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“Five feet tall, curly but not kinky dark hair, dark brown eyes — a real pretty face — mature figure,” said someone who had announced himself as Lieutenant Joe Brown. “Oh, and a large heart-shaped birthmark on her right buttock.”

“Don’t go away, Joe, I’ll be there in half an hour.”

He put the flashing light on the Ford’s roof and gunned the car down I-95, siren screaming; the forty miles took him slightly more than twenty minutes.

Lieutenant Joe Brown was around his own age, early forties, and more excited than Carmine had expected him to be. Brown was on edge, so were the other cops in the vicinity. Carmine studied the color photo in the file, looked for the reference to the birthmark, which some untutored hand had attempted to sketch.

“She’s our girl, all right,” he said. “Man, she’s pretty! Fill me in, Joe.”

“She’s a sophomore at St. Martha’s High School — good grades, no trouble, no boyfriends. It’s a Dominican family been here in Norwalk for twenty years — the father’s a toll collector on the Turn-pike, the mother’s a housewife. Six kids — two boys, four girls. Mercedes is — was — the eldest. Youngest is three, a boy. They live in a quiet old neighborhood, mind their own business.”

“Did anyone see Mercedes abducted?” Carmine asked.

“No one. We busted our asses to find her because” — he paused, looked worried — “she was the second girl of that type to go missing within two months. Both sophomores at St. Martha’s, in the same class, friends but not bosom buddies, if you get me. Mercedes had piano practice after school finished, was due home at four-thirty. When she didn’t turn up by six and the nuns said she had definitely left when she was supposed to, Mr. Alvarez called us. They were already upset over Verina.”

“Verina was the first girl?”

“Yeah. Verina Gascon. A Creole family from Guadeloupe, been here a long time too. She disappeared on her way to school. Both families live within walking distance of St. Martha’s, just a block away in either direction. We ransacked Norwalk looking for Verina, but she’d gone without a trace. And now this one, the same.”

“Any possibility either girl took off with a secret boyfriend?”

“Nope,” Brown said emphatically. “Maybe you should see both families, then you’d understand better. They’re old-fashioned Latin Catholics, bring their kids up strict but with lots of love.”

“I’ll see them, but not yet,” said Carmine, shrinking inside. “Can you organize Mr. Alvarez to identify Mercedes on the basis of the birthmark? We can’t show him more than a tiny patch of skin, but he’ll have to know beforehand that —”

“Yeah, yeah,
I
get the job of telling the poor bastard that someone chopped his beautiful little daughter into pieces,” said Brown. “Oh, Jesus! Sometimes this is a shit job.”

“Would their priest be willing to go with him?”

“I’ll make sure. And maybe a nun or two for extra support.”

Someone came in with coffee and jelly doughnuts; both men wolfed down a couple, drank thirstily. While he waited for copies of the files of both girls, Carmine called Holloman.

Corey, said Abe, was already at the Hug, and he himself was about to see Dean Wilbur Dowling to find out how many dead animal refrigerators existed within the medical school.

“Did we get any other missing persons who might have fitted our girl’s description?” Carmine asked, feeling better for the food.

“Yeah, three. One from Bridgeport, one from New Britain, and one from Hartford. But when none of them had the birthmark, we didn’t follow up. They all happened months ago,” said Abe.

“Things have taken a turn, Abe. Call Bridgeport, Hartford and New Britain back, and tell them to send us copies of those files as fast as a siren can travel.”

“Our killer likes curly but not kinky hair, faces that are fantastically pretty in a certain way — full but well-delineated lips, wide set and wide open dark eyes, a dimpled smile — a height of no more than five feet, a mature figure, and light but not white skin,” Carmine said, flicking the photos.

“You really think the same guy snatched them all?” Abe asked, not wanting to believe it.

“Oh, sure. Look at their backgrounds. God-fearing, respectable families, all Catholic except for Rachel Simpson, whose father is an Episcopalian minister. Simpson and Olivaro went to their local high schools, the other three went to Catholic high schools, two at the same one, St. Martha’s in Norwalk. Then there’s the time span. One every two months. Corey, go back to the phone and ask for all missing persons who fit this description from as far back as — say, ten years. The background is as important as the physical criteria, so I’d be willing to bet that all these girls were famous for — well, if chasteness is too old-fashioned a word, at least
goodness.
They probably volunteered for things like Meals on Wheels or were candy stripers in some hospital. Never missed on church, did their homework, kept their hems at knee level, maybe wore a touch of lipstick, but never full makeup.”

“The girls you’re describing are thin on the ground, Carmine,” Corey said, his dark and beaky face serious. “If he’s snatched one every two months, he must waste a lot of time finding her. Look at how far afield he’s gone. Norwalk, Bridgeport, Hartford, New Britain — why no girls from Holloman? Mercedes at least was dumped in Holloman.”

