Naked Cruelty Page 28

  “So it’s only taken me eighteen years to learn that you live upstairs. Any family?”

  “Four boys, all in the armed services.”

  “And the wife?”

  “Took off with a sailor in 1944.”

  “So you raised your boys alone.”

  “The family helped.”

  “I don’t even know your last name!”

  “Silvestri. What can I do you for, Captain?”

  “Is there someone can bring me over meat loaf and rice pudding in about an hour, Luigi?”

  “Sure thing. I got some juicy shrimps, want a cocktail?”

  “Why not?”

  He fetched all the relevant files—and some that only he felt were relevant—and put them on his table. The only way to tackle the case of Didus ineptus was to go through it from its beginning to its present end in the peace of a deserted office. After a pensive look at the number of files and the area of his table, he went to Stella Pulaski’s office and took the two folding banquet tables stored behind her door. Once they were up, he decided he had sufficient room, and began the business of distributing the files widely separated enough to allow their contents space if they needed laying out. The last series of interviews Delia and Helen had conducted with the victims went into each victim’s pile.

  Then he proceeded to break the files up: uniformed reports, detective reports, witness reports, victim reports. By the time that he was satisfied that everything was arranged according to his needs, Minnie arrived with his dinner, which went on to his formal desk together with a giant thermos of Luigi’s coffee.

  He sat and ate—Luigi was right, the shrimps were juicy—until the plates were clean, then sent them back to Malvolio’s in the custody of a desk cop. Under Danny Marciano, it would have simply happened; under Fernando Vasquez, he had to fill in a form explaining why he had used a uniformed cop as a personal servant. Jesus, how he hated the bureaucratic mentality! An imp whispered that he should fill out a form explaining why he’d ordered a uniform to shine his shoes, but he pushed the little devil away; he was too busy for pranks.

  Stomach full, coffee mug steaming, he started work.

  Considering that the first inkling the police had of the Dodo’s existence was the rape of Maggie Drummond on Tuesday, September 24, and it was now Tuesday, November 19, Carmine realized that at no time had he been free to examine the case from its actual start on March 3 until this moment. But after tonight, that would change; he would have the Dodo at his fingertips. Even as he worked it nagged at Carmine that if the Dodo switched to two weeks, tomorrow they would have another victim, and she would be dead. Yet he couldn’t seriously think that: the Dodo might tell himself that nothing temporal ruled his forays, but three weeks did.

  Shirley Constable, the first victim, on March 3, a Sunday. An embryonic Dodo, not even named because she had been so terrified that she hadn’t even remembered his notice. But in her last interview, after some weeks of treatment, she had told Liz Meyers that the man definitely wasn’t Mason Novak. The Dodo’s touch was alien. Mercedes Mendes, ten weeks later, on Monday, May 13. Even after weeks of therapy she maintained she had no boyfriend; Dr. Meyers had elicited an unknown fact about her that solved the puzzle. Mercedes was a lesbian. Leonie Coustain, raped on Tuesday, June 25, which was six weeks after Mercedes. The Dodo was growing into his final shape, gaining confidence. From then on his intervals were roughly three weeks; Esther Dubrowski on Tuesday, July 16, Marilyn Smith on Tuesday, August 6, Natalie Goldfarb on Friday, August 30, Maggie Drummond on Tuesday, September 24, Melantha Green on Tuesday, October 15, and the attempt on Catherine dos Santos on Tuesday, November 5. Why with some victims he had varied by a few days Carmine couldn’t begin to fathom. Personality traits, linked as they always were to career choices and life styles, were as varied as ethnic backgrounds, religions, family histories. Two were religiously motivated virgins, two were lesbians, the rest had fairly active sex lives without sleeping around. If they had anything in common, it was a professional career; apparently the Dodo was not drawn to women in menial jobs. All were strong personalities, if very different, and it occurred to Carmine that the Dodo harbored a degree of hatred for outgoing, independent professional women. Had he been publicly laughed at by one such? The first of his victims, for instance? The pre-rape Shirley Constable had been noted for her outspoken frankness. She had “caught” a much wanted fish, Mason Novak, who hadn’t looked at another woman since they became an item, but she was one of Carmine’s two religiously motivated virgins—a wedding ring came before sex.

