On Off (38 page)

Walter Polonowski hardly heard Desdemona’s crisply succinct summary; he was too depressed. Four kids from Paola, and a fifth coming up from Marian. With a wedding band looming, Marian was shedding her mistress’s skin to reveal a new epidermis striped in wifely colors. They
are
serpents, we
are
their victims.

To Maurice Finch, the news brought sorrow, but sorrow of a peaceful kind. He had always thought that to give up medicine would be tantamount to a death sentence, but the events of the past few months had taught him that this need not be so. His plants were patients too; his skilled and loving hands could tend them, heal them, help them multiply. Yes, life with Cathy on a chicken farm looked very good. And he’d beat those mushrooms yet.

Kurt Schiller was not surprised. He had never liked Charles Ponsonby, whom he had suspected of secret homosexuality; Chuck’s attitude was a little too subtly knowing, and the art whispered of a nightmare world beneath that anonymous exterior. Not its subject matter, more an emanation from Chuck. In Kurt’s book he had gone down as one of the chains-and-leather boys, heavily into pain, though Schiller had always assumed Chuck was on the receiving end. The passive type, scuttling around to serve some terrifying master. Well, evidently he, Kurt, had been wrong. Charles was a true sadist — had to be, to have done what he did to those poor children. As for himself, Kurt expected nothing. His credentials would guarantee him a post no matter what happened to the Hug, and he had the germ of an idea about transmitting diseases across the species barrier that he knew would excite the head of any research unit. Now that the photograph of Papa with Adolf Hitler was ashes on the hearth and his homosexuality was out in the open, he felt ready for the new life he intended to lead. Not in Holloman. In New York City, among his peers.

“Otis,” Tamara shouted from the door, “you’re needed at home, so get going! I couldn’t make hide nor hair out of what Celeste was saying, but it’s an emergency.”

Don Hunter and Billy Ho ranged themselves one on either side of Otis, helping him out of the row of seats.

“We’ll take him, Desdemona,” Don said. “Can’t have his wonky heart playing up if he’s needed.”

“What was all that about?” he asked, knowing the answer.

“You!” she said, hiccoughing. “Bloody huh-huh-hero!”

“Not bloody, and no hero.”

“Bloody hero! Stepping in front to take the buh-buh-bullet! Oh, I could have
killed
you!”

“It’s great to see you too,” he said, laughing. “Now put up your feet and I’ll fix us a couple of snifters of X-O.”

“I knew I loved you,” she said later, calmed down, “but what a way to learn how much I love you! Carmine, I don’t want to live in a world that doesn’t have you in it.”

“Does this mean that you’d rather be Mrs. Carmine Delmonico than live in London?”

“It does.”

He kissed her with love, gratitude, humility. “I’ll try to make you a good husband, Desdemona, but you’ve already had a televised preview of what a cop’s life entails. The future won’t be any different — long hours, absences, stray bullets. However, I figure someone’s on my side. So far I’m still in one piece.”

“As long as you understand that whenever you do foolhardy things, I’ll bash you up.”

“I’m hungry” was his answer. “How about some Chinese?”

She heaved a huge sigh of satisfaction. “I’ve just realized that I’m not in danger anymore.” A tinge of anxiety crept into her voice. “Am I?”

“The danger’s over, I’d bet my career on it. But there’s no point in looking for a new apartment. I’m not letting you leave this one. Sin is in.”

“Yes. And who dug the tunnel, and how did Ponsonby ever get all that gear into his killing premises, from a generator to a bank vault door? Who did the plumbing? A major job! The floor of the place is
thirty feet
below ground. Most house basements are damp at ten, fifteen feet, but this is as dry as an old bone. The county engineers are fascinated, looking very forward to tracing his drains.”

“And do you think that Claire is the second Ghost?”

“ ‘Think’ isn’t the right word. My gut says she is, my mind says she can’t be.” He sighed. “If she is the second Ghost, she has managed to get away clean.”

“Never mind,” she soothed, stroking his hair. “At least the murders are at an end. No more abducted girls. Claire couldn’t do it on her own, she’s female and grossly handicapped. So count your blessings, Carmine.”

“Count my stupidity, you mean. I’ve bungled this case from start to finish.”

