The End of the Night

Book 629: Murder Room

by John D. MacDonald

Genres: Mystery; Traditional Mysteries; Noir

Synopsis

Three men and a beautiful girl on a cross-country terror spree - a coast to coast rampage of stealing, kidnapping, rape and killing.

Who were they? Where did they come from? Why did they do it?

With chilling detail, John D. MacDonald unwraps the grotesque inner world of these four young psychopaths, and brings into terrifying focus the random, violent lusts that lie hidden between mischief and madness ...

Release date: June 11, 2013

Publisher: Random House

Print pages: 224

Sample

DEAR ED,

Well, we had the big day here, and we sent the four of them off to their reward with what Satchel-Butt Shires, our lovable Warden called “splendid efficiency.” Honest to God, if
you’d still been here, you would have split a gut watching Shires sweat blood around here as burning day got closer and closer.

I admit it was a pretty big deal all right, four in one day when the most we ever had before was three, and this time one of them was a she. Did you know she was the third female ever
executed in this state? I didn’t. It just goes to show how fast women can talk, Eddie boy. Do I need to tell you?

Anyhow, Big-Butt Shires knows he’s going to have a full house, and he like to drove everybody crazy with this idea he got about rehearsals. He borrowed a stop watch someplace, and half
the time it wasn’t right because he didn’t know how to work it, and then he’d chew us out. Remember how red his face gets? How could you forget? He chewed on you most of
anybody.

I can’t count how the hell many times he run us through it. Eight of us, and a damn stuffed dummy. He had old Creepy Staples over on the switch as usual. Bongo and me were on the
electrodes, straps and hood. Christy and Brewer were on the cart. He couldn’t get the Doc to mess around with that kind of nonsense, so he had old Mitch make like the Doc. Marano and Sid were
escorts, and he’d say “Go” and they’d walk the dummy in, grinning like fools, with Shires yelling “Take it serious, men!” and they’d sit in on the throne
and Bongo and me would make a full latchup like it was for real, and step back to our places. Staples would fake the switch with Shires giving us a slow count, then old Mitch would step in and hold
a beatup stethoscope on the dummy and pronounce it dead, and then Christy and Brewer would come wheeling the cart in as we did the unlatching. We’d do it four straight times and then Shires
would give us a pep talk and we’d do it again.

Honest to Pete, Eddie boy, you’d think Shires was going to get married.

I’ll tell you, we did get us a full house. They were packed behind that glass shoulder to shoulder. I don’t have to tell you the types. We had the cops and politicians you see
every time on account of they get some kind of boot out of it. One way it’s better than auto races on account of when you come here you know somebody is going to get it. Then there
were the official witnesses appointed for this one, most of them hating the hell out of every minute, and then there was the reporters. You could tell about the few who’d seen this kind of
thing before. They weren’t making any smart cracks and trying to play tough. They just looked sick. Shires, by the way, managed to pass the buck upstairs about who could get in, so he
didn’t have a thing to do with it, and that made him real happy. They were shook down thorough for cameras and little tape recorders and little transmitters, and I hear they got a pretty good
haul off those boys.

Shires was scared sick they wouldn’t get the woman here on time, but it was timed right, and they brought her in through that little back death-house gate where the stiffs go out. I
guess all those guys behind the glass were thinking about all the sexy pictures that got printed of the Koslov woman, and if they were, they had a hell of a disappointment. She put on maybe twenty
pounds, and she had her hair in braids, and she’d got religion. She walked in steady, her hands together in front of her, her lips moving every minute, following right along with the Father
who was with her, looking down toward the floor. She had on a white dress like a confirmation dress, I swear, but real plain. She didn’t even flick an eye at the throne until she come to the
step up onto the little platform, and then she stepped up and turned and sat down, not missing a word. She crossed herself before we strapped her arms, and she kept right on with the praying. She
was shaved good under those braids, and the plates went on neat and tight. The only thing was just before the hood went on, it was like she saw all those guys behind the glass there watching her
for the first time. She said a few words, not loud, but loud enough for Bongo and me to hear them, and I can tell you, Eddie boy, I can’t put them in no letter going through the U. S. Mails.
She picked up the praying when the hood went on, and we stepped back, and all I have to say to you is that it was a good one. You know how bad even the good ones are. The first time was enough, and
when they were running her out on the cart, I looked over and saw our audience had shrunk some, which is always to be expected, and there were a few bottles out, and some of them didn’t look
like they’d last much longer.