  Easy to see why Maggie Drummond was his last living victim; she had flipped him a more insulting bird than a dodo when she survived her rape unintimidated, despite its new horrors—his fist, the asphyxiations.

  The Dodo murdered Melantha Green. She had a boyfriend steady enough to be gifted with a key to her apartment, and apparently enjoyed a safe, comfortable relationship with a fellow black in medicine. Why had the Dodo chosen her for his first killing? Her blackness? No, somehow that didn’t fit. The Dodo did nothing unreasonable according to his lights. What was unique about her?

  Catherine dos Santos was not a virgin, she had admitted, though she didn’t indulge in sex regularly. Maybe she would qualify as a nun-like person, but only so far. She hadn’t put up the bars on her windows, but she had hailed them in delight when she was looking for a place to live. Why was a mystery, but Carmine felt that a part at least of her defenses—the sirens, definitely—contained an element of the practical joke. She had been dying to try her sirens out! Well, they had done their job. That she had been spared the Dodo’s attentions had to be attributed to her own ingenuity; the police had done nothing to help her, any more than had the abominable Hochners.

  All of which, he decided at midnight, stretching painfully, pointed to a part of a motive for Didus ineptus: he intended to ruin the happiness and contentment of a number of professional women who irked him more than most of the breed. What Carmine couldn’t come to grips with was the exact nature of the Dodo’s sexual motives. No victim had been cut, hacked, mutilated, burned or endured the tortures usually inflicted by the multiple offender. He bruised, and with numbers seven and eight, he had used a rope, probably of human hair, to asphyxiate. If he wasn’t caught, would he progress to other forms of torture? Carmine didn’t think so.

  Accepted thinking had it that rapists who murdered preyed on prostitutes because such crimes went almost unnoticed: who misses a whore? Whereas the Dodo preyed on women who were noticed. Nine women thus far, and we didn’t know about him until the seventh.

  What if this kind of predator is common? Police notice boards are full of the pictures of missing young women, pretty, from good families, pursuing careers. What if a number of them can be traced to a horrifying death at the hands of a raping killer? I am looking, Carmine thought, at the tip of an iceberg.

  Our Dodo knows every single one of his victims, but whatever his victims do to be entered on his list, no one save he knows. At first raping them was enough; he used them, abused them, and left them emotionally handicapped for life. Until Maggie Drummond spoke out, exposed him. My two women, Delia and Helen, brought in Dr. Liz Meyers and the rape clinic, and now he sees the damage he inflicted start to heal. But no one can heal a dead victim, so he moved up and on to murder.

  Whose is the next name on his list? He’s left me no clue that I can see to identify her.

  The Gentleman Walkers of Carew, he decided at one a.m., were no help to the investigation. Mark Sugarman led one group of Walkers; Mason Novak led the other group that walked on the alternate days. No name had sprung out as never walking on a Dodo night, which probably meant that the Dodo wasn’t a Walker—or that the Dodo was listed as walking, but didn’t.

  There was a cross-link between the Glass Teddy Bear gift shop vandalisms and the Dodo case, in that Hank Murray, manager of the Busquash Mall, lived in Carew and, when he had th
e time, served as a Gentleman Walker. Then there were the Warburton twins, who also lived in Carew and seemed to lead lives of leisure. They were devious and shady, but any criminal activities in California had gone unreported, and in Connecticut they were simply dismissed as eccentrics, a type of person both prominent and tolerated in a university city like Holloman.

  From there he went back to the victims and did the whole exercise again, this time using sources like Helen MacIntosh’s journals, which he found informative, perceptive and amusing. She had put them in his custody a week ago, even including the one she was entering—in about nine weeks, she had filled no fewer than seven books!

  Her colored inks amused him in one respect, but in another provoked sincere admiration: she was right when she said it was a help, and certainly the purple entries were something of a revelation. Her description of the glass teddy bear, his value, and Amanda’s stubborn refusal to admit its worth were excellent; he was interested to learn that his cool, selfish, ambitious trainee had developed a fondness for Amanda that ripened into friendship; long after there was no necessity to put entries in her books about the Vandal case, a paragraph or two of purple ink would appear.

