Too Many Murders (42 page)

“Thank God it stopped raining,” he said to Carmine a minute later. “Want me to tell those turkeys on the jet that they’re not going anywhere unless they want to leave two Board members behind in the hospital?”

“Abe’s got that,” Carmine said, eyeing Corey shrewdly. “I want to know why you look like the mutt that got to the pedigree bitch ahead of her designated mate.”

For answer, Corey led him around to the back of his car and popped the trunk. “The contents of Phil Smith’s briefcase,” he said. “I wish I could say I’d gotten all four briefcases, but one is a start. The way I saw it, there the guy is, lying unconscious in the road, and his papers drowning in that pool there. So I did what any considerate citizen would do—I picked them up. Then I figured I could always say later that our police labs have great facilities for drying papers that would otherwise have disintegrated, so I saw it as my citizen’s duty to save them if I could. He won’t buy it, but he can’t argue about it either.”

“Great work, Corey,” Carmine said sincerely. “Our luck that the accident happened, but your initiative and presence of mind that Smith’s papers have fallen into our hands.”

The two men walked back to the road, where both ambulances were loading up. Thanks to Corey’s having demanded medics, two of the new physician’s assistants had come with the standard crews.

They reached Fred Collins’s medic first.

“I don’t think he’s suffered much internally,” the woman said, folding up her stethoscope. “Blood pressure’s okay. Comminuted fracture of his right femur—he won’t be going skiing for a while. Grazes and bruises. That’s about it.”

“Head injury,” said Smith’s medic. “Broken right humerus, right scapula is suspect too. His skull impacted on the road, but the water cushioned it some. No left-sided weakness that I can find, but we’ll know more when he’s examined by neurosurgeons. His pupils are reacting. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll get him to where they can deal with any cerebral edema.”

Wal Grierson and Gus Purvey were waiting anxiously, prevented from approaching by the customary police cordon. Sergeant Terry Monks and his team had just arrived, and would inspect the site of the accident to reconstruct it and apportion blame.

“Though,” Terry Monks said to Carmine angrily, “what are two stupid old men doing in an E-type Jag with no roll bar and no seat belts?”

“A roll bar would spoil the car’s looks, and seat belts are for people who drive Yank tanks. However, if you’re fair, Terry, you’ll have to admit that not wearing seat belts saved their lives,” Carmine said, just to ruffle Terry.

“Yeah! But a roll bar
and
seat belts would have seen the stupid old geezers walk away.”

Onward to Grierson and Purvey.

“This is terrible! Terrible!” Purvey said, face ashen. “I can’t count the times I’ve told Phil to stop behaving like Stirling Moss! He drives like a bat out of hell!”

“A pity he’s not conscious to hear himself described as a stupid old geezer,” Carmine said. “That’s the verdict of our traffic accident men.”

“Stupid is right,” Grierson said through his teeth, more angry than upset. “I guess we’re not going to Zurich. Gus, you get to tell Natalie and Candy while I deal with things here.” As if on cue, the little Ford and the Rolls appeared and parked just down the road.
“Take the car. It can come back for me as soon as you get home and get your own wheels.”

Purvey, looking hangdog, set off along the airport’s chain-link fence in the direction of the Rolls.

“I thought you were a Mustang man,” Carmine said.

“The Rolls is the most comfortable car on the road,” said Grierson, smiling slightly. “Jesus, what a mess!”

Carmine looked at Corey and Abe. “Corey, drive across the tarmac and out the far gate. Abe, you’re still with me.”

The Fairlane followed Corey’s car closely. Only when they were out of the far gate and back on the road past the fuel farm did Carmine breathe a sigh of relief. He had used the time to fill Abe in on what resided in Corey’s trunk, and Abe’s hands were trembling in sheer excitement. He glanced at Carmine.

“One chance in four it’s the right briefcase,” he said.

“Where’s Delia?”

“Out like a bloodhound on Dee-Dee’s trail.”

“There’s a phone booth, and I do believe the phone is still connected,” Carmine said, pulling in to the side of the road. “Abe, get on to Danny and ask him to send out search parties for Delia. This isn’t something I want going out on our radio; it’s too important for truckers and bored housewives. The one person we need most in this operation is Delia.”

