Too Many Murders

by Colleen McCullough

  “Open it, Mr. Smith,” Carmine said.

  Smith obeyed, smiling sourly; he wasn’t worried.

  It held $10,000 in cash, some securities and shares, and three locks of flaxen hair, two tied with blue ribbon, one pink.

  “My children’s hair,” Smith said. “Have you done that?”

  “No,” Carmine said. “Why keep them in here?”

  “In case of burglary or simple vandalism. The art doesn’t really matter, but my children do.”

  “They’re all away, aren’t they?”

  “Yes. I miss them, but one cannot impede the progress of one’s children for the sake of having them nearby,” Smith said a little sadly.

  “Whereabouts are they?”

  “Anna is in Africa—Peace Corps. Her mother worries about her constantly. She’s already infected with malaria.”

  “Yeah, it’s a slapdash program,” Carmine said. “They never really prepare these kids for what’s in store. And the boys?”

  “Peter is in Iran—he’s a petroleum geologist. Stephen is a marine biologist attached to Woods Hole. At present he’s somewhere in the Red Sea.”

  The safe closed, they moved on. The bedrooms underwent scrutiny—Smith and his wife still slept together—and they moved to the top floor.

  “Mostly junk,” Smith said, “but Natalie likes everything kept tidy, so it’s not difficult to search.” He was relaxed and more affable than at the beginning of his home’s inspection; it was hard to sustain outrage when its object was so patently indifferent to it.

  “You have no live-in servants?” Carmine asked.

  “No. We like our privacy as much as the next one.”

  “What’s this?” Carmine asked, looking at a tightly sealed door. He pushed it, but it refused to open.

  “My darkroom,” Smith said curtly, and produced a key.

  “You mean yours is the eye behind all those great photographs in the family room and the television den?”

  “Yes. Also the little movie theater upon occasion. Natalie calls me Cecil B. de Smith.”

  Carmine chuckled dutifully and entered the best-equipped darkroom he had ever seen. There was nothing it didn’t have, and everything was automated. Even Myron didn’t have facilities like these—though why should he, owning a studio? Philip Smith could take a set of blueprints all the way down to a microdot if he felt so inclined. But was he so inclined? There was one way to find out.

  “Given the nature of this case, Mr. Smith, I’m afraid I’m going to have to impound the contents of your darkroom,” he said without apology. “That includes all your film, developed and undeveloped, these books on photography, your photographic paper and cameras. It will all be returned to you later.”

  The tension in the big facility was palpable; at long last he had gotten under Philip Smith’s skin. But why?

  “Close your ears,” he said, and blew the whistle on a cord around his neck. “Clean cases, guys,” he said to the cops who rapidly appeared. “Everything has to be packed as if it were made of tissue paper, and handle every item as little as humanly possible—around the edges if you can. I want nothing dislodged or smeared, from a print to a fly speck. Malloy and Carter, you stay here while the others go for boxes and cases.”

  “I’m going to lose pictures I would treasure,” Smith said.

  “Not necessarily, Mr. Smith. Anything undeveloped will be processed in our own darkrooms, and we’ll try to keep your unused film unspoiled. What’s on the roof?” he asked, already on his way through the door.

  Smith was seething, but clearly felt it was better to stick with Carmine than protect his darkroom. “Nothing!” he snapped.

  “That’s as may be, but the paint on the midsection of these steps looks well worn.” Carmine climbed them and pushed at an angled door that opened sideways.

  He emerged onto a large, flat roof faced with asphalt, and stood staring at what from the ground had seemed to be a cupola. In the days when a building of this kind was what wealthy people aspired to, it would have contained a water tank; gravity feed would have enabled water to be piped throughout the house, a rare luxury. Above the cupola was a thin, whippy antenna he hadn’t noticed from the ground, and in its straight side, hidden by the roof parapet, sat a door.

  “What’s this?” Carmine asked, walking across.

  “My ham radio setup,” Smith said. “No doubt, thinking me Ulysses, you’ll want to impound its contents too?”

  “Yes, I will,” Carmine said cheerfully, waiting as Smith opened the door with another key. “State of the art,” he said inside, gazing about. “You could talk to Moscow from here.”

