Too Many Murders (23 page)

“Did he go away?” Carmine asked, conscious of a sinking in his belly. “How long were you in there?”

“About five minutes. I
knew
he was going to open the door and attack me as soon as the school quietened down, so I got out through a manhole in the roof. It led to the main fume duct, so I crawled for ages and came out in the fume cabinet at the other end of the lab. The lights were off, but it was still daylight outside, and I could see him—a little guy with a limp. I tried not to make any noise and kind of wriggled out of the cabinet onto the floor. Then I crawled for the
door at my end and waited until he was walking the opposite way before I opened it a crack and wriggled through. Then I got to my feet and ran!”

Amazing, thought Carmine. She’s my girl, for sure. Gives a good report even if she is scared stiff. “Then you made it to your car and drove home,” he said.

She stared at him scornfully. “
Daddy!
If I’d done that, I would have been home ages ago! No, he must have opened the closet door and found nobody there. I ran and dived into the forsythia just in time—he was heading for my car. That’s how I know he was after me—not just anybody,
me!
So I hunkered down and waited until it was dark, then I sneaked up to Route 133 and hailed a cab. But I wouldn’t get in until I got a good look at the driver. He was black, so I knew I was safe. He’s up on the Circle now, Daddy. I didn’t have my pocketbook, and the fare’s humongous!”

Desdemona slipped out, money purse in hand, while Carmine led his doughty daughter into the sitting room and gave her a red wine spritzer.

“To use a phrase of the Mayor of New Britain’s, you done good, kid,” he said, bursting with pride.

That, plus gratitude to whatever power had looked after Sophia, carried him through giving her dinner—she was starving—and getting her to bed sedated with one of Desdemona’s “bombs.” Once the girl’s elation at escaping by her own efforts died down, she would sleep a sleep of nightmares unless her busy, clever brain was damped.

Then the reaction set in. He sat and shook as if in a rigor, twisting his hands together.

“The bastard! The fucking bastard!” he said to Desdemona, his teeth clenched. “Why couldn’t he come after me? Why a sixteen-year-old innocent, for crying out loud? The sweetest, nicest, kindest kid imaginable! I’ll rip his head from his neck!”

She cuddled in close and stroked his face. “You don’t mean that, Carmine. You mean a life sentence, marked never to be released. Are you sure it’s your murderer?”

“A little guy with a limp? It’s got to be. But why Sophia? He chose her deliberately—targeted her at school, had it worked out down to the last
t
crossed and the last
i
dotted. By rights her body should have been found tomorrow in the physics lab closet, maybe beaten to death if what he thumped on the floor was a baseball bat. The best club ever invented. What he didn’t count on was Sophia’s presence of mind in a crisis.”

“And the fact that she’s inherited your gut instinct, dear heart. Where any other victim would have assumed she was locked in by mistake, Sophia knew almost at once that she was in danger. So she concentrated on escape rather than waiting to be let out.”

He managed to find a smile. “Resourceful, isn’t she?”

“Yes, very. I don’t think you ever need worry about Sophia being one of life’s victims,” said Desdemona. “She’s going to pick life up and wring it dry.”

He got up feeling like an old man. “I don’t think I’ll be making a little brother or sister for Julian tonight, Desdemona.”

“There’s always tomorrow night,” she said cheerfully. “Now let’s break the rules and have a drink before bed. I can bomb Sophia and keep her out of school tomorrow, but I can’t do that to you. An X-O cognac is the answer for Daddy.”

“I’ll have to put a cop at the Dormer to keep an eye on our daughter,” he said, taking the snifter and warming it in his hand. “Concealed surveillance, but Seth Gaylord will have to know in case the duty sergeant puts a dodo on watch. Then tomorrow you’ll have to talk to Sophia and persuade her not to mention the incident to anyone, including Myron.”

Desdemona blinked. “Including Myron?”

“We can’t trust his tongue these days because I don’t know how discreet his lady love is. Tell Sophia it’s not a good idea to be marooned on her own at school or anywhere else right now. She’s to stick with a group and leave school along with everyone else. And that goddamn red Mercedes that Myron gave her goes into the garage! She can drive my mother’s Mercury clunker.”

Desdemona shivered. “It’s like the Ghost,” she said.

“Yes. That’s why I’m convinced our best weapon is Sophia’s ingenuity. If you talk to her frankly and don’t pull your punches, she won’t buck.”

