On, Off

by Colleen McCullough

  “Is the ether chamber common in research laboratories?”

  That did it! She turned away and began to sort through a pile of surgical instruments. “I wouldn’t know,” she said, voice as cold as the air outside. “I worked out the technique for myself, and that’s all that matters as far as I’m concerned.”

  Feeling as if he should back out of her presence, bowing deeply all the way, Carmine left Mrs. Liebman to fulminate about the total stupidity of cops.

  “Mercedes and Francine were brutally raped with a succession of implements, and I can only guess that he did the same to begin on Margaretta,” said Patrick to Carmine, Silvestri, Marciano, Corey and Abe. “Then he graduated to some new device that must have been encrusted with barbs and spikes, maybe tipped with a blade. It tore her to shreds inside — bowels, bladder, kidneys, even as high as the liver. Massive, multiple lacerations. She died of shock before she could bleed to death internally. There was a little Demerol in her bloodstream, so wherever he took Margaretta after he abducted her was too far from Groton to rely on ether beyond the initial few minutes. I found no trace of ether on the pillowcase, by the way.”

  “Did you expect to find any?” Marciano asked.

  “No, but I smelled it in a tight fold of the pillowcase at the time we reached the Bewlee house.”

  “Did she lose blood when her head was removed?” Abe asked.

  “Only a very little. She’d been dead for some hours when he did that. Because of her height, he seems to have used a band across each leg as well as the chest band to restrain her.”

  “If she died prematurely, why wait thirteen days to dump her? What did he do with her?” Corey asked.

  “Put her in a freezer big enough to lie her flat.”

  “Has she been identified?” Carmine asked.

  Patrick’s face twisted. “Yes, by her father. He was so calm! She has a small scar on her left hand — a dog bite. The moment he found it, he said she was his daughter, thanked us, and left.”

  The room fell silent. How could I deal with that were she Sophia? Carmine wondered. No doubt the rest of us here feel the blade more keenly, they’ve all got daughters who didn’t go to California before the ties were properly forged. Hell is too good for this beast.

  “Patsy,” Carmine said, breaking the moment, “is it possible that there were two of them?”

  “Two?” Patrick asked blankly. “You mean two killers?”

  “Yes.”

  Silvestri chewed on his cigar, grimaced, dropped it in his waste-basket. “Two like him? You’re joking!”

  “No, John, I’m not. The longer I think about this series of abductions, the more convinced I become that it took two people to do them. From there to two killers is an obvious step.”

  “A step a thousand feet high, Carmine,” said Silvestri. “Two monsters? How could they find each other?”

  “I don’t know, but maybe something as common as an ad in the National Enquirer personal columns. Guarded, but clear as crystal to someone with the same tastes. Or maybe they’ve known each other for years, even grew up together. Or maybe they met by accident at a cocktail party.”

  Abe looked at Corey and rolled his eyes; they were thinking about sitting for days in the National Enquirer morgue reading to find an ad at least two years old.

  “You’re shoveling shit uphill, Carmine,” said Marciano.

  “I know, I know! But forget for a moment how they got together and concentrate on what happens to the victim. I realized that there has to be a bait. These aren’t the kind of young women who would be lured off by an invitation from some man, or fall for an offer of a screen test, any of the ploys that work on less carefully brought up girls. But think how hard it would be for one man to make the snatch without a bait!”

  Carmine leaned forward, getting into stride. “Take Mercedes, who closes the lid on the piano, says goodbye to Sister Theresa, and lets herself out the music annex door. And somewhere quiet, with nobody else around, Mercedes sees something so irresistible that she has to go closer. Something her heart goes out to, like a half-starved kitten or puppy. But as it’s got to be in the exact right spot, there’s someone else mourning over the animal too. While Mercedes is engrossed, the other man strikes. One to dangle the bait, one to grab. Or Francine, somewhere near the toilet block, or else actually inside it. She sees the bait, her heart goes out, she’s grabbed. There are just too many people still in the school to risk getting her out of Travis, so they put her in the sports locker. How much easier to do that in a hurry if there are two of them! It’s Wednesday, the gyms are deserted, and the Chemistry classroom is right near to that toilet block. With Margaretta, there’s a sister sleeping not three yards away. No bait, but would this killer run the risk of Linda when he plans so meticulously? The bait half has a new role, to watch Linda and act if she stirs. When she doesn’t, it’s a piece of cake for two men to get a tall girl out a window, one inside, one outside.”

