Colleen McCullough - Too Many Murders

“No one knows that for sure. Look at him, Desdemona! Our son is peacefully asleep. Has he woken in distress? Thrashed around in his crib?”

“No,” she said.

“I’m not worried about him-half of him is me,” Carmine said with a smile. “You’re doing the English thing, bottling it all up, using logic to repress it. You wouldn’t be human if you didn’t carry some scars out of this, and the most prominent will be fear that it might happen again. My mother-who blames herself terribly, I should tell you-will certainly be a basket case for months. If you really want that little brother or sister for Julian, you can’t let today rule your life. But not by doing mental gymnastics, my lovely lady. Just by keeping busy and enjoying what you’ve got-what we’ve got. You can’t let that bastard ruin us, ruin our family. Stop thinking so much about how to forget it. Time will do that for you, it always does.” He played his trump card. “After all, Desdemona, you came out on top! Nothing worse than a freezing swim happened to you and Julian. You’re a heroine, just like that vaulting exercise on the outside of the Nutmeg building. Today should reinforce your confidence in yourself, not destroy it.”

Finally she smiled and turned her gaze from son to husband. “Yes, I do see that.” She unwound, shivering. “Oh, but I was terrified! For what seemed an eternity I didn’t know how I could get away, then I looked at the water- really looked-and saw that the tide was right in. It’s a steep slope underwater there, I knew it was deep enough for me to disappear. Once I had my plan, I was all right. Poor little Julian!” Her eyes filled with wonder. “Oh, Carmine, do you realize that on both occasions I would have died if I weren’t so big? When I did all that vaulting on the Nutmeg, I was fit from lots of hiking, but today has made me realize that I need to get my fitness back. I’ve been lazy for over twelve months, and it showed today. It’s lucky the man gave up, because I was done when I crawled out. If Sam hadn’t been in his garden, we might have died.”

“Hiking is no longer an option,” he said, pulling her into his chair and holding her across his knees. “How about joining a gym? One of these new fitness clubs?”

“No, I’ll exercise in my own home, thank you very much. I know it’s silly, but I want to keep Julian with me,” she said.

“As long as you don’t smother him when he gets a bit older. Overprotective mothers don’t do their children any service,” Carmine said.

“I promise I won’t smother him later. Mind you, I probably couldn’t,” she said. “Half of him is you. And thank you for your kindness, dear heart. I feel much better. What else do you need to know?”

“More about the man’s appearance.”

“His face was hidden by a khaki balaclava.”

“A what?”

“A balaclava. A knitted thing that’s pulled over the head and has two holes for the eyes and one hole for the mouth. I never got very close to him-I was on the seat, and he came out of the little door on the side of the boat shed. What’s that, forty or fifty feet? I could see the flash of his eyes, but not their color or shape, and his brows were covered. He wore gloves.”

“A ski mask,” said Carmine.

“Yes, exactly! He was wearing camouflage-khaki, green, olive, dark green in patches like a Frisian cow-a closed jacket and rather baggy trousers stuffed into army boots. While I’ve been sitting watching Julian, I realized that his garb meant he’d come along the shore. He would have been hard to see if he was among the bushes.”

“How quickly did you see the gun?”

“At once. He was vigilant but quite relaxed, but the moment he saw me he lifted the gun. One thing I know, Carmine. He was an expert marksman. When I spoiled his aim by moving, he chose to aim for my head. At that distance and with a light weapon, he couldn’t afford to miss. You see?” she asked proudly. “I’m married to a policeman, I know the ropes.”

“He must have been watching our house for long enough to think he knew our movements. That goddamn telescope in Skeps’s penthouse! It was focused on the East Holloman shore. After I found it, it disappeared. But someone kept right on using it.” Carmine hugged her, kissed her face. “I thought it was just a prurient interest-and it may have been, for Skeps. But someone else had a more practical use for a telescope.”

“And whoever it was,” she said excitedly, “would never have seen anyone in our front garden! I’d been too pregnant for the slope, then I had Julian, and it was winter. Today was my first trip down to the water’s edge in yonks and yonks!” Suddenly she began to tremble. “Oh, Carmine, what if Julian had still been strapped into his stroller? We would have died!”

He rocked her back and forth; he’d already been in this place himself. “Julian wasn’t, Desdemona! He was sitting on your knee. I guess that means that somebody up there likes you.”

A good howl and a fit of the shakes helped get the shock out of her system. By the time it passed, she was beginning to return to the ordinary world.

“I’ve got nothing for your dinner!” she said.

“I brought pizza.”

“Sophia! How could I forget Sophia?”

“Patsy’s taking her to JFK. Myron wants her.”

Whereupon Julian woke, hungry but otherwise himself.

Carmine sat and watched his wife feed his son, battling to banish the demons. The trouble, he thought, was that Desdemona mistook her importance in his police scheme of things. Holloman was small enough for his wife to have her own presence, and she drew enmity to herself like a magnet drew iron filings. It was her size, the dignity that went with it, her air of invulnerability. If his enemies hated him, they also hated her, but in her own right. Desdemona was not a princess: she was sovereign.

The death of Erica Davenport was the epicenter of a human earthquake; it shook people and their constructions to their foundations, from the chief executives of Cornucopia, through Carmine Delmonico and his family, all the way to the FBI.

“But she’s Ulysses!” Ted Kelly insisted, seeking out Carmine in his office at County Services. “We’ve known that for two years!”

“Then why didn’t you arrest her?”

“Evidence! It’s called evidence? No matter where we went, no matter what we unearthed, we could never find a shred of evidence against her that would stand up in court. If we’d tried her, she would have walked, and in a blaze of publicity that would have harmed our image as much as it enhanced hers.”

“That’s because she wasn’t Ulysses,” Carmine said. “I have actually heard of evidence, Ted, and it wasn’t there for the simple reason that Erica Davenport wasn’t Ulysses. I think she knew who Ulysses is, but that’s a far cry from being him. And you know what, Special Agent Kelly? I don’t like your attitude any more today than I did when I put your big ass on the ground. You’re as thick as two planks.”

“She was Ulysses, I tell you!” Kelly smacked his fists on his thighs, beat them up and down in frustration. “We’d just finished planning the neatest sting operation in espionage history-she couldn’t have resisted the bait, she’d have gone to her drop and we’d have been waiting. Now- Fuck! ”

“You found out where her drop is?” Carmine asked, looking astonished and ingenuous.

“This one,” Special Agent Kelly said in goaded tones, then embarked on a tutorial. “Spies have a list of drop sites, they never use the same one twice. Their list is coded and they work through it. They have signals to alert their contact that something is going to be dropped, usually in a deserted spot like woods or an abandoned factory-”