The news about Sophia hit no one quite the way it did John Silvestri, whose daughter Maria had been savagely beaten some years ago. It had been a revenge aimed at Silvestri, who took it very hard. But Maria healed, married happily and moved on with her life; the perpetrator got a thirty-year sentence, twenty before parole. Knowing all this, Carmine told him in private of the attempt on Sophia; to see Silvestri weep was an ordeal and not for other eyes.

“Terrible, just terrible!” the Commissioner said, mopping his face. “We have to catch this bastard, Carmine. Anything you want, you got. Such a beautiful child!”

“I know it doesn’t really look that way,” Carmine said, sitting down, “but somehow I feel as if we’ve rattled his cage. It’s nine days since the twelve murders, and we’ve actually managed to solve some of them—Jimmy Cartwright, Dean Denbigh, Bianca Tolano—and catalogued the assassination of the three blacks as commissioned. There’s been a thirteenth death—the suicide of Bianca Tolano’s killer.”

“I think it’s impressive,” Silvestri said, composure restored. “Where to now?”

“Peter Norton, the banker who drank strychnine in his orange juice. An agonizing death.”

“So’s cyanide,” Silvestri pointed out.

“Yes, but cyanide is quick. As soon as enough of the blood’s hemoglobin is stripped of its oxygen, death ensues. Whereas, John, strychnine takes twenty, thirty minutes, depending on the dose. Norton got a huge dose, but drank only half of it. He was a dead man, but not for some time. Vomiting, purging, strong convulsions—I don’t know how much consciousness remains, but his wife and two little kids witnessed it. That’s disgusting.”

“Are you implying that the killer wanted that?”

“I don’t know. Maybe I am,” Carmine said, sounding surprised.

“If choosing a method that tortured Norton’s wife and kids was a part of the crime, it opens up new territory, Carmine,” the Commissioner said thoughtfully. “Maybe we should be looking harder at the victims’ families.”

“Every stone will be turned over again,” Carmine promised.

Mrs. Barbara Norton had had more than a week to recover from her screaming hysterics, though Carmine suspected her doctor had her on some pretty powerful tranquilizers. Her eyes were vacant, and she moved as if pushing her way through a sea of molasses.

However, she spoke logically. “It’s some nutter he refused a loan to,” she said, giving him a cup of coffee. “You have no idea, Captain! People seem to expect a bank to lend them money without any collateral at all! Most people eventually give up, but the nutters never do. I can remember at least half a dozen crazies who filled our mailbox with dog do, put caustic soda in our pool, even wee’d in our milk! Peter reported all of them to the North Holloman police, so look there for the names.”

She was fairly plump, Carmine noted, but her rotundity had a certain seductiveness for some men, and she had a pretty face—dimples, rosy cheeks, flawless skin. When her children came in, he stifled another sigh at this second sight of them: this was a fat family, the genes predisposed to obesity. Peter Norton, he remembered from the autopsy, had been very overweight in the manner of one always so: fat arms and legs, puffy hands and feet, the adiposity packed on from shoulders to hips rather than just around his middle. According to police notes taken in the neighborhood, Mrs. Norton had tried to limit the family’s food intake, but her husband would have none of it. He was always taking the kids to Friendly’s for parfaits and shakes.

“Were your friends your husband’s friends as well, Mrs. Norton?” Carmine asked.

“Oh, definitely. We did everything together. Peter liked me to have the same friends.”

“What kind of things did you do?”

“We went bowling on Tuesday nights. Thursday nights were canasta at someone’s home. Saturday nights we went out to dinner and took in a movie or a play.”

“Did you use a babysitter, ma’am?”

“Yes, always the same girl, Imelda Gonzalez. Peter picked her up and drove her home.”

“You never went out on your own?”

“Oh, no!”

“Who are your friends?”

“Grace and Chuck Simmons, Hetty and Hank Sugarman, Mary and Ernie Tripodi. Chuck’s with the Holloman National, Hank’s an accountant with a tax practice, and Ernie owns a bed and bath store. None of us girls work.”

Middle management types, thought Carmine, sipping coffee. It was flavored with cardamom, a pet hate. In his opinion coffee was coffee, never to be adulterated with alien tastes.

“Did you ever go anyplace else, Mrs. Norton?”

