Naked Cruelty Read online

“Do get up, Julian,” she said cheerfully. “You look silly.”

  “Mommy, she tripped me up!”

  “You deserved it,” said Desdemona, and gulped. Somehow it was easier when she had another adult to back her, and that adult was an acknowledged expert on how to deal with recalcitrant children. Prunella had managed to wound Julian’s dignity, his rather inflated idea of himself, and that part of him would continue to smart long after his bottom ceased to pain him.

  In record time Desdemona was launching her craft, with a very co-operative Julian doing his share instead of whining; he was not about to be laughed at again by a stranger.

  Who, by the time she had supervised his bath and clad him in pajamas, had already given him to know that she’d stomach none of his tricks. Mommy, she informed him, was sick, and he wasn’t helping any, so until Christmas he’d have to make do with her, Prunella. The trouble was that he quite liked her; she had such merry eyes, eyes that made him want to get on the right side of her. Mommy’s eyes were always dreary and uninterested—why hadn’t he seen that she was sick? He wasn’t very old, but he could well remember an interested, jolly Mommy.

  “It’s too early for bed,” he said after a six o’clock dinner.

  “Why?”

  “I’m not sleepy.”

  “Oh, good! Then you can exercise your imagination after you go to bed. I’ll be there to listen.”

  “Listen to my what?”

  “Your imagination, silly! Everybody has one, so that’s your first task after you hit your bed—looking for it. When you’ve found it, I’ll help you exercise it.”

  “Oh, not more exercise!”

  “Exercise for your mind, Julian, not your body.”

  His eyes should have been as dark as the rest of him; Julian Delmonico had taken after his father in bulk and coloring, and sported a mop of black curls as well as rather thin black brows and impossibly long black lashes. A remarkably handsome child, he had discovered that his looks could win him favors and treats—not to mention excuses for bad behavior. But it was the eyes that put the finishing touch on a striking appearance: the color of weak, milky tea, they were surrounded by a thin black ring that made them piercing, compelling. Well, thought Prunella Balducci, his mother and I have to inculcate some humility and sensitivity into this unpromising material, otherwise he’ll king it at St. Bernard’s Boys’ School and be ruined.

  He’s had his first lesson: Mommy’s sick, and he didn’t see it. Now let’s see what imagination can do.

  “What does an imagination look like?” he asked, curious.

  “Anything you want. You’ll know it when you find it. Until you do, lying in bed is awful, isn’t it? Like a desert, dry and sandy. Once you find your imagination, you won’t mind going to bed, even if you’re not tired.”

  “I still want to know what it looks like.”

  “Imagination makes the desert vanish, become all kinds of places. Maybe it disappears and a depth-diving submarine appears—that’s imagination. During the day,” said Prunella, warming to her theme, “you and I will look at books full of pictures your imagination might like to hide in. Looking at books is like piling wood on a fire when the world’s all snow—the fire burns brighter and brighter. You’re going to love books, Julian.”

  I don’t believe it, thought the listening Desdemona. She’s hooked him already, and she hasn’t even unpacked her bags.

  When he walked in at six-thirty that evening, Carmine got a loving, intensely grateful kiss; his elder son was pestering Prunella to go to bed. Wasn’t it time yet?

  For answer, she presented him to his father and mother for a goodnight kiss, then took his hand and led him away. “Phase two—a walk around East Circle to get the sleepy-bugs biting—and no, Julian. The more you badger me, the longer our walk.”

  “Wow!” said Carmine, following his wife into the kitchen. “Doc Santini told me she was ruthless. Has Julian eaten yet?”

  “Yes. Prunella insists on six o’clock for the children, so Alex gets a breast and Julian gets meat or fish and three veg. At least on his food I didn’t fall down. Prunella gave me full marks. I don’t over-cook the veg, nor give him bloody meat—blood can turn kids off their best source of protein, she says.”

  “What about us?”

  “We eat at seven-thirty. By then, Julian will be sound asleep. That, I’ll believe when I see it. She made me take him out in the kayak, but he’s not tired.”

