On, Off

by Colleen McCullough

  He came down Route 133 from the northeast, which brought him to Deer Lane first. In the Council’s view, the four houses on its far side had not warranted tar seal; Deer Lane’s 500 yards were traprock gravel. At its end it flared into a circular patch that gave sufficient parking for six or seven cars. On all sides the forest came down to the road — secondary growth, of course. Two hundred years ago this would have been cleared and farmed, but as the more fertile soils of Ohio and westward beckoned, farming had ceased to be as profitable for Connecticut Yankees as the assembly line precision industries Eli Whitney had started. So the woods had grown back in profusion — oak, maple, beech, birch, sycamore, a few pines. Dog-woods and mountain laurel to bloom in the spring. Wild apple trees. And the deer had come back too.

  His tires crunched audibly over the gravel, which reinforced his opinion that the cars watching Deer Lane at its junction with 133 on the night Faith Khouri vanished would have heard a vehicle as well as seen the white vapor from its tailpipe. And the only cars parked on Deer Lane that night had been police unmarkeds. So while it was possible that Chuck Ponsonby had walked up the slope behind his house minus a flashlight, where would he have gone from there? He hadn’t stored his vehicle any closer than some distance up 133, or if the vehicle belonged to a partner, it hadn’t picked him up any closer than that. A walk that long at zero Fahrenheit? Unlikely. Freezers were warm by comparison. So how did he do it?

  Carmine had a precept: if you are forced to take a stroll on a nice day, then do it near a suspect; and if the stroll involves a forest, take along a pair of binoculars to watch the birdies. Binoculars slung around his neck, Carmine walked up the slope among the trees in the direction of the spine that looked down on number 6 Ponsonby Lane. The ground was a foot deep in wet leaves, the snow melted except in the lee of an occasional boulder and in crannies where the warmth hadn’t penetrated. Several deer moved out of his way as he walked, but not in alarm; animals always knew when they were on a reserve. It was, he reflected, a pretty place, peaceful at this time of year. In summer the whining buzz of lawn mowers and shrieks of laughter from cookouts would ruin it. He knew from previous police combing that no one ventured out of the car park, even for illicit sexual encounters; the twenty-acre reserve contained no beer cans, ring pulls, bottles, plastic detritus or used rubbers.

  Once on top of the ridge it was surprisingly easy to see the Ponsonby house. The trees of their slope had been drastically thinned to make a woodsy statement: a clump of three-trunked American birches, one beautiful old elm tree looking healthy, ten maples clustered in such a way that their fall leaves would make a stunning display, and nursery specimens of dogwood that would turn the grounds into a pink-and-white dreamland in spring. The thinning must have been done a very long time ago, as the stumps of the removed trees had disappeared from sight.

  Lifting his binoculars, he surveyed the house as if it were fifty feet from him. There was Chuck up a ladder with a chisel and a blow-torch, chipping at old paint the proper way. Claire was sprawled in a wooden outdoor chair near the laundry porch, Biddy at her feet; the scant breeze was kissing his face, so the dog hadn’t scented his presence. Then Chuck called out. Claire got to her feet to walk around to the side of the house so unerringly that Carmine was amazed. Yet he knew that Claire was blind.

  How did he know that so certainly? Because Carmine left no stone unturned, and Claire’s blindness was a stone in his path. Sometimes he used the services of a women’s prison warder, Carrie Tallboys, who struggled to support a promising son, therefore was available for hire outside working hours. Carrie had a curious talent that involved acting out a role so convincingly that people told her a great deal they ought not have. So Carmine had sent Carrie to see Claire’s ophthalmologist, the eminent Carter Holt. Her story was that she was thinking of donating some money to retinitis pigmentosa, as her dear friend Claire Ponsonby suffered from it before she went completely blind. Ah, well he remembered the day Claire came in with bilateral retinal detachments — so rare, for both eyes to go at once! His first big case, and it had to be one that lay beyond his power to heal. But, protested Carrie, surely nowadays it could be cured? Definitely not, said Dr. Holt. Claire Ponsonby was irretrievably blind for life. He had looked into her eyes and seen the damage for himself. Sad!

