Authors: Colleen McCullough
“Yes, I’m afraid so.”
“But—but—what can we do? I swear no one saw anything odd today! I’ve asked, I do assure you!” the Dean bleated.
“I understand that, but tomorrow there will be detectives back to ask a lot more questions on the subject, Dr. Highman. For which reason, I’d like to make sure that every single member of your staff, including janitors, trash collectors, gardeners, maids and other nonfaculty be present all day. They’ll all have to answer questions. No one will be treated harshly, but every last one will be seen individually,” said Carmine, voice steely.
“I understand,” said the Dean, sounding as if he did.
“How well did you know Evan Pugh, Dean?”
Highman frowned, licked his lips, and decided to pour himself another glass of sherry. “Evan Pugh was a difficult young man,” he said, back in his chair and sipping gratefully. “I am afraid that no one either knew him—or, perhaps more important, liked him. I have dealt with youths and young men for many years, but the Evan Pughs of my acquaintance have been few. Very few. I am rather at a loss to describe his personality, except to say that it was—repugnant. I don’t claim to be au fait with modern science, but I have read of substances called pheromones. They are emitted, as I understand it, to attract others, particularly of the opposite sex. The pheromones Evan Pugh emitted repelled.” He shrugged, took a gulp of sherry. “More than that I cannot tell you, Captain. I didn’t really know him at all.”
Carmine lingered until he finished his drowned drink, chatting
with the Dean about his college’s endowment by the Parson clan, whose charities—amounting to millions upon millions—were always oriented toward something medical. Roger Parson Sr.’s choice of Piero Conducci as architect did not surprise him; had the younger members of the clan had their way, he was sure Paracelsus would have gone to a more conservative designer. It must have hurt them hugely to have to give up their edition of the
Burghers of Calais
, but yield it they had; it stood at the junior/senior end of the X nucleus, ensconced in one of Conducci’s glass-walled, pebbled gardens, and it looked as stunning as a Rodin should.
“I imagine,” said the captain of detectives gravely, “that any cherry pickers in the vicinity of Paracelsus are stringently policed.”
“They would be, had any materialized, but I’m delighted to say that none ever has. There are many other works of art at Chubb far easier to steal than our Rodin.”
“And there’ll be still more, when the museum of Italian art goes up—lots of Canalettos and Titians will come out of the vaults. If, that is, the Thanassets can ever decide where their museum ought to go,” said Carmine.
“A great university,” said the Dean ponderously, “should
swim
in works of art! I thank God every night for Chubb.”
Thus it was a little after eight when Carmine strolled into the Medical Examiner’s segment of the County Services building on Cedar Street. The ME was his first cousin, though no observer would ever have picked up on the blood relationship from visual inspection. Patrick was blue-eyed and auburn-haired, with a fair, freckled skin; Carmine had dark amber eyes and black, waving hair that he kept disciplined by cutting it short. They were the children of the sisters Cerutti, one of whom had married an O’Donnell, the other a Delmonico. Though Patrick was ten years older than Carmine and the happily married father of six children, no difference could ever diminish the huge love that existed between them. An only son, Carmine had been rendered fatherless in his thirteenth year, the smothered darling
of a widowed mother and four older sisters with no masculine leavening to help him survive until twenty-two-year-old Patsy stepped in to fill the breach. It was not a paternal relationship, however; they felt like brothers.
Coroner as well as Medical Examiner, Patrick had managed to pile most of his court duties on the back of his deputy coroner, Gustavus Fennel, who loved appearing in court and conducted a running feud with His Honor Douglas Thwaites, Holloman’s cantankerous district judge. Patrick was completely enamored of the new science of forensics, and kept his department absolutely up to date on all advances made in that captious discipline, with its blood types, serums, hairs, fibers, anything that a criminal might leave behind as a signature. His perpetual headache was lack of funds to buy analytical equipment, but in the wake of the dissolution of the medical research center known as the Hug, the Parsons had given him an electron microscope, a Zeiss operating microscope, several other specialist microscopes, new spectrometers and a gas chromatograph. These, together with the latest centrifuges and other, more minor apparatus that found their way from the Hug to him, had enabled him to assemble the best criminal pathology lab in the state, and—a curious side effect—had predisposed Hartford to consent to demands for further equipment. To be dowered so lavishly by the Parsons obviously gained anyone brownie points with the Governor, was Patrick’s explanation.
