The Second Richard Deming Mystery MEGAPACK™: 23 Classic Mystery Stories

An Element of Risk

Originally published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, September 1972.

When I learned my brother-in-law was going to be out of town for a whole week, I got pretty upset about my sister being alone for seven nights when a psychotic killer was running around loose. I was having Sunday dinner with them at their place when Lyle casually mentioned he was flying to Chicago the next morning.

“For how long?” I asked.

“I’ll be back the following Monday.”

“Seven days!” I said so loudly that I startled young Tod into dropping a spoonful of mashed potatoes and gravy onto his high-chair tray. “You’re going to leave Martha alone in the house for seven days!”

The moment the words were out, I wished I hadn’t raised my voice. I liked Lyle, but he was so touchy you had to be careful how you talked to him. I had seen him abruptly withdraw from conversation at some imagined slight and sit without uttering a word for hours.

Martha was having the same thoughts, because she threw him a concerned glance, but this time he seemed undisturbed.

Relieved, she said lightly, “I’ll have Tod to protect me.”

Big deal. My namesake nephew was two-and-a-half-years old.

The boy, whose high chair was between me and my sister, looked from me to his mother and inquired, “Why Unkie Tod talk so loud?”

“Because he has a vivid imagination,” she told him. “Eat your mashed potatoes.”

My fears were hardly imaginary, though. The wraith known as the Stocking Killer had so far strangled six local women with their own stockings, and incidentally had inspired a couple of other nuts in Kansas City and Chicago to imitate him by each killing one victim. All six St. Louis women had been young, attractive married women, alone in their homes when murdered. In two cases their husbands had been out of town, but in the other four they had merely been out for the evening.

The M.O. had been the same in each case. The killer had obtained entry after his victim was asleep, had searched the house until he found a pair of stockings recently worn by the victim but as yet unlaundered, then had strangled the woman with one stocking and had carried the other away.

There had been no evidence of sexual attack in any of the cases, and no strange fingerprints were ever found, leading the police to believe the killer wore gloves. The only clue was that a female witness had seen the man who probably was the killer, just after he left the home of one of the victims.

Unfortunately she had seen him only from the back and by moonlight. The victim and her husband had lived in the lower flat of a two-family building and the witness lived in the upper. At two-thirty in the morning the witness had gone down the back stairs to let in her squalling cat, and as she opened the back door she saw a man just disappearing through the rear gate into the alley.

Aside from describing his dress and approximate size, she hadn’t been able to tell the police anything about him. He had been dressed all in black, she said, with matching slacks, sweater and cap. She had estimated his height as from six feet to six-two and his weight at 180 to 200.

In a more moderate tone I said, “I’m serious. One of those killings was less than a mile from here.”

Martha said, still in a light tone, “He might be in for a surprise if he picked me. Don’t forget I had judo training as an Army nurse.”

“Yeah, about two lessons, wasn’t it?” I said dourly. “And how do you know the Stocking Killer doesn’t know judo too?”

Martha elevated her chin. “We trained an hour a week for twelve weeks. I could toss you all over the room, big brother.”

I made a dismissing gesture. “I’m out of condition from eating my own cooking. The one witness who saw this guy described him as being as big as Lyle, and you can’t weigh over a hundred pounds.”

“Ninety-nine,” Lyle said. “But she’ll lock the doors after dark, and I’ve instructed her not to open to anyone until she’s established his identity.”

I leaned forward in order to emphasize what I was saying. “Listen, Lyle. I’ve been on this story since the first murder, and I know a few things the general public doesn’t. The police asked the press to sit on it, because they’re afraid of public panic, but from crime-lab examination of the barrels of the door locks of a couple of the victims, they’ve decided he’s expert with a picklock. It seems a picklock leaves certain distinctive scratches that show up under a microscope.”

Martha looked at her husband. Lyle frowned. “Maybe there ought to be draw bolts on the doors,” he conceded, “but I have to catch a plane tomorrow morning before any hardware stores will be open.” After a pause, he said, “Would you have time to pick up a couple of bolts tomorrow and install them, Tod?”

“I could take the time, but that still wouldn’t be enough protection. In one case, where the woman had her doors bolted from inside, the Stocking Killer used a glass cutter to make a neat little hole next to a window catch. That was the one where the published report was that he gained entry by breaking a window. The cops were afraid that if the public knew what an efficient break-in man he was, the warning might make some woman jittery enough to shoot her husband when he came home late and keyed open the door. How necessary is this trip of yours?”

“The company’s sending me. It’s the annual electronics manufacturers’ convention, and all the new products will be on display.”

Lyle worked as a parts-procurement agent for an electronics firm, a job which periodically took him out of town, but usually only for a day or two at a time. He also supplemented his income by doing a little TV repair work evenings. He had taken a correspondence course in television repairing under the G.I. educational program after he came out of service.

Actually, when he took the course he had intended to go into that business, but had ended up in his present job instead. Nevertheless it came in handy as a means to make extra money. Although his salary was nearly ten thousand a year, inflation had made that just barely enough for a family of three to exist on, these high-priced days.

