The Second Randall Garrett Megapack Page 41

  The woman, Mrs. Ebbermann, had calmed down a little. The police surgeon had given her a tranquilizer with a hypogun, Officer Ramirez was getting everything down in his notebook, and his belt recorder was running.

  “No,” she was saying, “I’m sure she didn’t go home. That’s the first place I looked after she didn’t answer when I called. We live down the block there. I thought she might have gone home to go to the bathroom or something—but I’m sure she would have told me.” She choked a little. “Oh, Shirley, baby! Where are you? Where are you?”

  I started to ask her a question, but she suddenly said: “Shirley, baby, next time, I promise, you can bring your water gun with you to the park, if you’ll just come back to Mommie now! Please, Shirley, baby! Please!”

  I glanced at the Duke. He gave me the same sort of look.

  “What was that about a water gun, Mrs. Ebbermann?” I asked casually.

  “Oh, she wanted to bring her water gun with her, poor baby. But I made her leave it at home—I was afraid she might squirt people with it. But I shouldn’t have done that! She’s a good girl! She wouldn’t squirt anybody!”

  “Sure not, Mrs. Ebbermann. Does Shirley have a key to your apartment?”

  “Yes. I gave her her own key, a pretty one, with her initials on it, for her seventh birthday, so she wouldn’t have to push the buzzer when she came home from school.”

  “Where’s your husband?” I asked taking a look at Ramirez’ notebook to get her address.

  “Shirley’s father? Somewhere in Boston. We’ve been separated for two years. But I wish he were here!”

  “Would you give me the key to your apartment, Mrs. Ebbermann? We’d like to take a look around.”

  She gave me a key. “But she’s not there. I told you, that’s the first place I looked.”

  “I know,” I said. “We just want to look around. We won’t disturb anything.”

  Then His Grace and I got out of there as fast as we could.

  * * * *

  I keyed open the front door of the apartment building, and we went inside. Neither of us said anything. There was no need to. We knew what must have happened, we could see it unfolding as plainly as if we’d watched it happen.

  Nestor had seen Shirley sneak off from her mother and had followed her. In order to get into the building, he must have come right in with her, right behind her when she unlocked the outer door. Then what?

  The chances were a billion to one against his ever having been in the building before, so it stood to reason that all he would have been doing is watching for an opportunity and—the right place.

  The foyer itself? No. Too much chance of being seen. The basement? Unlikely. He must have followed her into the elevator, and she would have pushed the button for the seventh floor, where her apartment was, so there wouldn’t be much likelihood of his getting a chance to see the basement. Besides, there was a chance that he might run into the janitor.

  * * * *

  The Duke and I went into the old-fashioned self-service elevator, and I pushed number seven. The doors slid shut, and the car started up. The roof? No. Too much danger of being seen from other buildings higher than this one.

  Where, then? I looked at the control panel of the elevator. The button for the basement was controlled by a key; only the employees were allowed in the basement, so that place was ruled out absolutely.

  I began to get the feeling that we were on a wild goose chase, after all. “What do you think?” I asked His Grace.

  “I can’t imagine where he might have taken her. We may have to search the whole building.”

  The car stopped at the seventh door, and we stepped out as the doors slid open. The hallways stretched to either side, but there were no apparent hiding places. I went over to the stairwell, which was right next to the elevator shaft and looked up and down. No place there, either.

  Then it hit me.

  Again, I could see Nestor, like a scene unfolding on a TV drama, still following little Shirley. Had he spoken to her in the elevator? Maybe. Maybe not. He was still undecided, so he followed her to the door of her apartment. Wait—very likely, he had made friends with her on the elevator. He saw her push button seven—

  Well, well! Do you live on the seventh floor?

  Yes, I do.

  Then we’re neighbors. I live on the seventh, too. I just moved in. Do you live with your mommie and daddy?

  Just my mommie. My daddy doesn’t live with us anymore.

  And, since he knew that mommie was in the park, he could guess that the apartment was empty.

