Manhunt. Volume 14, Number 1, February/March, 1966

He had loved her so much that her death had temporarily deranged him. All this talk about innocent guests came from the part of George’s mind that was trying desperately to catch on to something, anything, that it could deny. His mind couldn’t deny Kathy’s death, but the need for denial was so great that George had somehow channeled it toward something else.

Malone tried to manage a grin for his friend, but it wouldn’t stay on his lips. If I’d told George that this wasn’t Chicago, instead of that one of his guests had murdered his wife, Malone thought he’d have denied that too. Right now, his mind can’t accept things. The poor lug...

George studied Malone’s face a moment, his eyes cloudy and remote. He shrugged. “All right, Malone.” He turned and started up the back stairs. “But I can’t go in. I—”

“I know,” Malone said. “It’ll only take me a minute — and then we’ll call the cops.”

At the door to Kathy’s bedroom, George suddenly put his hands up to his face, his head bent, his shoulders shaking.

It hurt Malone to see George this way, but there was nothing he could do.

“I... I think I’m going to be sick,” George said. He turned in the direction of the bathroom and half ran toward it.

Malone wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand and went into the bedroom. From the direction of the bathroom, he could hear George Weston being very sick. He closed the bedroom door and walked slowly around the bed and stood looking down at Kathy.

Any one of those men down there could have done it, he thought. Not the women, because only a man could break someone’s neck quickly enough to avoid getting clawed and bitten. It took a lot of strength to break a neck; a hell of a lot of strength.

And motive? That would come out later. It always did. Right now he wanted the personal satisfaction of having a hand in finding the man who had killed a woman he loved dearly. His own deep reaction — the thing George was going through now — would come later, he knew.

He circled the room several times, and each time his eyes missed nothing. His brain was in high gear now, and his thoughts came quickly and clearly, the way they had before in similar situations. He looked for the obvious thing, the thing that seemed slightly wrong somehow. There was nothing. He came back to the sheet-covered body, and then, with the strongest reluctance he had ever felt toward anything, he bent and pulled away the sheet.

He looked down at Kathy Weston a full minute, his eyes covering every line and curve of her body. He stood wholly without movement, his face as devoid of expression as if it had been a wooden mask.

But, inside him, deep in the pit of his stomach, something tightened and drew into a hard, pulsing knot. And then, carefully, and with infinite gentleness, he drew the sheet back across Kathy’s body and left the bedroom.

He walked to the bathroom. The door was open, and George Weston was not inside. Malone went to the stairway and down the stairs to the living room.

The party was gay no longer. Everyone was in the living room, and all were watching George Weston at the telephone. A quick glance at their faces told Malone that they knew what had happened, that George had told them. George put the phone down and looked at Malone. “I’ve just called the police,” he said.

Malone nodded. He took a folder of matches from his pocket and lit his cigar. “Maybe it’s just as well, George. A few minutes more, either way, wouldn’t make any difference.”

“I got to thinking,” George said. “Up there in the bathroom. I guess you were right when you said I couldn’t think, before.” He glanced quickly toward a broad-shouldered man, in his middle thirties, with thinning blond hair and a pinched, sallow face. “And I guess you were right in saying there was something special about Les McJanet. It must have been him, Malone. He just got out of prison for doing almost the same thing he did to Kathy.”

The blond man lunged forward, but two of the other men caught his arms and held him. “What the hell is this?” Les McJanet shouted. “What are you trying to pull, Weston?”

Malone put his cigar down in a tray. If there was going to be action, he wanted no tobacco coals in the air.

“It wasn’t too difficult to kill Kathy,” Malone said. “With people going upstairs to the bathroom, and one thing and another, it wasn’t hard to get to Kathy and break her neck and get down again without being missed.”

“Goddam it!” Les McJanet yelled. “Let go of me!”

“In just a moment,” Malone said. “When you’re calmer.” He looked around at the others. No one moved or spoke. All eyes were upon him. He turned back toward George Weston. “You can’t go through with it, George, and you know it. You’re not made that way. I don’t know exactly when you decided to kill Kathy, but it must have been just a few seconds after you discovered she was going to have a baby.”

George’s eyes widened almost imperceptibly. “A... a baby.”