After a while he turned around. "Bruce Lombardi," he said. "Yes."
"I'm sorry you—Oh, hell." Moffat looked away. "He was a sort of handsome young chap, wasn't he? Thin regular features and so on. I'll bet his parents were proud of him."
"They paid his undergraduate expenses," mumbled Kintyre. "Since then he went ahead on scholarships and assistantships, but those were four high-priced years for a poor family."
"And now they'll see this. Hell." Moffat stood with fingers doubled together, talking fast. He himself was rather young, more shaken than his superiors would have wished. "Look at those burns—marks—He's like that all over. He was never unconscious once, unless he passed out now and then—no blackjack marks, no chloroform, just rope bruises. Then when he was dead, the murderers cut off his fingers and hacked his face some more, to make it harder for us to identify. Stuffed him into an old coat and pair of pants and left him half in the tidewater. Twenty-four years of age, did you say? This is what the old Lombardis have to show for their twenty-four years. Jesus Christ. I'll bet I have to take his father in here."
"You think it was a sadist?"
"Oh, sure, I don't doubt at least one of the murderers got his kicks. It takes a cracked brain to do something like this—even for money. Yes, I feel pretty sure it was a professional job. Most of the torture was systematic, almost neat, for a definite purpose. You can see that. When they reached their purpose, when he talked or whatever it was, they cut his throat—neatly—then mutilated him for a good logical reason, to make it harder for us, and disposed of the body in regular gangland style. They shouldn't have dumped him in Berkeley. The Berkeley force sees so many University people we automatically thought a nice-looking young fellow like this might belong on the campus, and checked. But that was their only mistake. Mine was going in for a job where I'll have to show this to his father."
"Must you?"
"It's the law. I wish it weren't."
Moffat moved to pull back the sheet, but Kintyre was there first. Covering Bruce's face made a kind of finality. Though the real closing curtain had fallen hours ago, he thought, when Bruce lifted hands torn, broken, and burned, to take death for his weariness. And afterward they cut his fingers off. Maybe the curtain had not been rung down yet.