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“I’ve never seen anything quite like it. A loop at one end of the wire, a wooden handle at the other. Slip the handle through the loop, step back, and yank with all your might. Charlie never managed to lay a hand on him.”
“Then he stuck up his notice cold as ice — look at it, Patsy! Absolutely straight, exactly in the middle of the pane — how did he fix it there?”
Patrick looked up and looked amazed. “Jesus!”
“Well, Paul can tell us when he takes it down.” Carmine squared his shoulders. “Time I knocked on her door.”
“How was she when she phoned it in?”
“Not gibbering, at any rate.” He knocked, called out loudly. “Desdemona, it’s Carmine! Let me in.”
Her face was pinched and white, her hands shook, but she was in command of herself. No excuse to take her in his arms and try to comfort her.
“Some red herring,” she said.
“Yes, he’s upped the ante. What have you got to drink?”
“Tea. I’m English, we don’t go in for cognac. Just tea. Made the proper way, on leaves, not bags. Holloman is quite a civilized place, you know. There’s a tea and coffee shop where I can get Darjeeling.” She led the way to her kitchen. “I made it when I heard the sirens.”
No mugs; cups and saucers, frail, hand painted. The teapot was covered with what looked like a Dolly Varden doll, its spout and handle poking out of opposite ends of a thickly padded crinoline finished with frills. Milk, sugar, cookies even. Well, maybe scrupulous attention to domestic rituals is her way of being strong. Coping.
“Milk in first,” she said, lifting the doll off the pot.
He wasn’t game to tell her that he took it the American way, weak, no milk, a slice of lemon. So he sipped the scalding liquid politely and waited.
“You saw the notice?” she asked, looking better for the tea.
“Yes. You can’t stay here now, of course.”
“I doubt I’d be let! My landlord wasn’t happy about my guards. Now he’ll be foaming at the mouth. But where can I go?”
“Protective custody. We keep an apartment in my building for people like you.”
“I can’t afford the rent.”
“Protective custody means no rent, Desdemona.”
Why
was
she such a miser?
“I see. Then I’d better start packing. I don’t have much.”
“Have some more tea first, and answer some questions. Did you hear anything unusual during the night? See Charlie?”
“No, I heard nothing. I’m a deep sleeper. Charlie said hello when he arrived — I heard him come in, even though it was later than my usual bedtime. He’s usually on the cadge for a book, even if he doesn’t like my choice of authors very much.”
“Did you give him one last night?” No need to tell her that Charlie wasn’t supposed to read on duty.
“Yes, a Ngaio Marsh. The name intrigued him, he didn’t know how to pronounce it. I thought he might like her better than Agatha Christie — Marsh’s victims usually die in a terrible mess of excrement.” She shuddered. “Just like Charlie.”
“Any sign that he actually entered this apartment?”
“No, and believe me, I’ve looked. Not a pin out of place.”
“But he could have. This is one thing I didn’t count on.”
“Don’t blame yourself, Carmine, please.”
He got up. “Does anything ever make you scream, Desdemona?”
“Oh, yes,” she said gravely. “Spiders and cockroaches.”
“No. I think he put a rag between his fingers and the paper.”
“What made you say the garotte was unusual, Patsy?” Carmine asked, sighing. “A loop and handle’s not that unique.”
“This one is. The handle isn’t wood as I thought. It’s a carved human femur. But he didn’t carve it. It looks incredibly old, so I’m carbon dating it. The wire is piano wire.”
“Did it bite in hard enough to cut the skin?” Silvestri asked.
“No, just hard enough to occlude the airway and carotids.”
“He’s used one before.”
“Oh, yes, he’s had plenty of practice.”
“But he left his garotte behind. Does that mean he’s finished playing with this toy?” Abe asked.
“I’d say so.”
“Do you still think Desdemona Dupre is a red herring?” asked Corey, more upset then the others; Charlie’s wife was great friends with his own wife.
“I can’t believe she’s anything else!” Carmine cried, hands in his hair. “She’s no dummy — if she knew anything, she’d have told me.”
“What’s your theory on her, Carmine?” Silvestri asked.
“That he picked her for several reasons. One, that she’s a loner. Easier to get at. Another, that she’s about as far from his victim type as women can get. And maybe most important of all, he knows that Desdemona is the one Hugger I make use of, always have done. The note — notice — calls her a sneak.”