We got Golden next, the scrawny guy that talked so funny and made you so sore that time. He had nothing left at all, that boy. They’d taken his glasses. He had that empty foolish look,
and Marano and Sid were carrying all but about two pounds of him. He was trying to make his legs go in that flappy stilt walk they get, and he had ruined his pants before they even got him to the
door to bring him in. When that bird spotted the throne, he went stiff as a board and set his heels and tried to thrash around. And he started to make a hell of a noise like I never heard before.
For a guy with so many words, he didn’t have one left in English. He just went, “Gaw, gaw, gaw, gaw,” with the strings in his neck standing out, and he couldn’t take his
eyes off the throne. Marano and Sid slid him right along, lifted him and spun him and plunked him down and held him a second until we could make the first latch. He was thrashing, but there
wasn’t much strength in him. He was still going “Gaw, gaw” under the hood when Staples threw it to him. And that was a good one too, and that one cleaned out a few more behind the
glass so those boys left had some nice standing room.

We got the big one next. All brute. He didn’t take it bad. He had a silly grin on his face and he kept trying to move in any direction except toward the throne, but he handled easy. It
could have been a lot tougher, but Shires got scared of what a guy so powerful might do, so he fixed it with the Doc to sneak a shot to that boy that would have stunned a horse. So he hardly knew
where he was, and that’s why he acted like a punchy fighter.

I had a hunch that everything was going too good, and I was sure right. It looked all right at first. But after Doc checked, he stepped back and gave the sign to Staples for another bang. He
got rattled and didn’t give us our chance to check the plates, so it was the Doc’s fault. There was clearance at the leg and you know what that will do. You want to know how powerful
that boy was? He busted the right arm-straps like wet string, and nobody thought anybody would ever bust those! I found out later he busted his right arm in three places, thrashing it. Of course it
didn’t work the second time, but Doc gave us our chance to reset the electrode firm, but then we didn’t know what the hell to do about that arm. We all looked at Shires. He was like
paste, and he gave us the go-ahead. Let it thrash. Staples made sure on that third run. You know, that one even made me feel a little funny.

There was a delay while we had to jury-rig something for the right arm. It was fifteen minutes before we could get heavy canvas straps from the shop, and I guess the waiting was hell on that
Stassen boy. He was good as the girl, I’d say. Bongo says better. He came in dead-white and his mouth a little bit open, moving so fast they had to trot to stay with him. He hopped up onto
the platform and hesitated such a little time you could hardly notice it, and sat down and put his arms right where they belonged. He saw them through the glass then, and I can tell you we had damn
few customers left, and he turned red in the face and closed his eyes tight. And when Bongo slid the hood on, he said, “Thanks.” Isn’t that a hell of a thing? Bongo, he jumps a
little and says, “You’re welcome.” We step back then, and that one went good too.

I knew you would want to know how it was, pal, because you were here in the fun house so long. As you can expect, I am sitting here writing this to you in an empty house. Like always, Mabel
has gone to her sister’s place for a while. She agrees about the extra money and all, and God knows we can use it, but it makes me sore as hell the way she gets it in her head she don’t
want to be anywhere around me afterwards, like I had some kind of disease.

All I can say is, I’m damn glad they didn’t spread those four out, say about two weeks apart. A man would hardly have no love life at all. Ha Ha. From the way it looks around
here, we won’t get the next one until July, and he’s had two stays already and his lawyers are fighting for another one, so it might stay quiet right into fall, which would suit me just
fine. Four of them like that, it takes something out of you, I guess.

Write me a note when you got time, Eddie boy, and tell me how it feels to be retired after a long useless life. And don’t forget the bet. You got the Yankees and I got news for you.
They’re not going to make it this year either.

Yours in friendship

WILLY

IT IS NOT ASTONISHING that the memoranda written by Riker Deems Owen, the defense attorney, regarding what came to be known as the Wolf Pack Murders,
have been preserved by Leah Slayter, a softly adoring member of Mr. Owen’s staff.

Though Riker Deems Owen had long had the habit of writing windy and rambling memoranda for the files, to “clarify my concepts,” his output in this instance is of more than normal
interest.

It was his first—and most probably his last—case conducted under the hot glare and distorting lens of national publicity. Perhaps no one could have won the case. And
“won,” within this particular framework, can be translated to mean any penalty less than death. Riker Owen, at forty, had a solid record of success. Once it had been determined, on a
jurisdictional basis, that the four co-defendants would be tried in Monroe—which calls itself The Friendly City—the stunned parents of Kirby Stassen, the only defendant with family
resources, made a logical choice when they retained Riker Deems Owen in their attempt to save the mortal existence of Kirby Stassen, their only son, their only child, their only chick, their only
illusion of immortality.

