The following morning he was having breakfast-a small glass of apple juice, a bowl of organic cereal with skim milk, a cup of black coffee-when the nine o’clock news came on the kitchen radio and a toneless voice announced the murder of Detective third grade Roger Kope on East 75th Street the previous midnight. Kope had been promoted from uniformed patrolman only two weeks previously. He left a widow and three small children. Deputy Commissioner Broughton, in charge of the investigation, stated several important leads were being followed up, and he hoped to make an important statement on the case shortly.
Daniel Blank put his emptied dishes into the sink, ran hot water into them, went off to work.
When he left his office in the evening, he purchased the afternoon Post, but hardly glanced at the headline: “Killer Loose on East Side.” He carried the paper home with him and collected his mail at the lobby desk. He opened envelopes in the elevator: two bills, a magazine subscription offer, and the winter catalogue from Outside Life.
He fixed himself a vodka on the rocks with a squeeze of lime, turned on the television set and sat in the living room, sipping his drink, leafing through the catalogue, waiting for the evening news.
The coverage of Kope’s murder was disappointingly brief. There was a shot of the scene of the crime, a shot of the ambulance moving away, and then the TV reporter said the details of. the death of Detective Kope were very similar to those in the murder of Frank Lombard and Bernard Gilbert, and police believed all three killings were the work of one man. “The investigation is continuing.”
Later that evening Blank walked over to Second Avenue to buy the early morning editions of the News and the Times. “Mad Killer Strikes Again,” the News’ headline screamed. The Times had a one-column story low on the front page: “Detective Slain on East Side.” He brought the papers home, added them to the afternoon Post and settled down with a kind of bored dread to read everything that had been printed on Kope’s death.
The most detailed, the most accurate report, Blank acknowledged, appeared under the byline “Thomas Handry.” Handry, quoting “a high police official who asked that his name not be used,” stated unequivocally that the three murders were committed by the same man, and that the weapon used was “an ax-like tool with an elongated spike.” The other papers identified the weapon as “a small pick or something similar.”
Handry also quoted his anonymous informant in explaining how a police decoy, an experienced officer, could be struck down from behind without apparently being aware of the approach of his attacker or making any effort to defend himself. “It is suggested,” Handry wrote, “the assailant approached from the front, presenting an innocent, smiling appearance to his victim, then, at the moment of passing, turned and struck him down. It is believed by the usually reliable source that the killer carried his weapon concealed under a folded newspaper or under his coat. Although Gilbert died from a frontal attack, the method used in Kope’s murder closely parallels that in the Lombard killing.”
Handry’s report ended by stating that his informant feared there would be additional attacks unless the killer was caught. Another paper spoke of an unprecedented assignment of detectives to the case, and the third paper stated that a curfew in the 251st Precinct was under consideration.
Blank tossed the papers aside. It was disquieting, he admitted, that the term “ax-like tool” had been used in Handry’s report. He had to assume the police knew exactly what the weapon was, but were not releasing the information. He did not believe they could trace the purchase of an ice ax to him; his ax was five years old, and hundreds were sold annually all over the world. But it did indicate he would be wise not to underestimate the challenge he faced, and he wondered what kind of a man this Deputy Commissioner Broughton was who was trying so hard to take him by the neck. Or, if not Broughton, who Handry’s anonymous “high police official” was. That business of approaching from the front, then whirling to strike-who had guessed that? There were probably other things known or guessed, and not released to the newspapers-but what?”
Blank went over his procedures carefully and could find only two obvious weak links. One was his continued possession of the victims’ identification. But, after pondering, he realized that if it ever came to a police search of his apartment, they would already have sufficient evidence to tie him to the murders, and the identification would merely be the final confirmation.
The other problem was more serious: Celia Montfort’s knowledge of what he had done.