  Carmine watched blind Claire talk animatedly to Chuck, who came down his ladder, linked his arm through his sister’s, and took her inside through the laundry porch. The dog followed them; then came the faint strains of a Brahms symphony. That was it: the Ponsonbys had had sufficient fresh air. Though — wait, wait! Oh, yes, sure. Chuck emerged, gathered up his tools and took them and the ladder to the garage before returning to the house. He did have an everything-in-its-place side to him, but obsession?

  Letting the binoculars fall, Carmine turned to make the trip back to Deer Lane. It was more difficult going downhill through masses of slimy, decaying leaves; not even the deer had yet made paths, though by summer there would be many. Immersed in thoughts of Charles Ponsonby and his contradictions, Carmine started to hurry, on fire now to get back to his office and chew the puzzle over at leisure. Also chew some lunch at Malvolio’s.

  The next thing his feet went from under him, he was plunging forward, both hands outstretched to take the impact of his fall. Dead leaves went flying in wet, clotted clumps as he landed on his palms with a dull, hollow boom. He slid onward, scrabbling for a hold, before his momentum gradually slowed down and he could stop. Two ruts marked the progress of his hands, gouged deeply into the humus. Cursing softly, he rolled over and picked himself up, feeling the sting of abraded skin but relieved to discover that he hadn’t done himself worse harm. Stupid, Carmine, stupid! Too busy thinking to watch where you’re going, you dodo.

  Only why a hollow sound? Curious because that was the kind of man he was, he crouched down and excavated one of the channels a palm had made; six inches deeper he uncovered a wooden plank. Digging frantically now, he pushed the leaves away until he could see a part of what was there: the surface of what might be an old cellar door.

  Oh, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus! Suddenly galvanized, he was scraping the leaves back where they had been, pushing them down, packing them down, forehead dewed with sweat, breath grating. When he was fairly satisfied that he had evened out the evidence of his fall, he squirmed backward on his rump before standing again to survey his work. No, not good enough. If someone were to examine the area closely, they would notice. He took off his jacket and used it to gather more dead leaves from a hundred feet away, brought them back and distributed them, then threw the jacket down and used it like a broad broom to obscure every trace of his intrusion. Finally, gulping and gasping, he was positive that no one would suspect what had happened. Now get the hell out of here, Carmine! That he did on his knees, scattering leaves in his wake; he was almost to the parking lot before he rose. With any luck, deer would browse through in their constant search for winter forage.

  Back in the Ford, he prayed that Claire’s remarkable hearing didn’t extend as far as a grunty engine on Deer Lane. He put his foot gently on the gas pedal and rumbled to the corner in first gear. Part of him was dying to transmit his news to Silvestri, Marciano and Patrick, but he decided not to call them from Major Minor’s love retreat, doing a brisk Sunday business. Better to turn back into the northeast and depart the way he had come. It wouldn’t kill him to wait.

  Not such a long walk at zero Fahrenheit after all, Chuckie baby! And no need for a flashlight on the house side of the ridge, because you have a tunnel that doesn’t surface until way down the reserve’s slope. Someone — was it you, or long before you? — dug deep below the ridge, made the distance shorter. In Connecticut, hundreds of miles from the Mason-Dixon Line, it certainly wasn’t dug for escaping slaves. My bet is that you dug it yourself, Chuckie baby. On the night that you snatched Faith Khouri all you had to do was get out; by the time you returned with her, we had left the neighborhood. That was one of our mistakes. We should have maintained
the watch. Though, to be fair to us, we wouldn’t have caught you returning; we were watching Ponsonby Lane and your house, we didn’t know about the tunnel. So that time the luck was with you, Chuckie baby. But this time the luck is with us. We know about the tunnel.

  Since he was ravenous and wanted a little more time to think, Carmine lunched at Malvolio’s before summoning his cohorts.

  “I now understand the full significance of an old cliché,” he said as Patrick, the last to arrive, came through Silvestri’s office door.

  “Which old cliché is that?” Patrick asked, sitting down.

