The Lenient Beast Read online

  Synopsis:

  Logical add-on to the old phrase about a busybody never resting. Fred Brown’s Lenient Beast is a five-part narrative telling of the perfect crime. The killer is driven not out of lust, greed or any of the usual sobs, rather 'cause he cares so much for all of us.

  This novel of serial killings garners its strength from the bluntness and crispness of Brown’s narrative; this is a detective novel with no moody lighting, no one-liners and no super cool hero. Each chapter presents a different view point, yet each latches onto the previous chapter to create a stifling tale of a week in a small town in the US south with a killer on the lose. This is the literary equivalent of Jim Jarmusch’s Night on Earth or Mystery Train — this is Pynchon rather than Spillane.

  The Lenient Beast

  Fredric Brown

  Copyright © 1957

  When I said that mercy stood

  Within the borders of the wood,

  I meant the lenient beast with claws

  And bloody, swift-dispatching jaws.

  — Lawrence P. Spingarn

  ONE

  JOHN MEDLEY

  Late this morning I found a dead man in my back yard. Although I wakened at my usual time, eight o'clock, I did not make the discovery until a few minutes after eleven because I did not chance to look out of the back window of my living room until that time.

  My house, I should perhaps explain, is small. It is almost square and the living room extends the length of one side of it and has windows at front and back. There is a window at the side of the house also, but it is useless since I had a carport built outside it, and I keep it covered with a drape; the front and back windows are large and give ample light. The other side of the house has bedroom at the front and kitchen at the back, a small bathroom between them.

  The kitchen, where I had eaten breakfast — a bowl of cereal followed by several leisurely cups of coffee while I read the Tucson Daily News — has a door and a window opening on the back of the house, but the door has no pane of glass and the window is a small high one; since the table is against the wall under it I never try to look out the window.

  April is the loveliest month in Tucson. A sunny April day is perfect, and almost all April days are sunny. After breakfast I stood outside my front door, drinking the air and the warmth, watching the high clear vapor trails of the big six-engine jet planes from Davis-Monthan Field; two of them, so high in the sky that the planes themselves were all but invisible. Another plane, just taking off, flew over low while I stood there. A beautiful thing, if noisy and a bit terrifying when one thought of what its purpose was.

  Not that I fear that purpose, for myself.

  Or do I? But they make me feel old, those sleek monsters, for I remember when I was a boy and the sound of a plane brought us all running out of the house to stare upward at the rare wonder of a machine in the sky, defying gravity. A little open cockpit biplane with wings held together and apart by struts and wires, precariously powered by an engine not much more powerful than a car's.

  Those who flew those planes were men to me then; those who fly the jets today are boys, and that makes me feel even older, for the difference is not in them but in myself. I see them in a tavern on Plumer Street which I go to occasionally of an evening; they are nice boys, and friendly, but at fifty-six I must seem like a doddering old codger to them.

  But I digress. The day was so lovely that I decided to leave my car and walk the few blocks up Campbell to do my shopping at the Safeway Market on Broadway; my current needs were not too great for me to carry easily. It was Wednesday, and I always do my bulk shopping on Friday, which lets me take advantage of weekend specials and still avoid the Saturday crowds and the standing in line in front of one of the checkers.

  I made a few small purchases at the drugstore as well, and it must have been at least ten o'clock when I returned home. After that — but I am being prolix; suffice it to say that I did a few chores inside the house and did not happen to look out of the back window until eleven o'clock or a few minutes thereafter. And then I saw the man lying there.

  He lay on his back with his head slightly raised and resting on a large root of the Chinese elm which is in the center of the yard. The position in which he lay was a natural one; he could have been a tramp or a drunk who had wandered into the yard and fallen asleep.

  But when I went out of the door and approached closer, I could see that he was dead. His eyes were wide open and staring straight up into the bright Arizona sun. But I unbuttoned part of his jacket and shirt and put my hand inside to make sure there was no heartbeat.

  I have no fear of dead bodies, as many people have. Once, thirty-some years ago, I worked for a mortician and started to learn the trade. For a few months only, but long enough permanently to overcome whatever squeamishness I may have had in dealing with cold clay that once was warm flesh. My eventual decision to choose another occupation was made when I realized that I would, if and when I became a mortician in my own right, have to deal with — and mulct, for my own profit — the grief-stricken living. The dead feel nothing, but I knew that I would find myself suffering with the bereaved who mourned them.

  I touched the body in no other way, not even to rebutton the clothing. Although there was nothing visible to indicate that the death was not a natural one, I knew that it must be reported to the police, and that the police, if they are like the police in the mystery novels I occasionally read for relaxation, do not like to have bodies disturbed until they have had the chance to examine them in situ.

  I have no telephone so I did not go back into the house. Instead I walked across the two vacant lots that separate my property from that of my nearest neighbor to the south, Mrs. Armstrong, a widow who lives with her unmarried daughter. Although we have not become close friends, we have been good neighbors, and on the few occasions when I have had cause to use a telephone she has permitted me to use hers.

