Colleen McCullough - Too Many Murders

Are you indeed? said Carmine to himself. Now why? I think I have to go back to the Cape and talk to Philomena Skeps again. She becomes more and more like the lady spider at the center of the web.

He called a little conference in his office: Abe and Corey, Delia and Patrick.

“Okay, we’re down to ten,” he said, not trying to conceal his pleasure. “We can forget the three shootings, that’s an absolute. But I’m putting them down as solved when we catch our mastermind, because they were definitely commissioned. That leaves us with six cases-Beatrice Egmont, Bianca Tolano, Peter Norton, Cathy Cartwright, Evan Pugh and Desmond Skeps. For the moment we shelve Beatrice Egmont as unsolvable. Okay, five dead people, and that’s where we begin. Everything we have we throw at the textbook rape murder of Bianca Tolano. Commissioned, yes, but after a bit of thinking I’ve realized you don’t shop for a sex killer. Money doesn’t interest them. Therefore he’s a local. Our mastermind found out about his fantasies, took him in hand and educated him. If we don’t get him, he’ll kill again, now that he’s had a taste of it. If the Ghost taught me nothing else, he taught me that sex killers can’t stop.”

“How do we know what to look for?” Patsy asked. “That was our trouble with the Ghost-anonymity. How is this any different in that respect?” He glowered. “I thought you weren’t going to call the murderer a mastermind?”

“I hate it, yes,” said Carmine patiently, “but it’s both accurate and convenient. Unless you want to go all FBI and give the guy a code name? How about Einstein or Pauling? Moriarty? No? Let’s just stick with what we’ve got. As to how this one is different, Patsy, it is because someone else-the mastermind-evicted the killer from his fantasy home, and our hermit crab isn’t comfortable yet in his new shell. Walking sideways still terrifies him, and he’s no Ghost. I have an idea where to look for him-the Ghost was fantastic training. Refresh us on Bianca, Patsy, please.”

“She was found naked,” Patsy began, “wrists and ankles tied with single-strand steel wire. She was conscious throughout, except for brief periods of asphyxiation induced by a pair of pantyhose around her neck. Burned in twenty-nine places by a cigarette, cut in seventeen places by something like a Sheetrock knife. Particular attention was paid to the breasts and pubes. Multiple rape, but no semen was found in any orifice. Death was caused by a broken bottle shoved into the vagina; she bled out. There’s a case exactly like it in a book about sexual deviance that’s well thumbed by psych students.”

“How old is the book?” Delia asked.

“Published ten years ago to an outcry. It was felt to be too accessible to thrill seekers.” He looked wry. “Not like wading through Krafft-Ebing and wondering what frottage was-dictionaries didn’t give definitions of words like that in my day. I think the author was German and the book was translated from the German. Kaiserine Germans invented the sex vocabulary.”

“Thank you, Patsy,” said Carmine firmly. “We know this guy. By that, I mean we must have seen his face several times, maybe even interviewed him. He’s undersized and unattractive, but I’m not sure of his age group.”

“We go to Cornucopia,” said Abe instantly, “and we start with Dr. Davenport’s male secretary.”

“What makes you say that?” Corey demanded, looking jealous and frustrated. Larry Pisano’s lieutenancy was never far from the forefront of his mind.

“I remember the secretary,” Abe said. “He fits.”

“When you said you weren’t sure of his age group, Carmine,” asked Delia, “did you mean very young, young, and older young?”

“No, Delia, I meant young, middle, or elderly.”

“What about his job?” she pursued, not having been there during the frantic days of the Ghost.

“With sex killers, that’s a mystery, but in this case I’d say he was more used to taking orders than giving them. Otherwise the mastermind couldn’t have brainwashed him.”

“That’s an interesting choice of verb,” Patsy said. “It’s to do with ideological conversion, I thought.”

“Brainwashing? Don’t forget the FBI is sniffing for espionage on the perimeter of this case,” Carmine said. “But seriously, I think the term can be applied to any kind of conversion process that digs deep into the psyche.”

“Especially,” said Abe, “if there’s a tendency already.”

Back they went to Cornucopia to begin with Richard Oakes, secretary to Dr. Erica Davenport, Chairman of the Board and now managing director of Cornucopia Central. She was outraged, but she couldn’t prevent Abe and Corey from subjecting the young man to an inquisition that lasted two hours. When he emerged he was in tears, shaking uncontrollably, and suffering the onset of a migraine aura that had his boss put him in an ambulance and ship him to Chubb-Holloman Hospital.

“I’ll sue you for this!” she shouted at Carmine.

“Rubbish,” he said scornfully. “He’s as nervous as a filly at a starting gate, is all. It wouldn’t matter who interrogated him for a suspected wrong, he’d react the same. Importantly for me, he’s cleared of the Tolano murder.”

“What grounds have you got for believing him guilty?” she asked, stiff with anger.

“They’re none of your business, Dr. Davenport, but I will inform you that I’ll be questioning some other men at Cornucopia, as well as in other places around Holloman, including Chubb.”

She gave a mew of frustration, and flounced into her office.

Hmm, thought Carmine. I begin to see why Wallace Grierson thinks she’ll run the Cornucopia ship aground.

As if determined to produce an opposite reaction to Richard Oakes’s, Michael Donald Sykes entered into his interrogation with glee, aplomb, and faultless good humor. He was entranced with the idea that anyone could suspect him of sexual murder, and made Abe’s and Corey’s lives a misery interrogating them.

“I believe you have fixated on me,” he said solemnly, “due to the fact that I do not have Gettysburg laid out in my basement. How can I, an American, prefer to lay out Austerlitz? And what, you ask, is Marengo, if not a recipe for chicken? Napoleon Bonaparte, sirs, as a military genius put Sherman and Grant and Lee in the shade! By blood he was an Italian, not a Frenchman, and in him the old Italian genius flowered again.”

“Shut up, Mr. Sykes,” said Corey.

“Yes, Mr. Sykes, shut up,” said Abe.

But of course he didn’t. In the end they evicted him from their commandeered office, and he skipped off very pleased with himself. Passing Carmine, he stopped.

“There’s a fellow in Accounting you should question,” he said, wreathed in smiles. “That was so refreshing! And to think that when you first appeared here a week or so ago, I was scared out of my wits. But no more, no more! Your devoted followers are gentlemen who accepted my dismissal of the Civil War generals as if they heard it every day. Very kind of them!”

“Who in Accounting?” Carmine asked sharply.

“I don’t believe I’ve ever heard his name, but you can’t mistake him, Captain. No more than five feet tall, very thin, and walks with a heavy limp,” said Mr. Sykes.

Shit! Carmine grabbed Abe with one hand and Corey with the other, hustling them to the elevator. “What floors are Cornucopia General’s accounting?” he asked.

“Nineteenth, twentieth, twenty-first,” said Corey.

Which, which, which? “Twenty-one,” he said, diving into the elevator. “We’ll work our way down.”

“Jesus!” said Abe as they emerged on the twenty-first floor. “Mrs. Highman’s carpenter!”