teens.”
“Leopold and Loeb.”
“You know the case?”
“Slightly.”
“They killed a boy, Bobby Franks. Fourteen years old. Son of anot er
rich man. They had nothing against him. None of the usual reasons.
No classic motive. Newspapers said it was for kicks. For thrills.
Very bloody murder. But they killed Franks for other reasons.
For more than kicks. For a philosophical ideal.”
Turning away from the window, Preduski said, “I’m sorry. I must have
missed something. I’m not making sense of this. What philosophical
ideal?”
“They thought they were special. Supermen. The first of a new race.
Leopold idolized Nietzsche.”
Frowning, Preduski said, “One of the quotes in there on the bedroom wall
is probably from Nietzsche’s work, the other from Blake.
There was a quote from Nietzsche written in blood on Edna Mowry’s wall
last night.”
“Leopold and Loeb. Incredible pair. They thought that committing the
perfect crime was proof that they were supermen. Getting away with
murder. They thought that was proof of superior intelligence, superior
cunning.”
“Weren’t they homosexuals?”
“Yes. But that doesn’t make Bobby Franks the victim of a sex killing.
They didn’t molest him. Never had any intention of molesting him. They
weren’t motivated by lust. Not at all. It was, as Loeb called it, ‘an
intellectual exercise.
In spite of his excitement, Enderby noticed that his shirt cuffs were
not showing beyond the sleeves of his suit jacket. He pulled them out,
one at a time, until the proper half inch was revealed.
Although he had worked for some time in the blood-splashed bedroom and
then in the messy kitchen, he didn’t have a stain on him.
His back to the window, leaning against the sill, conscious of his own
scuffed shoes and wrinkled trousers, Preduski said, “I’m having trouble
understanding. You’ll have to be patient with me. You know how I am.
Dense sometimes. But if these two boys, Leopold and Loeb, thought that
murder was an intellectual exercise, then they were crazy.
Weren’t they? Were they mad?”
“In a way. Mad with their own power. Both real and imagined power.”
“Would they have appeared to be mad?”
“Not at all.”
“How is that possible?”
“Remember, Leopold graduated from college when he was just seventeen. He
had an IQ of t*o hundred or nearly so. He was a genius.
So was Loeb. They were bright enough to keep their Nietzschean
fantasies to themselves, to hide their grandiose self-images.”
“What if they’d taken psychiatric tests?”
“Psychiatric tests weren’t very well developed in nineteen twenty-four.”
“But if there had been tests back then as sophisticated as those we have
today, would Leopold and Loeb have passed them?”
“Probably with flying colors.”
“Have there been others like Leopold and Loeb since nineteen
twenty-four?” Preduski asked.
“Not that I know of. Not in a pure sense, anyway.
The Manson family killed for murky political and religious reasons. They
thought Manson was Christ. Thought killing the rich would help the
downtrodden. Unmitigated crazies, in my book.
Think of some other killers, especially mass murderers. Charles
Starkweather. Richard Speck. Albert DeSaivo. All of them were
psychotic. All of them were driven by psychoses that had grown and
festered in them, that had slowly corrupted them since childhood. In
Leopold and Loeb, there were apparently no serious childhood traumas
that could have led to psychotic behavior. No black seed to bear fruit
later.”
“So if the Butcher is two men,” Preduski said forlornly, “we’ve got a
new Leopold and Loeb. Killing to prove their superiority.”
Enderby began to pace. “Maybe. But then again, maybe it’s more than
that. Something more complex than that.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. But I feel it’s not exactly a Leopold and Loeb sort of
thing.” He went to the table and stared at the remains of the meal that
had never been eaten. “Have you called Harris?”
Preduski said, “No.”
“You should. He’s been trying to get an image of the killer.
Hasn’t had any luck. Maybe that’s because he’s focusing on a single
image, trying to envision just one face. Tell him there are two
killers. Maybe that’ll breit open for him. Maybe he’ll finally get a
handle on the case.”
“We don’t know there are two. That’s just a theory. “Tell him anyway,”