Sins of the Flesh (20 page)

“There’s just me,” Hank whispered, weeping the tears of sheer shock and agony. “Oh, God, it hurts! I’m just hopin’ for no pain!”

“That’s first priority, soldier. What happened?”

“I can’t! The pain! The pain!” Hank wept.

“Sure you can, soldier. It gives you something else to think about.

“I was painting, sir, nothin’ else in my mind than the black water and the shimmering lights across it—I’m nearly finished. It hurts, it hurts!” Hank lay whimpering for a moment, then continued. “And the Creature from the Black Lagoon rose out of nowhere in front of me right as Frankie went into bark mode—I was so scared I started hollering, and couldn’t stop. The thing was carrying a woman around his neck, threw her away—I’d crouched down for protection. Then there was an explosion, I was knocked all the way down like a kid by a car—
boom!
I guess it shot me, the Creature, huh?”

“He did, but you’re in a very good town for docs, thanks to the Chubb medical school. Nobel Prize winners a-go-go.”

The ambulance took less than five minutes to reach the patient, and had a physician’s associate aboard. Hank was given a shot of morphine that reduced his pain to bearable, and was taken off, siren wailing, to a waiting ER. By the time he arrived, the spinal team, complete with neurosurgeon, was assembling, the chief of the unit coming under a police escort.

East Circle had sustained other disturbances over the years since Carmine Delmonico had bought his house, but this was the loudest and most intrusive, happening at an hour when those still in town were peacefully asleep. However, the Captain’s popularity far outweighed these disadvantages, so no one complained. After all, there were
two
primary policemen on East Circle, and that held many advantages.

“Our only choice, really, is to wait until morning, and pray it doesn’t rain,” Carmine said to Fernando.

“It won’t rain, and our luck is improving,” Fernando replied, sipping his tea. “The wind is dropping to nothing.” Something occurred to him; he looked up. “Why did you whistle Frankie back?”

“He’s the beloved pet of two little boys, Fernando, and the guy had a gun he wasn’t afraid to use. Desdemona and I keep Frankie as a watchdog, and he’s brilliant. Tonight he gave me time to put on a pair of shorts, get my gun, take the safety off, and prepare for anything. Hank was the unknown factor, poor guy, As for the dog, I’ll not let him go in harm’s way.”

T
hey met at ten a.m. in Commissioner Silvestri’s aerie to discuss the stunning turn this raid on Carmine’s house had meant. Though his team was not actively involved, Silvestri had asked that Abe, Liam and Tony should attend, so the room was crowded; Gus Fennell and Paul Bachman were there, as were Fernando Vasquez and Virgil Simms from the Uniform Division. Delia had yielded her place at Hank Jones’s bed to Simonetta Marciano, who had survived her husband’s retirement as Captain of Police without any diminution in her sources of gossip. Upon hearing of Hank’s plight—
no relatives!
—she had insisted upon gathering her women friends together and taking the matter of companionship for Hank unto herself. Knowing Netty of old, Delia was sure she was just the person to manage Hank, and went back to her own world with a sigh of relief.

“First of all, how’s Hank?” Silvestri asked.

“The news is better than feared at first, sir,” Delia said. “The projectile had lost some oomph on a ricochet before it hit Hank, which was the saving of him. It shattered part of the right pelvis at a level too low to damage the spinal cord directly. The collection of smaller nerves called the cauda equina sustained damage, but the worst injury was to the right buttock. He’s in the care of neurosurgeons and plastic surgeons, and the neuro boys have already operated to remove bone fragments and reduce spinal cord swelling.”

“Will he walk again?”

“Yes, sir, he will. How well is on the lap of the gods.”

“A long period in the hospital?”

“Yes, sir. Eventually he’ll be transferred to Professor Prarahandra for extensive grafts to give the poor little chap a right cheek to sit on as well as a left.”

Silvestri heaved a huge sigh. “For which, we may be very thankful. Sounds as if it could have been worse.”

“It could have been,” Paul said grimly. “The projectile had been doctored with mercury, but the shooter bungled the job.”

“Carmine, what exactly happened?”

“Someone, identity unknown, walked onto my property about one in the morning carrying the body of Sister Mary Therese, who went missing yesterday. I think he intended to leave her on my property—inside the house, not outside. Hank Jones was on my sun deck painting a nightscape, as he called it—he’d been there every night from midnight on for a week. According to the little he was fit to tell me, the guy rose up in front of him and gave him a helluva fright. Frankie started barking, Hank started screaming, the intruder literally threw Sister Mary Therese’s body at Hank, then fired a single shot. I came out the back door in time to see a vague shape drop off the deck and run. I fired four rounds after him, then ceased for fear I’d hit a neighbor coming outside to investigate.”

“Did you hear a car? A bike?” Abe asked.

“No, nothing,” Carmine said.

“Gus, what can you tell us about Sister Mary Therese?”