“What about the notice?” Silvestri pressed.
“Oh, it’s a doozy, sir! I mean, the phraseology is more an international English than it is American. He
punctuates.
‘Dago’ is used here, but it’s old-fashioned. These days we’re Wops. He indicated his degree of education by referring to me as Othello, whose wife was Desdemona.” He caught the look on Corey’s face and extrapolated. “A real piece of goods named Iago worked on Othello’s possessiveness, his passion for Desdemona. Made Othello think she was unfaithful. So Othello strangled her. Given the circumstances, a garotte was probably as close to strangulation as he could get.”
“Is he setting you up?” Patrick asked.
“I doubt it. He’s set her up. What he was really doing was showing us that nothing we do can protect her if he decides to act.”
“A cop killer!” said Corey savagely.
“A child killer,” said Marciano. “We gotta stop him, Carmine!”
“We will. I’m not letting go, Danny, no matter what.”
“Darjeeling tea from Scrivener’s — Colombian coffee from the same — brown bread — butter — sliced ham — some TV dinners — fresh raisin bagels — mayonnaise — pickles — chocolate chip cookies — anything I thought you might like,” he said, depositing his bags on the kitchen counter.
“Am I under siege?” she asked. “Am I not allowed to go to work or hike at the weekends?”
“Hiking’s out, that’s for sure, but we’ll eat at Malvolio’s tonight or anywhere else you want. You don’t go out without two cops, and they won’t be reading books,” he said. “The door means I don’t have to waste good men on surveillance, but once you step through it, you’re government property.”
“I shall hate it,” she said, plucking her coat off a hook.
“Then let’s hope it won’t be for very long.”
1966
he phone woke Carmine from a deep sleep shortly before 8
A.M.
on New Year’s Day, one of the few times in almost three months that he had decided to let body and brain sleep themselves out. Not because he had celebrated the passing of the old year; though it had been the most harrowing of his life, he had many reasons to think that the new one might be even worse. Therefore, his New Year’s Eve had been spent alone in his apartment watching the crowd in Times Square on TV. It had occurred to him to invite Desdemona up from two floors down, but he decided against it because it worried him that perhaps she was very tired of his company. If she ate out, he was the one who escorted her, paid for their dinner no matter how she carped about what he deemed no more than common courtesy. The result was that he went to bed long before midnight, had a fantastic sleep and was ready to be awakened when the phone rang.
“It’s Danny,” came Marciano’s voice. “Carmine, get up to New London right now. There’s been another abduction. Dublin Road, on the Groton side of the river. Abe and Corey are on their way in, so is Patrick. The New London cops will wait for you.”
He was upright immediately, conscious of a sweat the 50°F thermostat hadn’t produced; he liked to sleep cold, it kept him from throwing the covers off. “But it can’t be,” he said, shivering. “It’s only been thirty days since Francine, the guy isn’t due to strike until the end of the month.”
“We’re not sure it’s the same guy — the abduction took place during the night, for starters, and this is a new experience for the New London cops. Get up there and tell them what they’ve got.”
“Take the Groton turnoff just over the bridge,” said Corey, a map spread on his knees. “It can’t be the same guy, Carmine.”
“We’ll know in a few minutes, so take it easy.”
The location wasn’t hard to find; every squad car in all of New London County looked to be parked up and down the verges of a street containing modest houses in fifth-of-an-acre blocks; Dublin Road, Groton.
The house a patrolman indicated was grey-painted, a single-storey dwelling too small to qualify as ranch style. Very much the home of a workingman having pride in himself and his property. One glance at it, and Carmine knew with sinking heart that the people who lived inside were as respected as respectable. A perfect family for the killer’s purposes.
“Tony Dimaggio,” said a man in captain’s uniform, hand out to Carmine. “A sixteen-year-old black girl named Margaretta Bewlee was snatched during the night. Mr. Bewlee seems to think through the bedroom window, but I haven’t let any of my guys near it for fear they’d destroy evidence — this is way out of our league if the Monster’s got her. Come inside,” he said, preceding Carmine. “The mother’s a basket case, but Mr. Bewlee’s holding up.”