  Then there was her work on the California connections of the Warburton twins, starting with Howard, their father.

  “Howard Warburton was autopsied,” she wrote in black ink, “not because he had died falling down his stairs, but because the examining doctor at the scene thought his body in an impossible posture. At autopsy he was shown to have a spinal column fracture at C2–C3. There were no other injuries apart from minor bruising. The police pathologist agreed that Mr. Warburton’s head should have been closest to the bottom step, not his feet, and called the death suspicious.

  “Then the twins—eight years old—admitted that they had been present when the accident happened, and had pushed and pulled at their father trying to revive him. His head had been closest to the step, but by the time they finished with him, it was farthest away. That left only one difficulty, the fact that there had been no cerebral or cardiac catastrophe to cause the fall. Then Robert said he thought his father had tripped, and Gordon, a parrot according to the San Diego police, said he saw his father trip too. After interrogating the twins intensively, the San Diego D.A. declined to pursue the matter. The year was 1945, and the cream of every crop was in the armed services. Howard Warburton hadn’t been, thanks to poor vision and flat feet. Two reasons why he might have tripped.”

  In purple ink she had written: “They did it! In 1968 we’re a bit more sophisticated about the capacity of children for doing murder, but in 1945 I guess people would have died of horror at the mere thought.

  “I didn’t think there was any reason why, provided I kept identities properly concealed, I shouldn’t talk to Kurt about it, and he agrees with me. I made my killer one child, in case you’re worried, Captain. I confess I only do it to get a rise out of him—he’s so cool, calm and collected. Sorry, sir.”

  Smiling, Carmine put the book down. She was incorrigible! However, she had been dating Kurt exclusively for eight or nine months, and no one knew better than he that all human beings need someone to confide in. According to her lights, Kurt was ideal—unconnected to her work, prone to take her side. What more could one ask? he thought, an image of Desdemona before his eyes.

  Carmine ploughed on—black pen, blue pen, red pen, green pen, and that inevitable purple pen to put a very personal, highly biased slant on everything that swam through her little part of the huge police ocean.

  Sometimes there were irreverent remarks about her father—purple pen, of course! and one perceptive comment about her mad-in-an-uncertifiable-way mother, who had seen three ghosts in the Chubb House sitting room fireplace. Which wasn’t enough to make it into Helen’s report book: what was? The fact that all three stopped playing some antique game of cards, complete to wigs and buckled shoes, and stared at Angela MacIntosh in utter terror. ‘A ghost! Can you see her?’ asked one. Then all three disappeared. Written in red overwritten in purple: “Mom strikes again. No one’s safe.”

  And what do I do? he asked himself at three in the morning, finished at last. What she says is so interesting, though she has no idea of it. And the spontaneity of those little stories about her parents, Kurt, and Amanda Warburton—wonderful!

  Desdemona was awake, watching New York television on the little set that stood atop the bureau in their bedroom; she tended to be insomniac if he hadn’t come home by bedtime. Even knowing he was sure to be safe—if he wasn’t, they’d race to tell her—couldn’t compensate for the fear in a cold bed.

  “Did you do what had to be done?” she asked, sitting up.

  “Yes. I just needed to see all of it in perspective and from every viewpoint.” He threw his clothes over a chair, too tired to put them away.

  “Do you know whodunit?”

  “Yes, I’m fairly sure.” He crawled into bed and cuddled. “The trouble is, there’s not a shred of evidence.”

  “I love your hair,” she said, running her fingers through it. “Mine’s so flimsy.”

  “Wrong genes, my giant English mouse.” He kissed her neck. “I hope you’re not in too much need, love. I’m past it.”

  “So am I, actually. I’m just glad you’ve seen the trees as well as the forest. Are you sure there’s no evidence?”

  “Positive.”

  “Will you confide your suspicions to anyone other than me?”

  “Not this time. There are all kinds of complications, too many sensitive egos … ” He was mumbling a little.