  “Why do you make things so hard for yourself?” Patrick asked.

  “Things are as hard as they have to be, Patsy. If one killer isn’t enough, then we have to think there are two.”

  “I agree,” Silvestri said suddenly, “but we don’t breathe a word about Carmine’s theory outside the people in this room.”

  “One other thing, John. The party dress. I’d like to show it to Desdemona Dupre.”

  “Why?”

  “Because she does incredible embroidery. There are no labels on the dress, no one’s ever seen anything like it before, and I want to try to find out where to start looking for the person who made it. That means I need to know how much it would cost if it was bought in a store, or how much someone like Desdemona would charge for custom making it. She does commissions, she’ll know.”

  “Sure, once it’s had the works from Paul — and if you trust her not to spill the beans about it.”

  “I trust her.”

  Chapter 18

  Monday, January 24th, 1966

  The logical journal to search for a person advertising for a partner in anything from business through sex to murder was the National Enquirer, which was read clear across the country and available in any supermarket at the cashier’s desk among the gum and magazines. After talking to the three psychiatrists who made murder their speciality, Carmine was able to equip Abe and Corey with some key words before shipping them off to read the personals between January of 1963 and June of 1964. The Ghost may have been in his gruesome collaboration before the first girl disappeared, or he might have seen how much easier his task would be with a helper after he commenced his killing career.

  The nature of the bait was now fairly clear to Carmine: an object of pity, of irresistible appeal to a soft-hearted, sensitive young woman. So he abandoned that line of thought to move on to what kind of premises housed the girls while they were raped and killed and stored. The general police feeling was that the killing premises were makeshift; only Patrick saw Carmine’s point that the killing premises were anything but makeshift. Anyone so persnickety that he lined up a notice would want his “laboratory” perfect.

  After the discovery of Margaretta Bewlee’s body on a Hugger property, the Huggers fell over themselves to offer permission to the police to search anywhere they liked. Even Satsuma, Chandra and Schiller crumbled. Maurice Finch’s mushroom tunnel was just that; another search of Benjamin Liebman’s mortuary yielded nothing; Addison Forbes’s “eyrie” consisted of two round rooms, one above the other, overfilled with neatly stacked or shelved professional reading materials; the Smith basement was pure train heaven; Walter Polonowski’s cabin was a love nest, decorously posed photographs of Marian everywhere, a big bed, not much of a kitchen. Paola Polonowski had seized her opportunity and gone up to the cabin in the wake of the police, with the result that Polonowski was now living in it with Marian, and looking a great deal happier. Hideki Satsuma’s retreat turned out to be near the corner of the Cape Cod elbow in Orleans, an architect-designed bachelor pad that held no
thing more indictable than a huge amount of pornography heavily into violence, though not murder. No real surprise to Carmine, whose time in Japan had shown him the Japanese penchant for pictorial pornography. Dr. Nur Chandra was just “being bloody-minded” as Desdemona would have phrased it; his secret activity in the cottage he used consisted of a new generation computer that he was trying to program without enlisting one of those amazing young Chubb medical students who paid their way through school by devising programs for specific scientific purposes. Chandra was so sure of his Nobel Prize that he would speak of his work to no one, especially a super-bright, ambitious young Chubb medical student. The Ponsonby forest was a forest; no cabins, sheds, barns, underground anythings. And Kurt Schiller’s worst secret was a photograph of himself, his father, and Adolf Hitler. Papa had been a highly decorated U-boat captain invited to meet der Führer and bring his towheaded little son along; Hitler loved towheaded children with brave fathers. Schiller Senior had gone down with his submarine when it encountered a depth-charge in 1944; Kurt was ten years old at the time.

