a field.

He has no memory of the act, and when his boss questions him as to why he's late coming in from his deliveries, all he can say is that he got lost. Mr. Baldwin, his boss, doesn't take the explanation very well and snaps at him, but his mother coddles him and sends him into his room to work on his hobby, that of constructing toy antique cars. His madness has taken root and it grows. A few days later he picks up another hitch hiker-Gayle. Discovering that she's running away from home, he lapses once more into blinding paranoia and sends her off to the great hereafter with a wire coat-hanger twisted around her lovely neck.

Cpt. Shaw and Lt. Davis are very worried. They fear that they have a maniac on their hands. They are convinced that they have when still another victim is discovered in a ravine. Howard is having his problems, too. Fleeting scenes of his crimes are coming to him in flashes. He can't understand them. They make no sense to him at all. But they trouble him severely, and his only refuge is in his mother's arms. Howard's next victim is a boy. The boy is gay, but this doesn't register with Howard. What does register is that the boy hates his mother and is putting miles between her and himself--and another coat-hanger is wrapped around another neck.

The police are going bananas, and they decide to set a trap. But the trap never gets beyond the thinking stage. Lisa is only eleven years old, and she's running away from her quarreling parents. Her innocence and tender years do not spare her from Howard's madness, and she is found dead under a trash heap. But in her small hand the police find a crumpled scrap of paper. It is the top portion of one of Howard's dry-cleaning tickets. The name of the establishment is legible, and the police nail Howard as he comes in from his days work. Howard's fate is a padded cell He's in a staight jacket. He's cold. He's very very cold. He calls for his mother, But she's not there.