The morgue itself was stuffed with gurneys, something that happened only as a consequence of airline disasters or multivehicle road accidents. But not tonight. Each of these silent, still, draped figures was a murder victim. Added to them were the other bodies requiring a coroner’s attention: inexplicable deaths, those whose doctor refused to sign a death certificate, and any death the police considered warranted autopsy.
There were a series of stainless steel doors in one wall, a total of sixteen altogether, and the room was a hushed hive of industry as two technicians worked to clear autopsied bodies out of the drawers
while not confusing them with murder victims and others as yet uninserted into drawers. Outside on the loading dock, Carmine knew, there would be vans or retired hearses sent from funeral homes to pick up released bodies, their crews grumbling at the ME’s insistence that they come right now, at once, no delay!
He walked through into the autopsy suite, where Patrick stood at the side of a long stainless-steel table fitted with a huge sink at one end and drain channels along either side. A pair of ordinary wholesale meat scales hung in a convenient spot, and several carts of covered instruments were arranged nearby.
Evan Pugh had been freed from the bear trap; it lay on a marble-topped bench some distance away, fenced off by carts. Carmine went to it first and stood staring at it, too wise to touch it. If Patsy had erected a fence around it, then it was highly dangerous. Spread out, as it was now, it was fully two feet wide at its hinged base, its stained, terrible teeth a good two inches long. Not barbed, not serrated, just knife-sharp. The base, which had been bolted to the closet ceiling, was wide enough for a man to put his feet on, one to either side of the hinge—the usual way, Carmine concluded, for its user to pull it apart and set it. There were six bolt holes, three in either side plate, marking the middle and each end. These had not been a part of the trap when it was made but had been added very recently. Every other surface was well rusted, whereas the holes gleamed with fresh metal. The killer had reamed them out himself.
“Don’t even breathe on it, Carmine,” Patrick said from the table. “It’s on a hair trigger, and I’m not exaggerating. Whoever cleaned it up for this exercise used naval jelly on the spring to remove the rust and adjusted the pressure on the plate to trigger it with any old kind of tug, even from a weakling like our victim. What fascinates me is the size of the killer’s balls, to handle his device so coolly that he was able to screw his bolts in all the way to their heads without setting it off. Jesus! I break out in a sweat just thinking about it.”
Carmine moved to the table. “Any clues, Patsy?”
“A couple of doozies, actually. Here, read this. It was in his pants pocket.”
“Well, it sure answers a lot,” Carmine said, putting the clear plastic envelope back among Pugh’s other possessions. “Among other things, it explains the money. Have you opened the package? Does it contain a hundred grand?”
“I don’t know. I thought I’d save that treat for you. I did wash the blood off it and remove the first layer of wrap, though I doubt I’ll find any prints on it apart from Pugh’s.”
Carmine took the brick and a pair of utility scissors and sliced the food wrap’s many layers down to bedrock. Expecting blank paper beneath an outer layer of real notes, he was astonished to find that every note was a genuine hundred-dollar bill. There had been an outbreak of counterfeit hundred-dollar bills a year ago and he had been shown what to look for, but these were genuine. What kind of blackmail victim could afford to drop a thousand C-notes in the course of a murder?
“The money only complicates matters,” he said, putting it in a steel dish and lidding it before peeling off his gloves. “There is a hundred thousand here, brand-new, but the numbers aren’t fully consecutive. I’ll have to hand it over to the Feds to find out its origins.” He leaned his rump on a wall sink and contemplated the money dish sourly. “Motor Mouth … I wonder what Motor Mouth said to warrant not only murder but the sacrifice of so much money? Whoever he is, he knew he had no hope of retrieving his outlay—or his letter. Which says he’s not worried, that he doesn’t think we stand a chance of discovering his real name or what the subject of the blackmail was.”
“Blackmail aside, Carmine, one motive is hate,” said Patsy, inserting a probe inside one vicious chest wound. “The object here is physical agony, a slow death.”
“But not a public lesson.”
“No. A private vendetta. Motor Mouth isn’t concerned about the
details of his crime becoming public, but all his spleen was directed at Evan Pugh. Whoever he is, he’s not an attention seeker.”
