Pity Him Afterwards

If so, it was a dead end. There was absolutely no way to guess which of these four people harbored within himself a second personality. If there was complete separation between the two, the “normal” personality would have no real memory of what the second personality had done, might only know he had a memory lapse at the times the killings took place. He might not even realize that much. The killer himself, waiting with the others again in the rehearsal room, might have no suspicion that he was the one being hunted.

Sondgard remembered thinking, when he’d seen that first note scribbled on the bathroom mirror, that he was dealing with a Jekyll and Hyde, a man whose mind had been confused, and in which confusion the Hyde — the evil part of himself — had been allowed to gain dominance. And now he wondered if it wasn’t actually a Jekyll-Hyde situation, two distinct personalities operating within the same body.

But how to find Hyde, if Jekyll didn’t even know he existed?

Yesterday, of course, as part of normal procedure, he had requested police checks on nearly everyone at the theater. If Hyde had been acting up before all this, some police organization somewhere might have run across Jekyll before. But it could be that Hyde had just emerged very recently, and had no prior activities. Or, since all of his suspects had lived the last few years in New York City, Hyde might have emerged there and not yet been tracked down by the New York police. The city was so large, and the crime rate so enormous, that there were inevitably great numbers of crimes unsolved. Hyde could have been active in New York without the Jekyll part having yet come to the attention of the police.

All of his suspects had told him they had had no prior trouble with the law, and Sondgard was willing to accept the statements. They were too easily checked. If the Jekyll personality had been involved in any other case, even only in the capacity of witness, he would have said so, and he would have had a story prepared. To lie about it, when the truth was so easily obtained, would only be to direct suspicion at himself.

Which implied a Jekyll who knew about the existence and activities of Hyde, which wasn’t necessarily true. But if Jekyll didn’t know about Hyde, he wouldn’t have any reason to lie because he wouldn’t know there was anything to cover.

Besides, he thought gloomily, it didn’t necessarily have to be a Jekyll-Hyde situation at all. There could very easily be only one personality involved: the killer. Able to present a blameless face to the world, and then to turn around and commit the most brutal murders.

The thing to do was find out whether any of the four had ever had psychiatric treatment. He could put a request through to the police departments in their home towns, and also again to the New York City police department. With Will Henley, that kind of checking might be difficult; Henley was an Army brat, brought up here and there around the world. Well, if he’d had mental disturbances, his father would most likely have brought him to an Army psychiatrist, so Sondgard would send a request for information to the Army, too.

But all these things would take time, time, time. And the killer wasn’t giving them time. He wasn’t one of the old-fashioned slow-working homicidal maniacs who only killed once a month, when the moon was full or his wife had completed a menstrual cycle; this particular maniac had killed twice in two days. And, except for the brutality in both cases, the killings were not at all similar. One was a sex slaying, and the girl was strangled, and it took place in daylight. And the other was the killing of a middle-aged man, and he’d been tom to pieces, and it took place at night. In the first, sex had been the motive; but in the second, there wasn’t really any motive at all.

“If we could find out why he climbed over that gate,” Sondgard muttered to himself, “we might have him. He had to have a reason, no matter how crazy or unreal it was. He had to have a reason, and if we can only figure out what that reason was, we’d—”

He was talking to himself.

He said, “Gahhh!” and rose abruptly from the chair. Talking to himself. He had to finish this thing pretty soon, or they’d be carrying him off instead of the killer.

Talking to himself. Next, he’d be cutting out paper dolls.

Paper dolls. What if—?

Not paper dolls necessarily. But something. Maybe there’d be something, left behind by Hyde.

He made his decision, and strode out of the kitchen. Larry Temple and Mike Tompkins were both standing in the hallway, Larry looking pale and dazed, from a combination of his experiences of the morning and a lack of sleep, and Mike still looking sheepish because of yesterday’s fingerprint fiasco.

They had been that close. One fingerprint away, and Mike had blown it.