In a definite tone I said, “Then I’m going to move in here with Martha and Tod while you’re gone.”

Lyle shrugged. “It’s all right with me, if you don’t mind the daybed in the den.”

“Reporters can sleep anywhere,” I told him.

Little Tod said, “You stay for a visit, Unkie Tod?”

“Yeah,” I said. “For a whole week.”

Martha said, “Actually, if it won’t inconvenience you, I would feel better with you here. Not that he’d be very likely to pick on me. So far he’s only picked pretty women.”

Cocking an eyebrow at her, my brother-in-law said loyally, “That includes you, honey.”

She gave him a fond smile, but she knew that if he meant it, she was pretty only in his eyes. The best adjective to describe my sister was plain. She certainly wasn’t ugly, but no one except a man blinded by love could possibly have considered her pretty. She was thin, with match-legs, and had the unfortunate Conner nose. It was thin and pointed and too long, making her rather resemble a bird.

In short, she looked like me, except I was eight inches taller. At the paper I’m known as Nose Conner. The editor who nicknamed me claims he thought up the sobriquet because of my skill at nosing out stories, but I suspect most of my colleagues associate it with my appearance.

Martha was one of the sweetest, most understanding women around, though, and there was no doubt about Lyle being nuts over her, so maybe he did think she was pretty.

Although they did their best not to show it, I’m sure most of our friends were astonished when Martha returned to St. Louis with such a handsome husband in tow. Lyle Barton was tall and muscular, with blond, curling hair and the features of some mythical Greek hero. He also had a certain charm about him that made both women and men instantly like him, despite his occasional moodiness and his tendency to be oversensitive to people’s remarks.

As fond as I was of my baby sister, I have to confess I was surprised too, until I learned some of the details of their romance.

Martha had been serving as a psychiatric nurse at the Fort Ord Army Hospital when Private Lyle Barton was shipped back from Vietnam with combat fatigue. He had also been wounded slightly, but had fully recovered from his physical wound before he arrived at Ord.

It seems that many emotionally disturbed patients tend to reach out desperately for love and understanding. According to Martha, patients in psychoanalysis usually develop parent complexes about their analysts when both are of the same sex. If they are of different sexes, it is almost routine for patients to go through periods during treatment when they fall in love with their analysts.

Also, according to Martha, in military hospitals the case loads of psychiatrists are generally so large that they have to concentrate most of their time on the more severely disturbed patients, usually seeing those with less serious problems only briefly on their periodic visits through the wards. The result is that these patients never establish the rapport with their doctors that almost always develops during analysis, but the need is still there, so the less disturbed patients tend to fall in love with their nurses.

While Lyle was pretty disoriented when he first arrived at the hospital, he was deemed by his assigned psychiatrist to require merely rest and tranquilizers instead of psychiatric treatment. Martha was his day nurse.

She told me in confidence that she was quite aware of the psychological reasons that made Lyle think he was in love with her. As a matter of fact, she had gone through similar experiences with a number of previous patients who eventually recovered from their infatuations at the same time they recovered their mental health, but she had an odd and disturbing premonition that Lyle’s feeling for her wasn’t going to change when his condition improved.

She couldn’t explain why, but she candidly confessed that it might have been merely wishful thinking, because she had fallen hopelessly in love with him too. She waited to see how he felt when he recovered before committing herself to anything, though.

When he was discharged from the hospital, and simultaneously received an honorable discharge from service, he was still insisting he loved her. At the time, Lyle was twenty-six, the same age as Martha, which she figured was too mature an age for it to be puppy love. Nevertheless, she was still afraid it might be only an unusually prolonged attachment of the usual sort common in nurse-patient relationships, and she insisted that he take more time.

Lyle had no parents, but the uncle and aunt who had raised him were still alive and lived in Wisconsin. He had some terminal leave coming, so Martha suggested he visit his uncle and aunt for thirty days, and told him if he still felt the same at the end of his visit, she would marry him.

He arrived back at Fort Ord on the twenty-ninth day, and they were married a week later.

Lyle had only a high-school education, and under the G.I. educational program he could have gone to college with all expenses paid, plus $200 a month for living expenses, but he preferred to go to work. He took a civilian job at the post exchange.

Since he was so set against college, Martha didn’t push that, but she hated to see him throw away entirely his veteran’s benefits. It was largely at her urging that he took a correspondence course, in television repair, because he had always had an interest in electronics.

Lyle had barely finished the course when Martha requested release from active duty because she was pregnant. His PX job wasn’t important enough to worry about leaving, so they came to St. Louis for Lyle to look for another job. Until he found one I put them up in the single bedroom of my bachelor apartment and took over the front-room sofa.

Lyle quickly discovered that the field of television repair was lucrative only if you owned your own shop. No one wanted to offer a decent salary for an assistant. So he widened his sights and almost immediately found a job in another field, in the parts-procurement department of one of St. Louis’ largest electronics firms.

They stayed with me for only a month. Since then, Lyle had been promoted twice and they had bought a two-bedroom home on Bellerive Boulevard in South St. Louis.