“They’re all dumped in Holloman. We’ve only got five girls so far, Corey. We won’t know his pattern until we’ve traced him back as far as he goes. In Connecticut, at any rate.”

Abe swallowed audibly, his fair, broken-nosed countenance pale and sick looking. “But we’re not going to find any of the bodies prior to Mercedes, are we? He cut them up and put the pieces in at least one dead animal refrigerator, and from there they went to the medical school incinerator.”

“I’m sure you’re right, Abe,” said Carmine, who to his loyal and most constant companions looked unusually cast down. No matter what the case, Carmine sailed through it and over it with the ponderous grace and power of a battle wagon. He felt — he bled — he pitied — he understood — but until this case he had let nothing burrow in as far as his central core.

“What else does all this tell you, Carmine?” Corey asked.

“That he’s gotten a picture of perfection in his mind’s eye that these girls resemble, but that there’s always something wrong with each of them. Like the birthmark on Mercedes. Maybe one of them told him to go fuck himself — he’d hate language like that coming from virginal lips. But what he gets off on is their suffering, like any rapist. That’s why I don’t honestly know if we should be cataloging him as a killer or a rapist. Oh, he’s both, but how does his mind work? What’s the real purpose of what he does to
him?”

Carmine grimaced. “We know what kind of victim he likes and that they’re relatively rare, but ghosts are more visible than he is. In Norwalk, with two abductions on their plate, the cops have busted their asses looking for prowlers, peeping Toms, strangers on the street around the school, strangers contacting the school or the families. They’ve looked at everybody from United Way collectors to garbage collectors to postmen to encyclopedia salesmen to people purporting to be Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses or any other proselytizing religious group. Meter readers, council workers, tree surgeons, power and phone linesmen. They actually formed a think tank and tried to work out how he might have gotten close enough to abduct the girls, but so far they’ve come up with zilch. No one remembers anything that might help.”

Corey got to his feet. “I’ll start calling around,” he said.

“Okay, Abe, fill me in on the Hug,” Carmine said.

Out came Abe’s notepad. “There are thirty people on the Hug staff, if you count Professor Smith at one end and Allodice Miller the bottle washer at the other end.” He fished two pieces of paper from a file folder under his elbow and handed them to Carmine. “Here’s your copy of their names, ages, positions, how long they’ve worked there, and anything else I thought might be useful. The only one thought to have real surgical expertise is Sonia Liebman in the O.R. The two foreigners aren’t even medically qualified, and Dr. Forbes said he passed out watching a circumcision.”

He cleared his throat, flipped a page over. “There are any number of people who wander in and out pretty much at will, but their faces are well known — animal care, salesmen, doctors from the medical school. Mitey Brite Scientific Cleaners have the contract to clean the Hug, which they do between midnight and 3
A.M.
Mondays to Fridays, but they don’t handle the hazardous waste. Otis Green does that. Apparently you have to be trained, which adds a few bucks to Otis’s pay packet. I doubt that Mitey Brite have anything to do with the crime because Cecil Potter walks back to the Hug at 9
P.M.
each evening and locks animal care up better than Fort Knox in case a cleaner pokes around in there. It’s his babies — the monkeys. They hear the slightest noise at night, they raise a helluva rumpus.”

“Thanks for that, Abe. I hadn’t thought of Mitey Brite.” Carmine looked at Abe with great affection. “Any impressions of the inmates worth reporting?”

“They make godawful coffee,” said Abe, “and some smart-ass in neurochemistry fills a beaker with these delicious-looking candies — pink, yellow, green. But they’re not candies, they’re polystyrene packing material.”

“You got caught.”

“I got caught.”

“Anything else?”

“Negative information only. You can rule Allodice the bottle washer out — too dumb. I doubt the bags were put in the fridge while Cecil and Otis were on duty. Later in the day, is my bet.”

“What about the possible number of dump sites?”

“I finally found seven different dead animal refrigerators, excluding the Hug’s. Dean Dowling wasn’t amused to have to talk to a cop about something so far underneath his job description, and no one seemed to have a list. No way any of them once I found them would have been as easy as using the Hug’s — all more public, busier. Man, they must get through millions of rats! I hate ’em alive, but I hate ’em dead a lot worse after today. I’m putting my money on the Hug.”

“So am I, Abe, so am I.”

How many things had happened in 1950! He was a brand-new detective; the Hug was built; the Holloman Hospital was built; and Sandra Tolley had come to wait on table at Malvolio’s. She had knocked him off his feet at first glance. Tall, stacked like Jane Russell, legs six feet long, a mass of gold hair and wide, myopic eyes in a gorgeous face. Full of herself and the career she knew she was going to have as a model; she’d put her portfolio in to all the New York agencies, but couldn’t afford to live there. So she had moved a two-hour train ride into Connecticut, where she could rent for less than thirty dollars a month and eat for free if she was a waitress.

