Sins of the Flesh Read online

  “You’re amazing, Walter,” she said hollowly.

  “Will you put it in my notes?”

  “Of course.”

  “I’m tired,” he said. “I think I’ll try to sleep.”

  “Since sleep is the state of being you find the hardest, I won’t delay you a moment longer.”

  “Do you think I’ll ever be able to control my dreams, Jess?”

  “If you could do that, I’d win a Nobel Prize.”

  “Is that important?”

  “The most important thing that can ever happen to a doctor.”

  Jess kept Walter’s notes in her handbag—or rather, kept the meaningful notes there, the ones she didn’t want Walter to see; he read everything on everybody, especially himself. But he had one extraordinary idiosyncrasy, given his amorality: he refused to open or delve into the contents of a woman’s handbag. Jess’s private theory about this put its cause before his thirteenth year, during one of Walter’s brief, infrequent periods in foster care. Whatever the woman who found him rifling her purse had done to him, Jess had no way of knowing, but it had been terrifying enough to survive mania and two hundred hours of neurosurgery.

  So Walter would find a few bland lines in his file folder when he had a look, but only her eyes would ever see what she wrote and deposited in her handbag. The many dozens of these slender exercise books had accumulated over the thirty-two months of his post-operative career, and were stored in the basement of her house, some among anonymous thousands.

  While Walter slept, Jess filled ten pages of his notebook, then dropped it into her handbag; time now for other patients.

  By half after eleven he was inside the wall, topping up his gas tank from a plastic container; tonight he didn’t dare go near a gas station on his way home. Sister Mary Therese had passed out of rigor—not that it made any difference, as he had stored her bent exactly as she would be over the additions to the back of his Harley. At midnight he opened the door to the outside world and wheeled the motorcycle out, frowning at the thought that perhaps two nights in a row might leave a track. But the ground was still wet from storms and short deluges, the grass was actively growing. After he came back tonight he’d have to spend some time outside obliterating the marks of his passage. If anyone found his door, he was over and done with, kaput.

  A full mile away he kicked the bike into life and grumbled down 133 a very short distance before turning onto Maple, a long, winding street that traveled across Holloman from its outskirts on Route 133 to downtown, sheltered by the trees after which it was named, his burden draped across the pillion box and panniers no burden at all to a Harley-Davidson. Whenever he saw flashing lights from a patrol car he pulled over into dense shadow and waited; police presence was up tonight, after the nun’s abduction. Once through downtown he headed for East Holloman and a street called East Circle that followed the curve of Holloman Harbor on its east side, providing its houses, each on an overly large allotment, with views both interesting and beautiful. Wardroom scuttlebutt had informed Walter that the most enviable house on East Circle, adorned with a tall, square tower owning a widow’s walk, belonged to Captain Carmine Delmonico, of the Holloman PD. He doubted anyone would remember who dropped the name into that particular chat!

  Hank Jones had every reason to be delighted with the address; he had turned up after the Captain had turned in, been welcomed by an ecstatic but relatively noiseless Frankie, who received a yummy snack as reward. Then, in harmony with each other, youth and dog set up Hank for a night at the easel, a portable one, unfolded a card table, and put Hank’s tiered box of paints and brushes down on it. As soon as Hank became more interested in what sat mute on his easel than what sat panting at his feet, Frankie heaved a huge dog-sigh and went back to his basket in the bedroom hallway upstairs—a lonely place with only Carmine for company.

  Given the constant police presence, Walter decided to leave the bike under the east pylon of I-95; the west pylon lay at the end of a long span that arced over the factories and Holloman airport. Which left North Holloman Harbor and the Pequot River much closer to the east pylon, built right on the shore.

  There was, however, a track worn scant feet above the high tide marker; Sister Mary Therese around his neck, his left hand gripping the wire between her wrists and the butt of his hunting knife, his right hand gripping the wire between her ankles and the butt of his .45, Walter saw the house he was aiming for as soon as he emerged from the blank blackness under the pylon. Ah! Easy! He’d follow a line just up-water from the rear ends of boat sheds—crappy little things that housed rowboats with outboard motors, or canoes, or kayaks—no millionaire craft here!

