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  “No absentees at the Hug, Danny?”

  “Only Cecil Potter and Otis Green, who’d already finished for the day. Both of them were at home when Miss Dupre called. She says everyone else was present and accounted for.”

  “What can you tell me about the Murrays? All I managed to find out is that one parent is black, the other white.”

  “They’re just like all the rest, Carmine — the salt of the earth,” said Marciano, sighing. “Only difference is no Caribbean connection as far as anyone knows. They’re regulars at the local Baptist church, so I took the liberty of calling its minister, a Leon Williams, and asking him to go over and break the news. It’s spreading at the speed of light, and I didn’t want some bug-eyed neighbor getting there first.”

  “Thanks for that, Danny. What else?”

  “The black half is the father. He’s a research associate in electrical engineering in the Susskind Science Tower, which means he’s junior faculty on reasonable pay. Mom is white. She works the lunch rush in the Susskind cafeteria, so she’s there to see the kids off to school, and home again before they are. They have two boys, both younger than Francine, who go to the Higgins middle school. The Reverend Williams told me that the Murrays caused a bit of talk when they moved to Whitney nine years ago, but the novelty faded and now they’re just a part of the local woodwork. Very well liked, have friends of both colors.”

  “Thanks, Danny. See you later.”

  The Valley was an area with a fairly mixed population, not affluent, but not impoverished either. Racial tensions broke out there from time to time, usually when a new white family arrived, but property rates were not sufficiently high to make blackness a real financial liability. It was not an area famous for hate mail, killing of pets, dumping of trash, graffiti.

  As the Ford turned onto Whitney, all half-acre blocks with modest houses, Carmine could feel Abe and Corey stiffen.

  “Jesus, Carmine, how did we let this happen?” Abe burst out.

  “Because he changed pace, Abe. He outfoxed us.”

  As they drew up to a yellow-painted house Carmine put his hand on Corey’s shoulder. “You guys stay here. If I need you, I’ll holler, okay?”

  The Reverend Leon Williams admitted him to the Murray house. This is becoming a habit, Carmine.

  The two sons were elsewhere; sounds from a TV came faintly. Seated together on a sofa, the parents were trying valiantly to remain composed; she held his hand as if it were a lifeline.

  “You’re not Caribbean, Mr. Murray?” Carmine asked.

  “No, definitely not. The Murrays have been in Connecticut since before the Civil War, fought for the North. And my wife is from Wilkes-Barre.”

  “Have you a recent photograph of Francine?”

  A sister to the other eleven.

  And so it went all over again, the same questions he’d asked eleven other families: whom Francine saw, what good deeds she did, if she’d mentioned any new friend or acquaintance, if she’d noticed anyone watching her, following her. As always, the answers were no.

  Carmine didn’t stay a moment longer than he had to. Their minister is a greater comfort to them in their pain than I could ever be. I’m the agent of doom, maybe of retribution, and that’s how they see me. They’re in there praying that their little girl is fine, but terrified that she is not. Waiting for me, the agent of doom, to return and tell them that she is not.

  Commissioner John Silvestri appeared on local TV after the six o’clock news was finished, appealing to the people of Holloman and Connecticut to help search for Francine, to come forward if they had seen anything unusual. A desk cop had his uses, and one of Silvestri’s best was his public image — that leonine head, superb profile, calm dignity, air of candor. He didn’t try to parry the anchorwoman’s questions the way a politician would, so shrewd a politician was he. Her rebarbative remarks about the fact that the Connecticut Monster was still at large and still abducting innocent young women didn’t dent his composure in the least; somehow he managed to make her look like a handsome wolf.

  “He’s smart,” said Silvestri simply. “Very smart.”

  “He must be,” said Surina Chandra to her husband as they sat in front of their gigantic TV screen. They had paid a fortune to bring in a special line from New York City so they could channel-hop on cable until eight, when they sat to eat dinner. What they hoped to see was an item about India, but that was a rare occurrence indeed. The U.S.A., they had discovered, wasn’t a scrap interested in India; it was involved in its own problems.

