Naked Cruelty (5 page)

“Oh, dear!” Desdemona's English accent wasn't as posh as Delia's, but it showed strongly on exclamations. And at least, thought Carmine, watching her, Morty Jones's troubles were giving her something other than Julian to think about. “What can you do, Carmine?”

“Keep talking to Morty and hope Ava comes home again. No other cop would put up with her out of a bed.”

“Corey's bothering you in other ways, isn't he?”

“Clever chicken! Corey's jealous of Abe. He implied that I'm biased in favor of Abe. It was hard to take.”

Why don't they leave him alone? Desdemona asked herself, all traces of depression burned to ashes in the furnace of her rage at Corey, Ava, Morty—anyone who didn't see her husband for the great and good man he was. I must get better, I must! The last thing Carmine needs is an emotionally crippled wife. But what her heart was telling her lay beyond her ability and capacity at this moment; Desdemona sat, huddled in her chair, without the strength to offer him any kind of comfort. All her little spurt of anger had done was to stimulate the ever-lurking tears. When she tried to blink them away, they overflowed, and again it was Carmine who had to summon up the energy to offer comfort.

By noon of the next day, Thursday, September 26, Delia Carstairs, in charge of gathering information about the Dodo's possible rapes, had accumulated a total of six young women she deemed highly likely to have been victims prior to Maggie Drummond. Done in the form of a dialogue between Delia and the host of the program, the radio broadcasts had proven astonishingly effective; Delia suspected that all six young women had yearned for somewhere feminine to go, and that, as was usually the way, it hadn't occurred to any of them that a medical school as prestigious as Chubb's would have a rape clinic rather than merely an emergency room. Delia used her accent to present as a very classy woman who really would, as she assured her listeners, see and talk to victims in privacy and without a male presence.

A delighted Helen was severely cautioned.

“Have you ever been raped?” Delia asked her.

“No, not even close.”

“Then strictly speaking you're as ignorant as any man. All you have in facing these devastated women is your sex, which I require be used as a reassurance. Never appear indifferent.”

“Are you implying that men dismiss rape as a fabrication?”

“A minority of men only. A few men have been falsely accused of rape—you'll never convert them. Some have been brought up to regard all women as liars and cheats. There is always an element of ignorance. Samson and Delilah is a good illustration—women are seen as stripping men of their power, their authority.”

“Why tell me stuff I already know?”

Delia drew a patient breath. “I'm telling you this because it's a rare man who empathises with a rape victim, but Captain Delmonico is one such rare man. The Dodo case will be
worked
, and not just because the rapist is escalating.”

“Why?” Helen demanded, eyes glistening.

“Don't take your mind there, Helen!” Delia snapped. “Don't go romantically endowing the Captain with a raped girlfriend, or anything even remotely so personal. No such person exists. What I am trying to get through your unversed head, Madam Trainee, is that you're extremely lucky to be working here.”

“Yes, Delia,” said Helen meekly. “What do I do?”

“If a victim chooses to come here, you sit in the interview room with her and me. If the victim prefers to be seen at her home, you accompany me to her home. You are purely a witness. You say not one word unless I indicate you may. You don't ask curious questions either, even if you believe your question will solve the case. You write it down, hand the paper to me, and I will decide. Our best advantage is that we're women, so don't blow it. Understood?”

“Should I take notes?”

“Unobtrusively, yes. None of them will consent to a tape recorder, unfortunately.”

There were seven rape victims: Shirley Constable on March 3; Mercedes Mendez on May 13; Leonie Coustain on June 25; Esther Dubrowski on July 16; Marilyn Smith on August 6; Natalie Goldfarb on August 30; and Maggie Drummond on September 24.

When Helen offered to drive each young woman into County Services in a private car and return her the same way, Delia managed to persuade all six earlier victims to come in. Her trainee assistant, Delia noted when Shirley Constable appeared, had handled this most damaged of the victims with a cheerful insouciance that had revolved around her green Lamborghini sports car; she hadn't mentioned the coming interview.

The erstwhile Carew character had retreated so far inside herself that it took Delia almost an hour to get her talking, but when she did, it poured out. She had been a virgin for religious reasons and regarded herself as ruined for life; but that, Dr. Liz Meyers and the rape clinic would help. Delia had already been in touch with Dr. Meyers, a brilliant psychiatrist whose sole interest was rape.

What preyed more cruelly on Shirley's mind was her conviction that the Dodo would return to kill her, and a large part of her felt she deserved to die. Oh, we women have to get over this mind-set, Delia said to herself. The value society puts on virginity is a way to make sure a man fathers his children—look at poor Morty Jones.

Having assured Shirley that the Dodo was too busy moving on to bother going back and killing earlier victims, Delia sent her off with Helen to see Dr. Meyers.

“He's definitely escalating in method,” she said to Carmine and Nick later, “but he seems to have settled into a three-week cycle. There were ten weeks between Shirley and Mercedes, then six weeks between Mercedes and Leonie. From Leonie on, three weeks, with a slight preference for Tuesdays and Wednesdays.”

Carmine was scowling. “Then he's not a moon man or a sun man, Deels, and that means he's a real headache. He can switch his time span without feeling that he's offended the sun or the moon—I hate the ones without a planetary pattern.”

“Then perhaps he's on a Mars or a Venus cycle. We won't know that until we check the astronomical ephemeris. I'll get on to it,” Delia said. “However, if he sticks to three weeks, he's due to strike around October 16. A Wednesday. We should expect it, Carmine, sun, moon, or none.”

“Does he have a physical type of victim?”

“No. Nor a racial one, nor a religious one. All colors of hair, eyes, Caucasian skin. Eastern European roots, Jewish, WASP, Latin-American. Things might pop out at us when we consider the events more dispassionately and conclude all the interviews. Apart from Shirley, all we did today was make their acquaintance.”

