The Problem Solver
and the Hostage
Richard Verner sat back in his desk chair, his right hand at his chin. His faintly red-Indian features were intent as he listened to the tall, well-built police officer across the desk.
“We had to get this man,” said the Lieutenant, “before he did any more damage. He’s been responsible for more than twenty robberies in the last six months, and he’s trigger-happy—a mad dog. If anyone hesitates, he shoots them. Our trouble was, he hit different parts of the city, apparently at random, and we couldn’t find any useful pattern. Well, by sheer persistence, trudging around the city with a drawing the witnesses agreed on, we finally learned of someone who looked like the man, living in a room on Fraley Street. This morning we went over to get him.”
“What happened?”
The Lieutenant sighed wearily. “He must have spotted us. Just before we got there, he grabbed a little girl walking down the hall, yanked her into his room, locked the door, and shoved a couple of pieces of heavy furniture against it. Then he yelled, ‘Try and come in, cops, and this kid gets it through the head.’”
Verner sat motionless for an instant. “You mean, if you went in, he’d shoot the girl?”
The Lieutenant gave an ironic nod. “That’s where we were early this morning. That’s where we are now.”
Verner glanced at his watch. It was a little before noon.
“What did you do?”
“We finally offered to clear out and let him go, if he’d let the little girl come out unharmed. But he says he’s too smart to trust a cop. The instant he comes out, he says, we’ll shoot him. He’s holding on to the girl.”
“This can’t go on forever.”
“No, but what can we do? We’ve got to get him fast, to save the girl. But he’s in a third-floor room with just one door, and that’s locked and barricaded. He’s got Venetian blinds at both windows. He can watch the street, but we can’t see into the room. The thing is no bluff, either. He’s a killer—take my word for it.”
Verner glanced off at a corner of the room for an instant, then back to the Lieutenant. “Why bring this to me? I’m not a detective.”
“Detectives,” said the Lieutenant glumly. “I’ve already got detectives—they’re running out my ears. And they’re all up against the same blank wall I’m up against.” He felt through his pockets. “We need detectives, but every now and then we also need a different point of view.” He smoothed a newspaper clipping, and held it out.
Verner took the clipping and read: “. . . instrumental in unraveling the mystery was Richard Verner, a new kind of specialist known as a ‘heuristician.’ Mr. Verner explained that a heuristician is a professional problem solver, who works with other experts. Nearly all problems, he said, can be cleared up by much the same technique, provided the necessary expert knowledge is available.”
The Lieutenant said doggedly, “Any expert knowledge you need in this problem, either we’ve got it or we’ll get it for you. You just solve the problem. Get the little girl out of there alive. Get us out of this terrible mess.”
***
The building was old, of dirty red brick, and stood on a street corner in a small shopping center. It was long and narrow, four stories high, with a flat roof. The narrow end of the building fronted on Fraley Street.
Verner and the Lieutenant stood well back in a vacant room across the street, looking out the window.
“That’s his room,” said the Lieutenant, “on the third floor, in the corner. He’s got two windows. The front one looks out on Fraley Street. The other looks out to the side, over Meacham Street.”
Across the way, in both windows on the third floor, dirty Venetian blinds swayed gently, as if moved by a faint breeze.
“Thanks to those blinds,” said the Lieutenant, “he can watch both streets, and we can’t see into his room from either street.”
Verner studied the blinds. “But he can’t see up.”
“No. Little good that does us.”
“Let’s go over.”
They went out into a back alley, emerged farther up the block, crossed Fraley Street, and approached a side door of the building, on Meacham Street.
The Lieutenant cleared his throat. “With minor exceptions, each floor is a carbon copy of the others.” He led the way inside the old building, with its dark halls, high ceilings, long stairways, and moderately large rooms with heavy paneled doors and tall windows. The woodwork was scarred and dark, the walls were papered with long-faded patterns, and the plaster ceilings were stained and cobwebbed. When they reached the second floor, the Lieutenant said quietly, “Here’s an exact duplicate of his room. His is directly overhead.”
The room had a large sagging bed in the far corner, between the two windows. A heavy dark dresser stood against the wall to their right, a dark chest of drawers to their left, and beyond that, the door to a shallow closet. The Fraley Street window was in a direct line with the hall door.
Verner looked over the two heavy dark pieces of furniture, then glanced at the dark paneled door. He said quietly, “You say everything is the same above?”
“Except that his furniture’s against the door.”
They went up to the third floor, where a police sergeant and two uniformed policemen stood with their backs against the wall, guns in hand, and listened to threats that the girl could “die any minute.” The sergeant shouted back that if anything happened to the girl, the police were coming in, their guns blazing.
As the Lieutenant watched uneasily, Verner methodically examined the door and its frame; then, frowning, Verner glanced up and down the hall at the narrow windows that supplied the light in the hallway.
From within the room came the sudden cry of a frightened child, a slap, silence, then muffled sobbing.
Verner and the Lieutenant moved grimly down the hall.
“Well,” said the Lieutenant, “what do you think?”
“How much help can you get?”
“As much as I need.”
“Can you get pneumatic drills working in that alley?”
