Colleen McCullough - Too Many Murders

“Terrible, just terrible!” the Commissioner said, mopping his face. “We have to catch this bastard, Carmine. Anything you want, you got. Such a beautiful child!”

“I know it doesn’t really look that way,” Carmine said, sitting down, “but somehow I feel as if we’ve rattled his cage. It’s nine days since the twelve murders, and we’ve actually managed to solve some of them-Jimmy Cartwright, Dean Denbigh, Bianca Tolano-and catalogued the assassination of the three blacks as commissioned. There’s been a thirteenth death-the suicide of Bianca Tolano’s killer.”

“I think it’s impressive,” Silvestri said, composure restored. “Where to now?”

“Peter Norton, the banker who drank strychnine in his orange juice. An agonizing death.”

“So’s cyanide,” Silvestri pointed out.

“Yes, but cyanide is quick. As soon as enough of the blood’s hemoglobin is stripped of its oxygen, death ensues. Whereas, John, strychnine takes twenty, thirty minutes, depending on the dose. Norton got a huge dose, but drank only half of it. He was a dead man, but not for some time. Vomiting, purging, strong convulsions-I don’t know how much consciousness remains, but his wife and two little kids witnessed it. That’s disgusting.”

“Are you implying that the killer wanted that?”

“I don’t know. Maybe I am,” Carmine said, sounding surprised.

“If choosing a method that tortured Norton’s wife and kids was a part of the crime, it opens up new territory, Carmine,” the Commissioner said thoughtfully. “Maybe we should be looking harder at the victims’ families.”

“Every stone will be turned over again,” Carmine promised.

Mrs. Barbara Norton had had more than a week to recover from her screaming hysterics, though Carmine suspected her doctor had her on some pretty powerful tranquilizers. Her eyes were vacant, and she moved as if pushing her way through a sea of molasses.

However, she spoke logically. “It’s some nutter he refused a loan to,” she said, giving him a cup of coffee. “You have no idea, Captain! People seem to expect a bank to lend them money without any collateral at all! Most people eventually give up, but the nutters never do. I can remember at least half a dozen crazies who filled our mailbox with dog do, put caustic soda in our pool, even wee’d in our milk! Peter reported all of them to the North Holloman police, so look there for the names.”

She was fairly plump, Carmine noted, but her rotundity had a certain seductiveness for some men, and she had a pretty face-dimples, rosy cheeks, flawless skin. When her children came in, he stifled another sigh at this second sight of them: this was a fat family, the genes predisposed to obesity. Peter Norton, he remembered from the autopsy, had been very overweight in the manner of one always so: fat arms and legs, puffy hands and feet, the adiposity packed on from shoulders to hips rather than just around his middle. According to police notes taken in the neighborhood, Mrs. Norton had tried to limit the family’s food intake, but her husband would have none of it. He was always taking the kids to Friendly’s for parfaits and shakes.

“Were your friends your husband’s friends as well, Mrs. Norton?” Carmine asked.

“Oh, definitely. We did everything together. Peter liked me to have the same friends.”

“What kind of things did you do?”

“We went bowling on Tuesday nights. Thursday nights were canasta at someone’s home. Saturday nights we went out to dinner and took in a movie or a play.”

“Did you use a babysitter, ma’am?”

“Yes, always the same girl, Imelda Gonzalez. Peter picked her up and drove her home.”

“You never went out on your own?”

“Oh, no!”

“Who are your friends?”

“Grace and Chuck Simmons, Hetty and Hank Sugarman, Mary and Ernie Tripodi. Chuck’s with the Holloman National, Hank’s an accountant with a tax practice, and Ernie owns a bed and bath store. None of us girls work.”

Middle management types, thought Carmine, sipping coffee. It was flavored with cardamom, a pet hate. In his opinion coffee was coffee, never to be adulterated with alien tastes.

“Did you ever go anyplace else, Mrs. Norton?”

Her bright curls bounced in time to her nods, robotic. “Oh, sure! Charity functions, mostly, but they aren’t regular. Cornucopia functions Peter and I went to on our own-the Fourth National is owned by Cornucopia. Otherwise the eight of us went together.” Her face fell, her chin wobbled. “Of course from now on I can’t go to anything much. Our friends are real kind, but I’m a drag without Peter. He was the joker, full of tricks!”

“Things will sort themselves out, Mrs. Norton,” Carmine comforted. “You’ll make plenty of new friends.”

Especially, he thought privately, with the size of Peter Norton’s pension and insurance payouts. Beneath the dominated housewife lurked someone determined to save herself. Maybe she’d go on a luxury cruise looking for someone she could dominate? Were it not for that inescapable date, April third, he might have suspected her of putting paid to domination by a person few seemed to like. Despite the horror of his death, a certain kind of poisoner would have relished witnessing his suffering. But Mrs. Norton had not relished it. She had gone into hysterics so strong that the neighbors had heard and come running. By the time that he, Carmine, had arrived, the children were emerging from their shock, whereas Mrs. Norton had needed two medics, her doctor, and a shot of something so potent she had slept for hours.

He turned to the children, seeking some idea what kind of family theirs was. The little girl, Marlene, was aggressive and intelligent-probably not popular at school, he thought. The little boy, Tommy, apparently lived for food; when he grabbed at the cookies put out for Carmine, his mother slapped his hand away viciously, with a look on her face the child retreated from.

“You have no outside interests of your own at all?” Carmine asked.

“No, none-Tommy, leave the cookies alone! ”

He plucked it out of thin air. “Women’s liberation?”

“I should think not!” she snapped, bridling. “Of all the stupid, embarrassing things-! Do you know they actually tried to proselytize me? I don’t remember her name, but I sure sent her packing with a flea in her ear!”

“When was this?”

“I don’t remember,” said Mrs. Norton, fighting the drugs and losing. “Some function or other, a long time ago.”

“What did the woman look like?”

“That’s just it! She looked normal! Shaved her legs, wore makeup and nice clothes. For a while I was quite taken in, then she-she stood forth in all her evil panoply! I learned that at school, and it fit, Captain, it fit. When I told her what I thought of women’s libbers, she got nasty, and I got nasty right back! I must’ve frightened her-she gave up and left.”

“Was she a blonde? A brunette? A redhead?”

“I don’t remember,” said Mrs. Norton, yawning. “I’m tired.”

“I told you,” said Carmine to Abe and Corey, “this is a case full of women. Now where the hell does feminism enter into it? Because I believe it does, at least in the death of Peter Norton. Someone or something influenced our killer to punish Mrs. Norton by making her watch him die. It worked-she’s still under a lot of sedation-but she had a lucid moment when she talked of the feminist who looked ‘normal.’ I wish I knew more about the Nortons! Something is escaping me, but what it is, I have no idea. Maybe it’s not knowing for sure what kind of woman Mrs. Norton is. Like a psychiatrist inheriting a patient so doped up he can’t get to square one on a diagnosis.”