“Only because it’s a new sort of crime committed by a new sort of criminal, my love. You’re an extremely competent, highly intelligent policeman. Regard the Ponsonby case as a new learning experience. The next time things will go better for you.”

He shuddered. “If I have my druthers, Desdemona, there will be no next time. The Ghosts are a one-off.”

She said no more, just wondered.

They had pieced Ponsonby’s cleaning techniques together, staggered at the amount of work involved, the obsessiveness. A medical man, he knew that heat fixed blood and tissue, so the hose he used first and the water blaster he followed that with were fed by cold water; the talisman alcove was sealed off by a steel slider. When every surface was dry again, he steam blasted it. Finally he wiped everything down with ether. His surgical instruments, the meat hook and its hoist, and the penis sheaths were soaked in a blood-dissolving solution before being subjected to the rest of the treatments. They were also autoclaved.

When the room yielded nothing, they started on the drains with a compressor-driven vacuum, which sucked water containing no organic matter. Backwashing didn’t work, leading the county engineers to think that the effluent was not deposited in a septic tank. Ponsonby had his outlet in an underground stream, of which there were many in the neighborhood. Their sole remaining hope was to dig down to his pipes and follow them.

The moment the county engineers began to excavate her garden for no better reason than flogging an already dead horse, Claire Ponsonby took out a lien against willful destruction of her property, and respectfully petitioned the court to grant a blind woman permission to live in said property without perpetual and extremely distressing harassment by the Holloman police and their allies. Given that Charles Ponsonby had been positively identified as the Connecticut Monster and that nothing going on at 6 Ponsonby Lane was necessary to produce further evidence of this, Miss Ponsonby had had enough.

“The well is bottomless and the pump chugs out three horses,” said the chief county engineer, thwarted and angry. “Since there’s a twenty-acre deer park as well as five-acre house lots, the water table is high and local consumption low. You haven’t gotten any organic matter because the bastard must have put thousands and thousands of gallons down after every killing. The residue is on the bottom of Long Island Sound. And shit, what does it matter? He’s dead. Close the case, Lieutenant, before that nasty bitch starts suing you personally.”

“It’s a total mystery, Patsy,” Carmine said to his cousin.

“Tell me something I don’t already know.”

“Obviously Chuck was wiry and strong, but he never struck me as an athlete, and his Hug colleagues were convinced he couldn’t change the washer on a tap. Yet what we found is marvelously constructed out of expensive materials. Who the hell put in a terrazzo floor and isn’t owning up to it now that the secret’s out? Ditto the plumbing? No one’s reported a missing plumber or terrazzo worker since the war!” Carmine ground his teeth. “The family has no money, we know that. Claire and Chuck lived so well that they must have spent every cent he earned. And yet there’s two hundred grand’s worth of labor and material down in the ground. Damnit, no one admits to having sold them the linen or the plastic liquid for the heads!”

“To quote the county engineer, what does it matter, Carmine? Ponsonby is dead and it’s time to close the case,” Patrick said, patting Carmine’s shoulder. “Why give yourself a coronary over a dead man? Think of Desdemona instead. When’s the wedding?”

“You don’t like her, Patsy, do you?”

The blue eyes dimmed but refused to look away. “Past tense might be more accurate. I didn’t like her in the beginning — too strange, too foreign, too aloof. But she’s different these days. I hope to come to love her as well as like her.”

“You’re not alone. Your mom
and
mine are shivering in their shoes. Oh, they gush enthusiastically, but I’m not a detective for no reason. It’s a façade to mask apprehension.”

“Made worse because she’s noticeably taller than you are,” said Patrick, laughing. “Moms and aunts and sisters
hate
that. You see, they were hoping that the second Mrs. Delmonico would be a nice Italian girl from East Holloman. But you’re not attracted to nice girls, Italian or otherwise. And I much prefer Desdemona to Sandra. Desdemona has brains.”

“They last longer than faces or figures.”

“As the business director, Miss Dupre, please take a seat,” Parson said briskly, then looked at Tamara quizzically. “Miss Vilich, are you up to taking minutes?”

A legitimate question, as this Miss Vilich didn’t resemble the woman whom the Parson Governors had known before today. Her light had gone out, so Richard Spaight fancied.

