Kolchak The Night Strangler by Richard Matheson, Jeff Rice Read Free Book Online Page B

looks like a corpse?
    “Another vampire? Ah, that just doesn’t make sense.”
    “Carl, let’s order something. I’m famished. Thinking comes better on a full stomach.”
    She was right, of course. It also comes better in good company and by now I was beginning to feel very attached to this particular belly dancer. No doubt the silly dreams of an over-the-hill scribe.
    After we had eaten and driven back to her houseboat, she looked at me and said, very levelly, “Carl, from what you’ve told me, you’ve been up against it for a long time. I’m not saying you should cop out. But why not go easy for a while? Just till you build up a stake. You’re new in this town and you don’t want to get off on the wrong foot.”
    I kissed her goodbye and told the driver to take me to Fourth and University.
    “Just doesn’t make any sense, eh? Well I’m gonna force it to make sense, by God!”
    “What’s that?” the cabbie queried.
    “I said I’m gonna force it to make sense! Sense! He wants facts, does he? I’ll ram them down his damn Sicilian throat!”
    Step number one took me to Seattle’s Public Library at 1000 Fourth Street where I spent the remainder of the afternoon and the best part of the evening checking through their microfilmed collection of Seattle’s newspapers. The Post-Intelligencer had been founded in 1863, ten years before the Daily Chronicle . The Times , founded in 1896, was no help for the first series of murders. But I did add one promising piece to the puzzle.
    As near as I could make it out, every set of murders had taken place over a period of 18 days. Even though the current murder wave was, but all accounts, one year early, the pattern had held thus far.
    Which meant that our killer, whoever—or whatever—he was, had only eight days to find his last three victims.
     

Chapter Eight
     
     
     
    Monday, April 10, 1972
     
    That nights, at about 11:45, while I was walking around the Pioneer Square up one street and down another, the killer reduced his list to two. I was walking southwest on Janes Street toward Yesler Way when an unpleasant voice hailed me.
    “Hold it right there, mister.
    Across Yesler Way was a squad car, two cops sitting in it. One of them turned a flashlight on my face as I moved toward them. I walked around to the passenger side.
    “You scared the hell out of me.”
    “Identity, please.”
    I flashed my press card. “Kolchak. Daily Chronicle. ”
    He shined his flashlight on the card, asked for the wallet, then told me to remove my other cards. I handed them to him and he went through them slowly, deliberately. He handed them back.
    “What are you doing around here so late at night, Mr. Kolchak.”
    I never got to answer them. There was some action down on Occidental and the noise came over the car’s radio: “We’ve got something in an alley between Yesler and Washington on Occidental. Units 14 and 16 move in.”
    “Hold it!” I yelled as I grabbed for the door handle.
    “The hell you say,” shouted the driver and off he went with me sprinting after. By the time I got to the corner and started down Occidental, whoever it was they were chasing had doubled back up the street and I tried to tackle him. He knocked me flat like a pro lineman and tore off down Yesler. Two squad cars on Occidental almost collided trying to follow him. Still on my knees, one trouser leg torn and short of breath, I checked my camera and strobe. They were intact, I heaved myself up and with what strength I had left went charging back the way I had come.
    The figure was just turning northeast on First Avenue toward Cherry as I rounded Occidental and Yesler. By the time I got to Cherry I was joined by several other officers on foot. Schubert had had the area well staked out. I wouldn’t doubt he’d had officers for every block from the Alaskan Viaduct to Third Avenue.
    Cherry was a mass of blinking red lights and sirens, curses and gunshots. I was breathing so hard a gray mist was