  “Yes, he must be,” said Nur Chandra absently, his mind on a triumph so great he wanted to shout it to the world. Only he dare not risk it, dare not. It had to remain his secret. “I’ll be sleeping in my cottage for the next few days,” he added. A smile curved his perfect lips. “I have important work to do.”

  “How can anyone call the Monster smart?” Robin demanded. “It isn’t smart to murder children, it’s — it’s stupid and inhuman!”

  I wonder, Addison Forbes asked himself, what her definition of “smart” might be if I pushed her to explain it?

  “I agree with the police commissioner,” he said, discovering a crushed cashew nut hiding beneath some lettuce. “A very smart fellow. What the Monster does is disgusting, but I do admire his competence. He’s made total fools out of the police.” The nut melted on his tongue like nectar. “Who,” he said bitterly, “had the gall to order Desdemona Dupre to hunt us down like animals and ask us where we’d been! We have a spy in our midst, and I for one will not forget that. What her idiocies mean is that I’m behind in my clinical notes. Don’t wait up for me. And throw out that quart of ice cream in the freezer, do you hear me?”

  “Yes, he is smart,” said Catherine Finch. She eyed Maurie anxiously; he hadn’t been the same since that Nazi schmuck tried to kill himself. With more steel in her character than Maurie had in his, she thought it a pity the Nazi schmuck hadn’t succeeded, but Maurie had a great big conscience and it was telling him that he was the schmuck. Nothing she could say prevented Maurie from blaming himself, poor baby.

  He didn’t bother answering her, just pushed his brisket away and got up from the table. “Maybe I’ll work a little on my mushrooms,” he said, plucking a flashlight from the pungent porch as he passed through.

  “Maurie, you don’t need to be in the dark tonight!” she cried.

  “I’m in the dark all the time, Cathy. All the time.”

  The Ponsonbys didn’t see Commissioner Silvestri on TV because they didn’t own one. TV was lost on Claire, and Charles referred to it as “the opiate of the uncultivated herd.”

  Tonight the music was Hindemith’s Concerto for Orchestra, a windy, brassy blare that they enjoyed most when Charles had found a particularly good bottle of pouilly fumé. They were eating lightly, a fines herbs omelet followed by fillets of sole poached in water liberally laced with very dry white vermouth; no starches, just some romaine lettuce with a walnut oil vinaigrette, and a champagne sorbet to finish. Not a coffee and cigars meal.

  “How they do insult my intelligence sometimes,” Charles said to Claire as Hindemith entered a quieter phase. “Desdemona Dupre came looking for all of us with some tale of needing all of our signatures on a document that Bob certainly knew nothing about, then an hour later the police arrived in their thousands. Just when I was in the middle of a train of thought that did not need the thump of jackboots. Where was I all afternoon? Tchah! I was tempted to tell them to go to hell, but I didn’t. I must say that Delmonico runs a smooth operation, though. He didn’t deign to grace us with his own presence, but his minions betray the stamp of his style.”

  “Dear, dear,” she said placidly, fingers twined loosely about the stem of her wine glass. “Are they going to persecute the Hug every time a girl is abducted?”

  “I imagine so. Don’t you?”

  “Oh, yes. How sad a place the world becomes. Sometimes, Charles, I am very glad that I walk through it blind.”

  “You walke
d through it blind today, you always do. Though I wish you wouldn’t. There’s some story going around that Desdemona Dupre is being stalked. Though what she could have to do with the other business is a bit of a mystery.” He giggled. “Such a vast and unprepossessing creature!”

  “Threads weave predictable patterns, Charles.”

  “That,” he said, “depends upon who’s making the predictions.”

  The Ponsonbys laughed, the dog wuffed, Hindemith let loose.

  Much to Carmine’s surprise, he found his mother’s car parked outside Malvolio’s when he pulled up shortly after 7 P.M., Corey and Abe delivered to their long-suffering wives.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked, helping her out. “More problems?”

  “I thought you might need company. How’s the food in there? Any hamburgers to take away?”

  “No burgers to go, but let’s eat inside. It’s warm.”

  “I did my best for Captain Marciano this afternoon,” she said, eating a fry (she called it a chip) in her fingers, “but it took half an hour to track them all down. I couldn’t find a one of the researchers themselves until I realized that it might be the first of December, but up on the roof it was warm and sheltered from the wind. They were up there having a round table discussion on Eustace. All of them, and they looked as if they hadn’t moved in yonks.”