“Yes, Mr. Parson,” Tamara said tonelessly.

President Mawson MacIntosh already knew what Dean Wilbur Dowling only suspected; however, the one’s certain knowledge and the other’s strong suspicion produced contented faces and relaxed bodies. Chubb University was going to inherit the Hug, so much was certain, together with a huge amount of money that wouldn’t be devoted to neurological research.

Half glasses perched on his thin blade of a nose, Roger Parson Junior proceeded to read out the legal opinion that had rendered his late lamented uncle’s last will and testament null and void in respect of the trust fund that financed the Hug. It took forty-five minutes to read something drier than dust in the Sahara, but those forced to listen did so with expressions of alert and eager interest save for Richard Spaight, upon whom the most wearisome aspects of the affair would devolve. He swung his chair to face the window and watched two tugs escort a large oil tanker to its berth at the new hydrocarbons reservoir complex at the foot of Oak Street.

“We could, of course, simply absorb the hundred-fifty million capital of the fund plus its accrued interest into our holdings,” Parson said at the conclusion of his peroration, “but such would not have been William Parson’s wish — of that we, his nephews and great-nephews, are very sure.”

Ha ha ha, thought M.M., like hell you didn’t want to absorb the lot! But you dropped the idea after I said Chubb would sue. The best you can do is snaffle the accrued interest, which in itself will make a nice, plump addition to Parson Products.

“We therefore propose that half of the capital be deeded to the Chubb Medical School in order to fund the ongoing career of the Hughlings Jackson Center in whatever guise it will assume. The building and its land will be deeded to Chubb University. And the other half of the capital will go to Chubb University to fund major infrastructure of whatever kind the university’s board of governors decides. Provided that each infrastructural item bears William Parson’s name.”

Oh, yummy! was written all over Dean Dowling’s face, whereasM.M.’s face remained complacently impassive. Dean Dowling was contemplating the Hug’s transformation into a center for research on the organic psychoses. He had tried to persuade Miss Claire Ponsonby to donate her deceased brother’s brain for research, and had been politely refused. Now
there
was a psychotic brain! Not that he had expected to see any gross anatomical changes, but he had hoped for localized atrophy in the prefrontal cortex or some aberration in the corpus striatum. Even a little astrocytoma.

Mawson MacIntosh’s thoughts revolved around the nature of the buildings that would bear William Parson’s name. One of them had to be an art gallery, even if it remained empty until the last of the Parsons was dead. May that day come soon!

“Miss Dupre,” Roger Parson Junior was saying, “it will be your duty to circulate this official letter” — he pushed it across the table — “among all members of the Hughlings Jackson Center, staff and faculty. Closure will be Friday, April twenty-ninth. All the equipment and furniture will be disposed of as the Dean of Medicine desires. Except, that is, for selected items that will be donated to the Holloman County Medical Examiner’s laboratories as a token of our appreciation. One of the selected items will be the new electron microscope. I had a chat, you see, with the Governor of Connecticut, who told me how important — and underfunded — the science of forensic medicine has become.”

No, no, no! thought Dean Dowling. That microscope is
mine!

“I am assured by President MacIntosh,” Roger Parson Junior droned on, “that all members who wish to stay may stay. However, salaries and wages will be reassessed commensurate with standard medical school fiscal policy. Faculty members wishing to stay will be put under Professor Frank Watson. For those who do not wish to stay, Miss Dupre, you will arrange redundancy packages incorporating one year’s salary or wages plus all pension contributions.”

He cleared his throat, settled his glasses more comfortably. “There are two exceptions to this ruling. One is Professor Bob Smith, who, alas, is not well enough to resume medical practice of any kind. Since his contribution over the sixteen years of his administration has been formidable, we have arranged that he be compensated in the manner prescribed herein.” Another sheet of paper was thrust at Desdemona. “The second exception is you yourself, Miss Dupre. Unfortunately the position of business director will cease, and I am led to understand from President MacIntosh that it will be impossible to find you an equivalent position within the university. Therefore we have agreed that your own redundancy package will consist of what is listed in here.” A third piece of paper.

Desdemona took a peek. Two years’ salary plus all pension contributions. If she married and quit working altogether and income-averaged, she’d do quite well.

“Tamara, turn the coffee pots on,” she said.