Helen came in and sat down.

“Your impressions, Helen?” Carmine asked.

“Well, we didn't spend much time on our home visits—it will be better when I drive each of them in for a formal interview. I can say that the Dodo himself didn't vary much from victim to victim—did he, Delia?”

“No.”

“Almost six feet, and extremely well built. Marlon Branda was the movie star they chose. Naked and completely hairless. No scars, spots, moles, pimples. A black, silky hood over his head. He never spoke. The warning and his name were printed on a piece of white Bainbridge board with a black marker.”

“Thank you,” said Carmine, interrupting smoothly. “Delia?”

“Shirley was raped twice, both vaginal. Mercedes also, but the second one was anal. And so it went, Carmine, escalating each time a little. My feeling is that with Maggie Drummond and the arrival of the garotte, or cord, or whatever, the Dodo is close to his kill point. That means it's imperative we catch him.”

“I couldn't agree more,” Carmine said.

“Have you any ideas about the Dodo, Carmine?” Nick asked.

“He's verging on unique, for starters. Through six rapes over a period of nearly seven months he managed to be invisible. If it weren't for the Gentleman Walkers, his attack on Maggie would have seemed the first. None of his earlier victims would have come forward of her own volition. The Dodo is a stalker who must know a great deal about the women he targets. It's my guess that he's working from a list, and that list might contain a hundred names,” Carmine said grimly.

“Will he escalate to murder?” Helen asked, not having heard the first part of their conference.

“All multiple rapists of this kind eventually move up to murder, Helen. Asphyxiation is a give-away. That's why, as you women probe the earlier victims deeper and deeper, I want you to be on the lookout for anything suggesting asphyxiation. In a way, Miss Trainee, that never gives your victim any idea what you're doing. We don't want anyone feeding ideas, okay?”

The blue eyes were blazing, but Helen MacIntosh had learned more than merely police procedure: not a muscle moved in her face as she thought: how
dared
they treat her like a teenybopper! “Madam Trainee!” “Miss Trainee!” They were baiting her, but they wouldn't succeed in getting a rise. “Okay,” she said aloud.

“The nakedness says the Dodo's ego is so big he's sure he can deal with the unexpected, like a room-mate coming home. His rape technique says he's never going to be a metal or a fire man, cutting, mutilating, even burning with a cigarette. He punches, pokes and pinches, but most of all he kicks. The assaults are erotic, in that they're directed at breasts, buttocks, belly, pubes. In an odd way, his actions are immature. According to Maggie, he sustained rigid erections for long periods, yet he can't climax. According to his lights, he has principles.”

“You're describing an almost supernaturally cool, calm and collected man,” Nick said uneasily.

“Not supernatural, but certainly highly instinctual. Has any victim reported seeing a weapon, Delia?” Carmine asked.

“Not so far.”

“He must have brought a weapon with him and kept it close at hand,” Carmine said.

Ask your questions, Helen, said their trainee to herself. If they make you seem ignorant, that's because you are ignorant. But you're here to learn, and sometimes they don't see the most basic questions of all—too much water under the cop bridge. “Why should so many sex murderers strangle?” she asked, eyes wide and curious. “I mean, asphyxiation is just one form of it.”

Carmine looked pleased. “As against death by mutilation?”

“Yes.”

“I don't know that anyone honestly knows, but the general feeling is that strangulation—hands, a garotte, a scarf—offers the killer about as leisurely a look at dying as he'll ever get. It can take minutes, depending, and especially if he's gotten his technique with a cord down so pat that he can drag his victim to the brink of death a dozen times before the
coup de grâce
. It also means no blood, and a good proportion of sex killers dislike blood as a component of murder. It's messy and unpredictable unless you're extremely well prepared to handle the mess. One errant drop can convict if the blood type's rare and the killer shouldn't have been there.” Carmine's large, square, beautiful hands gestured. “One thing I can tell you, Helen. The Dodo isn't into blood. What turns him on is a woman's suffering.”

Though they were sitting in a room without windows, it felt as if the sun had gone in; Helen shivered.
Suffering
. Such a terrible word. It occurred to her that in her twenty-four years of life, she had never truly witnessed suffering any closer than a television screen or news magazine.

“How can the Dodo do meticulous research on a bunch as varied as our victims?” Helen asked. “Shirley is an archivist, Mercedes is a dress designer, Leonie is a mathematician, Esther is a lecturer in business, Marilyn is an archaeologist in dinosaur research, Natalie buys women's wear for a chain of department stores, and Maggie is a bird physiologist. Where's the common thread, apart from the fact that they all live in Carew?”

“I doubt there is a common thread,” said Nick; this is one case, he thought, where the women should be driving. “I do think we have to assume that the Dodo lives in Carew, and that under the black hood is a face well known to Carew residents. A face not only known, but trusted, maybe admired. He could be a Gentleman Walker. He could be that movie star guy you go out with, Helen.”

She guffawed. “Kurt? Hardly likely, Watson! He's a contender for the Nobel Prize in physics.”

“Yes, but do you see what I mean? Whoever the Dodo is, he leads a double life. I'd be willing to bet that he's invited to Mark Sugarman's parties—and those parties are something all the Dodo's victims have in common.”

Delia squawked. “Nick! You stole my thunder.”

“Did I? Gee, Deels, I'm sorry.”

“It doesn't matter,” said Carmine. “The fact is, you both noticed the parties. Sounds like you said a little more than hello and goodbye to the other five victims, Delia.”

Her face went pink enough to clash with her orange ascot. “Um—well, yes. They were
dying
to talk, especially because the public nature of Maggie's rape told them they weren't in much danger anymore. They're very intelligent women.”