  “Yonks?”

  “A long time.”

  “I’m sorry to have inflicted it on you, but I couldn’t spare any cops while there was a hope of finding Francine.”

  “It’s all right, I blamed you. Very caustically.” She picked up another fry. “Ever since word got round about my police guard, I’m regarded differently. Most of them think I’m putting it on.”

  “Putting it on?”

  “Making it up. Tamara says I’m trying to catch you.”

  He grinned. “A tortuous scheme, Desdemona.”

  “A pity my ruined work didn’t yield that clue.”

  “Oh, he’s far too smart to have left one beyond the first time. He knew you wouldn’t report it.”

  She shivered. “Why do I think you think it’s the Monster?”

  “Because it’s a red herring, woman.”

  “You mean I’m not in danger?”

  “I didn’t say that. The cops stay.”

  “Is it possible he thinks I know something?”

  “Maybe, maybe not. Red herrings don’t need reasons apart from creating illusions.”

  “Let’s go back to your apartment and watch the Commissioner on the late news,” she said.

  Then, afterward, she smiled. “The Commissioner looks like a sweetie. Didn’t he handle madam smarty-pants anchorwoman well?”

  Carmine’s brows rose. “Next time I see him I’ll tell him that you think he’s a sweetie. Cute word, but your sweetie once took on a twelve-man German machine gun nest single-handed and saved a whole company. Among other things.”

  “Yes, I can see that side of him too. But you won’t mention me. When you see him it will be a very serious meeting because the situation is very serious. The Monster is really clever, though perhaps that’s to underestimate him.”

  “He’s a whole bunch of things, Desdemona. Smart — clever — insane — maybe a genius. What I do know is that the façade he presents to the world is totally believable. His guard never drops. If it had, someone would have noticed. I think he might be a married man whose wife doesn’t suspect him. Oh, yeah, he’s one smart cookie.”

  “You’re pretty smart yourself, Carmine, but you’ve got more going for you than that. You’re a bulldog. Once the teeth lock in, you can’t let go. Eventually the extra weight of dragging you around with him will exhaust him.”

  Warmth flooded through him, whether from the cognac or the compliment he wasn’t sure; Carmine preened a little inside his mind, very careful that the rest of him didn’t bat an eyelash.

  Chapter 8

  Thursday, December 2nd, 1965

  Francine Murray hadn’t turned up by the following day, nor did anyone save her parents doubt that the Monster had gotten her. Oh, the parents knew it too, but how can the human heart exist in such a sea of crushing pain until there is no other alternative? She’d gone to a pajama party once without telling them — just plain forgotten, but it had happened. So they waited and prayed, hoping against hope that it was all a mistake and Francine would come bouncing in the door.

  When Carmine returned to his office at 4 P.M., he had nothing positive to show for a day of talking to people, including at the Hug. Two months on a case and zilch. His phone rang.

  “Delmonico.”

  “Lieutenant, this is Derek Daiman from Travis High. Could you possibly come up here straightaway?”

  “I’ll be there in five minutes.”

  Derek Daiman, thought Carmine, was probably always the last teacher to leave Travis; his gigantic, polyglot baby must be hell to run, but he managed to run it well.

  He was standing inside the doors of Travis’s main building, but the moment the Ford pulled into the schoolyard he emerged, ran down the steps to the car.

  “I haven’t said anything to anyone, Lieutenant, I just asked the boy who found it to stay where he was.”

  Carmine followed him around the left-hand corner of the main block to where an ungainly, shedlike structure had been tacked on adjacent to the brick side wall through a short passageway that gave the brick wall’s windows nine feet of light and air as well as a view of buff-painted metal siding.

  Education was a municipal responsibility; cities like Holloman, handicapped by soaring populations in their poorer areas, struggled to provide adequate facilities. Thus the shed had come into being, a hangar that held a basketball court, bleachers for spectators, and, at its far end, gymnastic equipment — vaulting horses, rings suspended from the ceiling, parallel bars, and what looked like two posts and a cross bar for high jumps or pole vaults. Another gym mirrored this one on the right side, held a swimming pool and bleachers where the basketball court was here, and a far end devoted to boxing, wrestling and working out. The girls here to perform graceful leaps, the boys there to beat the crap out of punching bags.

