Colleen McCullough - Too Many Murders

Patrick took over almost in the same breath. “A toddler, about eighteen months old, dressed in top quality Dr. Denton’s and a super-thick diaper of the kind certain institutions sell to families with handicapped kids. The body showed the stigmata of Down’s syndrome. Cause of death-I prioritized the child-wasn’t drowning, but asphyxiation due to smothering with a pillow. There were contusions indicating that the child had resisted. Death occurred about four a.m.”

Carmine resumed. “The identity of the victim was a mystery. No one had lodged a Missing Persons for a Down’s syndrome child. Corey?”

“At eight-oh-two we got a call from a Mr. Gerald Cartwright, whose house fronts onto the Pequot River near the Chubb Rowing Club,” said Corey, striving mightily to keep his voice dispassionate and level. “He had just returned from an overnight trip out of state to find his wife dead in their bed and their youngest son, a Down’s syndrome, missing from the house.” He stopped.

Back to Carmine. “By this time several other things had happened. A prostitute we all know well-Dee-Dee Hall-was lying in an alley behind City Hall with her throat cut from ear to ear. That call came in four minutes before seven a.m., and was followed at seven-twelve by a call from the residence of Mr. Peter Norton, who died after drinking a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice. So I left Abe to deal with Dee-Dee’s murder, Corey on the Cartwright affair, and went myself to the Norton house. I found the victim’s wife and two children-a girl aged eight and a boy aged five-basket cases, especially the wife, who behaved like she was demented. What details I got were from the little girl, who swore it was the orange juice. The glass was on the breakfast table, about half drunk. The wife squeezed it every morning, then went upstairs to wake and dress the kids, during which time-about ten minutes-the glass sat unobserved and unattended on the table. So there was a window of opportunity for an outsider to add something to the juice.”

“I have the remainder of the juice and the glass,” Patsy said, one hand propping his chin; he looked tired. “Though I don’t have any analytical results back yet, my guess is that Mr. Norton was poisoned by a large dose of strychnine.” He grimaced. “Not a pleasant way to go.”

“While I was at the Nortons’,” Carmine went on, “I was called to a rape and murder out on Sycamore. I sent Corey. Mrs. Norton needed a woman cop, and we’re short on those. Report, Corey?”

“The body was discovered by the girl’s landlord,” said Corey, managing his voice better. “Her name is Bianca Tolano. She was on the floor, naked, hands bound behind her back. She’d been tortured, and there was a pair of pantyhose around her neck. But I don’t think she died of strangulation, Carmine. I think she died from a broken bottle up the vagina.”

“Quite right, Cor,” said Patsy. “Autopsy is still pending, but I’ve made a preliminary examination. The pantyhose was an on-again, off-again form of torture.”

“Jesus!” cried Silvestri. “Are we under siege?”

“It sure felt like it yesterday, sir,” said Carmine. “I was still trying to get information out of Mrs. Norton when the call came about the shooting of a black cleaning woman and two black high school students-not gang related, according to the cop who phoned them in. They happened on his beat. I passed them to Larry here. Larry?”

A medium-brown man who had had an undistinguished but quite satisfactory career, Larry Pisano wiggled his brows ruefully. “Well, Carmine, it may have sounded ordinary enough, but believe me, it’s not. Ludovica Bereson is a cleaning woman-she does five houses between Mondays and Fridays. She’s well liked by her employers, doesn’t shirk, never gives cause for complaint. Likes a good joke and something hot for her lunch. Her employers didn’t mind the lunch because she was a good cook and always left enough for them to eat for dinner. She was shot in the head with a small-bore gun, and died instantly. No one saw it, but-and this is more interesting-no one heard it either. Cedric Ballantine was sixteen years old, a good student in line for a football scholarship to a top college. He works hard, has never been in trouble. He was shot in the back of the head by a medium-bore gun. Morris Brown was eighteen years old, an A student, no record of trouble. He was shot in the chest by a big old mother of a gun-a.45 or something like. No one saw or heard the boys gunned down either. All three victims had powder residue around the wounds, so they were shot at close range. Same beat cop, yeah, but Cedric and Morris occurred at opposite ends of his territory, and Ludovica in the middle. I had Morty and Liam hunt for casings, but nada -and not because they missed them! I tell you, Carmine, it was one helluva smooth operation! And the victims? Three totally harmless black people!”

“I doubt I’ll get to them today,” said Patrick with a sigh. “The poison cases take precedence.”

“Poison cases? ” Silvestri asked, eyes widening. “In the plural?”

“Oh, yes,” said Carmine, nodding. “Mrs. Cathy Cartwright, the mother of the Down’s syndrome child, didn’t commit suicide. She was killed with an injection of something, and Patsy says she couldn’t have maneuvered a needle herself into the vein that was used. Then we have Peter Norton, who ingested strychnine. And Dean John Kirkbride Denbigh, of Dante College at Chubb, who drank a lethal dose of potassium cyanide in his jasmine tea. Not to mention el supremo of Cornucopia, Desmond Skeps.”

The Commissioner was gaping. “Sweet Jesus! Skeps? Desmond Skeps is dead?”

“Oh, yes. And don’t think it didn’t occur to me that all the other murders are simply a way of making Skeps’s death look less like the object of the exercise,” said Carmine, then scowled. “Had there been fewer, I might have inclined that way too, but not this many. Whatever way you look at it, twelve murders in one day are too many murders by far for a little city like Holloman.”

“Let’s see,” said Silvestri, using his fingers. “The baby. The baby’s mother. The strychnine-in-the-orange-juice guy. The rape murder. The prostitute-poor old Dee-Dee! She’s been on the streets since I was a boy, it seems… Three blacks, shot. The Dean of Dante College with cyanide. The head honcho of Cornucopia… That’s ten altogether. Who else, for pity’s sake?”

“A seventy-one-year-old widow in very comfortable circumstances who lives on two acres just outside of town. She was discovered by her cleaning woman-no connection to the dead one-in a mussed-up bed with a pillow still over her face. And last, a Chubb pre-med sophomore who was blackmailing someone he called Motor Mouth,” Carmine sighed, looked frustrated. “Four poisonings, a sex crime, three shootings, a whore’s violent end, two pillow suffocations, and a bear trap.”

“A bear trap?”

Carmine was just concluding his description of the murder of Evan Pugh when the coffee cart arrived, a special one for the Commissioner that held fresh Danish and raisin bagels from Silberstein’s as well as distinctly better coffee. Everyone rose thankfully and stretched before descending on the cart like locusts targeting a lush green field after a season of burned stubble. Never having forgotten President Mawson MacIntosh’s advice given at a Parson board meeting, Carmine chose an apple Danish. Yes, still delicious!

Carmine took Silvestri to one side as soon as he could.

“John,” he began, voice low, “the press are going to wallow in this. How can we keep them off my back?”

“I’m not sure yet,” Silvestri said in equally low tones. “I figure we’ve still got a few hours before I have to feed them something. I have a couple of ideas, but I want some time before I decide my best line of attack.”