  She must have chanced to look from a window and to have seen me coming, for she opened the door as I neared it.

  “Morning, Mr. Medley,” she called out. She is a big woman with a cheerful, booming voice.

  “Good morning,” I said. “May I use your telephone for a moment?”

  “Sure.” She stepped back to let me enter. “And then you'll have a cup of coffee with me, won't you? I was just thinking about heating it up to have a cup myself.”

  “Thank you,” I said, “but I'm afraid I must return home as soon as the call is completed. It's to the police, and they'll expect me to be there waiting for them when they arrive.”

  “When they — you mean something's wrong, Mr. Medley?”

  “Yes and no,” I said, looking for the police number in the phone book and finding it quickly among the emergency numbers on the first page. “If you'll pardon me a moment, I'll explain as soon as I've made the call.”

  But of course once I had made the call I didn't have to explain; she heard what I told the police. That there was a dead man in my yard, a stranger to me, and that I'd just discovered him. And my name and address, of course. “Please stay home, Mr. Medley. Well be right there. And don't disturb anything,” I was told.

  When I put down the telephone and stood up, Mrs. Armstrong was staring at me with wide eyes. “Are you sure—?”

  “Of course I'm sure,” I said dryly. “You don't think I'd fool the police about a thing like that, do you? They wouldn't like it.”

  “I mean — I didn't mean it that way, Mr. Medley. Where is he?”

  “Lying under the big tree in the center of the back yard. The Chinese elm.”

  “But-how did he die?”

  “I don't know how. I'd say acute alcoholism is a good possibility. It would account for his having-uh-strayed off the beaten path. Thanks for the use of your phone, Mrs. Armstrong. And I'd better get back quickly. If they pass the word to a radio car, it can be there within minutes.”

  She followed me out of the door and stood staring toward the tree. But the body under it wasn't visible from here because of the low privet hedge around the yard.

  I went back the way I had come, across the lots and through the break in the hedge, but I didn't approach the body again. I went into the house and to the front window, to wait.

  It was not over five minutes before a car pulled up at the curb and two uniformed men got out and walked rapidly toward my front door. I met them there and had the door open.

  “Mr. Medley? You phoned?”

  “Yes,” I said. “This way, gentlemen. In the back yard, but you might as well come through the house to get there.”

  I led them through and out the back way, but waited just outside the back door while they approached the body and bent over it. One of them repeated my gesture of feeling for a heartbeat.

  “Dead all right, Hank. Guess we might as well phone in right away, huh?”

  The taller and slightly older of the two — they were both quite young men, not yet far into their twenties — straightened up. “It won't matter if we take A minute,” he said. “See if he's got a name on him; if he has we can tell 'em that much when we call.”

  While the younger one reached into pockets, the one who had straightened up looked toward me. “You said over the phone that he was a stranger to you, Mister?”

  “That's right,” I said.

  “Any idea how he got here?”

  “None,” I said, and was about to explain how it had happened that I hadn't looked into my back yard since waking and until just before I had phoned, when the younger one said, “No wallet,
no money, no papers. Handkerchief, cigarettes and matches, that's all.”

  “Don't look like a bum,” said the other one. “Say, Phil, don't move him except to lift his head a little and feel the back of it. If he was robbed, maybe he was slugged.” He joined the other. “Here, I'll give you a hand.”

  Their bodies blocked my view but a few seconds later I heard the one called Hank say, “Oh-oh. Look at that” They both straightened up.

  “Was he — slugged?” I asked.

  “Bullet hole,” said Hank. “And that puts it way out of our league. Can I use your phone?”

  I explained that I didn't have one and had used the one next door and pointed out the house. Noticing, as I did so, that Mrs. Armstrong was still or again outside her door, watching.

  “Our car's closer,” Hank said. “Phil, you call in. I'll stick here.”

  The one called Phil went around the house toward their car. Hank told me, “You go inside if you want to. Just so you don't go anywhere.”

  Since there didn't seem to be anything I could do, I decided that I might as well go indoors so I thanked him and did so. It was obvious that, now that the death seemed to be murder, these particular policemen had no more questions for me. They'd been sent in answer to my call — maybe to verify it and make sure that I really did have a body in my yard — but now they were ready to bow out. Investigation would be taken over by a homicide department, if Tucson was large enough to have a separate department for that purpose, or by a detective bureau. The latter turned out to be the case, if I may anticipate.

  Back in my living room I found myself at a loose end, wondering how to put in time until the detectives came; surely they'd be here soon and surely they'd want to ask me a great many more questions than the uniformed men had asked.

  Usually at that time of day I relax and read a while or listen to music or both. I have an excellent if not extensive record collection and a high-fidelity phonograph installation with speakers at both ends of the room. I didn't feel inclined to read and wondered whether, under the circumstances, it would be all right for me to play a record or two. I decided it would be all right if I kept it soft.

  But the record I put on played only a few minutes before a car drove up and two men who didn't look much like detectives but who must be, I decided, got out. They went over to the uniformed man who had been waiting in the radio car and talked to him for a few minutes, then came toward the house.