Her bright curls bounced in time to her nods, robotic. “Oh, sure! Charity functions, mostly, but they aren’t regular. Cornucopia functions Peter and I went to on our own—the Fourth National is owned by Cornucopia. Otherwise the eight of us went together.” Her face fell, her chin wobbled. “Of course from now on I can’t go to anything much. Our friends are real kind, but I’m a drag without Peter. He was the joker, full of tricks!”

“Things will sort themselves out, Mrs. Norton,” Carmine comforted. “You’ll make plenty of new friends.”

Especially, he thought privately, with the size of Peter Norton’s pension and insurance payouts. Beneath the dominated housewife lurked someone determined to save herself. Maybe she’d go on a luxury cruise looking for someone she could dominate? Were it not for that inescapable date, April third, he might have suspected her of
putting paid to domination by a person few seemed to like. Despite the horror of his death, a certain kind of poisoner would have relished witnessing his suffering. But Mrs. Norton had not relished it. She had gone into hysterics so strong that the neighbors had heard and come running. By the time that he, Carmine, had arrived, the children were emerging from their shock, whereas Mrs. Norton had needed two medics, her doctor, and a shot of something so potent she had slept for hours.

He turned to the children, seeking some idea what kind of family theirs was. The little girl, Marlene, was aggressive and intelligent—probably not popular at school, he thought. The little boy, Tommy, apparently lived for food; when he grabbed at the cookies put out for Carmine, his mother slapped his hand away viciously, with a look on her face the child retreated from.

“You have no outside interests of your own at all?” Carmine asked.

“No, none—Tommy, leave the cookies
alone!
”

He plucked it out of thin air. “Women’s liberation?”

“I should think not!” she snapped, bridling. “Of all the stupid,
embarrassing
things—! Do you know they actually tried to proselytize me? I don’t remember her name, but I sure sent her packing with a flea in her ear!”

“When was this?”

“I don’t remember,” said Mrs. Norton, fighting the drugs and losing. “Some function or other, a long time ago.”

“What did the woman look like?”

“That’s just it! She looked
normal!
Shaved her legs, wore makeup and nice clothes. For a while I was quite taken in, then she—she stood forth in all her evil panoply! I learned that at school, and it fit, Captain, it fit. When I told her what I thought of women’s libbers, she got nasty, and I got nasty right back! I must’ve frightened her—she gave up and left.”

“Was she a blonde? A brunette? A redhead?”

“I don’t remember,” said Mrs. Norton, yawning. “I’m tired.”

* * *

“I told you,” said Carmine to Abe and Corey, “this is a case full of women. Now where the hell does feminism enter into it? Because I believe it does, at least in the death of Peter Norton. Someone or something influenced our killer to punish Mrs. Norton by making her watch him die. It worked—she’s still under a lot of sedation—but she had a lucid moment when she talked of the feminist who looked ‘normal.’ I wish I knew more about the Nortons! Something is escaping me, but what it is, I have no idea. Maybe it’s not knowing for sure what kind of woman Mrs. Norton is. Like a psychiatrist inheriting a patient so doped up he can’t get to square one on a diagnosis.”

“You couldn’t get any more out of her?” Corey asked.

Carmine looked at him sympathetically; Corey’s wife wouldn’t let him rest, nagged nonstop. “She only remembers what suits her,” he said. “Corey, you’re on the Norton background. I want to know the name and the date of every function Mrs. Norton ever attended—well, modify that. Make it five years.” He turned to Abe. “Abe, you’re on the feminist angle. Use the good Dr. Denbigh as your starting point. She’s in the thick of the movement, and she fits Mrs. Norton’s description—no hairy legs or armpits for our Pauline. Incidentally, she told me she was frigid, but I doubt that very much. I know we’ve got her for the Dean’s murder, but her past still bears looking into. What was her reason for picking April third for the deed, huh?”

“You didn’t believe it had nothing to do with the other murders?” Corey asked, fretting that he wasn’t chalking up enough points.

“She’s a congenital liar. When she does tell the truth, it’s obliquely.”

He watched them leave his office, then put his chin on his hands and prepared for a think session.

“Carmine?”

He lifted his head, surprised; it wasn’t like Delia to interrupt a thinking boss. “Yes?”

“I have an idea,” she said, not sitting down.

“Coming from you, that’s encouraging. Explain.”

“The filing’s all up to date and you haven’t exactly snowed me
under with letters lately,” she said delicately, looking at him with eyes that always reminded him of a kewpie doll—wide, ingenuous, impossibly painted.