Lyle still had a little emotional trouble, as evidenced by his touchiness and his occasional fits of depression, but it seemed to be nothing serious. It was just enough to get him a 10 % disability compensation without interfering with either his work or his home life. He wasn’t under treatment, unless you counted his annual psychological checkup at the Jefferson Barracks Veterans Hospital just south of the city. That was required in order for him to continue to receive his disability compensation.

Otherwise they seemed to have no problems. I got the impression that both of them were still as deeply in love as the day Martha brought Lyle home. I know she was, from a conversation we had the first evening Lyle was away.

Tod was already in bed and we were companionably drinking together in the front room. The alcohol loosened her tongue enough to tell me some things about her relationship with Lyle that she had never mentioned before. More or less idly I asked if Lyle’s emotional condition was improving any. She took so long to answer that I sat up straight and peered at her.

“Well, it’s not really likely to, you know,” she said finally.

I hiked my eyebrows. “I know he had a bad time in Vietnam, but I thought everybody eventually got over combat fatigue.”

“Most do, when there’s no physical damage accompanying it. But Lyle’s problem is a little more than just combat fatigue.”

“Oh?”

“Since I was his nurse, naturally I know his complete medical history. He had a rather severe emotional problem before he ever entered the Army. In fact, he spent a year in a Wisconsin mental hospital.”

I stared at her. “Diagnosed as what?”

“Mild schizophrenia.”

“Schizophrenia!” I said incredulously. “How’d he ever get in the Army?”

“He neglected to mention it, and the Army didn’t discover it until he’d been returned to the States. Under Army regulations he could have been discharged as mentally unfit for service, or even have been given a discharge other than honorable. That’s not the same as a dishonorable discharge. You still have all veterans’ rights. It’s just sort of like graduating with a D-minus average. But Lyle had picked up a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star Medal in action, and the brass tends to overlook minor indiscretions by war heroes. Since he was being discharged in any event, they gave him an honorable one.”

“But schizophrenia!” I said. “Doesn’t that mean he’s dangerous?”

“Of course not,” she said, frowning at me. “Severe cases of schizophrenia can be dangerous, but I told you Lyle’s was diagnosed as mild. He’s far from psychotic. You probably know a dozen people you consider normal who have schizophrenic tendencies. It isn’t that uncommon.”

“Suppose he gets worse?”

“He isn’t likely to. He isn’t likely to get better either, though. It’s just a matter of learning to live with his occasional withdrawals into some private little world of his own.”

I took a long, slow sip of my drink before saying, “Don’t misunderstand this, Sis, because I like Lyle. But knowing his diagnosis, how’d you ever happen to marry him?”

She stared at me. “I love him.”

“That’s no answer,” I said. “Would you have married Jack-the-Ripper if you had loved him?”

“That’s hardly a comparable example!”

“Don’t get sore,” I said placatingly. “I’m not trying to run Lyle down. I’m just trying to understand how a girl with your background in psychiatry brought herself to taking the risky step of marrying a diagnosed schizophrenic.”

“Not a schizophrenic, dammit, Tod. Merely with schizophrenic tendencies.”

“Okay, okay. But despite what you say about his condition not being likely to worsen, you must have known before you married him that it could. And that seems pretty risky to me.”

She made no reply for nearly a minute, during which she took several angry pulls at her drink. Then she calmed down and gave me a sheepish smile.

“I know you’re just being protective, so I have no right to get mad at you. Particularly since you’re right. I did consider the risk. But he loved me too, you see.”

I cocked an eyebrow at her. “What’s that got to do with the element of risk?”

“Nothing, really,” she said with a shrug. “But Lyle’s the only man who ever gave me a second look.” When I frowned at her, she said quickly, “Don’t misunderstand me. It wasn’t just a matter of a love-starved spinster jumping at the only chance she ever had. I wasn’t just settling for what I could get. Even if I had been the belle of the hospital, I would have picked Lyle. He’s the handsomest, most charming, most wonderful man I ever met.”

I said nothing, merely taking a gulp of my drink.

“You’ve never been in love, Tod,” she said softly. “The way I feel about Lyle, I’d continue to love him if he became a raving maniac. I’d do anything in the world for him.”

The drinks were affecting me too, or I would never have said what I did. “Even stand still for a bullet if he decided to kill you?” I asked bluntly.

She blinked, but instead of getting angry again, she merely turned defensive. “That’s not fair,” she said. “He’s not going to get worse.” After a beat she added, “Yes, I guess I would, though.”

I felt a chill crawl along my spine as I suddenly had a mental vision of Martha standing with an expression of loving forgiveness on her face as Lyle, his face maniacally contorted, pumped bullets into her.

Shaking myself, I said, “Maybe we’d better drop the subject. You love him and I like him, and all we’re doing is getting each other upset. You want a nightcap?”

“I think I could use one.” Then she glanced at her wristwatch and said in a surprised tone, “Maybe we’d better not. It’s nearly eleven, and don’t you have to get up at six?”