  “He will be. What’s for our dinner?”

  “Swedish meatballs and mushroom risotto. And a salad.”

  “Prunella’s going to want to stay forever. Did I tell you today that I love you?”

  Her beautiful smile lit up those cool eyes. “Every day, as soon as you smell the dinner. I love you too. And thank you, thank you for Prunella.”

  She was making up her “pickle solution” as she called it; he pressed his lips against her flushed cheek and stole away to visit the nursery.

  His younger son was slumbering peacefully in his crib; when Carmine leaned down to kiss him, inhale the inimitable smell of properly cared for babies, two chubby arms came up to touch his face, and the eyes opened, too clouded with sleep to arouse fully. Daddy smiled into them, and they closed; the arms fell. Both his sons had strange eyes, Alexander James Delmonico’s even more peculiar than Julian’s: silvery-grey, with that black ring around the irises made them piercing, unsettling. Alex’s eyes reminded Carmine of Kemal Ataturk’s, exactly the same in an even darker face. Not an unpleasant similarity; Ataturk was regarded as the founder of modern Turkey, and had beaten a British army nearly half a million strong at Gallipoli during the First World War. Well, Alex wouldn’t have that tortured man’s life, but it was interesting. Blame Desdemona, really. Her extreme fairness had to show somewhere in her sons.

  And back to the little sitting room adjacent to the kitchen, where they sat to have a drink before dinner and unwind. I am blessed, thought Carmine, taking the glass Desdemona held out.

  He couldn’t wait any longer. Didus ineptus let himself into Melantha Green’s second floor apartment with his lock picks, then gazed around familiarly: he had been in here before. Melantha was another neat and tidy girl—he loathed mess!—who lived on her own and considered that her black belt in judo gave her all the protection she needed. So while other girls were fitting more locks, Melantha had decided that one dead-bolt was fine. As indeed it was, provided that the predator was an amateur with locks. Whereas this predator was an expert.

  Today’s methodology was different. The piece of duct tape for a gag remained, but in place of twine there were manacles and chains. Appropriate, really. His first black woman, and his first venture with chains—chains probably not unlike those that had encumbered her slave ancestors. A fresh thought, not the one that had prompted him to switch to chains.

  When the bedroom yielded no surface he could use, the Dodo located a folded up card table in the living room and carried it to the bedroom, there to employ it as a place to put his tools, neatly arranged. The silenced .22 went under a bed pillow, the duct tape, manacles and chains accompanied him back to the living room. There he began his careful transformation from just another guy into Didus ineptus: folding his clothes in a stack on top of his tennis shoes, removing a few items from his body, and then, admiring himself in the full-length mirror on the bedroom door, touching himself up with the greasepaint, a perfect color match to his skin. On went the surgeon’s gloves, after which he cleaned his prints from everything he had thus far touched.

  Finally, about a quarter of six, he was ready, black silk hood over his head, poised behind the front door. He knew this one was a self-defense expert, so it was important not to give her any chance to use his body weight against him. She came in at five of six. The tape was over her mouth and the manacles snapped on her wrists within seconds; then he struck her on the jaw with a clenched fist. Her knees buckled. He pr
opelled her, semi-conscious, to the toilet, pulled her panties down and sat her in place, a part of him astonished to see that those panties were sexy red lace. She groaned.

  “Piss, Melantha,” he said. “You don’t move until you do.”

  Sagging forward on the seat, she urinated. Didn’t the news programs say he never spoke? Why was he speaking to her?

  The idea of the chains had come to him when he first set eyes on her bed, an old-fashioned brass one with stout posts and bars. While she was still groggy he tethered the manacle chains to the top of the bed.

  “Manicure time,” he said.

  Her feet went into socks, her fingernails were clipped down to the quick and collected. After which he left her bedroom and went to look at her bookshelves: hundreds of books! Melantha was a final year medical student at Chubb. There! That one was great, just right for his collection. He brought it back to the bedroom, drew up a chair, and sat down.