Owen had not only his comforting record of success, but also a persuasive plausibility that lessened, to some small and necessary extent, their horrid fear. They could not know that they had
retained not a savior, not a hero, but an assiduously processed imitation, the hollow result of boyhood dreams distorted by the biographies of Fallon, Rogers, Darrow and other greats.

This does not indicate a special gullibility on the part of the Stassens. In fact, in the early days of the long trial, most of the correspondents in the courtroom believed themselves privileged
to watch the birth of a new legend. But as Riker Deems Owen tired, he could not sustain his own illusion. The gloss crackled. The strings became visible. What had been considered quickness of mind
was shown to be dreary gambits, well rehearsed. Originality dwindled to a contrived eccentricity. By the time it was over he had suffered a total exposure; he had been revealed as a dull-witted and
pretentious poseur, irrevocably small-bore, a midget magician who strutted and puffed under the cruel appraisal of his audience, lifting long-dead rabbits out of his provincial hat.

Yet it cannot be said that he lost the case, because it can never be proven that anyone could have won it.

The notoriety of the case—the State versus Nanette Koslov, Kirby Stassen, Robert Hernandez and Sander Golden on a charge of murder in the first degree—gives a special interest to
Owen’s memoranda.

The student of law can read the actual transcript of the trial to his professional profit. Those more interested in the irony of the human condition can read the Owen memoranda instead, and see
there the reaction of a rather pedestrian mind to the four souls he was committed to defend.

The confidential memoranda were dictated to Miss Leah Slayter, the newest addition to his staff, who not only took down many of the verbatim conversations between Riker Owen and the defendants,
but also acted as his secretarial assistant during the trial itself.

Should the discerning reader detect in the Owen memoranda a certain striking of attitudes which seems inconsistent with the legal approach, it can be blamed not only upon Miss Slayter’s
physical attractiveness and her tendency toward hero worship, but also upon the confirmed tendency of Owen’s wife, Miriam, to treat him and all his works, after twenty years of marriage, with
an attitude best described as patronizing boredom. A man must have someone before whom he can strut. Also, any excessive imagery in the memoranda can perhaps be blamed upon a wistful desire to
publish those memoranda as memoirs at some future date, a conceit not unusual in all professions.

Miss Leah Slayter’s attitude toward her employer kept her from sharing the general disillusionment with the talents of the attorney for the defense. For her he burned as bright as morning.
When he sought tears from a stony jury, it was Leah’s eyes which misted. When the verdict was returned, her ripe, shocked mouth gaped open, her brown eyes went wide and round and her fingers
snapped the yellow pencil in her hand.

Riker Deems Owen’s reaction to defeat can only be guessed. He wrote no final memorandum after the verdict was returned. It is safe to guess that he knew what the verdict would be, that he
sensed his own cumulative ineffectuality, and saw it confirmed by the very shortness of the jury’s deliberations. They were out only fifty minutes—a typical time span when the verdict is
to be guilty of murder in the first degree, with no recommendation for mercy. Perhaps Mr. Owen did write a memorandum heavy with blame for every factor except himself. If so, he recognized it in
time as an unproductive example of unprofessional flatulence composed as balm for his own ego, and destroyed it.

Nor can Miss Slayter’s total emotional reaction to the defeat of her hero be assessed. One can assume, with reasonable safety, that she was able to rationalize the traditional gift of self
to ease the agony of the fallen one. Her warm charms, only very slightly overabundant, awarded with worshipful humility, would have properly reinflated the ego of many men less trivial than Riker
Owen. One could say that while he was in the process of tumbling off the merry-go-round, he caught the brass ring.

The first memo in the Wolf Pack file was written after his first few conferences with the parents of Kirby Stassen:

I HAVE EXPERIENCED a partial failure of communication with Kirby’s parents. I understand why this must be, as I have seen it before. Everyone who
works with criminals in any capacity is familiar with this phenomenon. It is, I suspect, a classification error. All their lives, they have been conscious of a great gulf between the mass of decent
folk and that sick, savage, dangerous minority known as criminals. Thus they cannot comprehend that their son, their decent young heir, has leaped the unbridgeable gulf. They believe such a feat
impossible, and thus the accusation of society must be an error. A boyish prank has been misunderstood. People have lied about him. Or he has fallen under the temporary influence of evil
companions.