  “Pregnant with news.”

  “Behold three expert midwives, so give birth.”

  His words crisp, his sequence of events logical and correct, Carmine led his audience step by step through the things that had happened after he saw Eliza Smith.

  “It all sprang from her — what she said, how she said it. My catalyst. Culminating in a fall down a hillside — talk about luck! I have had so much luck on this case,” he said when the tale was over and his audience had managed to close their jaws.

  “No, not luck,” Patrick objected, eyes shining. “Pigheaded, hardassed determination, Carmine. Who else would have bothered to follow up on Leonard Ponsonby’s death? And who else would have bothered to look in an evidence box thirty-six years old? Chasing up a crime marked unsolved because you’re one of the very, very few people I can think of who know that when lightning strikes the same place twice, something is conducting it there.”

  “That’s fine and dandy, Patsy, but it didn’t amount to enough to take before Judge Thwaites. I found the real evidence by sheer accident — a fall on a slippery hillside.”

  “No, Carmine. The fall may have been an accident, but what you found was no accident. Anyone else would have gotten up, then brushed his clothes” — Patrick picked dead leaves off Carmine’s ruined jacket — “and limped away. You found the door because your brain registered a wrong noise, not because the fall uncovered the door. It didn’t. And anyway, you wouldn’t have been on the hillside in the first place if you hadn’t found our face in a picture taken about 1928. Come on, take some of the credit!”

  “Okay, okay!” Carmine cried, throwing up his hands. “What’s more important is to decide where we go from here.”

  The atmosphere in Silvestri’s office almost visibly fizzed with elation, relief, the wonderful and inimitable joy that comes with the moment a case breaks open. Especially the Ghosts case, so dark, so haunting, so tediously long in the breaking. No matter what hitches were to come — they were too seasoned to believe that none would — they had enough of the answer to move forward, to feel that the end wasn’t far away.

  “First off, we can’t assume that the legal system is on our side,” Silvestri said through his cigar. “I don’t want this shit getting off the hook on some technicality — especially a technicality his defense can pin on the police. Face it, we’re the ones who usually wear the rotten eggs. This will be a big trial, coverage nationwide. That means Ponsonby’s defense won’t consist of two-bit shysters, even if he doesn’t have much money. Every legal shit heap who knows Connecticut and federal law will be clawing to get on Ponsonby’s defense team. And clawing to plaster us with rotten eggs. We can’t afford a single error.”

  “What you’re saying, John, is that if we get a warrant now and bust in through Ponsonby’s tunnel, all we’ll really have is something that looks like an operating room in a doctor’s house,” said Patrick. “Like Carmine, I’ve always believed that this turkey doesn’t have a blood-soaked, filthy killing premises — he has an O.R. And if he’s only one-half as careful about leaving traces in his O.R. as he is on his victims, we might come out of it with nothing. Is that the way your mind is going?”

  “It is,” said Silvestri.

  “No mistakes,” said Marciano. “Not one.”

  “And we’ve already made carloads of them” from Carmine.

  A silence fell; the elation had died completely. Finally Marciano made an exasperated noise and burst into speech.

  “If the rest of you won’t, then I’ll say it. We have to catch Ponsonby in the act. And if that’s what we have to do, that’s what we have to do.”

  “Oh, Danny, for God’s sake!” Carmine cried. “Put another girl’s life in jeopardy? Put her through the horrors of being abducted by that man? I won’t do it! I refuse to do it!”

  “She’ll get a fright, yes, but she’ll get over that. We know who he is, right? We know how he operates, right? So we stake him out — no need to stake anyone else out —”

  “We can’t do that, Danny,” Silvestri butted in. “We have to stake everyone out the same as we did a month ago. Otherwise he will notice. Can’t be done without a full stakeout.”

  “Okay, I concede that. But we know it’s him, so we give him extra-special attention. When he moves, we’re there. We follow him to his victim’s home and we let him grab her before we grab him. Between the grabbing, the tunnel and the O.R., he can’t possibly walk out of court a free man,” said Marciano.