  Melantha moaned; he was there at once. “Waking up, are we?” he asked, slapping her face. Her dark eyes rolled, then cleared; she gasped.

  “Yes, I’m Didus ineptus,” he said, “and I’ve come to do all kinds of things to you.”

  She couldn’t scream or talk back to him. The duct tape was in place. But she didn’t need to ask him her most important question; he had already answered it by speaking. Didus ineptus intended to kill her.

  He raped her for hours, vaginally and anally, with penis and fist, using his cord around her neck time and time again, retiring to his chair to read, returning for another assault. He pinched, pummeled, pounded.

  “I am not a pervert,” he said to her. “My only instruments belong to my body.”

  Melantha’s mind began to wander as the strangulations went on; so intent was he on what he was doing that he almost missed the change begin in her eyes. She was lying half on her stomach, but this next one would be the last. He flipped her over—the chains allowed that—and pulled the hood from his head. The eye slits were too frustrating to retain it at such a moment. When she died, her eyes must be looking into his face. And, in case this was the ultimate of all experiences, he paused to snap on a condom. Buried in her, choking her, eyes locked on hers, he watched the life slowly die until he understood that all he had left was her shell. The bitch had escaped him! The orgasm never came.

  As he left the bed, tossing the unfilled condom on to the card table, the front door lock gave a dull thunk as the dead bolt turned and fell back. The Dodo’s hand went under the pillow and emerged holding the .22 pistol.

  “Melantha? Hi, honey,” said a man’s voice.

  He was halfway across the living room when the Dodo shot him in the throat, and he collapsed, dying, in a gurgling heap. But that was not satisfactory. Reaching him, the Dodo stood over him and shot him between the eyes.

  That taken care of, the Dodo unchained the lifeless girl and replaced everything in his knapsack, tucking his souvenired book down in one pocket. The load was heavier now that he had added chains to it, but on the whole the weight was worth it. He had almost come inside her; that he would definitely come later as he held the book he knew, but it was a disappointment nonetheless.

  At four in the morning Didus ineptus stole out of the place, wriggling on his elbows across the grass of the backyard until he reached the shelter of the side fence, down which grew a row of small pines. There he waited long enough to be sure that he was undetected, then he crawled on hands and knees to the front boundary. On his feet now, he ran across the road and into the deep shadows of the street’s maple trees. From there, it was a short run to Persimmon Street, where his car was parked. As soon as he reached it he got in and put the knapsack on the back seat floor. But he didn’t drive away. No, he’d wait until other cars were growling into life; only then would he drive away. A good night, all considered. He had always wondered how he would cope with an intruder. Now he knew. No sweat.

  The bodies were not discovered until noon, when a friend had gone to see why Melantha hadn’t attended the morning’s rounds; she was meant to be presenting a case to Prof. Baumgarten—important.

  And Helen was back with the Dodo.

  “It isn’t a question of your winning any victories,” Carmine said to her icily, “it’s simply that I need manpower, and you know the case. But don’t you ever play another trick like the one you did on Lieutenant Goldberg. If you do, you’re out one second later, and your father will know why.”

  She said nothing, just hastened to report to Delia; her luck that Nick’s wife had succumbed to a critical illness, and he was on compassionate leave. Knowing how he disliked her, she shrank from their confrontation once he was back at work. Oh, pray Imelda Jefferson was okay! The Dodo’s victims were black!

  With two women as his team, Carmine drove to Spruce Street in Carew. One corner of his mind yearned for Nick, but that was impossible. Black victims? It made no sense.

  For Helen, the crime scene came as a shock that she was too professional to betray, and she was relieved to learn that her stomach was a strong one. A patrolman had been forced to race outside and throw up, but not Helen MacIntosh!

  “Tell me what you see, Helen,” Carmine commanded.

  “A black male, mid to late twenties, shot first in the throat, then finished off with a bullet to the brain. If the head shot had been first, he wouldn’t have needed the throat shot. Whoever did it is a top marksman who made a mess of this guy’s throat from fifteen feet away, to silence him, obviously. He administered the coup de grâce standing over the victim—entry is straight in, not angled,” said Helen. “I guess this is her boyfriend and that he has a key. I can’t hazard much of a guess as to time of death. Have we beaten the Medical Examiner?”