  “Yes, it’s not a terribly happy division at the moment, I know.” She looked brisk. “You sit on it, love, no matter who tries to probe.” A giggle. “Or with what.”

  He forced his eyelids open. “I’m just glad, Desdemona, you’re not in danger from a killer.” The words came out a trifle slurred.

  She grabbed his hair again, but painfully. “Carmine! Don’t you dare tempt fate! Take that back, or cross your fingers, or—or—or something!”

  “I crossed my fingers,” he murmured, and was asleep.

  Good, she could leave the TV on; it would take her some time to grow drowsy. Twisting, she looked down at his face in the dim, flickering light. The lines had smoothed away, he was at peace. How awful to think I have to wake him again four hours from now. He’ll be mad at me for letting him sleep an extra bit, but I don’t care. The world won’t end if he’s not sitting at his wretched kitchen table by eight o’clock, and so I’ll tell Delia. What would I do without her?

  CHAPTER VII

  “I’ve worked our strategy out, twinnie dear,” Gordie said, waving a thick artist’s paint brush dripping crimson gore.

  “Do tell!”

  “To get the blood right, we have to witness a slaughter.”

  Robert swung around from the typewriter; the exasperation on his face was exactly mirrored on his brother’s, and he gave a whinnying laugh. “Gordie, your face is perfect! We’re getting so good that we won’t even need to be in the same room together.”

  “Shall we continue our rhymes a little more?”

  “Why not? Um—slaughter … Rhymes with daughter, caught her, bought her, fought her, sort her—”

  “Yes, yes, that’s plenty!”

  “Party pooper! All jokes aside, Gordie, I do like your sketch. It’s new, it’s different—a novel concept for murder. Why don’t we make more of it?”

  “Will Amanda like it if we do?”

  “Who cares, twinnie-winnie?” Robert asked, tittering. “She is our aunt, and small potatoes.”

  “Don’t forget that we need Captain Delmonico to dig our biggest potatoes, Robbie. Will he like the blood?”

  Robert leaped to his feet and executed a stylish pirouette across the black-and-white crazed rug; Gordon joined him at his halfway mark, and they finished together with an entrechat.

  “Oh, we
haven’t lost our balletic skills!” Gordie cried. “Here’s a harder one—Aubergine.”

  “Margarine. Ne’er was seen. Long string bean. Not that keen. Fast machine. Primp and preen.”

  The elfin face looked sly. “Ah—Dodo?”

  “HoJo. No—no. Old crow. So-so.”

  “Darling, you are brilliant!” Gordie went back to his work station. “We will go through with this, Robbie, won’t we?”

  “Yes, Gordie, we will. I promise we will.”

  “I can’t, Hank,” said Amanda Warburton wretchedly. “I’m so sorry, but while I esteem you as a friend, I’ll never think of you as anything else. I stopped loving a long time ago, and the scars are too many and too deep to eradicate.” Eyes full of tears, she gazed at Hank piteously. “Please understand! It’s impossible, but that’s no reflection on you. I’d like to keep you as my friend, but you may find that an insult.”

  Hank’s chief reaction to this rejection was a profound thankfulness that he hadn’t gone down on one knee to propose; it had occurred to him to do so, but something had restrained him—a subconscious knowledge that she would refuse him, probably. So he leaned back in his chair, released her hands, sighed, and tried valiantly to smile.

  “No, I’m not insulted, and yes, I’d be glad to continue as your friend. We’ll forget that tonight ever happened. I’ll never refer to it again unless you do, not by look either.” He took a breath and managed to make the smile more genuine. “You’re fun to be with, Amanda. I’d hate to lose our dinners, games, times with Marcia and the animals. Is that all right?”

  “Yes, Hank, of course it is! But for tonight, would you prefer that we called off dinner?”

  “Good lord, why? Lobster Pot, Solo’s, Sea Foam, Jerry’s? Take your pick,” he said, sounding quite himself.

  “Lobster Pot, please. Would you mind taking me to the Mall afterward? A new shipment from Orrefors came in just as I was leaving, and I’d like to get it unpacked. I left my car there and walked home, so it’s just the ride.”