Who was waiting, eyes bright, when Carmine and Abe walked in. Two Plant Physical workmen had erected a setup consisting of as many trestle tables as the office would hold, their tops newly covered with butcher paper held down by thumbtacks. The limp and sodden contents of Philip Smith’s briefcase were stacked haphazardly on a chair seat under Delia’s martial eye. As soon as the last table was finished and the two handymen had left, she began distributing the papers, one sheet at a time, on the off-white surfaces at her disposal.

“Oh, the man is a treasure!” she exclaimed, bustling from one
table to another with various sheets. “Meticulous in the extreme!
Not
his secretary’s doing, I can assure you—apart from Yours Truly, no secretary would dream of such precision. See? Every follow-on page is labeled in the top left-hand corner with subject or person plus date of the missive, while the page number is in the right-hand corner. Wonderful, wonderful!”

In all, there were 139 pages of letters and reports, plus a bound 73-page dissertation on the advantages of maintaining a research facility. That seemed peculiar to Carmine; Cornucopia Research was at least five years old, so why carry a bulky book full of long-established facts well known to the whole industry?

“He’s a paper snob,” said Delia when every page had been laid out and the bound report sat wrapped in a clean towel to dry its outer leaves and edges. “Nothing but high rag content paper, even for his memo pads. No cheap pulp for Mr. Smith! Nor ordinary print for his captions and letterheads—hot-pressed print only. At the same time, he’s not splashy. Plain white stationery, black print, not even a color horn-of-plenty logo. Yes, everything of the very best, yet understated.”

“Then you and I are going to go to work reading, Delia,” Carmine said. “Corey, you take the hospital watch. Report any change in Smith’s condition to me the moment you hear. The chief neurosurgeon, Tom Dennis, is a friend of mine, so I’ll make sure we know as soon as a change happens. Abe, you hold the fort with Dee-Dee, Sir Lancelot, Pauline Denbigh and anyone else of interest. If there’s a new case, you take it.”

“What are we looking for?” Delia asked as Abe and Corey left. “Naturally I have some idea, but I’d like detailed instructions.”

“The trouble is that if it’s a verbal code, I don’t think we stand a hope of cracking it,” Carmine said, frowning.

“You mean statements like ‘the clouds are dark over dear old Leningrad’?”

“Yes. If ‘the rifling commences two feet down the barrel’ actually means ‘don’t expect more from me quickly,’ we won’t know. But I
don’t think that kind of information interests us. We’re looking for plans and formulae, probably reduced to microdots.”

“How big is a microdot?” Delia asked.

“According to Kelly, whatever size will look logical, from the dot over an i to a fly speck or the bull’s-eye in a two-inch drawing of a target. They don’t have to be round, anyway. Round is less likely to be detected, Nature being nonlinear.”

Her face puckered in dismay. “Oh, Carmine! There must be literally a million dotted i’s here! Even if Mr. Smith’s comatose state lasts several days, we have no chance of finding anything.”

There was a fresh carafe of coffee on the counter. Carmine poured himself a mug and sat down on the wheeled chair he had stolen from the typists’ pool because he could move around with his chair still attached to his butt. “That’s why I don’t think microdots are above an i. Or at least, an i with an ordinary dot. We should be looking for dots that are too big. That look like typos or smears. Kelly’s so cagey that I haven’t got much useful out of him, so we’re winging it, Delia. To the best of my knowledge, cameras have finite limits, so maybe the reduction process can only be taken so far before another shot has to be taken and the reduction process recommenced. Since the space race began, things have miniaturized fast, but… I’m in true ignorance as to how it’s done or how small a reduction in size can go.” Carmine shrugged. “The best advice I can offer you is to use your common sense, Delia. If it looks wrong, we should see if it comes off. If it comes off, we should examine it under fifty or a hundred power on one of Patsy’s microscopes.”

They started to read, Delia on the letters, Carmine on the reports. An hour went by in silent intensity.

“How extraordinary!” Delia said.

Carmine jumped. “Huh?”

“Hasn’t Mr. Smith always had a reputation for doing nothing?”

“So my sources have led me to believe.”

“Well, for someone who has coasted through the however-many years of his—er—emboardment—he’s kept a close eye on all sorts of
people. Nor, it seems, is he happy to leave some of his observations behind during his absence. I’m reading a letter Mr. Smith apparently means to send to an M. D. Sykes, who bears the title of general manager of Cornucopia Central. I gather this means Mr. Sykes orders the stationery, checks the salaries and wages, looks after cleaning contracts and all sorts. Though from time to time over the years Mr. Sykes has had to substitute for men more senior than he.”