  Though they entered the gym from the yard, they could have done so from the building; the short passageway allowed students direct access, mandatory in bad weather, but it too had a door.

  Derek Daiman led Carmine past the basketball court and its bleachers to the gymnastic end, provided with seating down either side by what looked like big wooden footlockers. His was the old army term; in high school, he seemed to remember, they were just called boxes. Alongside the last box in the row on the passageway wall stood a tall, athletic-looking black youth whose face was marked with tears.

  “Lieutenant, this is Winslow Searle. Winslow, tell Lieutenant Delmonico what you found.”

  “This,” said the boy, and held up a candy-pink jacket. “It belongs to Francine. Her name’s in it, see?”

  FRANCINE MURRAY, machine-embroidered on the stout strip that enabled the jacket to be hung on a hook.

  “Where was it, Winslow?”

  “In there, pushed inside one of the mats with its cuff poking out.” Winslow lifted the lid of the box to reveal that it still held two gym mats, one rolled up, the other folded loosely.

  “How did you come to find it?”

  “I’m a high jumper, Lieutenant, but I have a glass jaw. If I land too hard, I get concussed,” Winslow said in a pure Holloman accent, his sentence construction indicating that he kept up good grades in English and didn’t hang out with a gang.

  “Potential Olympic standard, lots of offers from colleges,” Daiman whispered in Carmine’s ear. “He’s thinking of Howard.”

  “Go on, Winslow, you’re doing fine,” Carmine said.

  “There’s one super-thick mat, and I always use it. Coach Martin keeps it in the same box for me, but it wasn’t there when I came in to do some jumping after school today. I went looking, found it at the bottom of this one. It was weird, sir.”
>
  “How, weird?”

  “The box should be full, the mats stacked like frankfurters. Some of the other boxes had too many — more like sardines. And my super-thick mat wasn’t rolled up at all. It was folded back and forth from side to side of the box. The one with the cuff of Francine’s jacket showing was right on top of it. I had a funny feeling, so I pulled the cuff and it slid right out.”

  The floor around the box was strewn with five unrolling mats; Carmine surveyed them with a sinking heart. “I don’t suppose you remember which mat held the jacket?”

  “Oh, yes, sir. The one still in the box on top of my mat.”

  “Winslow, my man,” said Carmine, shaking the youth’s hand warmly, “I am rooting for you for a gold medal in sixty-eight! Thank you for your care and your good sense. Now go home, but don’t talk about any of this, okay?”

  “Sure,” said Winslow, wiped his cheeks and walked off, his gait reminiscent of a big cat.

  “The whole school is grieving,” said the principal.

  “With good reason. Can I dial out on that phone? Thanks.”

  He asked for Patrick, still there. “Come yourself if you can, but if you can’t, send Paul, Abe, Corey and all your gear, Patsy. Maybe we’ve found something useful.”

  “Do you mind waiting with me, Mr. Daiman?” he asked when he returned to the box, lid down, Francine’s jacket lying on it.

  “No, of course not.” Daiman cleared his throat, shifted on his feet, took a deep breath. “Lieutenant, I would not be doing my duty if I didn’t inform you that trouble is coming.”

  “Trouble?”

  “Racial trouble. The Black Brigade is campaigning hard for support using Francine’s disappearance as a platform. She’s not Hispanic, and on the forms she fills out she calls herself black. I never argue with my light-colored students about how they think of themselves racially, Lieutenant — to me, that would be a denial of their rights. Like the new concepts about indigenousness, that only an indigenous person can decide whether they are or are not.” He shook himself, looked wry. “I’m straying. The point is that some of my more irascible students have been saying that this is a white killer of black girls, and that the police aren’t bothering to catch him because he’s a powerful member of the Hug with all kinds of political influence. Since my school is fifty-two percent black and forty-eight percent white, unless I can keep the lid on the Black Brigade kids, we could have a mess of trouble.”