  When Walter moved with intentional silence, it was like listening to the night breathe, so the sleeping dog’s inbuilt alarm never sounded until the first foot put weight on the bottom step leading up to the deck: the dog cried terror with four stiffly upright legs and a cacophony of roaring barks.

  The sudden eruption of Frankie’s savage barks enhanced Hank’s profound horror as the apparition rose up in front of him, the Creature from the Black Lagoon with something draped across its shoulders. He couldn’t help himself: Hank screamed.

  Brushes, paints and palette flew everywhere as Hank scrambled on all fours along the deck away from the Creature. It threw whatever it was carrying far from it to crash against the easel like a reflexive gesture the moment Frankie began barking and Hank screaming. The noise from the dog rolled thunderously in the quiet night, Hank’s screams adding an eldritch quality of terror. Then something emitted a single roar that was even louder, and became entangled with blue-white pain in Hank’s lower back; the screams turned into howls.

  Dog and cop erupted out the door onto the deck together, Carmine in shorts, arm up and Beretta extended. It gave its crashing roars four times, but the intruder had gone and there was at least one casualty on the deck. Frankie had set out in pursuit; a high whistle brought the dog back at once.

  Lights came on in other houses, and Fernando Vasquez leaped up the steps, in shorts and brandishing his own side arm.

  “Jesus, Carmine!” Fernando said, going to the light switches and throwing the scene into high relief. “Jesus!” he repeated.

  “Ambulance, now!”

  Sister Mary Therese was sprawled amid the wreckage of an easel; one glance, and Carmine stepped over her to reach Hank, lying in a growing pool of blood, all his mind concentrated on a pain more awful than any he could ever have imagined.

  “Try not to move, Hank,” Carmine was saying. “An ambulance is on its way, and you’re not going to bleed to death.”

  From somewhere Hank found an answer. “I might wish I had died, I might wish I had! I can’t feel my legs, but the small of my back is agony! Oh, Carmine, help me!”

  “I won’t leave your side until the ambulance crew make me, then they’ll be with you. The first thing they’ll do is give you a shot to ease the pain.” Carmine’s eyes met Fernando’s. “I can’t ride with you—I’m a cop needed at the scene of the crime, but as soon as I can I’ll send you Delia. Do you have anyone I should contact, Hank?”

  “There’s just me,” Hank whispered, weeping the tears of sheer shock and agony. “Oh, God, it hurts! I’m just hopin’ for no pain!”

  “That’s first priority, soldier. What happened?”

  “I can’t! The pain! The pain!” Hank wept.

  “Sure you can, soldier. It gives you something else to think about.

  “I was painting, sir, nothin’ else in my mind than the black water and the shimmering lights across it—I’m nearly finished. It hurts, it hurts!” Hank lay whimpering for a moment, then continued. “And the Creature from the Black Lagoon rose out of nowhere in front of me right as Frankie went into bark mode—I was so scared I started hollering, and couldn’t stop. The thing was carrying a woman around his neck, threw her away—I’d crouched down for protection. Then there was an explosion, I was knocked all the way down like a kid by a car—boom! I guess it shot me, the Crea
ture, huh?”

  “He did, but you’re in a very good town for docs, thanks to the Chubb medical school. Nobel Prize winners a-go-go.”

  The ambulance took less than five minutes to reach the patient, and had a physician’s associate aboard. Hank was given a shot of morphine that reduced his pain to bearable, and was taken off, siren wailing, to a waiting ER. By the time he arrived, the spinal team, complete with neurosurgeon, was assembling, the chief of the unit coming under a police escort.

  East Circle had sustained other disturbances over the years since Carmine Delmonico had bought his house, but this was the loudest and most intrusive, happening at an hour when those still in town were peacefully asleep. However, the Captain’s popularity far outweighed these disadvantages, so no one complained. After all, there were two primary policemen on East Circle, and that held many advantages.

  “Our only choice, really, is to wait until morning, and pray it doesn’t rain,” Carmine said to Fernando.

  “It won’t rain, and our luck is improving,” Fernando replied, sipping his tea. “The wind is dropping to nothing.” Something occurred to him; he looked up. “Why did you whistle Frankie back?”

