Kolchak The Night Strangler Read Online Free PDF Page B

took place.”
    “Oh, joy! And he wants little old guess-who to do it?”
    “You got it, Kolchak” You’re the new man,” he said smiling broadly. Score one more for A.A. Vincenzo.
    “You know something, Vincenzo? You never change.”
    “Out! Get out.” He waved me from his office in what had come to be known as the Vincenzo salute and off I trotted through the ancient labyrinth of the Chronicle ’s corridors until I finally located the “morgue” down to a sub-basement.
    Rows upon rows of books, file catalogues, cabinets, and musty, bound volumes of the Chronicle surrounded a small island of comparative order in which sat a tiny elfin man with, believe it or not, black cuff guards and a croupier’s visor. He looked like Dickens’ Bob Cratchit.
    His name was John Berry and he’d been down here compiling the detritus of the Chronicle almost as long as Crossbinder had been putting it out. He was very quiet, with a high, thin voice, but he seemed anxious to help, apparently grateful for a visit of any kind. He kept the back issues coming, thumping each down with an accompanying cloud of dust.
    “There we go.”
    “Thanks, sport.”
    “Most welcome.” He watched me as I worked. He looked like a cocker spaniel that had lost its master. “Mr. Kolchak… I envy you.”
    “You’ve got to be kidding. Why?”
    “Nevertheless, I do. Yes, sir. Research. That’s where the real joy lies.”
    “Yeah. Sure.”
    “And the fascination,” he prattled on. “Let the others scurry about foraging for tidbits of contemporary gossip.” He extended a small white hand toward the volumes I was leafing through. “This is where the meat is found. For instance… no one yet has mentioned the distinct resemblance between these present strangulations and a series of them in the year… mmm… nineteen fifty-one… or was it fifty-two?”
    Again my ears pricked up. “Really? How… similar?”
    “Oh, extremely,” he said, evidently pleased with my response. He proceeded to fly like a startled bird back and forth amongst his treasures with increasing armloads of old bound volumes and I got a good look at some nice faded clippings. The paper was faded, that is. But not its content.
    The old man wasn’t exaggerating. On March 27, 1952, one Myra Johns was discovered strangled in an alley in the Pioneer Square area. On March 30, a second strangulation took place in the same area. On April 2, a third murder. On April 5, yet another strangulation. By April 14, six women had been strangled. All of them died and/or were found in the area of Pioneer Square.
    The stories intimated that certain “bizarre details” had been repressed by police officials. This, to my experience, was not at all unusual. I had encountered such tactics before in my travels.
    I made some notes and took the elevator back to the newsroom. Vincenzo displayed his usual lack of imagination.
    “I hardly think we can say we have the same killer now as in 1952.”
    “You hardly think, period! Read on.”
    He read on, the smug look of satisfaction fading from under his moustache. “Again?”
    “Give the bright man ten silver dollars!”
    Vincenzo eyed me with disgust. He read from my notes: “’He had the rotted features of… a corpse’?”
    “That’s it,” I told him. “Word for word. By a man who saw him in 1952.”
    “Damn it, Kolchak. You know I can’t print this junk.”
    “Why not?”
    “If you don’t know the answer to that one… ah, Jesus. I come to Seattle for some peace and quite when I could’ve taken a cushy PR job on the Strip, and what do I get? You again. And another nutty story.”
    “We’ll soon see about how ‘nutty’ it is.”
    “How, asked the red-eyed, much-abused editor… knowing that he shouldn’t?”
    “Because,” I told him, “if it is the same killer, he hasn’t finished killing. Not just yet.”
     

Chapter Six
     
     
     
    Sunday, April 9, 1972
     
    Joyce Gabriel, a quiet, divorced secretary in her