Eight murders—no—nine, I corrected as I parked my Nash Airflyte behind the flashing black-and-white and flipped off the lights. I returned the nod of the uniformed officer who stood beside the squad car, then glanced at the rundown, brick tenement building. Scrawled across the bottom right side in thick, black letters was, Kilroy was here. It was 1948 and signs of the war still lingered. Like the other crime scenes, a lot of shell-shocked vets eked out a survival in these south side buildings.
I left the car, hurried across the sidewalk and up the uneven, concrete steps to the building’s entrance. This string of murders was the biggest case I’d ever worked. The newspapers had dubbed the killer the ‘Bicycle Chain Strangler.’ We were scouring the city for a Nazi who got his kicks from watching American vets die slowly, while blood oozed from cuts inflicted by the murder weapon—a German bicycle chain, a Fahrradfabrik Schauff, to be precise. How even a Nazi could choke the life from another man was beyond me, beyond any rational thinking man. The shrinks think they have it figured out, but those freaks aren’t any more human than the lab rats they study.
I grabbed the doorknob, a wobbly leftover from the twenties, and nearly yanked it free. No locks or buzzer, I noticed as the door swung open. Just like all the others. The killer always entered through the fire escape. I released the doorknob, grabbing the door and swinging it open.
 
A black blur shot toward me from within the dimly lit hallway.