  One of them was of medium height and dark; he looked Spanish or Mexican and wore a tan gabardine suit The other was an Anglo (as they call them out here), taller and thinner. He was less neatly dressed, but not sloppily so. Even though he wore a hat — they both wore felt hats — one could see that his hair was carrot colored.

  I went from the window to the front door to open it for them but by the time I got there they were walking around the outside to the back. Either they thought I was still in the back yard or, more likely, they weren't interested in me until they had examined the body. But I was interested in them and in how they would start the investigation, so I went to the back door and outside again.

  They were there before me, talking to the uniformed man who had waited beside the body. I heard one of them, the Mexican one (whom I decided now at closer range was of Mexican rather than of Spanish ancestry), tell the uniformed policeman that he could leave now, and he did so. He nodded to me and said, “'Bye, Mr. Medley,” quite politely as he passed me.

  That caused the others to turn and look toward me, so I walked closer and introduced myself. “I'm John Medley. I found the body and telephoned in. I suppose you'll want to ask me some questions.”

  “Yes, Mr. Medley.” It was the Mexican one who spoke. “But no hurry — we want to do a few things here before the coroner comes and he's on his way now.”

  He turned to his partner. “We'd better take some pix before we even touch him, Red. Want to get the camera?”

  “Sure.” The man he'd called Red walked rapidly toward the street, past me.

  “Would you rather I went back inside?” I asked, “or do you mind if I watch from here?”

  “It's all right as long as you don't come any closer. By the way, my name's Ramos, Frank Ramos. My partner's Fern Cahan. Fern's a funny name for a man but it doesn't matter because everybody calls him Red anyway.”

  “I can see why,” I said.

  “Mr. Medley, you told the boys this man is a stranger to you. Are you really sure of that? I mean, did you take a close look, a good look, at this face?”

  “Close enough,” I said. I explained how I had bent over to feel inside the man's shirt to make sure that he was dead, and that I had touched nothing, disturbed nothing, otherwise.

  Red Cahan came back with a camera, a big Graflex like newspaper cameramen use, but old and battered. I stepped back a little farther to be out their way while they took half a dozen shots from various angles.

  “Guess that's enough, Red,” Ramos said. “And that sounds like it's the wagon coming.” He listened a moment “Yeah. Well, guess that's all the shots we need. Come on, Red, you put the camera in the car while I talk to Doc. And well see you in a few minutes, Mr. Medley.”

  They went around the house together. I went back indoors, mostly because the sun had become uncomfortably warm, and I hadn't been wearing a hat.

  The record I'd left on had finished playing and I'd missed most of it. I started it again, thinking they might be busy for quite a while yet.

  But it had played only a few minutes before there was a knock at the door, the back one, and I went to it and let Frank Ramos in.

  He said, “Red's going to give the boys a hand, and then case the yard. Hell be in soon. Say, that phonograph has a real tone. Hi-fi?”

  I nodded. “I thought you might be longer. I'll shut it off.”

  “Please don't. Not till Red comes in, anyway. I like it.”

  “It's Berlioz,” I said. “Hector Berlioz, one of the most underrated of the great composers. Because, I suppose, most people think of him as modern, whereas he was far ahead of his time. When he composed what we're listening to now, Symphonic Fantastique, in eighteen thirty, Beethoven had been dead only three years, and Wagner was only seventeen. And Richard Strauss was only five when Berlioz died in eighteen fifty-nine.”

  “It's nice stuff.”

  “What did you mean by saying your partner was casing the yard?”

  “Looking for footprints, heel marks, things like that. Red's more of a woodsman than I am so I leave things to him on outdoor stuff. Hell see things I'd miss — if there's anything to see. I doubt if there will be.”

  “The ground's pretty hard,” I said. “I haven't done any watering for four — no, five days now.”

  “Even if you'd watered yesterday, ground dries so fast here, I doubt if there'd be anything. Well, here's Red. Maybe at that you'd better shut off the music while we talk. I'll let him in.”

  I shut off the phonograph.

  “Nothing, Frank,” Red was telling his partner. “Hard as see-ment, damn near. One clump of hedge along the alley's broken, but it looks like it happened longer ago than last night.”

  “It did,” I said. “I don't myself know how it happened but I noticed it day before yesterday. May I offer you some coffee, gentlemen? Or, if it's not too early in the day, a glass of wine? I have some very good pale dry sherry.”

  “Thanks, no,” Ramos said. “Just sit down and we will too. Now, no doubt this has nothing to do with the crime, but would you mind giving us just a little background on yourself, Mr. Medley? How long you've lived here, what you do, things like that?”

  “Not at all,” I said. “I've been in Tucson six — no, six and a half years. And here in this house for the same length of time, as near as matters; I bought it within a month of coming here.”

  “Do you work at anything? Or are you retired?”

  “Retired,” I said. “Mostly so anyway. I own a few pieces of property around town and occasionally buy or sell a piece.”

  “Is the real estate business what you were in before you came here?”

  “More or less. As an independent operator, not an agent And I've done quite a few other things too.”