  “With North Rock hemming me in? Possible, Captain, but not likely,” Smith said, sneering. “In this Year of Our Lord 1967, I very much doubt that spies communicate directly with their masters. The world grows more sophisticated at an ever-increasing rate, haven’t you noticed? You can look until the cows come home, but you won’t find one single thing to suggest such a puerile activity! I’ve had no opportunity to alter my bandwidths or otherwise tamper with my ham setup, but confiscate away. As soon as my lawyers swing into action, I’ll have it back—and it had better be undamaged.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Smith,” Carmine said nicely, “but if it’s any consolation, exactly the same thing is happening to your fellow Board members.”

  “Answer me one thing, Captain! Your business is murder, not espionage. Espionage is a federal crime, out of your legal sphere. I take it you’ve impounded the contents of my darkroom and my radio shack with a view to searching for evidence of espionage. I can sue you,” Smith said.

  “Sir!” Carmine exclaimed, looking thunderstruck. “Judge Thwaites’s warrant clearly says ‘pursuant to murder,’ and I am pursuing murder. Poison can be concealed in bottles of developer, syringes and hypodermic needles inside all kinds of equipment, cutthroat razors in a bathroom cabinet or on a tiny guillotine—you had several guillotines in your darkroom—pistols in the weirdest places. Need I go on? The contents of your kitchen also suffered.” He spread his hands in a very Italian gesture. “Until everything I confiscated has been examined, Mr. Smith, I cannot be sure it isn’t part of a murder kit.”

  “Slippery,” Smith said, nostrils pinched.

  “As any other greased pig, sir,” Carmine said. “Espionage is not my affair, as you so rightly point out. Apart from any other consideration, I’m not trained to look for evidence of it. Nor is anyone else in the Holloman Police Department. If Mr. Kelly of the FBI were interested in your darkroom or your radio shack, I’m sure he’d be obtaining his own warrants. What he does is his business. Mine is very definitely murder, and this morning saw what could have been yet another mass murder.”

  Smith stood on his roof listening, his anger dying. “Yes, I see why this sudden spurt of activity,” he said, trying to sound reasonable, “but I resent the emphasis on Cornucopia.”

  Carmine looked conspiratorial. “I’ll let you in on one sequestered piece of evidence, Mr. Smith, that might help you understand,” he said. “The sniper wasn’t a lunatic. He was a professional assassin, sufficiently skilled to hire himself out for big dollars. Which makes anyone in possession of big dollars a prime suspect in his hire. There are few multimillionaires in Holloman, apart from members of the Cornucopia Board.”

  “I see,” Smith said, turned on his heel, walked to the door in the roof, and disappeared.

  Carmine followed more slowly.

  As it turned out, both Wal Grierson and Gus Purvey owned fully equipped darkrooms, though Smith was the only ham radio operator.

  “The quality of their photography is very high,” Carmine said the next morning, “so, taking into account the fact that they could all buy and sell J. P. Morgan, we can’t impugn their patriotism because of their plush darkrooms. All we’ve done is what we set out to do—rob them of the chance to turn Cornucopia secrets into something small enough to smuggle out of the country. Though I think it’s more likely that Ulysses has already performed h
is darkroom magic on at least some of what he hasn’t yet passed. And I agree with Phil Smith—espionage is not our business. Our other objective was to rattle a few cages, and I think we’ve done that. Through Smith, they’ll all soon know about our assassin theory.” He looked enquiring. “Anyone got anything interesting to report?”

  “I do,” Abe said, but not triumphantly. “You were right about Lancelot Sterling, Carmine—he’s a sadist. He lives on his own in a very nice condo just beyond Science Hill—no wife or kids on his horizon ever. The pictures on his walls were all photographs of muscular young men, emphasis on butt shots. He had a concealed closet full of leather, chains, handcuffs, fetters, and some pretty weird dildoes. I think he hoped I’d be content at finding that, but something about his attitude told me there were other goodies better hidden. So I kept on poking and pressing. Under a fancy chopping-block island in his kitchen I found the kind of whips that would shred flesh. They stank of blood, so I confiscated them. But the thing that turned my stomach was carried openly in his pants pocket—a change purse with a drawstring. It looked like leather, but finer than kid or chamois, light brown in color. The minute I focused on it, he started to yell about his civil rights and how dare I, and when I picked it up he went bananas. So I brought it in and gave it to Patrick.”

