The motel room was divided into two parts. Each part was
cluttered with the documents pertaining to a particular inquiry, for
although I always keep my clothing and personal effects in emmaculate
order, I need to have books and papers scattered about over a large
area in order for me conduct an investigation, or intellectual
activity of any sort. For that reason, the piano and three desks were
the only messy portions of my apartment. This motel room had a
pitifully small desk, so I had covered the floor with my work. 
	The north side of the room was covered with papers relating to
my work with jazz. This study was the central aspect of all my work,
and that which I most cared for. And also, the most important. I was
doing some cutting edge work in controlling the caprices of the masses
by popularizing appropriate jazz pieces on the radio. The results were
staggering, although we were still largely in a research phase. We had
introduced some songs with a Latino beat and within a week, people
were swarming like lemmings to Mexican restaurants; and none of them
had any idea why. Fads centered around canasta and mah jongg, cars
with hideous tailfins, bomb shelters, the enthusiasm for fluoridated
water- all sprang up seemingly overnight, but the plans to launch
these movements had begun months earlier, on my drawing boards. After
the art had been fine-tuned, we would go on to use jazz as an
instrument of policy, with the ultimate aim being the end of the Cold
War.
	I was able to bring this work with me here, to Wisconsin, but
the main purpose for my stay in lovely Riverbrook was to track down a
mass murderer, and it was the paper belonging to that probe that
covered most of the south side of the room. At the fringes, jazz had
begun to invade the murder half of the room, creeping around my bed as
I spread those papers wider and wider.
	Eighteen people had disappeared in the last 7 months. The only
commonalities between them were that they were all between the ages of
17 and 35, they were all female, and they all lived within 5 miles of
Riverbrook. This gave me a great deal to work with. I had the school
records of every graduate of Riverbrook High who matched a profile of
male, less than 60 years old, and still a resident of Riverbrook.
This had taken me several days and now I was reading the files of the
483 matches. I was about halfway done, and had found two candidates so
far. I would spend that night and the following morning reading the
rest of the profiles (luckily, a night disk jockey is used to these
hours) and probably end up with two to five suspects, each of whom
would receive a call from me the next evening.
	For a late lunch the next day, I had some coffee (capuccino
was not, sadly, available in Riverbrook) a roll and a cigarette. I had
four suspects who matched my idea of a serial killer so closely that I
could almost convict them already. The telling thing, though was that
three were brothers and lived on a farm together. I could have called
the sheriff then and there, but jurisprudence required a trial, and my
regulations required that I go in before the local authorities so that
there would be no risk of anyone getting hurt. Also, the remaining
bird was a real psycho himself, with quite a record of petty criminal
offenses already. I would later regret the decision, but I decided to
visit the lone wolf first because he lived only 150 yards from my
motel, even though I was virtually certain that Huey, Louie and Dewey
were the killers.
	I arrived at the residence of Mr. and Mrs. Hector Brady at 9
PM on a Wednesday evening. Because I had walked, no one inside heard me
approach even as I stood on the porch and heard a violent racket
inside. I kicked the door in, and saw immediately that what we had was
a wife beater, but probably nothing more.
	Both the assailant and his matrimonial punching bag froze as I
burst into the living room. The nattiness of my suit contrasted with
the plain and even ugly style of their furniture, and so I could
hardly blame them for their surprise.
	Hector pulled a knife, and there was a brief hostage situation
that ended with Hector getting an arm and some ribs broken. I checked
the basement and under the front porch for bodies before the local
boys in blue arrived, so as to make sure that the Morris boys were the ones
running a little private family butcher shop. I told the sheriff that
he should keep a couple extra men on late shift and have the county
coroner ready for a long night. I allowed him the obligatory
chest-puffing as he tried to get involved, and then shut him up with a
flash of my badge.
	I parked a couple of hundred yards away from the Morris
farmhouse and walked in. It was dark by this time, so I stood a pretty
good chance of getting within a few paces of the house undetected. I
reviewed what I knew about Jefferson, Theodore and George Morris: they
were probably the only trio of human brothers in the world separated
by less than 15 months of age without any of them being twins or
triplets. Maybe the "human" label didn't apply, though.
	The three of them kept this farm tending to some grain and
some pigs. They also did some of the butchering themselves. None of
them had ever been married, and this compound was the residence of
these three alone. They had stopped going to church fifteen years ago,
were C students, held no other jobs and had no girlfriends as far as
anybody knew. There was probably all kinds of animal husbandry going
on out here.
	As I approached the white house, I could immediately see a
chilling spectacle inside, as the brothers were moving around inside,
holding and wearing various parts of their victims. It was impossible
to tell one brother from the next; all were hairless, about 6 feet
tall, and of extremely stocky build. They wore undershirts and wielded
all sorts of knives and cutting instruments as they danced a silent
danse macabre. Heads, fingers, breasts and hides were draped over
their shoulders.
	I kicked in the front door and stared at the Morris brothers
as they stared at me. I was immediately offended by the smell of
death, and the plain decor of their front room. They tried to get an
emotional read on me; it was for this reason that I wore sunglasses at
all times. One Morris approached me and lifted a meatcleaver. In an
instant, the meatcleaver was my weapon, and I smacked his head with the
dull side. Morris number one fell half out the front door, and rested
unconscious on the threshhold. He didn't look any less intelligent
than when he was awake.
	Apparently, Morris number three thought that by making his
brother a hostage, he could hold me off. I stepped forward and watched
Morris number two receive a nail into his head with one stroke of
number three's hammer. A pun came to my mind as number two drooled his
way out of life.
	I was a bit dismayed that I had been in the house for fifteen
seconds and had only disposed of two of the Morrises. This meant that
I wouldn't be breaking my record for subduing three men. Number three
fled into the basement, I followed, and a moment later, I was smoking a
cigarette on the porch. I shoved number one aside and sat on the step
to wait for the local authorities. When they arrived, I called the
Milwaukee airport, courtesy of the Morris estate, to make sure that I
could return promptly to Washington and continue my work with jazz.