* * * * *
The FBI man followed me into the outer room.
"Do you figure this as a sex-degenerate case, Inspector?" he asked.
"Looks like it. You saw the bruises. Dr. Prouty will be able to tell
us for sure after the post mortem."
He shook his head as if to clear it of a bad memory. "You New York
police can sure be cold-blooded at times."
The thing that was bothering him, as Kleek and I both knew, was that
the FBI agent hadn't been exposed to this sort of thing often enough.
They deal with the kind of crimes that actually don't involve the
callous murder of children very often. Even the murder of adults
doesn't normally come under the aegis of the FBI.
"We're not cold blooded," I said. "Not by inclination, I mean. But a
man gets that way--he has to get that way--after he's seen enough of
this sort of thing. You either get yourself an emotional callous or
you get deathly sick from the repetition--and then you have to get out
of the job."
"Yeah," he said. "Sure." He quit rubbing his chin with a knuckle,
looked at me, and said: "What I wanted to say is that there's no
evidence that she was taken across a state line. Whoever sent that
ransom note to the Donahue parents was trying to throw us off the
track."
"Looks like it. Look at the time-table. The note was sent _after_ the
girl was murdered, but _before_ the information hit the papers or the
newscasts. The killer wanted us to think it was a ransom kidnaping. It
isn't likely that the note was sent by a crank. A crank wouldn't have
known the girl was missing at all at the time the note was sent."
"That's the way it seems to me," he agreed. The color was coming back
into his face. "But why would he want to make it look like a kidnaping
instead of ... of what it was? The penalty's the same for both."
My grin had anger, pity, and disgust for the killer in it--plus a
certain amount of satisfaction. Some day, I'd like to see my face in a
mirror when I feel like that.
"He was hoping the body wouldn't be found until it was too late for us
to know that it was a rape killing. And that means that he knew that
he would be on our list if we did find out that it was rape.
Otherwise, he wouldn't have bothered. If I'm right, then he has
outsmarted himself. He has told us that we know him, and he's told us
that he's smart enough to figure out a dodge--that he's not one of the
helplessly stupid ones."
"That should help to narrow the field down," he said in a hard voice.
He felt in his pocket for a cigarette, found his pack, took one out,
and then held it, unlit, between the fingers of his right hand.
"Inspector Royall, I've studied the new law of this state--the one
you're working under here--and I think it'll be great if it works out.
I wish you luck. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to call the office."
As he went out to the desk phone, I gave him a silent thanks. Words of
encouragement were hard to come by at that time.