“My experience is just the opposite,” he said. “Killers acquire a taste for it, enjoy it more and more and get careless.”
“Hope he did get careless and you find something in there.”
“It’ll take a couple of days to do a thorough workover.”
“From the outside, the place looked sealed up. If I hadn’t seen the breakfast dishes, I would have assumed Katarina was out of town. The killer must have closed the drapes after he killed her, then tossed in peace.”
“Like you said, it’s a ritual, something he sets up carefully.”
“So, we’re not dealing with a raving psychotic. Everything that’s happened is too calculated for a schizophrenic: traveling around to conventions, simulating accidents. Skewering my fish. Taping Hewitt screaming. Stalking, delaying gratification for years. This is calculated cruelty, Milo. Some kind of psychopath. Becky’s notes mean we have to look at Gritz carefully. If he’s SilkMerino, his street-bum-alkie thing may be a disguise. The perfect disguise, when you think about it, Milo. The homeless are everywhere, part of the scenery. To most of us they all look alike. I remember seeing a guy at Coburg’s office. He looked so similar to Hewitt it startled me.
All Bancroft really remembered about his intruder, besides age, was dirt and hair.”
He thought. “How many years ago did Bancroft say this guy barged in?”
“Around ten. The guy was in his twenties, so he’d be in his thirties now, which would fit Gritz. Bert Harrison’s Mr. Merino fits that time frame, too.
Both Merino and Bancroft’s tramp were agitated. Merino talked about the conference putting him in touch with his problems. A few years later, the tramp returned to his old school, causing a scene, trying to dig up his past.
So it could be the same guy, or maybe there are lots of Corrective School alumni wandering around, trying to put their lives together.
Whatever the case, something happe,Zed there, Milo. Bancroft called the school’s students miscreants and fire setters. He denied there’d been any major problems that he couldn’t handle, but he could have been lying.”
“Well,” he said, “local records can be checked, and Sally’ll be talking to Bancroft again, see if she can get more details.”
“Good luck to her. He doesn’t suffer the middle class lightly.”
He smiled and lifted his glass. “That’s okay. Sally doesn’t suffer assholes lightly.”
He drank some beer but didn’t touch his food. I looked at mine. It appeared well prepared but had all the appeal of fried lint.
I said, “Myra Paprock taught school here during the late sixties to the midseventies, so that’s probably the time frame we’re looking at. Lyle Gritz would have been around ten or eleven. Harrison remembers Myra as being young and very dogmatic. So maybe she got heavy-handed with discipline. Something a child could perceive as bad love. Shipler could have worked there, too, as a janitor. Got involved, somehow, in whatever happened. And most of the conference speakers were on staff then, too. I’ve got the exact dates in my notes back home. Let’s finish up here, get back to L.A and check.”
“You check,” he said. “I’ll be staying up here for a day or two, working with Sally and Bill Steen. Leave messages at her desk.” He gave me a business card.
I said, “The killer’s been accelerating his pace. One year between victims, now only a few months between Stoumen and Katarina.”
“Unless there are other victims we don’t know about.”
“True. I still can’t find Harvey Rosenblatt, and his wife hasn’t returned my call. Maybe she’s a widow who just doesn’t want to deal with it. But I’ve got to keep trying. If Rosenblatt’s alive, I need to warn him–need to warn Harrison, too. Let me call him right now and tell him about Katarina.”
I returned to the pay phone and dialed Ojai while reading the warning label on the cigarette machine. No answer, no tape. I hoped it was because Harrison’s self-preservation instincts were sharp. The little man would make an easy, crimson target.
When I returned to the table, Milo still hadn’t eaten.
“Gone,” I said. “Maybe hiding already. He said he had somewhere to go.”