‘Help me get up,’ he muttered.
Bannerman helped him to his feet. ‘The bandstand now,’ Johnny said.
‘No, I think we ought to go back, Johnny.’
Johnny pushed past him blindly and began to flounder toward the bandstand, a big circular shadow up ahead. It bulked and loomed in the darkness, the death place.
Bannerman ran and caught up to him.
‘Johnny, who is it? Do you know who…?’
‘You never found any scraps of tissue under their finger. nails because he was wearing a raincoat,’ Johnny said, He panted the words out. ‘A raincoat with a hood. A slick vinyl raincoat. You go back over the reports. You go back over the reports and you’ll see. It was raining or snowing every time. They clawed at him, all right. They fought him. Sure they did. But their fingers just slipped and slid over it.’
‘Who, Johnny? Who?’
‘I don’t know. But I’m going to find out.’
He stumbled over the lowest of the six steps leading up to the bandstand, fumbled for his balance, and would have lost it if Bannerman had not gripped his arm. Then they were up on the stage. The snow was thin here, a bare dusting, kept off by the conical roof.
Bannerman trained his flashlight beam on the floor and Johnny dropped to his hands and knees and began to crawl slowly across it. His hands were bright red. Bannerman thought they must be like chunks of raw meat by now.
Johnny stopped suddenly and stiffened like a dog on point. ‘Here,’ he muttered. ‘He did it right here.’
Images and textures and sensations flooded in. The copper taste of excitement, the possibility of being seen adding to it. The girl was squirming, trying to scream. He had covered her mouth with one gloved hand. Awful excitement. Never catch me, I’m the Invisible Man, is it dirty enough for you now, momma?
Johnny began to moan, shaking his head back and forth.
Sound of clothes ripping. Warmth. Something flowing. Blood? Semen? Urine?
He began to shudder all over. His hair hung in his face. His face. His smiling, open face caught inside the circular border of the raincoat’s hood as his (my) hands close around the neck at the moment of orgasm and squeeze… and squeeze… and squeeze.
The strength left his arms as the images began to fade. He slipped forward, now lying on the stage full-length, sobbing. When Bannerman touched his shoulder he cried out and tried to scramble away, his face crazy with fear. Then, little by little, it loosened. He put his head back against the waist-high bandstand railing and closed his eyes. Shudders raced through his body like whippets. His pants and coat were sugared with snow.
‘I know who it is,’ he said.
10.
Fifteen minutes later Johnny sat in Bannerman’s inner office again, stripped to his shorts and sitting as close as he could to a portable electric heater. He still looked cold and miserable, but he had stopped shaking.
‘Sure you don’t want some coffee?’
Johnny shook his head. ‘I can’t abide the stuff.’
Johnny…’ Bannerman sat down. ‘Do you really know something?’
‘I know who killed them. You would have gotten him eventually. You were just too close to it. You’ve even seen him in his raincoat, that shiny all-over raincoat. Because he crosses the kids in the morning. He has a stop sign on a stick and he crosses the kids in the morning.’
Bannerman looked at him, thunderstruck. ‘Are you talking about Frank? Frank Dodd?
You’re nuts!’
‘Frank Dodd killed them,’ Johnny said. ‘Frank Dodd killed them all.’
Bannerman looked as though he didn’t know whether to laugh at Johnny or deal him a good swift kick. ‘That’s the craziest goddam thing I’ve ever heard,’ he said finally. ‘Frank Dodd’s a fine officer and a fine man. He’s crossing over next November to run for municipal chief of police, and he’ll do it with my blessing.’ Now his expression was one of amusement mixed with tired contempt. ‘Frank’s twenty-five. That means he would have had to have started this crazy shit when he was just nineteen. He lives at home very quietly with his mother, who isn’t very well hypertension, thyroid, and a semidiabetic condition. Johnny, you put your foot in the bucket. Frank Dodd is no murderer. I’d stake my life on that.’