Their error lies in their inability to see how easy it is to step across the gulf. Perhaps, in maturity, when ethical patterns are firmly established, one cannot cross that gulf. But in youth,
in the traditional years of rebellion, it is not a gulf. It is an almost imperceptible scratch in the dust. To the youth it is arbitrary and meaningless. To society it is a life and death
division.

Their son has aided and abetted and participated in the commission of illegal acts. And so he is a criminal. These acts have been of such a serious nature that he can never again lead a normal
life and, in fact, is in very grave danger of having life itself taken from him as a barbaric penalty.

They cannot comprehend this. They have the pathetic faith that somehow this will all be “ironed out,” with suitable apologies, and they will take their son home with them where he
can sleep in his boyhood bed, eat well, and forget all this unfortunate nastiness.

The father, Walter Stassen, is a big, meaty man, positive, driving, aggressive, accustomed to take charge of any situation. He is about forty-eight. In twenty-five years he built one produce
truck into a tidy, thriving, one-man empire. He has lived hard, worked hard, played hard. I suspect he has neither patience nor imagination. Now, for possibly the first time in his life, he faces a
situation he cannot control. He continues to make loud and positive noises, but he is a sorely troubled and uncertain man.

The mother, Ernestine, is a year or two younger, a handsome, stylish woman with an eroded face, a body gaunted by diet, a mind made trivial by the routines of a country-club existence. She is
highly nervous, a possible by-product of the menopause. I suspect that she is a borderline alcoholic. At our two morning meetings she was perceptibly fuzzy. If so, this situation will most probably
push her over the edge.

I can detect no real warmth between these two people. They have measured their lives by their possessions. Most probably their emotional wells have been polluted by a long history of casual
infidelities. From the way they speak of Kirby, I believe that they have considered him to be, up until now, another possession, a symbol of their status. It pleased them to have a tall, strong
son, athletic, bright, socially poised. They were amused at his scrapes, and bought him out of them. Such incidents provided cocktail conversation. They were an evidence of high spirits. For Kirby
there was never any system of reward or punishment. This is not only one reason, perhaps, for his current grave situation, but also the reason why they find it so impossible to think of him, at
twenty-three, as a person rather than a possession, an adult accountable to society for the evil he has done.

As I had suspected, I met with strong opposition when I stated my intention to defend all four simultaneously. They did not want their invaluable Kirby Stassen linked so directly to horrid trash
like Hernandez, Koslov and Golden. They did not see why my services, for which they are paying well, should be extended to cover those people who have had such a dreadful influence on their only
son. Let the court appoint defense counsel for them. Kirby would travel first class, as usual.

To convince them, I had to resort to an analogy to explain why this state had been able to extradite them, and why they were being tried for the particular crime committed approximately ten
miles from where we were sitting.

I explained that there were several major crimes involved and, of course, many minor ones which we need not consider. The problem was jurisdictional, meaning who would get them first.

Addressing myself to Walter Stassen, I said, “Think of each crime as a poker hand. They spread them face up. Then they selected the strongest hand, the one most likely to win the game.
That’s why they were delivered into the hands of this state. We have the death penalty here. And this crime is more airtight than the others. And the prosecutor is dangerously
able.”

“What makes this one so strong?” he asked.

I shrugged. “You’ve certainly followed the case in the papers. Witnesses, opportunity, sound police work, clear evidence of significant participation in the crime by each one of
them.”

Ernestine broke in. “I read where it said that Kirby actually . . . He couldn’t do a thing like that! What has this got to do with your defending Kirby separately anyway?”

“The State will not entertain a motion for a separate trial for any defendant, Mrs. Stassen. They shared in the commission of the crime. They will be tried together. I can
represent Kirby separately. Someone will be appointed to defend the other three when they are arraigned on Monday. Maybe that person will approve of the line of defense I am developing.
Maybe not. It is a good way to guarantee that all four will be—electrocuted.”

“What is your line of defense?” Walter Stassen asked in a husky voice.

It took a long time to explain it to them. On the basis of preliminary investigations, I did not feel that I would find any significant holes in the State’s case, any room for reasonable
doubt. I told them I would admit the commission of the crime. At that point Ernestine Stassen tried to walk out, weeping. Her husband grasped her roughly by the arm, whirled her back and pushed her
into the chair, and snarled at her to be quiet.

I went on, saying I intended to show that the four defendants came together in the first place by pure accident, that due to the personalities involved, due to the interaction of those
personalities, compounded by the indiscriminate use of stimulants, alcohol and narcotics, they had embarked on their cross-country career of viole. . .