Too Many Murders (31 page)

“That’s what Myron says, except that his solution is for me to accept a large sum of money and take Desdemona and Julian to London for the duration.”

Patrick laughed, then turned to his autopsy table. It was draped with a sheet. When he removed it, Carmine was forced to look at Erica Davenport’s naked body, its arms and legs grossly swollen, misshapen and discolored, its face blue-black with tongue protruding, its trunk so unmarred and proper that it did not look as if it belonged to the extremities.

“Poor woman,” Carmine said.

“Poor indeed,” Patrick said, voice grim.

“What, Patsy?”

“At some time in her late teens or early twenties she was brutally raped, how many times I don’t know, but multiple. Anal as well as vaginal, devices as well as penises. The scar tissue would have prevented much cavorting in a bed—she must have been terrified that a lover would notice. Skeps must have, if his relationship with her was as long-term as Philomena Skeps says. I found out when I was washing her.”

Carmine leaned against the tiled wall. “That answers so much, Patsy.”

“I thought it would.”

“When’s the full autopsy?”

“I was going to do it now, but this discovery will make it a longer
business, so first thing tomorrow morning.” Patrick’s vivid blue eyes had dimmed; he loathed posting rape victims. “Who will bury her, Carmine?”

“Myron. He wasn’t as surprised as he ought have been, because she gave him her will before he left. He’s appointed executor. Her estate—I have no idea what it’s worth—goes to Women Against Rape. I add that she fooled Myron, he didn’t know she was a rape victim herself. Something else I have to tell him! As to Cornucopia, her guardianship of Desmond Skeps the Third, she made no mention. She must have known that if anything were to happen to her, Philomena Skeps’s case for total custody of her son would be much stronger. The mastermind must have known that too, which suggests that, whatever he’s all about, it’s not control of Cornucopia. My, won’t the dogs be snarling there!”

“Go home, Carmine” was Patsy’s reply.

Carmine went home.

His house had emptied of the women, including his mother, but there were police patrolling the grounds and an air of urgency. News of what had happened had spread throughout East Holloman with even greater speed than usual. The Silberfeins, his closest neighbors, had risen to the emergency splendidly from the moment Sam Silberfein found Desdemona in their yard. Ordinarily he would have been at his dry cleaning business, but Sylvia hadn’t been well that morning, and he had stayed home. By the time Carmine arrived, an ambulance with a physician’s assistant on board had dealt with Julian, chilled to the bone but otherwise little the worse for wear. The problem had been Desdemona, who wouldn’t leave Julian even to get out of her wet clothes, and was blue with cold. It was Carmine who persuaded her to go home complete with Julian and the medic, Carmine who thanked the Silberfeins ardently, fervently, Carmine who peeled off Desdemona’s clothes and gave Julian a bottle of breast milk from his mother’s refrigerated reserves while she warmed up in a bath of tepid water.

When he came into the bedroom she was still sitting near the crib, which normally stood in the nursery next door. She had managed to get her feet under her and sat hunched over, eyes on the sleeping baby.

Carmine didn’t try to lure her away. He found another chair and put it down opposite hers, but not where it impeded her view of Julian. Her face was dry, though because of her huddled posture he couldn’t tell if she was shaking. Her expression was of flintlike hardness, but her eyes held absolute love.

“It’s time to give me some details,” he said, matter-of-fact.

“Ask away.”

“Can you describe the guy?”

“His size, yes. About average—not tall, not short. I think he was a fit man. His reflexes were quick. His pistol was an automatic, but I imagine a .22. There was no silencer, so a big round would have sounded loud. I certainly didn’t hear a shot, and I presume he shot that poor woman in the boat shed?”

“No, she was strangled,” Carmine said quietly. “The handgun must have been for emergencies. You were an emergency.”

“What I have to sort out in my mind, dear love, is my fear,” she said steadily. “I can do that better if I can see Julian. It wouldn’t be logical or sensible to skulk about for the next however-many years expecting something like that to happen again, but that’s what I want to do. Somehow I have to put today behind me, and Julian says I can do that. Look at him! He went for his first swim and his first underwater dive, he didn’t have a clue what was happening to him, but he had Mummy.”

“He’s also not old enough to remember,” his father said.

“We won’t know that until he sees the Harbor again, or perhaps is taken into a swimming pool, or has a paddle at Busquash Beach. If there are buried memories, they’ll surface.”

