’t human staring at him through a window that isn’t there.”

“One of those,” said Grierson.

“We’ve got to believe it,” Romano replied. He was trying to convince himself, not Grierson. “We’ve got to believe he saw The Butcher’s face. Later on he may remember and tell us something we can work on. He’s got a heart condition. He had a slight stroke when he got home last night, the medics say. When he came out of it and saw the body, his mind was fogged. He thinks the window was directly opposite the door. It isn’t. But he could have stepped around the body, turned right and seen the face there in the only window. We’ve got to keep on thinking he did.”

“The lab finished with the knife,” said Grierson. “It adds up to nothing. The fingerprints were only smudges.”

Romano nodded glumly. “Like usual,” he said. “I’ve been on the force since you were playing hopscotch. In all that time I’ve seen just one murder solved by fingerprints. The murderer was considerate. He left his prints in a pot of jeweler’s wax.”

Grierson said, “The poop on Ferguson is on your desk. Top folder. I looked it over. He’s a solid citizen. Nobody had a word to say against him. Manages a book store on lower Fifth Avenue that sells Bibles and religious stuff. He’s a pillar of the church. All his neighbors and his clergyman and the shopkeepers he deals with had a good word to say for him. He met his wife at his church. They’ve been married six years. No children.”

“That’s all?” Romano asked.

“Not quite,” said Grierson. “He was a student at a Divinity College when the war broke out. He wanted to be a minister. He could have been deferred from the draft, but he enlisted in a combat unit. He was an infantryman. He was with Clark’s Fifth Army all the way up The Boot. His record was good. Bronze Star decoration. Made staff sergeant. Was wounded slightly and got a Purple Heart. He was hospitalized a long time. It wasn’t the wound. He also suffered battle shock or combat fatigue or whatever it was they called it.”

“That means he’s a nut?” Romano asked. “It means he might see faces in windows that aren’t there?”

Grierson shrugged and yawned again. “Not unless a couple of million other guys who are walking the streets are nuts,” he answered. “There were at least that many cases of combat fatigue during the war, I understand. It’s a temporary breakdown of the nervous system, that’s all.”

“Thanks, Grierson,” Romano said. Sometimes he resented these new cops, the eager-beaver kind who had college degrees and studied law in night school. But they were useful. Romano hated to wade through long reports and Grierson knew it. Grierson could type with all ten fingers. He did most of the clerical poop that was part of a cop’s job. Romano hated to peck at the typewriter with two thick fingers. He always made mistakes. After doing it for more than twenty years, he made mistakes.

The lieutenant began to skim through the report on Ferguson. He didn’t read it carefully. He could depend on Grierson. Suddenly he paused and his thick eyebrows knit together.

“He was in that vet’s place right over on Staten Island,” he said.

Grierson said, “That’s right. Bay Heaven. It’s one of the biggest Army general hospitals in the country.”

“Get your hat,” Romano said. Romano was tying his shoe laces. “Why?” asked Grierson.

“We’re going over to Staten Island,” Romano answered. “There just might be some medic still around who remembers Ferguson.”

Grierson rose and stretched. “Oh, well,” he said, “it’s a nice day for a ferry ride.”

They left the police car parked on the lower deck of the ferry and climbed up to the top. They stood by the rail, letting the wind whip their faces, watching the skyline of Manhattan recede into the distance. More than eight million people lived and worked and had their being in this immediate area, Romano thought. One of them was called The Butcher.

“I wish I had some easy job,” the lieutenant said aloud. “Like finding a needle in a haystack.”

It took nearly two hours of questioning and waiting and checking the files at the hospital before they found a doctor named Bowers. He was an elderly man with the rank of lieutenant-colonel. After he had glanced over the files he remembered Lester Ferguson among the thousands of patients who had been under his care during the last dozen years. He remembered him quite clearly.

“A most interesting case,” Bowers said. “His wound was comparatively trivial, a fragment of shell in the leg that required surgery, but did no permanent damage. He didn’t even limp as a result. But he was in shock for an incredible length of time. Weeks, months, even. Sometimes he would lapse into a catatonic state. He would lie there on his cot, his body rigid, staring wide-eyed at the ceiling. And he would murmur something in a kind of awed and frightened whisper. ‘The face,’ he’d say, ‘the face.’ He’d murmur that over and over again.