“I never sleep more than six hours,” I told her. “One more isn’t going to hurt either of us.”

In the kitchen I set the empty glasses on the counter next to the sink and was turning toward the refrigerator for ice when a sight across the alley caught my eye. The window over the sink looked directly at the rear of the house across the alley. Through a lighted second-story window I could see into a bedroom where a young and shapely blonde was just beginning to undress.

I don’t think I’m any more of a Peeping Tom than the average guy. It wouldn’t even occur to me to make a deliberate attempt to see into a neighbor’s window, but I doubt that any normal man deliberately turns his back when a view such as that is unexpectedly offered. I stood there and watched.

She took quite a while to undress, because she was neat. She hung her dress on a hanger and put it in a closet. After removing her stockings, she disappeared from view for a while, then reappeared without the stockings and in no further stage of undress. I guessed that she had washed them and hung them to dry in the bathroom.

The rest of her undressing didn’t take very long, and she was stark naked when Martha came into the kitchen to see what was delaying me.

When she saw, she burst out laughing instead of being shocked by my depravity.

“You too?” she said. “I catch Lyle in here watching the show about once a week.”

“Doesn’t she ever draw her drapes?” I asked without taking my eyes off the blonde. She was now putting on a filmy nightgown.

“Only on weekends, when her husband is home. He works nights. Then I imagine it’s he who draws them. Lyle and I have decided she’s not an exhibitionist, though, because she never shows the least self-consciousness. She would almost have to if she suspected she were being watched, don’t you think? Besides, we’ve had a little casual neighborly conversation with them, and she’s quite obviously fond of her husband, so it seems unlikely she’s looking for anything. We think she’s just careless about drawing drapes.”

The light in the bedroom suddenly went out. Belatedly I began mixing the drinks.

“Doesn’t it upset you when you find Lyle watching her?” I asked.

“Why should it?” she asked cheerfully. “It’s me he goes to bed with, not her. And the show always puts him in the mood for love.” The next morning on the way to work an unsettling thought occurred to me. I had left word at the city desk that I would be staying with my sister for a week, so they knew where to find me in an emergency, which meant I could be called out on some special assignment in the middle of the night before Lyle returned from Chicago.

That didn’t happen too often but, just in case, I decided to take Lyle’s suggestion and install drawbolts on both the front and back doors.

En route back to the paper from an assignment, I stopped at a hardware store and bought two bolts.

After work I drove to South St. Louis straight from the paper, getting to Martha’s place about five. Although it was only the end of March, we were having an early spring and it was pleasant enough for people to be out on their porches. Little Tod was riding his tricycle on the sidewalk while Martha sat on the porch watching him.

“Hi, Unkie Tod,” the little guy called. “Watch me!”

I stood and watched a few moments as his fat little legs pumped the pedals and the tricycle raced along at the desperate speed of perhaps two miles an hour. My applause made him grin with delight.

Climbing the steps, I held up the paper bag I was carrying for Martha to see. “Just in case I get called out on an assignment some night, I decided to take Lyle’s suggestion and install a couple of drawbolts after all. Where’s Lyle keep his tools?”

“In his workshop in the basement.”

Going inside, I shed my coat and necktie in the den, then went downstairs. One whole side of the basement had been partitioned off to serve as Lyle’s workshop. A long workbench had tools of every description hanging on the wall over it: everything from hammers to a set of bolt cutters. The dismantled innards of a television set stood on the bench, and two more sets were on the floor.

I selected a screwdriver of the size I would need, then began to open drawers in search of a drill. In a top drawer containing nothing but woodworking tools I found a hand brace and a set of bits. I could have used that, but I was sure that for his repair work Lyle would have an electric drill. I started searching the other drawers.

In one of the bottom drawers there was nothing but a small leather case and a tin box. When I found it was locked, I snapped open the leather case.

It contained five items. There was an extremely thin-nosed pair of pliers, a glass cutter, a small rubber suction cup with a metal ring attached to it large enough to fit over a man’s finger, a pair of black kid gloves and a long, thin implement that seemed to be made of spring steel.

I puzzled over the last item and the rubber suction cup. I figured out the spring-steel implement first. It was a picklock.

Then I realized the purpose of the suction cup. If you pressed it against the glass of a windowpane, then cut around it with a glass cutter, it would prevent the cut-out section from falling inside and perhaps shattering on the floor.

I like to think I’m at least as quick on the uptake as the average guy, but my initial reaction was merely puzzlement at why Lyle would possess what appeared to be a rather simple burglar’s kit. I suspect this was a quite normal reaction, though. On the basis of such a bare hint, it would be abnormal to jump to a monstrous conclusion about anyone as close to you as a brother-in-law. As a matter of fact the normal reaction would be not just to reject such a thought, but to refuse even to let it form.

Whether it was intuition, subconscious suspicion or merely my reportorial nosiness that made me try the picklock on the tin box, I don’t know. At any rate I did try it, and because it was a simple lock, I managed to get it open after only about five minutes of fumbling.

The box contained nothing but eight nylon stockings.