  “He’s the beloved pet of two little boys, Fernando, and the guy had a gun he wasn’t afraid to use. Desdemona and I keep Frankie as a watchdog, and he’s brilliant. Tonight he gave me time to put on a pair of shorts, get my gun, take the safety off, and prepare for anything. Hank was the unknown factor, poor guy, As for the dog, I’ll not let him go in harm’s way.”

  WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 27, 1969

  They met at ten a.m. in Commissioner Silvestri’s aerie to discuss the stunning turn this raid on Carmine’s house had meant. Though his team was not actively involved, Silvestri had asked that Abe, Liam and Tony should attend, so the room was crowded; Gus Fennell and Paul Bachman were there, as were Fernando Vasquez and Virgil Simms from the Uniform Division. Delia had yielded her place at Hank Jones’s bed to Simonetta Marciano, who had survived her husband’s retirement as Captain of Police without any diminution in her sources of gossip. Upon hearing of Hank’s plight—no relatives!—she had insisted upon gathering her women friends together and taking the matter of companionship for Hank unto herself. Knowing Netty of old, Delia was sure she was just the person to manage Hank, and went back to her own world with a sigh of relief.

  “First of all, how’s Hank?” Silvestri asked.

  “The news is better than feared at first, sir,” Delia said. “The projectile had lost some oomph on a ricochet before it hit Hank, which was the saving of him. It shattered part of the right pelvis at a level too low to damage the spinal cord directly. The collection of smaller nerves called the cauda equina sustained damage, but the worst injury was to the right buttock. He’s in the care of neurosurgeons and plastic surgeons, and the neuro boys have already operated to remove bone fragments and reduce spinal cord swelling.”

  “Will he walk again?”

  “Yes, sir, he will. How well is on the lap of the gods.”

  “A long period in the hospital?”

  “Yes, sir. Eventually he’ll be transferred to Professor Prarahandra for extensive grafts to give the poor little chap a right cheek to sit on as well as a left.”

  Silvestri heaved a huge sigh. “For which, we may be very thankful. Sounds as if it could have been worse.”

  “It could have been,” Paul said grimly. “The projectile had been doctored with mercury, but the shooter bungled the job.”

  “Carmine, what exactly happened?”

  “Someone, identity unknown, walked onto my property about one in the morning carrying the body of Sister Mary Therese, who went missing yesterday. I think he intended to leave her on my property—inside the house, not outside. Hank Jones was on my sun deck painting a nightscape, as he called it—he’d been there every night from midnight on for a week. According to the little he was fit to tell me, the guy rose up in front of him and gave him a helluva fright. Frankie started barking, Hank started screaming, the intruder literally threw Sister Mary Therese’s body at Hank, then fired a single shot. I came out the back door in time to see a vague shape drop off the deck and run. I fired four rounds after him, then ceased for fear I’d hit a neighbor coming outside to investigate.”

  “Did you hear a car? A bike?” Abe asked.

  “No, nothing,” Carmine said.

  “Gus, what can you tell us about Sister Mary Therese?”

  “She was a well nourished, healthy female with no reason I could see why she shouldn’t have lived to be ninety,” Gus said with a slight tremor in his voice. “At time of examination, she had been dead about thirty-two hours. Cause of death was manual strangulation—very brutal and powerful. There are no signs of trauma to suggest he clipped her on the chin or otherwise tried to knock her out, just extensive contusions around the anterior aspect of the neck. From carotid to carotid. I haven’t done the full autopsy yet, this is from preliminary examination.”

  “Paul?” Silvestri asked the head of Forensics.

  In answer, the bony-faced technician put a folded piece of ordinary writing paper on the table, then inserted two slides into the vacant wings of a wall projector. “This note was found in a plastic bag, folded exactly as it is, and pinned to Sister Mary Therese’s nightgown. There were no fingerprints, marks or stains that could help elucidate the note’s nature or presence. It said that”—and up onto the wall sprang a half-intelligible jumble of mirror-writing. “This is the translation.”

  DO I HAVE TO TELL YOU EVERYTHING?

  THERE IS NO MISSING WOMAN THIS YEAR.

  SEVEN WOULD BE SELF-INDULGENCE.