  “Just,” came Patrick O’Donnell’s voice from the doorway. He took a liver temperature and examined both wounds. “I’d say he died at two in the morning, cuz. No earlier, but not much later.” He fished in pockets until he found a wallet and gave it to Carmine, then vanished toward the bedroom.

  “Dr. Michael Tolbin,” said Carmine. “From his library card, a general surgery resident. Jesus, the waste! The country can’t afford to lose two young doctors—senseless!” He went in Patrick’s wake, the women following.

  A worse shock for Helen. Melantha was lying stretched out on the bed in an X position, belly up, covered with the crimson marks of forming bruises. Around her wrists were angry rings that didn’t suggest any kind of twine or wire; they were too broad and indistinct. Her face was blue and congested, the tongue protruding, the eyes open and so dark that it was difficult to discern an iris.

  “She fought for every breath,” said Helen huskily.

  “That she did,” said Patrick. “She died about the same time as the young man in the living room—a matter of minutes between them, I’d estimate. She was restrained with handcuffs, probably connected to chains, but her legs were free. This bed screams S & M—not that I’m implying that, only that it served the Dodo’s purposes admirably. Melantha probably thought it was unusual in a pretty way. There are other pieces of Benares brass. Feet in socks, nails pared down—it’s definitely the Dodo. He’s escalated—this isn’t accidental, he arrived to kill. That probably means he spoke to her, may not have worn his hood. Is there a book missing?”

  “Impossible to tell,” said Delia, coming in. “The shelves are overflowing. Oh, the waste! Their whole lives ahead of them, so much work to get this far! Melantha would have had her M.D. in six more months. Her thesis is on meningococcal meningitis. She’s twenty-five. Chubb Medical School! That means she was one of the best of her year nationwide.”

  “As today is Wednesday, October 16, he’s still on a three-week cycle. What a way to die,” said Helen.

  No one answered. Helen drew a long, sobbing breath. “I’m okay,” she said. “Just spitting mad.”

  “Delia, you’ll have to stay here after the bodies are removed and go over this apart
ment with a fine-toothed comb,” Carmine said. “Keep Helen as assistance.”

  He left; Delia looked at Helen. “Tell me what you see.”

  “On the girl? Greasepaint, there. And there?” She looked puzzled. “If he uses greasepaint, I don’t understand how he doesn’t leave slathers of it behind.” She went red, but labored on. “I mean, sex with her, skin on skin? Even if it’s a rape, sex is intimate physical contact. He’s naked and she’s naked. So why isn’t there more greasepaint?”

  “He cleaned her up with xylene,” said Patrick, packing his case. “It’s an effective reagent for something oil-based, but it also says his own skin is on the delicate side. He’s probably not of Mediterranean origins. Why not alcohol for his delicate skin? Because it’s overrated as an organic solvent, and he’s careful. However, he’s neither a chemist nor a pharmacologist. Maggie had no Dodo administered drugs in her system, and I’ll bet this girl won’t either. He does it on surprise, brute strength and, for want of a better word, natural techniques. In one way he’s a colossal psychopath, yet he uses no metal instruments of torture. Fingers, fists, feet. I suspect he despises rapists as sickos and doesn’t think of himself as abnormal. The strangling ligature has to fit within his definition of normality, so I’m guessing it’s made from human hair.”

  “His own?” Delia asked.

  “More likely his mother’s.” Patrick picked up his cases and departed.

  “Why did Dr. O’Donnell call the Captain ‘cuz’?” Helen asked.

  “Their mothers are sisters,” said Delia.

  “I never knew that! Does my father?”

  “I have no idea,” said Delia, sounding bored.

  The two women worked in silence, each taking half of the bedroom, the floor of which was covered in one of those annoying carpets that show every mark. Helen stared at it closely.

  “Delia, take a look at this.”

  Delia came, inspected. “Something with four legs sat here.