  Therefore, according to Silvestri, Marciano and the rest of Connecticut’s various senior policemen, the killing premises must be makeshift. Were they not, someone would have noticed.

  But they are not makeshift, Carmine said to himself. If I were the Ghost, what would I want? Pristine surroundings, that’s what. Surfaces that could be hosed down, scrupulously cleaned. That means tiles rather than concrete, metal rather than wood or rock. I’d want an operating room. Two Ghosts could build it if they were both skilled with their hands; they could even wire it for electricity. What they probably couldn’t do was plumb it, yet it had to be plumbed. A high-pressure water supply, adequate drains, and connection to either a sewer or a septic system. The Ghosts would want a bathroom too, for themselves if not for their victim. Her they probably bed panned, sponge bathed.

  So while Abe and Corey waded their way through the National Enquirer personals, Carmine checked every Hugger property for unsuitably large power or water bills. Unfortunately the more prosperous Huggers lived where they tapped for well water rather than used a piped supply, but no one’s electricity bill was huge. A generator? Possible, if the noise could be muffled. From that fruitless exercise he waded through plumbing contractors and more humble self-employed plumbers from one end of Connecticut to the other. Looking for a lucrative job that involved installation of what would have been described as a private gymnasium or a plush recreational facility or even a pool house. Those he did find turned out to be genuine, all located in Fairfield or Litchfield counties. He was aware that the kind of thing he was asking about spelled someone with money, but he had always thought that the Ghost had plenty of money. Wherever he looked, he came up with nothing. That said one of three things: the first, that the two Ghosts were able to do their own plumbing; the second, that they had hired a plumber whom they paid generously with cash so he would keep quiet about the job and not pay tax; and the third, that the Ghosts had rented or bought premises already suitable for their purposes, such as a veterinary clinic or surgeon’s rooms. He called around to see how many veterinary clinics and surgeons’ rooms had changed hands late in 1963, but those that had changed hands were bona fide. The usual nothing, nothing, nothing.

  Because the pink lace dress was adorned with 265 rhinestones, and every one had to be examined to make sure it held only one set of prints, presumably the seamstress’s, it was six days before Carmine could show the garment to Desdemona.

  He buzzed her intercom feeling more goofy and anxious than he had in high school when the girl of his dreams at the time said yes, he could take her to the prom. Mouth dry, heart in it — all he lacked was the corsage.

  “Desdemona, it’s Carmine. On business. Don’t open the door, I’ll key the combination in.”

  “How are you?” he asked, shedding his layers and putting the dress box — shit, what would she think? — on the table.

  She looked neither glad nor sorry to see him. “I’m well but bored to death,” she said. Then, flicking a finger at the dress box, “What’s that?”

  “Something I had to assure the Commissioner you wouldn’t talk about to anyone. I knew you wouldn’t, he doesn’t. You mightn’t know that the last victim, Margaretta Bewlee, was found wearing a child’s party dress. We can’t trace it, but I thought maybe with your eye for fancy work, you could tell us something about it.”

  She had the box open and was shaking out the dress in a second, then held it, turned it around, finally spread it on the table. “I take it that the last girl wasn’t chopped into bits?”

  “No, just the head was removed.”

  “The newspapers said she was tall. This wouldn’t fit her.”

  “It didn’t, but she was wedged into it all the same. Her shoulders were too broad for him to button it down the back, and that leads to my first question — why buttons? Everything these days is zipped.”

  Paul had fastened the buttons, which sparkled like genuine jewels under the table light. “That’s why,” she said, fingering one. “A zipper would have spoiled the effect. These glitter.”

  “Have you ever seen a dress like this?”

  “Only on a pantomime stage when I was a child, but it was makeshift due to clothes rationing. This is very pretentious.”

  “Is it handmade?”

  “To some extent, but probably not as much as you assume. The rhinestones have been sewn on, yes, but by a specialist who can wallop them on faster than you can eat pot roast. The person is a piece-worker, so she sticks her needle through the hole, loops her strand of cotton around the rhinestone once, then tacks her needle through the lace to the next rhinestone — see?”