“No one knows that for sure. Look at him, Desdemona! Our son is peacefully asleep. Has he woken in distress? Thrashed around in his crib?”

“No,” she said.

“I’m not worried about him—half of him is me,” Carmine said with a smile. “You’re doing the English thing, bottling it all up, using logic to repress it. You wouldn’t be human if you didn’t carry some scars out of this, and the most prominent will be fear that it might happen again. My mother—who blames herself terribly, I should tell you—will certainly be a basket case for months. If you really want that little brother or sister for Julian, you can’t let today rule your life. But not by doing mental gymnastics, my lovely lady. Just by keeping busy and enjoying what you’ve got—what
we’ve
got. You can’t let that bastard ruin us, ruin our family. Stop thinking so much about how to forget it. Time will do that for you, it always does.” He played his trump card. “After all, Desdemona, you came out on top! Nothing worse than a freezing swim happened to you and Julian. You’re a heroine, just like that vaulting exercise on the outside of the Nutmeg building. Today should reinforce your confidence in yourself, not destroy it.”

Finally she smiled and turned her gaze from son to husband. “Yes, I do see that.” She unwound, shivering. “Oh, but I was terrified! For what seemed an eternity I didn’t know how I could get away, then I looked at the water—
really
looked—and saw that the tide was right in. It’s a steep slope underwater there, I knew it was deep enough for me to disappear. Once I had my plan, I was all right. Poor little Julian!” Her eyes filled with wonder. “Oh, Carmine, do you realize that on both occasions I would have died if I weren’t so big? When I did all that vaulting on the Nutmeg, I was fit from lots of hiking, but today has made me realize that I need to get my fitness back. I’ve been lazy for over twelve months, and it showed today. It’s lucky the man gave up, because I was done when I crawled out. If Sam hadn’t been in his garden, we might have died.”

“Hiking is no longer an option,” he said, pulling her into his chair and holding her across his knees. “How about joining a gym? One of these new fitness clubs?”

“No, I’ll exercise in my own home, thank you very much. I know it’s silly, but I want to keep Julian with me,” she said.

“As long as you don’t smother him when he gets a bit older. Overprotective mothers don’t do their children any service,” Carmine said.

“I promise I won’t smother him later. Mind you, I probably couldn’t,” she said. “Half of him
is
you. And thank you for your kindness, dear heart. I feel much better. What else do you need to know?”

“More about the man’s appearance.”

“His face was hidden by a khaki balaclava.”

“A what?”

“A balaclava. A knitted thing that’s pulled over the head and has two holes for the eyes and one hole for the mouth. I never got very close to him—I was on the seat, and he came out of the little door on the side of the boat shed. What’s that, forty or fifty feet? I could see the flash of his eyes, but not their color or shape, and his brows were covered. He wore gloves.”

“A ski mask,” said Carmine.

“Yes, exactly! He was wearing camouflage—khaki, green, olive, dark green in patches like a Frisian cow—a closed jacket and rather baggy trousers stuffed into army boots. While I’ve been sitting watching Julian, I realized that his garb meant he’d come along the shore. He would have been hard to see if he was among the bushes.”

“How quickly did you see the gun?”

“At once. He was vigilant but quite relaxed, but the moment he saw me he lifted the gun. One thing I know, Carmine. He was an expert marksman. When I spoiled his aim by moving, he chose to aim for my head. At that distance and with a light weapon, he couldn’t afford to miss. You see?” she asked proudly. “I’m married to a policeman, I know the ropes.”

“He must have been watching our house for long enough to think he knew our movements. That goddamn telescope in Skeps’s penthouse! It was focused on the East Holloman shore. After I found it, it disappeared. But someone kept right on using it.” Carmine hugged her, kissed her face. “I thought it was just a prurient interest—and it
may have been, for Skeps. But someone else had a more practical use for a telescope.”

“And whoever it was,” she said excitedly, “would never have seen anyone in our front garden! I’d been too pregnant for the slope, then I had Julian, and it was winter. Today was my first trip down to the water’s edge in yonks and yonks!” Suddenly she began to tremble. “Oh, Carmine, what if Julian had still been strapped into his stroller? We would have died!”

He rocked her back and forth; he’d already been in this place himself. “Julian wasn’t, Desdemona! He was sitting on your knee. I guess that means that somebody up there likes you.”