“To cover the sound of whatever we do? Yes.”
“Can you get a loudspeaker set up in that building across the street, to draw his attention away from the door?”
“Sure.” The Lieutenant frowned. “But we’ve already thought of tear gas, pressure hoses, or a sharp-shooter across the street. Remember, what we do has to be sure and fast.”
Verner nodded.
“We’ve got one other little problem.”
“What’s that?”
“While the drills are working and the loudspeaker blaring, somebody has to be lowered headfirst down to the side window on Meacham Street.”
Involuntarily, the Lieutenant glanced out toward the hard cement sidewalk.
“What’s the point? We can’t get in fast enough that way. And we can’t risk a shot by somebody three stories up, hanging upside down by his feet.”
“No, but if he goes down upright, his feet can be seen from inside before his head is down far enough for him to see anything through those slanted blinds. If he’s upside down, he’ll be able to see in almost as soon as he can be seen from inside. And if he’s lowered along the edge of the side window, while the loudspeaker attracts the killer’s attention to the front window on Fraley Street, he’ll be able to see how that furniture is arranged against the door, without being seen himself.”
“Who’s going to perform this feat?”
“I think either you or I should do it. We’ve got to find out first-hand what I want to know.”
The Lieutenant’s eyes narrowed. He cast a brief but searching look at his companion. At first glance, Verner’s tall frame gave a somewhat catlike appearance of lithe quick strength. His waist was narrow, and his face lean. A closer look, however, revealed something deceptive in his appearance—as of a building so proportioned that it seemed more strongly built close to than from a distance.
The Lieutenant shrugged. “I think whichever one of us is lighter ought to do it.” The Lieutenant had the muscular build of a light-heavyweight boxer. “It’s going to be hard hanging onto the ankles while he’s lowered outside.” He cleared his throat. “I weigh 175, myself.”
Verner said, “You’re elected—I weigh 184.”
***
The pneumatic drills sent their racket reverberating between the buildings, and the boom of the loudspeaker urged the killer to release the little girl unharmed, as Verner, himself far out of the window, gripped the Lieutenant’s ankles. Two burly policemen clung to Verner with bruising strength, but the Lieutenant kept motioning to be lowered even more.
For an instant it seemed as if they’d gone too far, and would all slide out the window to the pavement below. But then the Lieutenant signaled to be pulled up. They scraped him with painful slowness up the wall, got the red-faced, perspiring Lieutenant safely in, eased him to his feet, and moved back into the room. The Lieutenant drew a deep breath.
“The chest of drawers and the dresser,” he said in a low voice, “are dark, like the door. They’re the same size as the furniture downstairs. They’re both pushed endwise against the door, about four inches apart.”
Verner nodded. “Let’s go down and get the blankets over the hall windows.”
***
The trapped killer had turned hysterical and begun wildly to threaten the little girl’s life.
The loudspeaker projected an earnest voice, “We’ve told you, as long as the girl isn’t hurt—”
“Yeah, you told me! But you can never trust a cop!”
“If you won’t believe us—”
“All right, but I warn you—you’ll never save this kid! I’m going to—”
From the shadows between the dark dresser and the dark chest of drawers standing side by side, there was a brief flash. As the shot echoed in the room, the killer’s gun clattered to the floor. Dazed, his hand clasped at his shoulder, the impact threw him against the blinds and the frame of the front window facing on Fraley Street.
There was a silence that seemed deafening.
Outside, the pneumatic drills abruptly stopped. The loudspeaker was suddenly still.
“Stay right where you are,” said a voice from outside the door, as clear and unmuffled as if it were inside the room. “Don’t move, or you’re a dead man.”
Blinking, the killer glanced around the room, then back to the heavy dark dresser and bureau standing side by side against the dark, closed door. The voice seemed to have come from there, but the door was still shut. It couldn’t be opened without shoving the furniture aside, and the furniture hadn’t been moved. Feverishly, the killer glanced at his gun on the floor, then quickly all around the room.
Before he could move, there was the brief slap of a rope against the building, the side window on Meacham Street shot up, and the Venetian blinds were thrust back. A big catlike man with a faintly red-Indian profile was suddenly in the room; he scooped up the gun, carried the little girl out of the way, and yanked the heavy pieces of furniture aside.
Then the door was open, to show the pitch-black hall outside. Policemen burst in, there was the snap of handcuffs, and the sobbing mother rushed inside, snatched up her little girl, and hugged her. The door was pulled shut by a police sergeant who, having stepped out, shouted down the hall, “Take those blankets off the windows! We want it light when we bring him out!”
The prisoner gave an angry exclamation.
In the hall the blankets came off the windows, and now the light shone through the closed door where one narrow panel had been sawed away while the killer had stood at the front window, looking out onto Fraley Street and shouting threats. Now, too late, he could see how he had been trapped by a loudspeaker, some noisy drills, and four inches of space between a bureau and a dresser.
The Lieutenant glanced at Verner. “It seems simple enough. It looked impossible before.”
Verner nodded. “That’s the way it often is. But a problem can nearly always be solved, given time, exact knowledge, and—”
The Lieutenant smiled, “—and, Richard Verner, heuristician.”