All the same, this was one of his. That was obvious right away. I didn't have to look at the murder scene or interview the victim's friends and fellow workers.
All I needed to know was her name. Elizabeth Scudder.
Back in my room I flipped through the Manhattan White Pages to my own last name. There were eighteen listings, three of them businesses. I wasn't there, but Elizabeth was, listed as Scudder E J, with an address on Irving Place.
I picked up the phone and started to call Durkin but stopped with the number half-dialed. I sat there, thinking it through, and put the receiver back in its cradle.
The phone rang a few minutes later. It was Elaine. She'd had a call from him herself, and once again he'd begun by demanding that she turn off the answering machine and pick up the phone, and once again she'd done it. At that point he stopped whispering and began talking in his normal tone of voice, whereupon she reached over and flicked a switch on the answering machine so that it would record the conversation.
'But it didn't,' she said. 'Can you believe it? The fucking machine malfunctioned. Maybe I positioned the switch wrong, I don't know, I can't figure it out. The tape advanced as if it were recording, but when I played it back there was nothing on it.'
'Don't worry about it.'
'He told me all about killing a woman last night. I would have had it on tape, they could have checked it for voiceprints or whatever it is you do. And I screwed it up.'
'It doesn't matter.'
'Really? I thought I was being brilliant when I switched the tape on. I thought he'd incriminate himself and we'd have something on him.'
'We would, but I don't think it would help. I don't think this whole thing's going to resolve itself on the basis of some piece of evidence that comes to light. The whole idea of an investigation seems pretty pointless to me. I can spend forever groping around in the dark while he goes on doing what he did last night.'
'What did he do last night? He wasn't that specific, so maybe it wouldn't have helped to have a recording of the conversation. I gather he killed somebody.'
'That's what he does.'
'He told me to look in the newspaper but I didn't have one to look at. I put the all-news station on but they didn't have anything, or if they did I must have missed it. What happened?'
I filled her in, and she gasped predictably enough when she heard the victim's name.
'It's no relation,' I told her. 'I'm the only son of an only son, so I don't have any relatives named Scudder.'
'Did your grandfather have any brothers?'
'My father's father? I don't know, he may have. He died before I was born, and I didn't have any Scudder great-uncles that I was aware of. The Scudders came from England originally. At least that's what I was told. I don't know much about that side of the family.'
'So you and Elizabeth could have been distantly related.'
'I suppose so. I suppose all the Scudders are related if you go back far enough. Unless one of my ancestors changed his name, or unless one of hers did.'
'Even so, we all go back to Adam and Eve.'
'Right, and we're all children of God. Thanks for pointing that out.'
'I'm sorry. I may be taking this lightly because I'm not letting it register. It's so awful that I don't want to have to take it seriously. He must have thought she was a relative of yours.'
'Maybe,' I said. 'Maybe not. There's something you have to remember about Motley. It's true that he's cunning and clever and resourceful, but that doesn't change the fact that he's nuts.'
The phone book was still open on the bed. I looked at the list of my namesakes. It occurred to me that perhaps I ought to call the rest of them and warn them. 'Change your name,' I could say, 'or face the consequences.'
Was that what he was going to do next? Would he actually try working his way through the list? Then he could move on to the other four boroughs, and after that there were always the suburbs.
Of course if he killed enough people with the same last name, sooner or later some brilliant cop would spot a pattern. One of the listings was for the Scudder group of mutual funds; he could travel all over the country, knocking off all their shareholders.
I closed the phone book. I couldn't call the Scudders, but was there any point in calling Durkin? It wasn't his case, it was a long ways from his precinct, but he could find out who was in charge and get through to him. Elizabeth Scudder's murder would generate a lot of heat. The killing had been bloody and fierce, there was a sex angle, and the victim was young, white, upscale and photogenic.
What good was a tip from me? For a change there was no danger the case would get written off as a suicide, or a family squabble. A full lab crew would have long since labored over the scene, and every shred of physical evidence would have been measured and photographed and bagged and bottled. If he'd left prints, they'd have them, and by now they'd know who'd left them there. If he'd left anything, they'd have it.
Semen? Skin under her nails? Some part of his physical being that would do for a DNA match?
It wasn't like fingerprint evidence, where you could run a computer check and see what you had in your files. To get a DNA match you had to have a suspect in custody. If he'd left sperm or skin behind, they'd need someone to tell them whose it was. Then, after they'd picked him up, forensic techniques could put the rope around his neck.
The rope was figurative, of course. The state doesn't hang killers. It doesn't fry them, either, which is what it used to do. It does put them away, occasionally for life. Sometimes a life sentence translates into seven years or