  All that went through my mind like a bolt of lightning. I said: “The apartment! Come on!”

  The Duke, looking a little puzzled, followed me to the door of 706. I put my ear against the door and listened. Nothing. Then I eased the key in and flung the door open.

  No one in the living room. I raced for the bedroom. No one in there, either, but the clothes closet door was shut.

  When I opened it, we saw a small, dark-haired girl lying naked and unconscious on the floor.

  Then there were noises from the front room. The sound of a door opening and closing, and the clatter of hurrying footsteps in the hall outside.

  We both turned and ran.

  In the hallway, we could hear the footsteps going down the stairwell. The slow elevator was out of the question. We took off down the stairs after him. He had a head start of about a floor and a half, and kept it all the way down. We saw the door swinging shut as we arrived in the foyer. Outside, we saw our man running toward the corner. I started to reach for my gun, but there were too many people around. I couldn’t risk a shot.

  And then that amazing walking stick came into action again. The Duke took a few running steps forward and hurled it like a javelin, the heavy silver head forward. Robin Hood couldn’t have done better with an arrow. When the silver knob hit the back of the running man’s head, he fell forward to the sidewalk.

  He was still struggling to get up when we grabbed him.

  * * * *

  The Duke and I were waiting for Dr. Brownlee when he came back from talking to Lawrence Nestor in his cell. “He’s one of our zanies, all right,” he said sadly. “A very sick man.”

  “He’s lucky he wasn’t lynched,” I said. “Did he tell you what happened?”

  Brownlee nodded. “Just about the way you had it figured. He had the little girl’s clothes off when her mother came back. He heard her putting her key in the door, so he grabbed Shirley and dragged her into the closet with him. The mother didn’t search the place at all; she just went through the main rooms, called her daughter’s name a few times and then left.”

  “That’s what threw us off at first,” I said. “We both accepted Mrs. Ebbermann’s word that Shirley wasn’t in the apartment. Then I realized that she wouldn’t have taken time to look in all the closets. Why should she? As far as she knew, there wasn’t any reason for Shirley to hide from her.”

  “It’s a good thing Mrs. Ebbermann did come back.” Dr. Brownlee said. “That was the only thing that saved the girl from rape and death. Nestor was so unnerved that he just left her in the closet, still unconscious from the blow he’d given her.

  “Any normal man would have gotten out of there right then. Not Nestor. He went looking for a drink. Fortunately, he found a bottle of whisky in the kitchen. He was just getting in the mood to go back in after the girl when you two came charging in.

  “He saw you run to the bedroom, so he knew the girl’s mother must have called for help. He decided it was time to run. Too late, of course.”

  “Too late for a lot of things.” I said. “Much too late far Angela Donahue, for instance. And, as a matter of fact, we were so close to being too late with Shirley Ebbermann that I don’t even want to think about it. I should have let Shultz go ahead and tell the newsmen. At least people would have been warned.”

  “There’s no way of knowing,” said the Duke, “But I think there’s just as good a chance that he’d have go
tten his hands on some other little girl, even if the warning had gone out. There will always be parents who don’t pay enough attention to what their children are doing. They may blame themselves if something happens, but that may be too late. As it happens, we weren’t too late. Let’s be thankful for that.

  “By the way, am I wrong in assuming that Nestor will not get your psychotherapy treatment?”

  “No, you’re right,” I said. “The warden at Sing Sing will be taking care of him from now on.” I turned to Brownlee and said: “Which reminds me—what’s going to be the disposition on the Hammerlock Smith case?”

  “I talked to Judge Whittaker and the D.A. Your recommendation pulled a lot of weight with them. They agreed that if Smith will plead guilty to felonious assault and agree to therapy, he’ll get off with eighteen months, suspended. When I release him, he’ll never bother young boys again.”

  The Duke looked puzzled. “Hammerlock Smith? Odd Name. What’s he up for?”