  “What’s your considered opinion, Abe?” Carmine asked.

  “That we’ve stumbled on another murderer unconnected to our case, Carmine. I’ve cordoned off the apartment—it’s on the first floor with its own section of basement—and I need to go back with two good men and maybe a jackhammer. He’s killed, I’d swear to that, but I don’t know whether he’s put the body in his walled-up basement or somewhere else. I checked him into Major Minor’s motel for tonight, but he’s looking for a lawyer.”

  “Then get a fresh warrant from Judge Thwaites now, Abe. Produce one of the bloody whips,” Carmine said. “Anyone else?”

  His answer was a general shaking of heads; his team was tired, not in a mood for discussions.

  Carmine went to find Patrick.

  A very enterprising man, Dr. Patrick O’Donnell had seized upon the landslide of murders to augment his Medical Examiner’s department. Several new pieces of equipment had been approved by the Mayor and Hartford, and he had expanded his empire to embrace ballistics, documents, and other disciplines not usually under the sway of the coroner. What made it easier—and more sensible—was the small size of the Holloman PD and his own persuasive, loquacious, charming personality. His latest coup came as a great relief to his deputy coroner, Gustavus Fennel, namely the addition of a third coroner, Chang Po. Gus Fennel was happiest on autopsies, but Chang was a forensics man.

  “How goes it, cuz?” Carmine asked, pouring coffee.

  Patrick propped his booteed feet on the desk and grinned. “I’ve had a great morning,” he said. “Look at this, cuz.”

  He reached into an evidence box that would have been a snug fit for a pair of light bulbs and withdrew a small, pale brown drawstring bag.

  “Careful,” he warned as Carmine took it. “Abe thought it held change, but the change was actually inside a rubber liner.”

  Carmine turned it over in his hand curiously, noting its peculiar construction and marveling at the patience that must have gone into fashioning something that puffed out on either side of a complex central seam.

  “Any ideas?” Patsy asked, eyes bright.

  “Maybe,” his cousin said slowly, “but enlighten me, Patsy.”

  “It’s a human scrotum.”

  Only iron self-control prevented Carmine from dropping the thing in sheer revulsion. “Jesus!”

  “There are some indigenous populaces that cure the scrotums of large animals,” Patrick said, “and in Victorian times it was a fad among some pukkah hunters to take an elephant’s or a lion’s scrotum as a trophy, have the taxidermist turn it into a water bag or a tobacco pouch. But such,” he continued blithely, “is the human male’s horror of castration that it’s a rare man indeed who would take a human scrotum as a trophy. This suspect of Abe’s certainly has.”

  “Are you sure it’s human?”

  “He left a few pubic hairs, and the shape and size are exactly right if the victim was possessed of a loose rather than a tight scrotal sac. The testes don’t vary much, but the scrotum does. Whoever did this is a real sicko.”

  “I’d better tell Abe before he goes to Doubting Doug.”

  One brisk phone call later and Carmine was free to quiz Patrick on other things. “Whose bullet killed our assassin?”

  “Silvestri’s. No wonder he could take out whole Nazi machinegun nests! The man’s a wonder with that old .38 he won’t be parted from. I bet he never even goes to the range to practice, either,” Patsy said. “Head shot—well, you know that. But you didn’t do too badly yourself, Carmine. Two of your three rounds plugged him in the right shoulder. Your third round lodged in the tree branch. Silvestri’s other two were in the chest.”

  “I never claimed to be Dead Eye Dick, especially at thirty yards or more.”

  “I know you—you were hoping to immobilize his shooting arm and keep him alive for questioning,” Patsy said shrewdly.

  “True, but John was right—we couldn’t risk the kids. I was in error. Do me a favor, Patsy?”

  “Sure, anything.”