“It was trauma, of course, some shocking experience that had been repressed and had made a lasting impression on him. We couldn’t bring out what it was or when it had occurred. It might have been in his childhood. It might have been anything and it might have happened at any time. I always say a thing like that is a splinter under the skin of the mind. You have to extract it somehow. We tried various techniques. None of them seemed to work. Finally, we hit on sodium pentothal, the stuff the newspapers call truth serum. I doubt we’d use it now we have the new relaxing drugs, but it did the trick. When he was under the influence of the drug we questioned him, and we finally brought it out, removed the splinter, you might say.

“He’d seen a face, or thought he’d seen one, staring at him through a broken window during street fighting while they were mopping up some little town in Italy. He thought it was the Face of Evil, as he called it. It must have been a pretty horrible experience for him. He was wounded right afterward, but the face stayed in his mind. Once we got him to tell us about it, we purged the thing and he was on his way to recovery.”

“You think he saw a real face in the window?” Romano asked. “Or was it just some sort of delusion?”

The doctor shrugged. “It’s hard to say,” he answered. “It could have been a real face. It could have been the face of some enemy sniper trapped there in a ruined building. The street was piled with dead and dying men, probably. Such faces aren’t very pretty. Whatever it was he saw, he thought it was the Face of Evil. He called it that. You have to understand that Ferguson was a very religious man. He’d been studying for the ministry when he went into the Army. Killing is a terrible experience for any man. That was especially true for a man like Ferguson. Most soldiers go through a war never knowing for sure that the shots they fire have killed an enemy. Ferguson knew for sure. Just a few days before he was wounded, a few days before he saw the face, he’d been decorated for wiping out an enemy strongpoint with a grenade. Five machine-gunners were killed by the grenade.”

“And when you brought it out, when you made him tell you about the face — this Face of Evil — he was cured?” Romano asked.

“From the clinical view, he was,” Bowers answered. “He came out of shock. The catatonic periods did not recur. We kept him around awhile for observation. He was perfectly normal when he was discharged.”

“Ferguson saw the face again last night,” Romano said flatly.

Bowers said, “I’m sorry. That is bad, of course, but it happens sometimes, years later. Usually it’s some shattering experience that brings it on.”

“It was a shattering experience,” Romano told the doctor. “Ferguson’s wife was killed by a murderer they call The Butcher.”

The Lieutenant rose and nodded to Grierson. He was ready to leave.

As the police car rolled off the ferry onto Manhattan Island, Grierson said, “It’s nearly five. Do we knock off now and catch some shuteye, or are we starting another tour of duty?”

“Drive to City Hospital,” Romano answered. “I want to try and talk to Ferguson again.”

Inside the hospital, Romano saw the same doctor he had spoken to that morning, the thin man with the high cheekbones and the small mustache.

“I’d like to talk to Ferguson again,” he said. “I won’t be but a little while.”

The doctor said, “Didn’t you get our message, Lieutenant?”

“What message?” Romano asked.

“We called your office and left word. Lester Ferguson died of a cerebral hemorrhage about an hour ago.”

Romano merely nodded, accepting it.

Grierson shook his head angrily. “So the only person who could tell us what The Butcher looked like died without identifying him,” the young detective said.

“Oh, he identified him,” Romano answered softly. “Come on, Grierson. I want to look in on Ferguson’s flat.”

The Fergusons had occupied the ground floor of a house of mellowed brick on a pleasant, tree-lined street in Greenwich Village. Romano got the key of Ferguson’s apartment from the superintendent. Daylight still showed through the windows, but the apartment was shadowy and Romano switched on lights.

He said, “Ferguson must have been sitting in that chair right there when he came back to consciousness after his stroke.” He crossed the room and sat down in a chintz-covered easy chair.

“He came to,” Romano continued. “He was confused. He probably wasn’t too sure where he was, even. He called to his wife, and she didn’t answer.”

Romano got to his feet. “The bedroom door was closed. Ferguson walked toward it.” Romano walked toward the bedroom door and opened it. He switched on another light, stood in the doorway.

“He looked down and saw his wife’s body on the floor, right inside the doorway. Then he looked up and saw the murderer’s face staring at him through a window.”

Romano drew aside, “Come over here, Grierson,” he said. “Stand here in the doorway.”

Grierson obeyed.

“Look straight ahead of you,” Romano said. “You see, Ferguson was right. There is a window.”

Grierson was a good cop and a conscientious one, but sometimes his mind did not work too fast. He turned to Romano, his face blank.

Romano said, “You want me to draw you a picture? Ferguson saw the face of the man who killed his wife in what he called a window, the thing that’s right in front of you. He called it The Face of Evil, but it was The Butcher’s face, the face of the psycho who killed five women in this neighborhood.”

Grierson didn’t see a window.

All he saw was his own face reflected in the mirror on the wall.