  SIX WOMEN ARE PLENTY!

  EYEBALLS PEELED LIKE BANANA SKINS

  TONGUES TIED WITH RED TAPE

  TALKING HEADS IN A VACUUM.

  “That’s the weirdest note I’ve ever seen in a long, varied career,” the Commissioner said. “The guy’s cuckoo!”

  “Or else he’s trying to make us think he’s cuckoo,” said Abe. “That note is constructed, but it’s also artificial.”

  “Written in two unequal halves,” Carmine added. “He takes fine care to tell us that Dr. Wainfleet has nothing to do with the Shadow Women, and that there will be no more Shadow Women. Then he tacks on three lines of not particularly clever nonsense.”

  Delia looked a little sick. “You don’t think he means to switch to nuns?” she asked.

  Silvestri answered her. “I doubt it, niece. Carmine?”

  “The poor little nun was a one-off, Delia. The guy was looking for a certain type of woman,” Carmine said, more for John Silvestri’s sake than for Delia’s. “As I see it, his intention was to disgrace me by implying that I was having a love affair with a nun. Either her dead body was to be found on my sun deck, or in my bed—the latter, I suspect. Of course he also intended to kill me, as if, having killed my lover, I was overcome by remorse and ate my gun. The headlines would have been juicy.”

  “No one would believe it,” Delia said stoutly.

  “Luckily it’s not an issue,” the Commissioner said. “Hank must have come as a big shock.”

  “Not to mention a pit bull dog, sir,” Carmine said.

  “What exactly was his motive?” Fernando Vasquez asked.

  “To deflect the whole PD away from the Shadow Women, is my guess,” Carmine said. “It was a clumsy effort, bunches of mistakes.”

  “Like wiring Sister’s wrists and ankles together,” Donny said. “Still, he wasn’t expecting a reception committee.”

  “I agree that the Shadow Women are at least a large part of the reason for the note,” Delia said. “In fact, they may be the entire reason for the note. But if he’s telling the true story, then he’s the Shadow Woman killer, and Jess Wainfleet can’t be implicated.”

  “One thing for sure!” Liam Connor said suddenly.

  “What’s that?” the Commissioner asked.

  “The guy has a colossal ego. I don’t mean the usual big one killers have, I mean an ego way up in t
he stratosphere. This guy is in an ego class all on his own.”

  “Invincible, inviolable, invulnerable and invisible,” said Silvestri. “He’s running rings around us.”

  Determined to get her point about Jess Wainfleet across before these bulldogs of men discarded it, Delia ploughed on. “Well, whatever or whoever, Jess Wainfleet is not a part of it!”

  “You’re correct, Deels,” Carmine said. “Paul, what’s the chance that he’s left you anything remotely like hard evidence? It’s possible he made mistakes after he found Hank on my deck.”

  “His gloves never came off, that’s for sure, but I can tell you what you’ve probably already deduced for yourself—he’s an extremely strong bastard. He managed to pitch a hundred and twenty pounds of dead weight ten feet effortlessly. We found his cartridge casing, correct for Marty Fane’s .45 semi-automatic. An honest opinion? He’s better with his hands than he is with a gun. His problem was Sister Mary Therese,” Paul said. “He didn’t take a bullet from your Beretta, Carmine. We found his escape route, but no blood anywhere.”

  “Did anyone find signs of a vehicle?” Carmine asked.

  Virgil Simms answered. “Nothing, Captain. He stepped on to sealed road at the top of your slope, and his trail vanished. My guess is that he left his transport under the I-95 flyover on the north side of the Pequot. With the all-night truck traffic, no one would have heard him.”

  “So no extra points for concluding that’s what this Samson did,” said Carmine, and looked at the Commissioner. “That’s it, sir.”

  “Thank you, gentlemen. Most illuminating! Dismissed,” Silvestri said. “Carmine, a word before you go.”

  Carmine stood as the rest filed out, faces grimly set and downcast, then sat opposite his boss. “I feel awful, John.”

  “No worse than I. That poor young man! To think I picked him for his talent, only to see this happen.”

  “He’ll walk again. It’s the months and months of plastic surgery—muscle grafts, skin grafts.”