A good howl and a fit of the shakes helped get the shock out of her system. By the time it passed, she was beginning to return to the ordinary world.

“I’ve got nothing for your dinner!” she said.

“I brought pizza.”

“Sophia! How could I forget Sophia?”

“Patsy’s taking her to JFK. Myron wants her.”

Whereupon Julian woke, hungry but otherwise himself.

Carmine sat and watched his wife feed his son, battling to banish the demons. The trouble, he thought, was that Desdemona mistook her importance in his police scheme of things. Holloman was small enough for his wife to have her own presence, and she drew enmity to herself like a magnet drew iron filings. It was her size, the dignity that went with it, her air of invulnerability. If his enemies hated him, they also hated her, but in her own right. Desdemona was not a princess: she was sovereign.

The death of Erica Davenport was the epicenter of a human earthquake; it shook people and their constructions to their foundations, from the chief executives of Cornucopia, through Carmine Delmonico and his family, all the way to the FBI.

“But she’s Ulysses!” Ted Kelly insisted, seeking out Carmine in his office at County Services. “We’ve known that for two years!”

“Then why didn’t you arrest her?”

“Evidence! It’s called evidence? No matter where we went, no matter what we unearthed, we could never find a shred of evidence against her that would stand up in court. If we’d tried her, she would have walked, and in a blaze of publicity that would have harmed our image as much as it enhanced hers.”

“That’s because she wasn’t Ulysses,” Carmine said. “I have actually heard of evidence, Ted, and it wasn’t there for the simple reason that Erica Davenport wasn’t Ulysses. I think she knew who Ulysses is, but that’s a far cry from being him. And you know what, Special Agent Kelly? I don’t like your attitude any more today than I did when I put your big ass on the ground. You’re as thick as two planks.”

“She was Ulysses, I tell you!” Kelly smacked his fists on his thighs, beat them up and down in frustration. “We’d just finished planning the neatest sting operation in espionage history—she couldn’t have resisted the bait, she’d have gone to her drop and we’d have been waiting. Now—
Fuck!
”

“You found out where her drop is?” Carmine asked, looking astonished and ingenuous.

“This one,” Special Agent Kelly said in goaded tones, then embarked on a tutorial. “Spies have a list of drop sites, they never use the same one twice. Their list is coded and they work through it. They have signals to alert their contact that something is going to be dropped, usually in a deserted spot like woods or an abandoned factory—”

“Or identical briefcases, or a package taped under a seat on a bus, or the fourth brick from the right seventeen rows from the top,” Carmine finished with a grin. “Come on, Kelly! All that’s horseshit, and you know it. The wad of money—the spy who can’t name his contact because he doesn’t know who his contact is—what a load of crap. First off, whoever’s doing this isn’t in it for the money or the intellectual thrill. He’s an ideologue, in it for the greater glory of Mother Russia, or Marx and Lenin—a Communist ideology, anyway. Secondly, the stolen item is passed openly, after a phone call or a fax from a number no one could know about. You can’t tap every phone in the country, or intercept every telex. No matter how fanatically you watch any individual, if he’s as smart as Ulysses he’ll pass his information right under your noses and you’ll never see or smell it. You can’t seriously expect me to believe that you and the FBI don’t know how important in himself Ulysses is! Which means he rides around big cities in a limo, uses private facilities when he has to go, has the run of five-star hotels, eats in places where you and I couldn’t afford the water in the finger bowls—how am I doing, Ted?”

“Ulysses was Erica Davenport,” Kelly said stubbornly.

“Ulysses is alive and well and slipped a noose around that poor woman’s neck,” Carmine said harshly. “Not, however, before he broke her arms and legs in two places each, to be sure how much she knew and whom she might have told.”

The mask fell completely. In a second the clumsy, slightly dense, distinctly lower-grade FBI agent disappeared, to be replaced by a highly trained, highly professional, intelligent and capable man.

“I give in,” Ted Kelly said ruefully. “They warned me you were hard to dupe, but I had to try. The last thing I need or want is anyone at Cornucopia thinking I might be in your league at sniffing out wrongdoers. I want Ulysses to think I’m a dumb official of a dumb institution, and so do my bosses. It’s okay for you, you’re hunting a murderer. You can get farther by spreading your tail and peacocking your skill, but my quarry’s different. I have to pretend I haven’t got to first base even when I’m stealing home. My man doesn’t make mistakes.”