“She was a well nourished, healthy female with no reason I could see why she shouldn’t have lived to be ninety,” Gus said with a slight tremor in his voice. “At time of examination, she had been dead about thirty-two hours. Cause of death was manual strangulation—very brutal and powerful. There are no signs of trauma to suggest he clipped her on the chin or otherwise tried to knock her out, just extensive contusions around the anterior aspect of the neck. From carotid to carotid. I haven’t done the full autopsy yet, this is from preliminary examination.”

“Paul?” Silvestri asked the head of Forensics.

In answer, the bony-faced technician put a folded piece of ordinary writing paper on the table, then inserted two slides into the vacant wings of a wall projector. “This note was found in a plastic bag, folded exactly as it is, and pinned to Sister Mary Therese’s nightgown. There were no fingerprints, marks or stains that could help elucidate the note’s nature or presence. It said
that
”—and up onto the wall sprang a half-intelligible jumble of mirror-writing. “
This
is the translation.”

“That’s the weirdest note I’ve ever seen in a long, varied career,” the Commissioner said. “The guy’s cuckoo!”

“Or else he’s trying to make us think he’s cuckoo,” said Abe. “That note is
constructed
, but it’s also artificial.”

“Written in two unequal halves,” Carmine added. “He takes fine care to tell us that Dr. Wainfleet has nothing to do with the Shadow Women, and that there will be no more Shadow Women. Then he tacks on three lines of not particularly clever nonsense.”

Delia looked a little sick. “You don’t think he means to switch to
nuns?
” she asked.

Silvestri answered her. “I doubt it, niece. Carmine?”

“The poor little nun was a one-off, Delia. The guy was looking for a certain type of woman,” Carmine said, more for John Silvestri’s sake than for Delia’s. “As I see it, his intention was to disgrace me by implying that I was having a love affair with a nun. Either her dead body was to be found on my sun deck, or in my bed—the latter, I suspect. Of course he also intended to kill me, as if, having killed my lover, I was overcome by remorse and ate my gun. The headlines would have been juicy.”

“No one would believe it,” Delia said stoutly.

“Luckily it’s not an issue,” the Commissioner said. “Hank must have come as a big shock.”

“Not to mention a pit bull dog, sir,” Carmine said.

“What exactly
was
his motive?” Fernando Vasquez asked.

“To deflect the whole PD away from the Shadow Women, is my guess,” Carmine said. “It was a clumsy effort, bunches of mistakes.”

“Like wiring Sister’s wrists and ankles together,” Donny said. “Still, he wasn’t expecting a reception committee.”

“I agree that the Shadow Women are at least a large part of the reason for the note,” Delia said. “In fact, they may be the entire reason for the note. But if he’s telling the true story, then he’s the Shadow Woman killer, and Jess Wainfleet can’t be implicated.”

“One thing for sure!” Liam Connor said suddenly.

“What’s that?” the Commissioner asked.

“The guy has a colossal ego. I don’t mean the usual big one killers have, I mean an ego way up in the stratosphere. This guy is in an ego class all on his own.”

“Invincible, inviolable, invulnerable and invisible,” said Silvestri. “He’s running rings around us.”

Determined to get her point about Jess Wainfleet across before these bulldogs of men discarded it, Delia ploughed on. “Well, whatever or whoever, Jess Wainfleet is
not
a part of it!”

“You’re correct, Deels,” Carmine said. “Paul, what’s the chance that he’s left you anything remotely like hard evidence? It’s possible he made mistakes after he found Hank on my deck.”

“His gloves never came off, that’s for sure, but I can tell you what you’ve probably already deduced for yourself—he’s an extremely strong bastard. He managed to pitch a hundred and twenty pounds of dead weight ten feet effortlessly. We found his cartridge casing, correct for Marty Fane’s .45 semi-automatic. An honest opinion? He’s better with his hands than he is with a gun. His problem was Sister Mary Therese,” Paul said. “He didn’t take a bullet from your Beretta, Carmine. We found his escape route, but no blood anywhere.”

“Did anyone find signs of a vehicle?” Carmine asked.

Virgil Simms answered. “Nothing, Captain. He stepped on to sealed road at the top of your slope, and his trail vanished. My guess is that he left his transport under the I-95 flyover on the north side of the Pequot. With the all-night truck traffic, no one would have heard him.”

“So no extra points for concluding that’s what this Samson did,” said Carmine, and looked at the Commissioner. “That’s it, sir.”

“Thank you, gentlemen. Most illuminating! Dismissed,” Silvestri said. “Carmine, a word before you go.”

Carmine stood as the rest filed out, faces grimly set and downcast, then sat opposite his boss. “I feel awful, John.”

“No worse than I. That poor young man! To think I picked him for his talent, only to see this happen.”

“He’ll walk again. It’s the months and months of plastic surgery—muscle grafts, skin grafts.”

John Silvestri pulled out his handkerchief and wiped at his eyes. “A tragedy!”