And then all her ambitions went west because the sight of Carmine Delmonico had knocked her off her feet too. Not that he was handsome or more than acceptably tall at five-eleven, but he had the kind of beat-up face that women adored, and a body bulging with natural muscle. They met at New Year’s; they were married within the month; and she was pregnant within three. Sophia, their daughter, was born right at the end of 1950. In those days he’d rented a nice house in East Holloman, which was the Italian quarter of town, thinking that if he surrounded Sandra with hordes of his relatives and friends she wouldn’t feel so alone when his job kept him working long hours. But she was from Montana ranching stock, and neither understood nor liked the way of life that East Holloman practiced. When Carmine’s mother called in to see her, Sandra thought that Mom was checking up on her, and by extension she saw all the kind visits and invitations from his family circle and his friends as evidence that they didn’t trust her to behave.

There was never a genuine quarrel, or even much discontent. The baby was the image of her mother, which pleased everyone; no one knows better than the Italians that they paint the angels fair.

As a matter of course Carmine was in line for free tickets whenever a play on tryout for Broadway had its final airing at the Schumann Theater; at the end of 1951, when Sophia was a year old, his turn for free tickets came. The attraction was an important play that had already received rave reviews from tryouts in Boston and Philadelphia, so everyone from New York City would be there. Sandra was ecstatic, dug out her most glamorous strapless dress, cyclamen satin that fitted like a second skin and then flared at the knees, a white mink stole to keep her warm against what was a cold winter. She pressed Carmine’s dinner suit, frilled shirt and cummerbund and bought him a gardenia for his buttonhole. Oh, how excited she had been! Like a kid going to Disneyland.

A case intruded and he couldn’t go. Looking back on it, he was glad now that he hadn’t seen her face when she found out; he had called her on the phone. Sorry, honey, I have to work tonight. But she went to the play anyway, all on her own in the cyclamen satin strapless dress and the white mink wrap. When she told him later that night, he hadn’t minded a bit. But what she didn’t tell him was that she had met Myron Mendel Mandelbaum the movie producer in the Schumann’s foyer, and that Mandelbaum had usurped Carmine’s seat, though his own was in a box much nearer to the stage.

A week later Carmine came home to find Sandra and Sophia gone, a brief note on the mantel to say that Sandra had fallen in love with Myron and was taking the train to Reno; Myron was divorced already and wanted desperately to marry her. Sophia was the icing on the wedding cake, as Myron couldn’t have children.

It came like a bolt from the blue to Carmine, who hadn’t begun to realize how unhappy his wife was. He didn’t do any of the things wronged husbands were supposed to do. He didn’t try to kidnap his daughter, beat up Myron Mendel Mandelbaum, take to the bottle, or fail to give of his best to his work. Not for want of encouragement; his outraged family would have done the first two of those things for him gladly, and couldn’t understand why he wouldn’t let them. Simply, he admitted to himself that his had been a misalliance based on profound physical attraction and nothing else. Sandra wanted glamour, glitz, gallivanting, a life he wouldn’t give her. His pay was good but not princely, and he was too in love with his job to lavish attention on his wife. In many ways, he decided, Sandra and Sophia would be better off in California. Oh, but it hurt! A hurt he mentioned to no one, even Patrick (who guessed), just buried deeper than remembrance.

Every August he went to L.A. to see Sophia, for he loved his daughter dearly. But this year’s visit had revealed to him a burgeoning facsimile of Sandra, limo’d every day to a fancy school where booze, pot, cocaine and LSD were easier to buy than candy, bored by possessions. Poor Sandra had become a cokehead on the Hollywood party circuit; it was Myron who tried to give the child a life, out of his depth though he was. Luckily Sophia shared some of her father’s inquisitiveness, was intellectually bright, and had gained a little wisdom from watching her mother’s deterioration. Between them, Carmine and Myron had spent three weeks persuading Sophia that if she stayed off the booze, pot, cocaine and LSD and worked on her education, she wouldn’t end like Sandra. Over the years Carmine had come to like Sandra’s second husband more and more; this last trip had cemented a strong bond, the cause of which was Sophia.

“You ought to get married again, Carmine,” Myron had said, “bring our little girl to some place saner than here. I’d miss her like hell, but I love her enough to know it would be better.”

But, never again, Carmine had vowed after Sandra, and was as true to that vow today as ever. For sexual solace he had Antonia, a widowed remote cousin in Lyme; she had offered him this with great candor and no love.

“We can get our rocks off without driving each other crazy,” she had said. “You don’t need the shenanigans of a Sandra, and I can’t ever replace Conway. So when you need it, or I need it, we can call each other.”

An admirable arrangement that had lasted now for six years.