  I told him about Hammerlock Smith.

  He thought it over for a while, then said: “Just what is it you do to men like that? How can you be so sure he’ll never hurt anyone again?”

  Brownlee started to answer him, but a uniformed officer put his head in the door. “Excuse me, Dr. Brownlee, the District Attorney would like to talk to you.”

  Brownlee excused himself and followed the cop out, leaving me to explain things to His Grace.

  “Do you remember that, a couple of centuries ago, the laws of some countries provided the perfect punishment for pickpockets and purse-snatchers?”

  He gave me a wry grin. “Certainly. The hands of the felon were amputated at the wrist. Usually with a headsman’s ax, I believe.”

  “Exactly. And they never picked another pocket again as long as they lived.” I said. “Society had denied them the means to pick pockets.”

  “Go on.”

  “Do you remember Manny the Moog? The little fellow who was brought in yesterday?”

  “Distinctly. I thought it was odd at the time that you should release a man who has a record of such activities as car-stealing and reckless driving, especially when the witness against him turned out to be a perfectly respectable person. I took it for granted that he was one of your…ah…‘tame zanies’, I think you called them. But I did not and still don’t understand how you can be so positive.”

  “I let Manny go because he’s incapable of driving a car. The very thought of being in control of a machine so much more powerful than he is would give him chills. Did you ever see what happens when you lock a claustrophobe up in a dark closet—the mad, unreasoning, uncontrollable panic of absolute terror? That’s what would happen to Manny if you put him behind the wheel of a running automobile. It’s worse than fear; fear is controllable. Blind terror isn’t.

  “Manny had one little twist, in his mind. He liked to get into a car—any car, whether it was his or not—and drive. He became king of the road. He wasn’t a little man any more. He was God, and lesser beings had better look out.

  “We got to him before he actually killed anyone, but there is a woman in Queens today who will never walk again because of Manny the Moog. But there won’t be any more like her. We took the instrument of destruction away from him; we ‘cut off his hands’. Now he’s leading a reasonably useful life. We don’t need to sacrifice another’s life before we neutralize the danger.”

  “What about Joey Partridge?” His Grace asked. “He’s one of your zanies, too, isn’t he?

  “That’s right. He couldn’t keep from using his fists. He liked the feel of solid flesh and bone giving under the impact of those big fists of his. Boxing wasn’t enough; he had to be able to feel flesh-to-flesh contact, with no padded glove between. He almost killed a couple of men before we got to him.”

  “What did you do to his hands?”

  “Nothing. Not a thing. There’s nothing at all wrong with his hands. But he thinks there is. He’s firmly convinced that the bones are as brittle as chalk, that if he uses those fists, he will be the one who will break and shatter. It even bothers him to shake hands, as you saw last night. It took a lot of guts to do what he did last night—walk over to those two thugs knowing he couldn’t defend himself. He’s no coward. But he’s as terrified of having his hands hurt as Manny is of driving a car.”

  “I see” the Duke said thoughtfully.

  “There are other cases, plenty of them,” I went on. “We have pyromaniacs who are perfectly harmless now because they have a deathly terror of flame. We have one fellow who used to be very nasty with a knife; he grows a beard now because the very thought of having a sharp edge that close to him is unnerving. The reality would send him screaming. We have a girl who had the weird idea that it was fun to drop things out of windows or off the tops of high buildings. Aside from the chance of people below being hurt, there was another danger. Two cops grabbed her just as she was about to drop her baby brother off the roof of her apartment house.

  “But we don’t worry about her any more. People with acute acrophobia are in no condition to pull stunts like that.”

  “What will you do to this Hammerlock Smith, then?” His Grace asked.

  “Actually, he’s one of the simpler cases. A large percentage of our zanies lose control when they’re under the influence of alcohol or drugs. Alcohol is by far the more common. Under the influence, they do things they would never do when sober.

