Colleen McCullough - Too Many Murders

The path here was sandy, and, true of many big people, Desdemona was light on her feet. Even after she and Julian sat, she made no sound, while he, a quiet child by nature, absorbed this new, wonderful experience. He will be a man of few words, she thought.

Perhaps two minutes went by before Desdemona realized that there was someone in the boat shed, moving things around; the water slapped and sloshed suddenly, as if greatly disturbed. As she turned her head to look, the door opened and a man came out. He was clad in woodsy camouflage and had pulled what she called a balaclava over his head, concealing all save his eyes and mouth under its khaki wool. In his right hand he held an automatic pistol, his demeanor that of someone who didn’t expect to be discovered, but was prepared.

With the baby, she would never make it up the hill, that was her immediate reaction. Even as she saw him, he saw her, and the gun came up. Sure of her, he took his time; he meant to get her with his first shot. Her wide blue eyes sought the apertures in the balaclava, gaze pleading for her child; she even extended the baby a little toward him, as if to show him the enormity of the crime he was about to commit. The gesture didn’t deflect him from his purpose, but moving the baby had spoiled his aim. He leveled the weapon again, going now for a head shot. That told the policeman’s wife all she needed to know: the man was an expert shot, he wouldn’t miss.

In the same instant Desdemona slapped one big hand over Julian’s mouth and nose, and dived for the water twenty feet away in a vast double leap. She hit it holding the baby to one side, her big feet using the bank to push off before she dived again as deeply as she dared given the tidal slope. Her mind was racing-where to go? Julian was hugged against her now, but fighting her more strongly than she had expected; he couldn’t breathe, but he was determined to.

The dive had taken her sideways in the opposite direction from the jetty, and she came up where salt-loving bushes grew thickly between the path and the water. When her hand released Julian’s face he sucked in a lungful of air preparing to bellow, but she clamped her hand down again as she sucked in her own air, and dived once more.

The water was freezing. She knew she didn’t have much time before it slowed her down too much to resurface, but Julian was her baby, hers and Carmine’s, and she wasn’t about to let him die. Icy water or not, she had to get off their property and onto the Silberfeins’. These neighbors had built on a narrow lot too near the water, the old fogeys said. For Desdemona, salvation.

By her fifth dive Julian was getting the hang of it, or at least that was what his mother thought; he would suck in the air, then push himself against her body without trying to fight her. But seven dives were as many as she could manage. If her enemy was waiting on the shore, she was done. She put the baby down on dry bank and crawled up beside him, exhausted. If the tide had not been in, the exposed bank would have been far wider, barnacled, slippery. No shot came. She hugged Julian to her again and dragged herself up the Silberfeins’ yard, calling for help. Over, it was over!

Once he had assured himself that his wife and son were safe and relatively unscathed, Carmine banished the awful helplessness, the unmanning knowledge that Desdemona had had to save herself. Shock and horror insisted that he should have been there to defend her and Julian, but a wealth of experience and sheer common sense said that would be impossible nine times out of every ten. This was not the first time Desdemona had had to save herself; what he prayed was that it would be the last. Inside himself he would shake for days, weep the wakeful nights away, but that Carmine was not the Carmine he could show either to his world or to his wife. It was not a machismo issue; it was his heritage, his nature and his duty. Maybe, he thought, I have been blessed. I have been split open to the very firmament of my being by the knowledge that today I nearly lost my family. At last I realize exactly what they mean to me. Literally everything.

His mother was in worse shape than Desdemona and Julian; she blamed herself for making them go walking. The house was milling with sisters, aunts and female cousins, so he turned her over to them and Doc Santini. Only time and a lot of arguments would eventually see her mend. Julian had come through his ordeal with his psyche apparently unscarred; that, at least, was what Doc Santini thought after the baby, his stomach full, went to sleep in his crib looking and acting not a scrap differently than always. Warm from a bath and wrapped in a thick robe, Desdemona seated herself in an easy chair beside Julian’s crib and refused to budge.

Later, thought Carmine, walking down the same path to the jetty. Right now she’s hardly aware of me, and I’m not intruding my police presence between her and the sight of Julian.

Patrick and his team were outside the boat shed, talking to Abe and Corey. Near them on a fairly flat piece of ground was a canvas enclosure.

Erica Davenport’s twisted body had been pulled out of the water and lay inside the enclosure. The slope was too steep for a gurney; she would have to be stretchered up to the road.

“Her legs and arms were broken a considerable time before she died,” Patrick said to Carmine, “and each in two places-tib-fib and femur for the legs, ulna-radius and humerus for the arms. Death was due to strangulation by what I guess was thin rope.”

“Different again,” Carmine said.

“How are the folks?” Patsy asked.

“Unharmed, according to Doc Santini. Mom’s the basket case. She blames herself.”

“You have a wife in a billion.”

“I know it. I’ll be in to Cedar Street soon.”

“We can manage,” Abe said.

“That’s not an issue, it never would be. The fact is that I’m in the way here-my home has been taken over by two dozen women, all likely to tear Holloman apart if we don’t find who tried to kill a woman holding a baby,” Carmine said, meaning it. “I feel the same way myself. First my daughter, now my wife and son. We must be closer to the fucker than we know.”

The entire police segment of County Services was boiling; as Carmine came in, cops clustered around him, offering to do anything they could. Getting through the crush took time, but it gladdened his heart too. Despite the empty pit that yawned within him, he suddenly knew that the mastermind’s days were numbered. The man had lost his cool, gotten too arrogant. Of course he hadn’t planned on killing Desdemona and the baby, but he had decided to send Carmine a warning by stranding Erica Davenport under the water of his boat shed. In broad daylight! Something had happened at the Maxwell banquet, and for four months all had seemed well. Then Evan Pugh sent a blackmailing letter, and within four days every witness of the something was dead. So around about March twenty-ninth another something had happened-something that the killer was afraid would expose him for all the world to see.

“We need a living witness,” he said to Abe and Corey when he made it in to his office.

“To what went on at Peter Norton’s table?” Corey asked.

“Yes, but we also need a living witness to whatever incident or event triggered Evan Pugh’s blackmail attempt. I think Erica Davenport knew, and now she’s dead. I could kick myself for not talking Myron out of flying home! When I saw her, I realized that she was laboring under some burden she couldn’t keep on carrying, and I wished for Myron. If he’d been here, it might have come out.” Carmine passed a hand across his face. “Now I have to tell him she’s dead.”

“We’ll get out of your way,” said Abe.