Killer, Come Back to Me

“How do you know that?”

“The murderer felt safe in murdering three people. Why? Because he had a good means of escape and didn’t live near where any of the bodies were found. But we KNOW where Charlie was looking, along the canal. Mathematically then, if the killer doesn’t live at either end of the canal where the murders took place, he must live in the middle. And his method of travel gives us a general description of his age and health. Markham was always very careful to emerge from the canal a helluva distance beyond the place where he intended causing trouble. That’s why nobody ever found his water trail, they didn’t look far enough down and away from where the disturbance started on certain nights.”

He nodded at the canal.

* * *

“The canal told me. Another thing—he’s got a healthy tan. He lives on the canal. Sure.” Steve folded all his clothes, including his pants, in a little pile on the cold cement beside the canal waters.

“I don’t get it, Steve.”

“Markham spends a lot of time on the beach every day. Lives a life of leisure, never does much. Black said he didn’t ask for much money from his victims. A little bit from each one. Six or seven people kicking out with thirty bucks a month, or maybe fifty. Our blackmailer has plenty of leisure, plenty of time. That’s a pretty good description of him. If I went to a row of houses and asked for a guy answering that description I should be able to find him, eventually, yes? Right. An athlete with a good chest expansion, a healthy tan, idle, young.”

Steve was down to the skin and a pair of shorts now. He didn’t even see Lisa there in front of him. He just rose and stood by the waters, looking down. “The water’s cold tonight. Probably wasn’t bad in the summer, but I bet it’s cold tonight.” He leaned forward. “Nobody ever saw Markham come or go. Like the fog, they said, drifting. Or a wave from the sea. Silent and easy.” He looked up at Lisa with the face of a lost child. “Have the police come to the end of the canal in about an hour, Lisa. I’ll see you there.”

She started to argue.

Steve said, “Nobody ever saw a car come by, or saw a boat on the canal, or saw anybody swimming across the canal. I’ll show you how Markham was so mysterious, Lisa. Goodnight, sweets. See you in an hour.”

“Steve!”

He was gone. Slipping like something white and of the fog, cleaving the water without a sound, so only a ripple came in to mark his vanishing, he went. Dark waters closed. The whole canal lay cold.

Lisa watched for five minutes, but she never saw Steve come up for air again, no matter how hard she stared.

The fog wrapped her up. The oil wells churned. The ocean pounded the shore. The foghorn sounded off in another world. Lisa, cold and shivering, gathered up the clothes and went to phone the police.

* * *

Steve was far away from Lisa, going north, when he came to the surface. He felt air break about nostrils, drew it in with a deep move of his lungs, and sank. The first cold shock of water wore off. Pain had gone from his side.

Pulling with great strokes of his arms, back, he skimmed through bottom darkness. Slime touched his fingers when they brushed the bottom. The water itself was clean here. It got sluggish, tepid with oil down further toward the sea. He could see about twenty feet ahead before intense black closed down. The lighting system on the Venice canal is lousy. One feeble lamp throwing diffused light from a base ten feet back from the canal; one feeble lamp every hundred yards. At night, with light like that, you’d never see anyone swimming five feet under.

When he rose again, with just a soft easy gesture of his body, he heard the oil wells throbbing like black hearts in the cliffs of silence on either side. Going down, he felt the extreme quiet of this mode of travel. No one to see you walking or running along sidewalks or dodging in shadows. Just the cold canal under stars, under fog, under wind. No ruffle on the water from swimming the surface. You kept deep and yanked cold wet power back, kicking away, holding breath, releasing it only in small bubble dribbles, gliding on.

With good lungs, a healthy young body, young and healthier than Steve’s, you could swim a long cold way without having air. You rose quiet, gaped, sank, and shot on your dim way like a shark in familiar sounds.

Like a shark. Steve grinned against the passing water’s pressure. You get like a fish after months of practice. Less and less air, longer down, easier strokes. No wonder the police never saw anything.

You can follow a guy for miles if he’s walking on the sidewalk, and he won’t know you’re following. You pace him, get ahead of him, idle back, sink, and wait.

Steve came up again, slow and quiet as a fin breaking water.

“Charlie,” he thought, “you walked here last night. You knew what you were looking for. Gerbelow told you his suspicions. You went on from there. It’s fantastic, but it’s true. You figured out how Markham worked, too. You figured him for a deep water shark.”

Steve shoved under again, thinking, pushing. The cold wasn’t half bad, now. But it’d been a long time since he’d swam late at night this way.

There was a hole gaping in the canal wall. Part of an old storm drain. Steve investigated. It all fell into place in his mind. Swim up the drain, under the ground a few feet to where the water recedes, crouch with your head out of water, bumping the tile walls of the tube, and you could hide all night if you had to, out of sight like a crocodile in a burrow of a river bank. There were storm drains emptying into the canal all along the way. Convenient burrows to rest in when one is tired of swimming. Rest in one for ten minutes, then swim on. Just enough air between top of tube and water for breathing. No wonder Markham fooled everyone!

Steve went on.

* * *

“Remember, Charl

ie, you and me and the canal when we were kids?” Steve gritted his teeth. “We three, you and me, and the canal. Funny how life begins and ends in the same place, sometimes. Yeah.

“So he followed you, Charlie. Like I’m after him. How far, Charlie? I’ll tell you. Figure how far a man can swim underwater, with little rests maybe, until he’s tired. One mile, two miles down the canal. No further. Just far enough away so the cops won’t find you. Far enough away from your crimes.