This being a little more than a bare hint, the monstrous thought did occur to me; but because I sincerely liked Lyle, I instantly began a mental search for some less monstrous explanation for this cache.

Almost immediately I was able to think of something that seemed to make it highly unlikely that he was the Stocking Killer. According to Martha, Lyle had repeatedly watched the blonde who lived behind them undress. She was as attractive as any of the Stocking Killer’s victims, and Lyle knew her husband worked nights. If Lyle were the killer, why hadn’t she been a victim?

The depressing answer to that hit me almost as quickly as the question. Insane people aren’t necessarily stupid. The blonde was simply too close to home to be worth the risk.

I turned back to trying to think of some alternate reason anyone would keep a secret cache of women’s stockings.

I couldn’t think of any, particularly after examining the stockings more closely. At least four of them had no mates. One was longer than all the others, another shorter, and two didn’t match any of the others in shade. The other four were the same shade and size, so might have been two pairs; but it was equally it possible that they were single stockings from four similar pairs.

I took some hope from the fact that there were eight stockings, while there had been only six murders. Then I thought of the one in Kansas City and the one in Chicago that the police assumed were merely apings of the Stocking Killer by a couple of other nuts who had read about him.

Lyle made periodic business trips to both cities. I decided to find out if he had been to either or both places when the murders occurred.

I had to play this very cool. I had to be absolutely sure before I went to the police, and I had to be equally sure that they would guarantee me anonymity as their informer. I didn’t want my sister living with a homicidal maniac, but I also didn’t want her thrusting me out of her life. Even if Lyle were guilty, I knew she would never forgive me for turning him in.

Fortunately there was time for some thorough checking. It was only Tuesday, and Lyle wasn’t due back from Chicago for six more days.

I put the nylons back in the tin box and managed to get it locked again with the picklock. Then I searched some more drawers until I found the electric drill, went upstairs and installed the two door bolts.

During dinner I casually remarked to Martha, “Lyle gets to Chicago quite often, doesn’t he?”

“Only about twice a year,” she said. “Last time he had to be there over Thanksgiving, remember?”

I did recall, now that she mentioned it, because she had invited me for Thanksgiving dinner, and Lyle had been away at the time. I tried to remember when the Chicago murder had occurred, but could place it in my memory only as sometime last winter. I could look it up at the paper tomorrow, though.

I said, “Yeah, I remember. His last trip to K.C. was over some holiday too, wasn’t it?”

“Oh, no. That was way last summer, around the middle of June.”

I let the conversation drop.

The next morning, as soon as I arrived at the paper, I went down to the news morgue in the basement.

The K.C. murder had been on Wednesday, June 16th, of the previous year. The Chicago murder had been on Friday, November 26th, the day after Thanksgiving.

I went up to the city room, sat at my desk and phoned Dr. Sam Carter at his home. I called there instead of to his office because it was only a few minutes after eight, and he didn’t reach his office until nine.

Sam was now a hundred-dollar-an-hour psychiatrist, but in our youth, when he was a pre-med student and I was studying journalism, we were fraternity brothers at Washington U. We still kept in touch and were still good friends.

When I got him on the phone, he at first said he couldn’t possibly see me until evening. When I told him it was urgent, he said he would cancel his first appointment and see me at his office at nine a.m.

I arrived exactly at nine and his receptionist sent me right into his private office. Sam was about my age, thirty-five, but a lot better-looking. He was tall and lean, with a strong-featured but amiable face and thick, slightly graying hair.

He pointed to an upholstered leather chair before his desk. “Have a seat, Tod. Or would you rather lie on the couch?”

Seating myself, I said, “It’s not a personal problem. I just want some information.”

“Okay. Shoot.”

I said, “Would it be possible for the Stocking Killer to be a happily married man, a good father and in love with his wife?”

Sam looked interested. “Possible. There have been cases where apparently normal family men with seemingly happy marriages have turned out to be pretty nasty sex criminals. I would have guessed that the Stocking Killer was a loner, but it’s not impossible he’s the sort of man you describe, that’s sure.”

“Okay, next question. If the guy I have in mind is the Stocking Killer, he keeps the mates of the stockings he used to strangle his victims in a locked tin box. Why would he do that?”

Sam shrugged. “I’m a psychiatrist, not a clairvoyant. If you want some blind guesses, I can give you a couple. Maybe he keeps them as the record of his victories, sort of like scalps. Maybe he just has a stocking fetish. Maybe he’s saving them to stuff a pillow.”

“You’re in the wrong profession,” I said sourly. “You should have been a stand-up comedian. Will you do me a favor?”

“Sure, so long as it’s legal and doesn’t require me to violate medical ethics.”

“It is and doesn’t. But first I want to stress that what I’m going to tell you is strictly confidential.”

He nodded. “Most of what I hear in this office is confidential.”

I took a deep breath. “I think Lyle Barton is the Stocking Killer.”

He gazed at me in astonishment. “Martha’s husband?”

“Uh-huh.”

“And on just what do you base that incredible theory?”