  “As long as they remain sober, they have control. But, give them a few drinks and the control slips and then vanishes completely. One of our others was a little like Manny the Moog; he drove like a madman—which he was when he was drunk. Sober, he was as careful and cautious a driver as you’d want—a perfectly reliable citizen. But, after losing his license and the right to own a car, he’d still get drunk and steal cars.

  “He has his license back now, but we know we can trust him with it. He will never be able to take another drink.

  “Smith is of that type. So, apparently, is Nestor. When we get through with Smith, he’ll be sober, and he’ll stay that way to his grave.”

  “Astounding.” The Duke looked at me again. “I can see the results, of course. I’m going to see that some sort of similar program is started in England, even if I have to stand up in the House of Lords to do it. But, I still don’t understand how it can be done so rapidly—a matter of hours. What is the technique used?”

  “It all depends on the therapist,” I said. “Brownlee is one of the best, but there are others who are almost as good. Some of the officers have started calling them hexperts because, in effect, that’s exactly what they do—put a hex on the patient.”

  “A geas, in other words.”

  I’d never heard the word before. “A what?”

  “A geas. A magical spell that causes a person to do or to refrain from doing some act, whether he will or no. He has no choice, once the geas has been put on him.”

  “That’s it exactly.”

  “But, man, it isn’t magic we’re discussing, is it?”

  “I don’t know,” I admitted frankly. “You tell me. Was it magic this morning when both you and I had a hunch that little Shirley was not in the park, in spite of the way it looked? Was it magic when we eliminated, without even searching, every spot but the place where she actually was?”

  “Well, no, I shouldn’t say so. I think every good policeman gets hunches like that every so often. He gets a feel for his work and for the types he’s dealing with.”

  “Well, then, call it hunch or telepathy or extra-sensory perception or thingummybob or whatever. Brownlee has just what you say a good cop should have—a feel for his work and for the types he’s dealing with. Within a very short time, Dr. Brownlee can actually get the feel of being inside his patient’s mind—deep enough, at least, so that he can spot just what has to be done to put a compensating twist in a twisted mind.

  “He says the genuine zanies are very simple to operate on. They have already got the raw materials in them for him to work
with. A normally sane, normally well integrated person would require almost as much work to put a permanent quirk in as removing such a quirk would be in a zany. The brainwashing techniques and hypnotism can introduce such quirks temporarily, but as soon as a normally sane person regains his balance, the quirks tend to fade away.

  “But a system that is off balance and unstable doesn’t require much work to push it slightly in another direction. When Brownlee finds out what will do the job, he does it, and we have a tame zany on our hands.”

  “It sounds as though men of Brownlee’s type are rather rare,” His Grace said.

  “They are. Rarer than psychiatrists as a whole. On the other hand, they can take care of a great many more cases.”

  “One thing, though,” the Duke said thoughtfully. “You mentioned the amputation of a pickpocket’s hands. It seems to me that this technique is just as drastic, just as crippling to the person to whom it is done.”

  “Of course it is! No one has ever denied that. God help us if it’s the final answer to the problem! A man who can’t drive a car, or use a razor, or punch an enemy in the teeth when it’s necessary is certainly handicapped. He’s more crippled than he was before. The only compensation for society is that now he’s less dangerous.

  “There are certain compensations for the individual, too. He stands less chance of going to prison, or to a death cell. But he’s still hemmed in; he’s not a free man. Of course, in most instances, he’s not aware of what has been done to him; his mind compensates and rationalizes and gives him a reason for what he’s undergoing. Joey Partridge thinks his condition is due to the fractures he suffered the last time he beat up a man; Manny the Moog thinks that he’s afraid to drive a car because of the last wreck he was in. And, partly, maybe they’re both right. But they have still been deprived of a part of their free will, their right of choice.

  “Oh, no; this isn’t the final answer by a long shot! It’s a stopgap—a necessary stopgap. But, by using it, we can learn more about how the human mind works, and maybe one of these days we’ll evolve a science of the mind that can take those twists out instead of compensating for them.