Deranged: The Shocking True Story of America's Most Fiendish Killer by Harold Schechter Read Free Book Online Page A

Mrs. Budd, whose bulk made the heat even harder to bear, had undone the top few buttons of her tentlike cotton house-dress. Even so she found herself pausing every few moments to swab the sweat from her neck with a balled-up hanky. Through the plaster wall behind her, she could hear the muffled squeals of her youngest daughter, Beatrice, playing in the adjacent bedroom. The rest of the family was away from home, at work or with friends.
    At the sound of the knock, Mrs. Budd raised herself with a little groan from the buckled mattress and made her way slowly to the door. Before she reached, it the rapping again.
    “Just a minute,” she called.
    Rebuttoning the top of her flower-printed housedress, Mrs. Budd pulled the door open. There stood a small, elderly stranger, dressed in a dark suit and black felt hat. A folded newspaper was tucked under one arm. In thedusk of the tenement hallway, he looked impressively well-to-do and dapper. Mrs. Budd was unaccustomed to such nicely dress callers. Instinctively, she reached up and patted at her shapeless hair.
    “Can I Help you?” Mrs. Budd asked.
    The elderly gentlemen reached under his arm, removed the newspaper, and held it out to Mrs. Budd, as though he had dropped by to deliver it.
    “I am looking for a young fellow named Edward Budd. I read his ad in yesterday’s paper.”
    “You come to the right place. I’m his mother.”
    The little man removed his hat and bowed slightly, a gesture that, in Mrs. Budd’s eyes, seemed as courtly as a kiss on the hand. “Good day to you.” he said. “My name is Frank Howard. I’m here with an offer that might be of interest to your son.”
    Stepping back from the doorway, Mrs. Budd held out a welcoming hand. “Come on in Eddie’s over to a friend’s but I’ll have my little girl fetch him for you.”
    The old man nodded again and, walking with a slightly bowlegged gait, followed Mrs. Budd into the living room, where she invited him to have a seat. As carefully as a convalescent, Mr. Howard lowered himself into a chintz-covered armchair.
    Calling Beatrice from the bedroom, Mrs. Budd told the child to run around the corner to the Korman apartment and tell her brother to come home immediately. As the five-year-old passed the stranger in the easy chair, the old man reached out bony hand took her by the wrist.
    “You remind me of my own grandaughter. What do they call you?”
    The little girl, who had just turned five, stared shyly at her feet. “Beatrice,” she said after a moment.
    Reaching into his pocket, the old man came up with a shiny coin. “Here’s a five-cent piece for your trouble,” he said, placing the nickel in her palm.
    Beatrice held up the coin for the mother to see.
    “What do you say to the man?” Mrs. Budd asked reprovingly.
    “Thank you,” said Beatrice, then dashed out the door.
    “You’ll spoil the child,” Mrs. Budd said with a smile. “Would you care for some lemonade? I got some freshmade in the ice box.”
    “That would be nice.”
    The windows of the Budds’ apartment faced a back alley, and even at the height of a bright spring afternoon, the rooms were filled with shadows. After returning with the drink, Mrs. Budd switched on a table lamp next to her guest, and in its yellow glow, she took a better look at him.
    It was hard to tell his age, though he seemed dried-up and shrunken, one of those wizened old men whose hollow faces look like parchment-covered skulls. He had a sharp, beaked nose, watery blue eyes, a thatch of gray hair, and a gray moustache that drooped over the corners of his mouth. Gazing up at Mrs. Budd, he smiled benignly, revealing a set of moldy teeth. His top incisors protruded slightly, giving him the look of a kindly old rodent.
    His navy blue suit, Mrs. Budd could now see, was shabbier than it had seemed in the hallway—its jacket cuffs frayed, its pants worn to a shine at the knees. Still, he looked respectable enough, and when he raised his left hand to lift the