I told him, in detail, including the history of Lyle’s mental illness.

When I finished, he was no longer looking astonished, but only thoughtful. “What’s the favor you want?” he asked.

“I’d like you to check out Lyle’s psychiatric history. Since he has his annual disability checkup at the local V.A. hospital, I assume his Army medical records would be on file there. As a psychiatrist, you’d have better access to them than I.”

“No problem. I’m on the staff out there. His file should include not only his Army medical records, but a detailed report from that Wisconsin mental hospital. Almost certainly the V.A. would have asked for one.”

“When can you get out there?” I asked.

“Not before this evening. I can’t possibly cancel any more appointments, and I’m booked solid right up to five.”

“That’s okay,” I said. “There’s still five days to work on this. Suppose you phone me at Martha’s when you get back from the hospital?”

“I’ll need a little time to evaluate whatever I find in the case record. I’d rather make it in the morning.”

“All right,” I agreed. “But I don’t want to make you cancel any more appointments. Could you get yourself up in time to meet me here at eight a.m.?”

“I’ll make that sacrifice if you’re willing.”

“It’s no sacrifice for me,” I told him. “I check in at the paper at seven-thirty.”

Thursday morning we arrived at Sam’s office simultaneously. Again I took the leather chair and he sat behind his desk with his hands folded across his stomach.

“There were some interesting things in Lyle’s case file,” he said. “Did you know his father strangled his mother, then blew his own brains out?”

“Martha never mentioned that,” I said in surprise. “When?”

“When Lyle was twelve. According to what he told the psychiatrist assigned to him at the Wisconsin mental hospital, he felt his mother deserved it. He hated her and loved his father. He described her as a very beautiful woman, but a cheat. Apparently he became aware at a very early age that she was having numerous lovers. From the case record, I gathered that she made little attempt to conceal it from him, but periodically threatened to beat him senseless if he ever told his father. He never did, but one day he deliberately neglected to give his mother a phone message in the hope that his father would find her out. His father phoned from out of town that he would be home a day earlier than expected, and would arrive around midnight. Because Lyle failed to relay the message, when his father walked in, he found his wife in bed with another man.”

“And killed her?”

“Not right then. He kicked the lover out, stormed out himself and went on a five-day drunk. Then he came back, still drunk, strangled her and shot himself.”

I said, “So Lyle developed a guilt complex because he had caused the tragedy?”

He gave me a mildly irritated look. “You armchair psychiatrists have guilt complexes on the brain. What makes you think everybody who’s mentally disturbed has to have a guilt complex about something? Neither the Wisconsin report nor the considerably briefer and more cursory reports of the various Army and V.A. psychiatrists who have examined him indicate he ever felt the slightest guilt about either parent’s death. He was deeply grieved by his father’s death, but he blamed it on her, not himself, and he was quite happy that he had been indirectly responsible for his mother being killed. He felt he had been an instrument in wiping out evil.”

“All right,” I said. “If no guilt complex, what?”

“Probably a mixed bag of emotions. These things are never simple, but what comes out most clearly is that he had a strong mistrust of good-looking women. At the risk of hurting your feelings, I suggest it’s possible that’s why he chose Martha. He may have felt he could be sure she wouldn’t cheat on him.”

“You can’t hurt my feelings,” I said. “No Conner has ever won a beauty contest. Then his hang-up is simply that he hates beautiful women? Each time he kills one, in fantasy he is killing his mother?”

He got that irritated look on his face again. “Don’t put words in my mouth, Tod. If I could get Lyle on the couch for a half dozen sessions, I might be able to figure out his motives, if indeed he is the Stocking Killer. But I don’t make diagnoses by long-distance. That could be it, and even may be it, but it’s only a guess. Psychologically it has a large hole in it. If he picks victims as substitutes for his despised mother, they should be not only beautiful, but also unfaithful.”

After thinking this over, I said slowly, “Maybe they were. They were all married.”

He shrugged. “How would Lyle know that they were cheating, if they were? No connection between any of the victims has ever turned up. So how could he separately have met six attractive married women who didn’t know each other, then have gotten to know them well enough to learn they were cheating on their husbands?”

The answer came to me in a blinding flash of inspiration. “On TV repair calls,” I said.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Lyle does spare-time TV repair work evenings. Maybe these women were all customers. Maybe they all made passes at him. He’s just the sort of guy discontented wives on the make would pass at. He’s built like a gladiator and has the face of a matinee idol.”

Sam pursed his lips, then shrugged again. “So why wouldn’t he kill them when they made the passes?”

“Opportunity,” I said promptly. “Maybe the husband was home, but in another room. Maybe kids were wandering around. Or more likely, maybe because it was early enough for neighbors to see him coming and going. He makes these calls in the early evening, remember. I’m not suggesting that the victims invited him into their bedrooms. Maybe they just dropped hints that they were available, if he wanted to come by sometime when their husbands weren’t home. Couldn’t that be enough to set him off?”

“Sounds possible,” the psychiatrist conceded. “I wouldn’t comment on its probability without first getting Lyle on the couch.”

