Colleen McCullough - Too Many Murders

According to Larry, who had taken on Dee-Dee’s case personally, Marty Fane was devastated at his loss. No matter how intensively Larry questioned the denizens of that seedy world in which Marty and Dee-Dee lived, he could find no evidence of a falling out between pimp and prostitute. The two had been seen giggling together as they took a break somewhere around two a.m. Which made Marty the last person known to have seen her alive. Her beat lay behind the Holloman City Hall, where the neighborhood was far less salubrious than in front. It was an area of parking lots, workshops, warehouses and blue-collar offices, deserted after dark save for those who cruised looking for a little sexual action, like Chubb students, commercial travelers and night workers.

Bitter at her murder, even grief-stricken, Marty Fane was quick to yield up the names of her regular johns insofar as he knew them, which had led to some embarrassing interviews with men foolish enough to deny their connection. The young Chubbers tended to be rather thrilled until it dawned upon them that they were suspects in a murder, whereupon those with powerful daddies suddenly demanded to see their lawyers and tried to say nothing. Once the lawyers were persuaded that their clients were more a source of information than suspects, they coöperated, but to no avail. Dee-Dee’s death remained shrouded in mystery.

Zilch, said Carmine to himself, adding the prostitute to the three shootings. Whoever had done it was as cool as Dr. Pauline Denbigh, though he doubted it was her. Not an out-of-stater either; the killer knew exactly where to find the hapless victim. Maybe someone to whom she’d given one of her fabled blow jobs in the past? Weep your heart out, Marty Fane! It will be a very long time before you find another Dee-Dee Hall.

Cathy Cartwright, killed before her handicapped child made a mess in his diaper. Like Desmond Skeps, yet unlike him. The drugged glass of bourbon-sad, to think that the poor woman had to go to bed in order to have a civilized drink. When she felt the effects of the chloral hydrate she probably didn’t try to fight them, deeming herself bone-weary and looking forward to a few hours of peaceful sleep, wondering when Jimmy would wake her demanding to be changed. Patrick thought the pentobarbital had been injected immediately; she was perhaps the first of the night’s victims to die, very quickly and without any pain. The vital centers in her brain stem had gently ceased to function, and she slipped away. What about her had prompted mercy? It said the killer felt kindly about her, regretted the necessity.

Carmine, Carmine! He sat up straight, conscious of the sweat trickling down the back of his neck, running between his shoulder blades. You’re thinking as if there’s only one murderer! But there can’t be. Too many crimes in too many different places at close enough to the same time. Unless some of the murders were commissioned? But that calls for huge amounts of money, and a mastermind. Look at it dispassionately, and you’ll see how wrong you are… About the only reason for such an orgy of killing at more or less the same moment is a spirit of mischief, which is ridiculous. Manifestly ridiculous! Think of the risks! Anyone intelligent enough to hatch a plot like that would be too intelligent to contemplate its hatching.

Confess it, Carmine, the idea only entered your mind after you learned that Desmond Skeps was among the dead. How brilliant, to conceal the importance of his murder under a landslide of other murders! An idea that might have held water, had there been fewer murders. But ten others? Jimmy Cartwright was a red herring, but the rest looked planned. Four other murders would have been ideal, and feasible. Ten others? Insanity!

Unless… unless, Carmine, all those people had to die. Unless between March twenty-ninth and April third something happened that forced this particular solution. Only, what? Oh, Carmine, Carmine, don’t complicate your job so crazily! And don’t you dare voice this suspicion to anyone, even John Silvestri.

Aware that the worm, having been born, was wriggling inside his brain and lighting every hidden, darkened cranny, Carmine put Cathy Cartwright on the “seen” pile and took Corey’s file on Bianca Tolano.

Bianca, twenty-two years old, had come to Holloman from Pennsylvania ten months ago. A graduate in economics from Penn State, she wanted to get an MBA at Harvard Business School, Corey had deduced from her correspondence and other papers in her apartment. But at present she lacked the money, so she had secured a job as an executive assistant at Carrington Machine Parts, one of the many Cornucopia companies dotted around Holloman. It paid well and she was a success at it; her savings account with the Holloman National Bank was growing fast. The top floor of a three-family house on Sycamore Street, her apartment was less than a block from his wife’s old apartment, Carmine discovered with a shudder. Back came the memories of Desdemona’s ordeal there, and the garotted cop supposed to be guarding her front door. A respectable neighborhood. Then Desdemona. And now this.

Her landlord had noticed her open front door, called out, and, receiving no reply, entered to find her naked body on the living room floor. According to Patsy, she had been tortured, including with a pair of pantyhose tightened and loosened around her neck a number of times; she had been burned with a cigarette, cut with scissors, pinched with cruelly wielded tweezers, and killed with a broken bottle rammed into her vagina. Apart from the temporary asphyxiations, she was conscious throughout; there were no drugs in her bloodstream.

Interviews with her colleagues had revealed that she kept to herself but was not shy. Her relationship with her boss, James Dorley, was pleasant and friendly in a professional way. As she was attractive, she had had offers of dinner or a movie, and had accepted several without any romantic consequences. The men were at pains to explain that Bianca had proven aloof, didn’t offer a guy any encouragement. Her landlord, an inquisitive old man, said he’d swear on a stack of Bibles that she hadn’t had any male visitors. Quiet, that was Miss Tolano. The women she worked with gave Corey no leads either. She’d participate in a coffee klatch, do her share of giggling, but gave the other girls the impression that nothing was going to come between Bianca and that MBA from Harvard. They did tell Corey that her home in Scranton had not been a happy one, that she didn’t keep in touch with her family, and was very glad to be somewhere else. Did she ever go out? asked Corey. Sometimes, the women answered, usually because Mr. Dorley gave her tickets to the theater or to events he couldn’t manage to attend. The only one she didn’t take him up on was a charity ball-she didn’t have a stylish enough dress, she said.

Another big fat zero, thought Carmine, adding Bianca Tolano to the “seen” pile. If Corey hoped Bianca Tolano would make him shine for the selection panel, he was wrong. His case was as bare as Abe’s.

Abe had done his best with Beatrice Egmont: no stone was unturned, from the trash collectors to the sons to the neighbors. What stood up high above the level plain of her existence was her personality; everyone who knew Beatrice Egmont loved her. She didn’t intrude herself into other people’s lives or doings, but she was always there with some appropriate gesture, suggestion, gift. Nor did she live the life of a recluse just because she had been a widow for many years; she was invited to all the local parties, loved busing into Manhattan for dinner and a show, bought Girl Scout cookies and raffle tickets, was never missing from the guest list of Holloman charity affairs. She knew the Mayor well, which had led to enquiries from City Hall about her murder. As far as Abe could ascertain, nothing was missing from her house; her Ming vases and Flemish tapestries were untouched, and her Baume & Mercier watch was still on her wrist when she was found. She had not been drugged prior to retiring for the night, but her heart had given out too quickly for her to struggle. “I can find no reason whatsoever for her death,” wrote Abe.