“But he won’t want to retire, John. His is a sedentary job, and we should get him back to it as soon as possible,” said Carmine, pretending not to see the handkerchief.

It helped; the Commissioner stiffened. “I’m hounding the insurance company already. The worst is, he has no family.”

Carmine rose. “He has us, John. Whether he likes it or not, he also has Netty Marciano and her troops.”

Despite the presence of the artist on Captain Delmonico’s deck, at first Walter was convinced that his foray was a big success. He did much work around his outside door, making sure the forest was unmarked. Now he would lie low for some days at least, while the Holloman PD combed the entire county looking for a killer who was already, did they know it, a lifer prisoner behind bars. Though he didn’t see it as a joke, Walter did sense the irony in his situation, and felt a certain glee whenever he thought of his incarceration. If only they knew they had their killer in custody the whole time!

Of course he expected to see his exploits emblazoned in the
Holloman Post
at least, but not a word about them appeared in print or over the radio or television news; apparently the captain had the power to suppress publicity. Then, late in the afternoon, Delia Carstairs visited Jess at HI, and Walter found himself privy to what had gone on among the cops after all—what a gift!

“I know Chubb Neurosurgery is one of the best units in the world, Jess,” said Delia, “but I also know you are the world’s very best when it comes to brain anatomy. Is there anything you can tell Chubb neurosurgeons that might help poor young Hank? It’s appalling to think he may never walk properly again, if at all.”

Walter sat a little back from the table, the gentle and tractable soldier Jess had made out of a raving lunatic, present to refill their coffee mugs, produce files or articles, and put them away again. It did not occur to Delia to ask Jess to send him away; she knew how much Jess meant to Walter, and how he fretted when he was banned from conversations he couldn’t follow anyway.

“You’re talking about a lower motor neurone world, Delia, and that’s one I’m no expert in,” Jess said with real regret. “Sam Kaminowitz is the best there is, and Hank’s lucky he’s under Sam in Holloman Hospital. They’re performing relative miracles these days, in no small measure due to that horrible war in Vietnam, where soldiers get their asses shot off every day by bigger projectiles than .45 bullets. Sam perfected his skills on the first Vietnam victims. NASA research helps too—science is a great circle that can often benefit from some stupid political mistakes. Nothing is ever totally bad, including war and space races. It’s amazing to see machines designed to kill eventually yield machines designed to heal, but it happens.”

“I see that. You’re telling me to be optimistic.”

“For next year, rather than tomorrow. Remembering that the most stupid of all politicians are those who cut science research in the budget. But that’s a personal soap box, and not what you came to hear. What happened last night?”

Delia told her story crisply and without embroidery; at one moment she glanced toward Walter, to see those beautiful eyes fixed on a world she couldn’t see—was he even listening? No, she decided, he wasn’t. “We think he may ride a Harley-Davidson or some other grunty big motorcycle,” Delia concluded.

“Isn’t there a police registration list?” Jess asked.

“They’re registered with Motor Vehicles in County Services subsidiary to Connecticut registration, and we’ve gone through them with a fine-toothed comb,” Delia said. “Nothing’s come out of it except several stolen bikes and a dozen stolen cars, none of which have ever come to light. It’s a two-edged sword.”

“I’m sorry I can’t help you. Ari Melos rides a Harley.”

“Long discounted.” Delia laughed, albeit wryly. “At least your security is a model to everyone.”

“It had better be, or we’re in trouble.”

“Thank you for your precious time, Jess, and thank you for the delicious coffee, Walter,” Delia said as she got up. She gave Jess a special smile. “And, most of all, Jess, thank you for the information. A terrific help.”

Jess saw her visitor out, then returned to her desk.

“What was that all about?” Walter asked.

“A young man, a very gifted artist, was shot in the back last night. He’s still alive, but his legs may be paralyzed—won’t work, I mean. Sometimes maiming is as bad as killing.”

His head went to one side as Walter considered this statement. “No, it isn’t ever as bad. When someone is killed, the lights are switched off for good. It’s eternal night.”

“But you don’t remember killing!” Jess cried, startled.

“I must, because I do.”

And what was she to make of that?

It was almost six o’clock in the evening before Carmine finally walked into Hank Jones’s area of Intensive Care. The curtains around his bed were pulled back and he was lying, eyes closed, in a Gulliveresque web of cords, tubes, wires and thin cables, with machines indicating everything from an EEG to an EKG, plus two waste bags and two bags of liquid nutriments dripping steadily. His eyes opened suddenly to lock on Carmine; a huge grin appeared.

“If it ain’t The Man!” Hank said in a strong voice.

“It’s just a man,” Carmine modified, putting a chair in a spot where he judged it wouldn’t be in the way. “See what happens when people engage in nocturnal activities? The night time is
not
the right time, my man. How’s tricks?”

“I got pins and needles in both feet,” Hank said proudly.

“Hot damn! Elvis is entering the building, and the crowd goes wild. You got steel balls, man.”