“You have a vested interest in scientific skepticism,” I said, rising from my chai”. “But to me it’s good enough to take to Sergeant Burmeister, and I do mean right now.” Sergeant Fritz Burmeister was the detective in charge of the Stocking Killer case. I found him at his desk in the Homicide squad room. He was a burly, beetle-browed man of about fifty with the perpetually sour expression some old-time homicide cops develop.

“Hi, Nose,” he greeted me with dour friendliness. “Sit down and rest your bones.”

Taking the chair alongside his desk, I said, “How would you like to wrap up the Stocking Killer case?”

His expression became alert. “I’d love it.”

“I can give you a strong lead. It may not pan out, but I kind of think it will. There’s a condition, though.”

“Okay,” he said impatiently. “You get an exclusive.”

I shook my head. “That’s not the condition. I want a guarantee that you’ll never disclose to anyone where you got the tip and that I won’t be called as a trial witness.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Will we need your evidence to convict?”

“No.”

“Okay. You got it.”

I told him the whole story.

On the basis of what I had told him, Sergeant Burmeister requestioned the husbands of all six victims. Three of them reported that TV repairmen had been called to their homes. Unfortunately in two cases, arrangements had been made by their wives, the husbands were out when the repairman arrived, and they had no idea who had been called. The two men who had been out of town when their wives were murdered both had traveling jobs. Neither knew of any TV repair work being done in their homes, but both conceded it was possible their wives had called repairmen and had just neglected to mention it. The sixth man was sure no TV repairman had been to his home, but the man who had arranged for the service call himself said he had called Lyle Barton, and had a canceled check to prove it.

No response resulted from a subsequent public appeal, after Lyle’s arrest, for whoever had made the TV service calls to the two homes where the husbands didn’t know who their wives had engaged, but a number of things transpired before that.

On Friday, Sergeant Burmeister descended on Martha with a search warrant. In deference to me he explained he was there because it had been learned her husband made a TV service call on one of the victims of the Stocking Killer, and may have called on others, and that the police wanted a look at his repair-service records. However, along with authorizing the look at Lyle’s records, the warrant authorized search for tools that might have been used for illegal break-in and for “items which may have been illegally removed from the premises of any of the victims.”

Martha was considerably upset by the search, but she had no idea that I had instigated it.

The leather case and tin box were found where I had told the sergeant they would be, but Lyle’s records showed no repair calls to any of the victims’ homes other than to the one Burmeister already knew about.

Six of the stockings found in the tin box matched those used as murder weapons. The police lab stated there was no way to establish them as definite mates, because similar stockings were manufactured by the millions, but at least they were established as possible mates. The other two stockings were sent respectively to Kansas City and Chicago.

Monday afternoon Lyle was arrested when he stepped off the plane from Chicago.

Martha nearly fell apart. I thought she was going to have a nervous breakdown. Deciding she shouldn’t be left alone, I continued to stay with her instead of moving back to my own apartment.

Naturally I had myself taken off the story, because it was too close to home, but I kept in close touch with Fritz Burmeister so that I would know what was going on.

The sergeant was convinced Lyle was guilty, but his case was far from airtight. One thing that bothered him was Lyle’s records showing a service call to only one victim. Burmeister was morally convinced he had made at least the two other calls known about, and perhaps had also made calls to the homes of the two traveling men. He thought Lyle had been cunning enough not to enter anything about those calls in his records, but to enter the one where he had been paid by check because the visit could be proved.

He wouldn’t be able to make that sort of speculation from the witness stand, though.

Another setback was the reports from Kansas City and Chicago. Neither stocking matched the ones used to strangle the victims in those cities. It was also established that Lyle had arrived back in St. Louis from Kansas City the day before the murder there. So apparently the original police theory that those murders had been imitations of the Stocking Killer by other psychos was right after all, if Lyle actually was the Stocking Killer.

Burmeister had a possible explanation for that setback too, but it would never have been admissible as evidence. He theorized that Lyle had broken into a couple of places, intending to commit murder, had gotten as far as locating a stocking to use, then had somehow been frightened off and had carried the stocking away with him.

Despite these loopholes, Burmeister thought he had a pretty strong case. It was going to be difficult for the defense to explain that miniature burglar kit and the cache of stockings that included six exactly matching the six used as murder weapons. Then a second search warrant turned up a pair of black slacks, a black long-sleeved sweater and a matching black cloth cap in Lyle’s closet. The witness who had once seen the Stocking Killer from the rear, and had described him as wearing similar clothing, was asked to view him wearing the outfit from behind. She couldn’t identify him as the man she had seen that night, but she was willing to testify that he was of the same height and general build. On top of all that, Lyle’s psychiatric history was bound to influence the jury.

It was a boon to the prosecution that Lyle had no alibi for any of the murder dates. There is little question in my mind that Martha would have sworn he was never out of her sight on any of the occasions, except it was a matter of record that he was.

Because Tod was so young, Martha didn’t care to work regularly, preferring to be at home with her son, but she filled in at Barnes Hospital when nurses went on vacation, or simply wanted nights off. She was on call only for night duty, so that Tod could be left with Lyle, thereby saving baby-sitter costs.