  Carmine saw.

  “Some of them are missing because they weren’t sewn on firmly enough, and they come off in a chain as long as the strand of cotton in the needle — see?”

  “I thought Paul might have done that in the lab.”

  “No, it’s more likely to have happened with rough handling, and I can’t imagine it would receive that in a pathology lab.”

  “So what you’re saying is that the dress is affordable?”

  “If you have something over a hundred dollars to spend on a frock that the child would probably only wear once or twice, then yes. It’s a profit exercise, Carmine. Whoever makes and sells these knows how often the frock will be worn, so they cut as many corners as they can. The lining is synthetic, not silk, and the underskirt is cheap net stiffened with thick starch.”

  “What about the lace?”

  “French, but not top quality. Machine made.”

  “With that kind of price tag, we should look in the children’s wear at places like Saks and Bloomingdale’s in New York City? Or maybe Alexander’s in Connecticut?”

  “A fairly expensive shop or department store, certainly. I would call the frock showy, not elegant.”

  “Like Astor’s pet horse,” he said absently.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Just a saying.” He drew a deep breath. “Am I forgiven?”

  Her eyes thawed, even twinkled. “I suppose so, you graceless twit. Too little Carmine Delmonico is worse than too much.”

  “Malvolio’s?”

  “Yes, please!”

  “Now to a different subject,” he said over coffee. “It’s late, we can talk here. Manual skills.”

  “Who at the Hug has them, and who doesn’t?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Starting with the Prof?”

  “How is he, incidentally?”

  “Shut up in an exclusive loony bin somewhere on the Trumbull side of Bridgeport. I imagine they’re loving him as a patient. Most of their intake consists of alcoholics or drug addicts drying out, plus heaps of anxiety neuroses. Whereas the poor old Prof has had a severe breakdown — illusions, delusions, hallucinations, loss of contact with reality. As to his manual skills, they are considerable.”

  “Could he wire for electricity and plumb a house?”


  “He wouldn’t want to, Carmine. Anything requiring hard manual labor he would regard as beneath his dignity. The Prof dislikes getting his hands dirty.”

  “Ponsonby?”

  “Couldn’t change the washer on a tap.”

  “Polonowski?”

  “A fairly skilled domestic handyman. He hasn’t the money to hire a carpenter when the children break a door or a plumber when the children stuff a cuddly toy down the lavatory.”

  “Satsuma?”

  She rolled her eyes heavenward. “Lieutenant, really! What do you think Eido is for? There’s also Eido’s wife, she slaves. Chandra has a whole army of turbaned lackeys.”

  “Forbes?”

  “I’d say he was competent with his hands. He works on his house, I do know that. They were so lucky, the Forbeses! At the time they bought it, the mortgage rate was two percent, and they have thirty years to pay it off. Now it’s worth a fortune, of course — water frontage, two acres, no oil tanks next door.”

  “Relocating those to the bottom of Oak Street helped everyone on the east shore. Finch?”

  “Builds his own glasshouses and greenhouses. There is a big difference, he tells me. Isn’t above grubbing out a mushroom tunnel. But I’d say Catherine is even more competent. All those thousands of chickens.”

  “Hunter and Ho the engineers?”

  “Could construct the Empire State Building, with improvements.”

  “Cecil?”

  “Now isn’t that an indictment?” she asked, scowling. “I just can’t tell you, Carmine. He has skills, but in one’s mind he tends to be not only a flunky, but a black flunky into the bargain. No wonder they hate us. We deserve to be hated.”

  “Otis?”

  “At present Otis isn’t doing any heavy lifting. Apparently he has the beginnings of congestive cardiac failure, so I’m trying to arrange a nice pension for him with the Parsons. Personally I doubt his troubles have much to do with how hard he works. His bugbear is Celeste’s nephew, Wesley. Otis is terrified that the boy is going to make mischief for Celeste. The Hollow and Argyle Avenue are rather boiling.”