“Jumping Jehoshaphat!” Carmine exclaimed, careful of his expletives when ladies were present. “I wouldn’t have thought that Smith so much as noticed Cornucopia Central employed a general manager, let alone noticed it’s Sykes. But to notice what Sykes has done! Is the letter interesting?”

“Yes and no. It’s quite long. Mr. Smith lays out the feats Mr. Sykes has accomplished over the years when substituting for more senior executives, and praises his diligence and experience. Mr. Smith informs Mr. Sykes that, in his capacity as Chairman of the Board, he is promoting Mr. Sykes to the position of managing director, immediately under the Board. Mr. Sykes will now be responsible for overseeing all the Cornucopia subsidiaries on an executive level, and will answer only to the Board.”

“That’s a real bombshell,” Carmine said, grinning. “Michael Donald
will
be happy! I can understand why Smith wouldn’t want it lying around on his desk while he’s away, though I wonder why he didn’t just ship it off as internal mail before he went? A minor mystery. He plays Napoleonic war games.”

“Who, Mr. Smith?”

“No, Mr. Michael Donald Sykes. On his new salary, he’ll be able to stage his hero’s coronation in Notre Dame, complete with gold and jewels.”

“How odd!” Delia exclaimed, still on the letter to Sykes.

“What’s odd?”

“Mr. Smith’s system of tabulation—to which, by the way, he is much addicted. I’ve always preferred the letters of the alphabet to numbers when I tabulate because, provided one does not need more
than twenty-six items, the tabulation column remains the same width. With numbers, once the number ten arrives, the column is one character wider, and to the left side at that. Most annoying! Whereas Mr. Smith neither enumerates nor eletterates—he uses a big, round black spot to tabulate—” She drew a hissing breath. “A big, round black spot!” she squealed.

Carmine scooted around the table on his wheeled chair and looked. “Holy shit!” he cried, forgetting ladies.

“There’s another thing, Carmine,” Delia said, voice shaking. “What machines can make a spot this size? A typewriter can’t, nor anything I can think of apart from a printing press setting type. These tabulation spots must have been applied by hand. If they’re not microdots, then Mr. Smith has gone to the trouble of using Letraset, and a man as fanatically tidy as that would be insane, even if he did force his secretary to do it.”

“One thing for sure, Delia, Mr. Smith is not insane,” said Carmine in grim jubilation. “I’ve got the bastard!”

“You mean he’s Ulysses?”

“Oh, I’ve known that for some time.”

He propelled himself across to a little table on which he had assembled a box of glass microscope slides, another of glass cover slips, some fine tweezerlike forceps, and a thin, pointed scalpel. Picking up the tray holding them, he returned to Smith’s letter to M. D. Sykes and, working very delicately, tried to get the tip of the scalpel under the edge of a spot. It slid in easily; the spot came away, balanced on the scalpel tip. Carmine transferred it to a slide and dropped a cover slip on top. He took a total of five of the eleven spots in the Sykes letter, chosen at random.

With five glass slides on a paper plate, he walked to the Medical Examiner’s department, Delia at his side.

“Tell me these aren’t Letraset spots,” he said to Patrick, giving him the plate. “Tell me they have typing on them, or schematics, or anything that shouldn’t be there.”

“You have found yourself a genuine, one hundred percent,
twenty-four karat, first-water microdot,” Patsy said after examining the first slide. “A hundred-power—man, what a camera! What reduction ratios! Even so, it must have taken a dozen separate shots to get this down so small. No resolution has been lost, the definition’s perfect.”

“So now we know why Smith didn’t send M. D. Sykes’s letter by internal mail before he left,” Carmine said to Delia as they went back to his office. “It had to travel out of the country with him. In Zurich the microdots in it would have been removed and Letraset spots substituted. Once back in Holloman, he could personally hand Mr. Sykes his promotion.”

“Oh, Carmine, I am so delighted for you!”

“Save your ecstasies, Delia. Now I have to call Ted Kelly and tell him what we’ve found. I’m afraid that our participation in the case of Ulysses the spy is at an end.”

An accurate prophecy. The astounded Ted Kelly arrived in minutes, gasping at what he called Carmine’s luck.

“No, it wasn’t my luck!” Carmine snapped, temper flaring. “It was the initiative of Sergeant Corey Marshall that got you your proof of espionage, Special Agent Kelly, and I insist that he be properly credited! If his name and his feat don’t appear in your report, I’ll tear Washington down around your ears!”