It just happened that Martha was on nursing duty every night that the Stocking Killer struck — except Sergeant Burmeister surmised that it hadn’t “just happened” at all. He suspected Lyle had deliberately chosen those nights to commit murder because his wife was away.

Despite my concern over her, Martha rather quickly recovered from her initial emotional collapse. By Tuesday she had regained full control of herself, although she remained pale and drawn and refused to eat anything. Meantime a friend had taken Tod into her home until Martha could completely quiet down.

Even in the face of the devastating circumstantial evidence against her husband, Martha fiercely denied any possibility of his guilt. She hired George Brinker, St. Louis’ top criminal lawyer, to defend him.

I accompanied her when she went to see the man for the first trial-strategy conference after he had interviewed Lyle and had studied the evidence against him. He was a plump, smooth-looking man in his mid-forties with considerable personal charm.

He started off by saying, “The evidence against your husband is entirely circumstantial, of course, Mrs. Barton. And the prosecution must establish guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. It’s not up to us to disprove his guilt. All we have to do is cast doubt on it.”

“How do you plan to do that?” I inquired.

“Let’s start with the so-called burglar kit. That’s what the prosecution is calling it, but we’re calling it an emergency repair kit for electronic appliances. Your brother-in-law has explained to me how that so-called picklock is used as a tool to test electrical contacts, and how, when it is used that way, the gloves are necessary for insulation.”

I noticed he made no mention of the glass cutter and rubber suction cup. I said, “How are you going to explain the stockings?”

“Ah, but we don’t have to, Mr. Conner. It’s up to the prosecution to prove they are the mates of the ones used in the murders, and the two extra stockings are certainly going to confuse that issue. We don’t have to explain why the defendant kept nylon stockings in a locked box. I don’t care if the jury thinks he’s eccentric; I just don’t want them to think he’s a murderer.”

He similarly felt that he could cast doubt that Lyle had met his victims by making service calls to their homes. He planned to block any reference by the prosecution to the two service calls where it had not been established who the repairman was, which would leave them with only the one call Lyle had admitted making to present to the jury. The lawyer felt he could convince the jury that was pure coincidence.

When we left Brinker’s office, I came away with the feeling that he really didn’t have much hope of acquittal, but had been optimistic merely for Martha’s benefit. From her pinched expression, I suspected she had gotten the same impression, but I didn’t mention it.

By now Martha seemed well enough not to require me underfoot any longer. She moved Tod back home and I returned to my apartment. Periodically I dropped by to check on her, and while she seemed terribly depressed, she was holding up well enough to function.

Trial had been set for six weeks after the arrest, which put it in mid-May. A week beforehand I happened to be in the city room when a call came in that there was a murder on Dover Place, down on the south side. I volunteered to go out on it, and thus got the assignment.

I didn’t realize until I got down there that Dover Place was the street just south of Bellerive Boulevard. The house was the one whose back faced the rear of Lyle’s and Martha’s.

There were several people inside in the front room: a couple of uniformed cops, a man from the police lab, a dazed-looking man of about thirty seated in an easy chair, and Sergeant Fritz Burmeister. The lab man was just leaving, apparently having finished his work.

When I glanced curiously at the seated man, Burmeister said, “Husband. Come on upstairs.”

I followed him up the stairs. In the same bedroom I had once looked into from Martha’s kitchen window, the same blonde I had watched undress lay on the bed wearing a filmy nightgown. Her face was purple and was horribly bloated because a nylon stocking had been knotted tightly around her throat.

“Husband found her when he came home this morning,” the sergeant said wearily. “He works nights. Same old story. No sexual assault, no prints. Both doors have inside bolts. A small square was neatly cut out of the glass pane in the back door, right next to the bolt. As usual, the second stocking is missing.”

I tore my gaze away from the dead woman. “What’s this do for Lyle?” I asked.

“Clears him,” he said in the same weary voice. “How the hell could he be the Stocking Killer when he’s locked in a maximum security cell?”

That’s almost the end of the story. Lyle was released with full apologies and again he and Martha seem radiantly happy.

There have been no more Stocking Killer murders, but recently I’ve been thinking. I keep remembering Martha saying, “The way I feel about Lyle, I’d continue to love him even if he became a raving maniac. I’d do anything in the world for him.”

I also keep remembering that Martha had judo training when she was an Army nurse. An hour a week for twelve weeks, I think she said, certainly not enough to win her a black belt, but maybe enough to handle another woman not much larger than herself.

Anybody can buy a glass cutter. They’re on sale in every dime store.

Martha doesn’t work at the hospital nights anymore either. Now she’s on call only for days, and arranges for a baby-sitter when she’s called in.

The last time they had me down to dinner, little Tod took me down to the basement to show me something. The partition had been taken down and there was no longer a television repair shop there.

I was afraid to ask why Lyle had gotten out of the TV repair business, but I can’t help wondering if Martha insisted on it, just to remove future temptation.