  “It’s circumstantial, is the problem,” Silvestri grumbled. “Ponsonby has committed at least fourteen murders, but our body count is four. We know the first ten victims were incinerated, but how are we going to prove that? Do you read Ponsonby as the confessing type? I sure as hell do not. Since sixteen-year-old girls run away from home every day, there are ten murders we’ll never convict him for. Everything rides on Mercedes, Francine, Margaretta and Faith, but nothing ties him to any of them beyond a supposition as frail as blown glass. Danny is right. Our only hope is to catch him in the act. Bust in there now, and he’ll walk. His lawyers will be good enough to persuade a jury to let Hitler or Stalin walk.”

  They glared at each other, faces perplexed and angry.

  “We have another problem,” Carmine said. “Claire Ponsonby.”

  Commissioner Silvestri was not a profane man, but today — a Sunday too — he was breaking his own rules. “Shit! Piss!” he hissed. Then, in a bark, “Fuck!”

  “How much do you think she knows, Carmine?” Patrick asked.

  “I can’t even guess, Patsy, and that’s the truth. I do know that she’s genuinely blind, her ophthalmologist says so. And he is Dr. Carter Holt, now Professor of Ophthalmology at Chubb. Yet I’ve never seen a more adept blind person than she is. If she’s the bait dangled in front of a nunnish sixteen-year-old filled with the desire to do good, then she’s an accomplice to rape and murder even if she never enters Ponsonby’s O.R. What better bait than a blind woman? However, a blind woman is very noticeable, which is why I’m inclined to dismiss the theory. She’d be walking ground she doesn’t know the way she knows Six Ponsonby Lane, so how fast could she move? How would she know her target unless Chuck is at her side? Oh, I’ve spent a lot of this morning wondering about Claire! I keep seeing her outside St. Martha’s school in Norwalk — did you know that the sidewalk has been in bad shape for over a year due to council repairs to pipes? With two girls disappearing in the same place, someone would have noticed her. To me, Claire would have needed practice walks on a sidewalk mined with holes. I wound up concluding that Claire would be more a handicap to Chuck than an asset. I guess she could have watched the victim as he drove back to his lair, but that seems flimsy. Yet he must have had a sighted accomplice — who was the chauffeur, for instance?”

  “You want to rule out Claire?” Silvestri asked.

  “Not entirely, John. Just as an unlikely abduction helper.”

  “I agree she shouldn’t be ruled out entirely,” said Patrick, “but I can’t believe she’s capable of much help of any kind. That’s not to say she doesn’t know what her brother’s been doing.”

  “There’s a colossal bond between them. Now we know what their childhood was like, the bond makes more sense. Their mother murdered their father, I’d stake my life on it. Which means Ida Ponsonby was mentally unstable long before Claire came home to look after her. It must have been hell.”


  “Would the children have known of the murder, Carmine?”

  “I have no idea, Patsy. How would Ida have gotten home in a blizzard in 1930? Presumably in Leonard’s car, but did they plough the roads back then? I don’t remember.”

  “The main ones, sure,” said Silvestri.

  “She must have had blood on her. Maybe the kids saw it.”

  “Speculations!” Marciano said with a snort. “Let’s stick to the facts, guys.”

  “Danny’s right as usual,” said Silvestri, paying him back by putting the cigar butt under his nose. “We start watching people tomorrow night, so we’d better work out the changes now.”

  “The most important change,” said Carmine, “is that Corey, Abe and I watch the tunnel entrance in the reserve.”

  “What about the dog?” Patrick asked.

  “A complication. I doubt it would eat drugged meat, guide dogs are trained not to take food from strangers or off the ground. And as it’s a spayed female, it won’t stray looking for canine company. It hears us, it will bark. What I can’t be sure of is that Chuck won’t take Biddy with him to guard the tunnel door in his absence. If he does, the animal will smell us.”

  Patrick laughed. “Not if you’re wearing eau de skunk!”

  The rest of them reared back, appalled.

  “Jesus, Patsy, no!”

  “Well, Abe and Corey, at any rate,” Patrick modified, looking devilish. “Even one of you would be enough.”