“I’m guessing this was Pugh’s first attempt at blackmail. Man, I’d love to get my hands on Pugh’s letter of March twenty-ninth!” Carmine clenched his hands. “But Motor Mouth will have burned it. Say he got it on March twenty-ninth. That means he cooked up this incredible retaliation within four or five days. And he must know Pugh left no evidence of the blackmail behind. So it’s not pictures, letters, memos, anything visual or auditory. Pugh had no safety deposit key, even one he’d think was cunningly hidden. No bus or train station locker key either. Of course he might have sent something to his parents, but I’m guessing he didn’t.”
“Oh, come on, Carmine!” Patsy objected. “Where blackmail is concerned, there’s always physical evidence, even if it’s no more than a written description of an incident.”
“Not here,” said Carmine, straightening. “I’m convinced that Motor Mouth acted with total security. Now that Pugh’s dead, no threat remains. The blackmail evidence died with him.”
“Cop instinct?” Patsy asked.
Halfway to the door, Carmine paused. “How are you coping with the chaos?”
“First off, no outside referrals for the moment. The last of our already autopsied cases will have gone to their funeral homes by ten tonight, and that will give us room to accommodate the murder victims plus whatever I couldn’t deflect,” Patrick said. “I’m sending Gus and his boys to the North Holloman labs to do outside cases there until my crisis evaporates.”
“Poor Gus! North Holloman is a dump.” Carmine resumed his progress. “Meeting in Silvestri’s office nine tomorrow, okay?”
The lights of Holloman’s east shore were twinkling in and out of the wealth of trees for which Holloman was famous as Carmine parked his Ford Fairlane on East Circle shortly before nine that night. Strictly speaking, the vehicle was a police unmarked, with a souped-up V-8
engine and cop springs and shocks, but it didn’t look the part; since attaining captain’s rank, Carmine got a last year’s model every year, so it bore none of the stigmata of the usual cop unmarked. He took the sloping, curving flagged path down to his front door, tried the knob, and let himself in. Desdemona didn’t bother locking doors, correctly reasoning that it would be a very rare criminal who entered Captain Delmonico’s residence. Reasoning like that wouldn’t have held water in a larger city, but everyone in Holloman knew where Carmine lived, which had its disadvantages but also its advantages.
His women were assembled in the kitchen, a large one permitting them to dine in it if they had no guests, thus saving the formal dining room and Carmine’s exquisite Lalique table with matching chandelier for more festive occasions. The kitchen was pure white and clinically clean; in the matter of domestic decor Carmine’s second wife had deferred to his taste as better than her own, and never rued that decision.
She stood at the extra-high counter putting the finishing touches on a dish of lasagna, while her stepdaughter tackled the salad enthusiastically. The counters needed to be forty-six inches high, for Desdemona Delmonico stood six foot three in bare feet; that they were not even higher was a concession to Sophia, a mere five foot seven, and to the economics of offering something usable if ever the family decided to sell. Desdemona’s hair was a little tangled from running her hands through it, as she was a learner-cook who still suffered paroxysms of anxiety over her cuisine, though lasagna was fairly safe. Carmine’s mother and sisters had taken her in hand, so what she learned tended to be southern Italian. Very alien to Desdemona, English to her fingertips, but she had her occasional victories too. A visiting friend from Lincoln had taught her to make a traditional roast dinner and a Lancashire hot pot, both devoured by her husband and his family with great pleasure. Fancy never eating potatoes peeled and roasted around the joint! To Desdemona, it was a terrible omission. Not to mention gravy made on pan drippings.
When she turned to greet Carmine it could be seen that she was
rather plain of face, between the overlarge nose and the prominent chin, but when her face broke into smiles it lit up most attractively, and the eyes were truly beautiful, big, calm, the color of thick ice. Motherhood had endowed her with a bosom, all that had been lacking to render her figure splendid, if hugely tall. As her well-shaped legs were proportionately very long, men tended to think her rather dishy. Not a verdict they would have delivered during Desdemona’s days managing the Hug; marriage had done wonders for her.
She went at once to Carmine and bent her face four inches to kiss him, while Sophia hopped from foot to foot, waiting her turn.