An Old Friend of the Family

“All that’s down this way is the creek, I think—hey.”

A few yards ahead, the slope flattened into what would be in summer muddy creek-bottom land. The dead stalks of last summer’s growth of weeds made a thin, wintry jungle, more than head-high but fragile and offering no real impediment to progress. Along the trail a number of the dried stalks had been broken down in its direction. Not many yards farther on, the flashlight’s beam now reached the frozen creek itself, a sunken aisle surfaced with plain snow, twisting between overgrown banks.

On the near bank of the frozen creek the double trail ended in a broad, trampled circle, centered on a mound of something that was not entirely snow.

Hurrying forward, looking over the deputy’s shoulder along the brilliant shaft of the flashlight’s beam, Joe could see blood. The trampled space was marked with it in little flecks and splashes, fresh, not yet sanitized by falling snow. And there, a pair of thick-lensed eyeglasses had fallen. As they entered the circle Joe also saw a human finger, its stump-end ragged and gory. Had someone carried one of the poor kid’s fingers out here, meaning to hide evidence? Or—

The central mound was moving in the light. It was sheepskin under newly fallen white. Joe lifted at it with two hands, the deputy with the hand in which he did not hold the light, and it turned over.

“Jesus.”

“He’s still alive, anyway.”

“Yeah.”

Joe lifted some more, the deputy held his light and brushed off snow. One arm in a sheepskin sleeve fell dangling.

“Look at his hand.”

“It’s both hands. Jesus God.”

Struggling to move the inert weight back toward the house, Joe found himself stepping on another loose finger. He saw a third. He didn’t look for more. Halfway back to the house, the deputy started blasting on a whistle. In a few seconds his partner came running to them through the snow, gun drawn.

With three to carry they made quick work of getting the hurt man back into the house. Corday watched their entrance without comment, and slowly followed them to the bedroom. There they stretched their burden on the cot, the only feasible place.

Joe was angry. “You’re a doctor, right? This is an emergency case we’ve got here, wouldn’t you say?” But there was more to his anger than the fact that Corday was standing by so passively.

The two of them were at the bedroom doorway. One of the deputies squeezed past and ran out, evidently heading for the car radio again.

Corday said gently, imperturbably: “I will examine him if you wish.” With Joe and the other deputy hovering watchfully, he approached the cot. He bent and touched the young man’s face. The eyes of the supine figure opened, squinting, blinking like a newborn’s in the light of the single lamp. It took those eyes a little while to focus on Corday’s face.

Then the man on the cot raised what had been a hand. A gurgle came from his throat, and with a terrible effort he moved as if to rise, to scramble backward. Joe caught him under the armpits to keep him from falling to the floor, and in that moment the young man’s body ceased to move.

Corday continued to regard the youth intently for a moment, without touching him again. Then he straightened. “Gentlemen, this man is dead.”

“We’re calling for an ambulance,” the deputy argued, as if in contradiction. Meanwhile he was helping Joe lay the man down flat again. “Isn’t there anything you can do? Heart massage . . .”

“It is too late.”

The deputy stood indecisively for a moment. Then, mumbling swearwords, he stalked out after his partner.

The body on the cot certainly looked dead. Joe waited to hear the broken, grating sound with which the front door closed. Then he looked at the old man. “Dr. Corday?” His own voice was tighter than he liked. He felt close to some kind of violence himself. His anger was largely at himself, he realized, for being taken in.

“Yes, Joe?”

“I want you to tell me what happened to this man’s hands. Don’t tell me you should not like to venture an opinion.”

The old man looked again at the figure on the cot. He was still cool, too cool. Only the crazies could be that cool. Joe should have seen it before.

Corday said: “It would appear that his fingers have somehow been—”

“Torn off, goddam it. I can see that. Who did it?”

“Discovering that would seem to be the job of the police. Though not necessarily, I suppose, of the Chicago Pawn Shop Detail?” Corday’s voice was tired, as well as cool. That sounded like a request for a little more comradely co-operation.

No more. “This is the same guy who supposedly fired a gun at you?”

“Oh yes. Yes.”

“He must have had his fingers then, right? Right? Then he ran out of here. Trying to get away? If he had the gun like you say, why was he running? And who chased him?”

A glint of something other than coolness came into the old man’s eyes. Amusement, it looked like. “I would surmise that he ran to get to running water. A forlorn hope, of course. It would not have saved him. But still he was a more knowledgeable young man than some. About some things, at least.”

“Running water, save him? What does that mean?” Joe knew he was losing his own coolness, his own control. The knowledge didn’t help.

“Joe, believe it or not, I am extremely tired. I must rest before I undergo any lengthy questioning.” Corday turned away to seek out the room’s one chair. And pallor, tiredness, age, were indeed all showing in his face at the moment.

“Don’t go to sleep just yet. I don’t like that trick you pulled on me today, sending me off on a wild goose chase. I don’t like a bunch of things about you. I’m not here as a cop tonight, and I can speak my mind.” He immediately felt a little better, calmer, for having spoken that much of it at least. All right, he should have seen before that the old man had to be at least a little crazy.

Sitting wearily erect, hands on knees, Corday made the old chair almost a throne. “As for the wild goose chase, as you describe it, I would not have done that had there been time to win you over by argument. But there was no time. The boy had to be saved at once.”

“You really knew that he was here. But how?”

“You saw.”

Joe, the interrogating officer, stood over the seated suspect. “Let that pass for the moment. Let’s go over again what you say happened here after you sent Judy and Johnny home. You were in the living room with this guy, he shot at you and then ran out. You stayed in the house. How do you suppose his fingers got torn off?”

Corday took a moment to ponder. “Perhaps, Joe, it would be more profitable to start with why.”

“All right, then. If you’ve got a good reason, try it out on me.”

“There is revenge as a motive. You must come across that in your work.”

“Not as often as you might think. Not like this. People do turn each other in to the police, there’s plenty of that. If this was done for revenge, who did it?”

“Some—ally—of the Southerland family?”

“Who?”

“A second common purpose of torture,” said the old man pedantically, “is of course the extortion of information. And a third purpose is to make an example of the victim. Perhaps to warn his associates to desist from a certain course of action—the persecution of a certain family, for instance.”

Watching the old man, listening to him, Joe felt his earlier anger coming back, more coldly now. Eight years on the force, brushing now and then against every kind of evil that the city bred, had not prepared him for a close look at anyone like this. It was not what Corday might have done, or what he was saying, so much as what he was. Just what the old man was, Joe did not know; but the closer he got to it, the more his deepest feelings recoiled.