  “Send the guy’s prints to Interpol and our military. He’s not from these parts, I know it in my bones, but he just might have come to someone else’s attention. I’m thinking East Germany as state of origin, but he’s no ideologue. He was in it for the money, which means he has family somewhere.”

  “Faint hope, but I’ll do it, of course. One last thing, cuz, before you vanish?”

  “Speak.”

  “What am I supposed to do with a whole room crammed with cases of photographic and broadcasting apparatus?”

  “Since we don’t have the manpower to mount that kind of examination, Patsy, I’m donating it to Special Agent Ted Kelly. Let the FBI find any microdots or snapshots of Granny holding up a set of blueprints,” Carmine said with a grin. “I’ll have Delia inform the Cornucopia Board that our evidence has been subpoenaed by the FBI. They’ll get it back, but not for weeks.”

  “How can that really help? They’re all so rich they can buy new gear and get going again within days.”

  “They could, but buying new gear would be noticed, and even rich people hesitate to spend their money on stuff they’ve already got. They know they’ll get it back, so what’s the hurry? There are reasons why none of them wants to draw attention to himself.”

  “You mean Ulysses?”

  “How do you know that name?”

  “Carmine, honestly! Ted Kelly has a mouth as big as his feet, and he has a habit of using Malvolio’s as his meeting place whenever another FBI agent comes to town. I mean, we’re hicks, the next best thing to Ozark hillbillies on his map of the nation,” Patrick said. “Besides, Holloman is Holloman. It has no secrets.”

  “Please tell me Netty Marciano doesn’t know!”

  “Of course she doesn’t! This is men’s business.”

  So Carmine left in a pall of gloom; the whole of his world knew about Ulysses, which was the penalty for a rather strident independence, he reflected. He was as guilty as the next man; so was John Silvestri. It reminded him of the time a more zealous mayor than Ethan Winthrop had tried to introduce a one-way traffic system to Holloman, where streets had gone both ways since the horse and cart. Holloman didn’t like it, and Holloman refused to obey. Years went by before sheer automobile pressure finally brought one-way streets. It’s a fool politician who tries to create Utopia, he thought. I bet the Reds know that.

  Lancelot Sterling didn’t move back into his condominium, which became permanently cordoned off when Abe discovered the well-preserved remains of a man carefully laid out beneath the false bottom of a very long, capacious storage bin attached to the wall of his basement. When its lid was lifted it was found to contain someone’s property: clo
thes, books, a set of weights, geographical magazines, maps, a tent, a sleeping bag, and other items that suggested an up-front, hiking itinerant.

  The body was nude and, externally, missing its scrotum, though the penis was intact. A midline incision, meticulously sutured, ran from his throat to just above the pubes, but the contours of the trunk were perfect. Very little decomposition had occurred, Patrick thought because the compartment under the body was full of hygroscopic crystals. Someone, presumably Sterling, was reactivating them a bucket at a time, which made them a pink or colorless patchwork.

  “He heats them in an oven to drive out the moisture they soak up,” Patrick explained, “which accounts for the change in color. It must have cost Sterling a bundle to accumulate this much. He’s put pans of sodium bicarbonate around to remove any smell, but I doubt the smell’s as bad as a freshman dissecting lab.” He pointed at the incision. “I’ll have to get him on my table to find out, but I predict that Sterling has removed the entrails—alimentary canal, liver, lungs, kidneys, bladder. Probably left the heart in situ. This is a mummy. With the false bottom in place, I imagine the humidity inside his secret compartment is very near zero. I’ll test it with a hygrometer.”

  He was talking to Abe; Carmine had handed the case over to him to see how he fared, very glad that his decision seemed the logical one. Abe was the original investigating officer. Corey had no valid grounds to assume either that Abe had been favored or that he had been excluded for any reason having to do with Larry Pisano’s lieutenancy. Now Carmine hoped for a case to give to Corey. The day when the panel met to decide which man got the job was looming, and there were four people—two detectives and two wives—who would be examining their treatment with a microscope. The closer the day drew, the greater Carmine’s grief. Why did Lancelot Sterling have to be such a meaty murder, and how could he equilibrate Corey?