“I’ll be there as soon as I take Dr. O’Donnell to the outside of the window. Thanks for your forbearance, Tony.”
The family was blue-black: father, mother, a young teenaged girl and two boys coming up toward their teens.
“Mr. Bewlee? Lieutenant Delmonico. Tell me what happened.”
He was that shade of grey that spoke of extreme travail in dark-skinned people, but he managed to control his feelings; to lose hold of them might mean all the difference to Margaretta, and he knew it. His wife, still in robe and slippers, sat as if turned to stone, eyes glazed over.
Mr. Bewlee drew a breath. “We toasted the New Year, then we went to bed, Lieutenant. All of us — no night owls here, so we could hardly keep our eyes open.”
“Did you drink something alcoholic, like sparkling wine?”
“No, just fruit punch. This isn’t a drinking house.”
His face was clouding; when he couldn’t seem to grasp what came next, he gazed at Carmine imploringly. Help me, help me!
“Where do you work, Mr. Bewlee?”
“I’m a precision welder at Electric Boat, due for a pay raise in a couple of weeks. We’ve just been waiting for the raise to move house, buy something bigger.” The tears flowed and he halted.
“Introduce your children to me, Mr. Bewlee.”
Their father collected himself, sure he could manage that. “This is Linda, she’s fourteen. Hank’s eleven, Ray’s ten. We have a little guy, Terence. He’s two and sleeps in our bedroom. Linda took him next door to Mrs. Spinoza. We figured he didn’t need — didn’t need —” He broke down, buried his face in his hands, battled to compose himself. “I’m sorry, I can’t —”
“Take your time, Mr. Bewlee.”
“Etta — that’s what we call her — and Linda share a room.”
“Share?”
“That’s right, Lieutenant. There’s two of them in there. We didn’t get up real early, but when my wife started making us some breakfast, she called out to the girls. Linda said Etta was in the bathroom, but it turned out the boys were, not Etta. So we started looking for her, couldn’t find her. That was when I called the police. All I could think of was the Monster. But it can’t be him, can it? He’s not due yet, and Etta’s like the rest of us —
black.
I mean, we’re real black. He wouldn’t want our little girl, Lieutenant.”
How could he answer that? Carmine turned to Etta’s sister. “Linda, is that right?” he asked, smiling at her.
“Yes, sir,” she managed, weeping.
“I’m not going to say, don’t cry, Linda, but you can help your sister best if you answer me, okay?”
“Okay.” She mopped her face.
“You and Etta went to bed at the same time, right?”
“Yes, sir. Half after midnight.”
“Your daddy says all of you were sleepy. Is that true?”
“Whacked,” said Linda simply.
“So you both went straight to bed.”
“Yes, sir, soon as we said our prayers.”
“Does Etta mind saying her prayers?”
Linda’s eyes dried; she looked shocked. “No, sir, no!”
“Did you talk any after you were in bed?”
“No, sir, least I didn’t. I was asleep soon as I lay down.”
“Did you hear any noises during the night? Wake up to go to the bathroom?”
“No, sir, I slept until Mom called us. Though I did think it was funny that Etta was up ahead of me. She’s a real tiger for sleeping in. Then I thought she must have snuck off to beat me to the bathroom, but when I banged on the door, Hank answered.”
The child had a beautiful face, liquid dark eyes, a perfect skin, very full lips that would drive a dedicated monk to break his vows, with their clean-cut margins and a turn to them that always whispered to Carmine of tragedy. A black girl’s lips, dark maroon shading to pink where they met in that heart-rending fold. Did Margaretta have this same face?
“You don’t think that Etta could have snuck out, Linda?”
The big eyes grew bigger. “Why would she?” Linda asked, as if that was an answer in itself.
Yes, why would she? She’s as sweet and docile and lovely as all the others. She still says her prayers at bedtime.
“How tall is Etta?”
“Five-nine, sir.”
“Has she got a good figure?”
“No, she’s thin. It depresses her because she wants to be a star like Dionne Warwick,” said Linda, who showed every evidence that she too would be tall and thin. Tall and thin.
Black.
“Thank you, Linda. Did anyone else hear a noise last night?”
Nobody had.
Then Mr. Bewlee produced a photograph; Carmine found himself gazing at a girl who looked just like Linda. And like the others.
