Too Many Murders

by Colleen McCullough

  “I don’t believe that! You got tired of Sandra years ago! What’s changed?”

  Here it comes, thought Carmine, sipping his drink.

  Myron coughed, looked shy. “Um—well … I met a lady. A real lady.”

  “Ohhh!” Sophia’s eyes went round, then something fierce and intensely proprietary flashed into them; by the time she gazed at Myron it was gone, replaced by a limpid curiosity. “Tell us more, Daddy, please!”

  “Her name is Dr. Erica Davenport, and she’s the chief legal officer attached to Cornucopia. She lives right here in Holloman! It’s early days yet, but I figured with the death of her boss, Desmond Skeps, she can probably do with some moral support. When I called her from L.A. she sounded harassed. She didn’t ask me to come, but I have anyway.”

  Carmine swallowed. “Myron, this could be a conflict. You should have stayed on the West Coast,” he said.

  “But Erica’s my friend!” Myron protested.

  “And a possible suspect in her boss’s death. I can’t stop your seeing her, Myron, but she can’t come anywhere near my home, surely you see that!”

  “Oh, potties!” said Myron, using an expletive he had picked up somewhere and thought innocuous enough for Sophia’s ears.

  “You’re in love, that’s why you want a divorce,” Desdemona said, gathering empty glasses.

  “Do you think so?”

  “I do. One more drink, then we eat. Roast leg of New Zealand lamb with all the trimmings.”

  She and Sophia left for the kitchen. Carmine stared at his beloved friend sternly. “Myron, I don’t need this complication.”

  “I’m sorry, Carmine. I didn’t think! I just wanted to be at Erica’s side.”

  “As long as you understand the limitations.”

  “I do, now that you’ve spelled them out. I’ll take Erica to lunch tomorrow and explain.”

  “No, you won’t. Like all the other suspects, she has to be in the Cornucopia building tomorrow, all day. Maybe into the night as well. I suggest you explain matters on the phone, and hope that I’m done with her in time to take her to dinner.”

  “Shit!”

  “Be it on your own head, Myron. And don’t expect to get much sympathy from Sophia.”

  “Fuck!”

  “Your vocabulary’s going downhill, old friend. So what’s so exciting about this News magazine article?”

  “Weren’t you listening? Just that it’s the best article on the Reds in years, especially about the Central Committee members. In case you’ve forgotten, Carmine, this country is in the middle of a cold war with the USSR.”

  “No, I hadn’t forgotten that. But at the moment my city seems in the middle of a hot war against persons unknown. And here come our second drinks, so let’s go back to News magazine.”

  Since everybody present at the meeting knew how little progress had been made, the only man in attendance who wasn’t surprised at its being called was Carmine. The only woman, Delia Carstairs, had a very good idea what was going down, but her function was to take minutes, not make comments.

  “We’re going about this the wrong way,” Carmine said after John Silvestri opened the proceedings. “From today on, the department goes back to normal insofar as it can. Larry, you and your guys will take over Holloman’s routine crimes—by which I mean crimes unconnected to the twelve deaths of April third. If we don’t pay them any attention, we’ll be swamped by robberies and domestic violence as well as biker and militant and other gang feuds. Get out there and let the local hoods know we haven’t overlooked them. You did great work on the three shootings and the prostitute, Larry, but that’s ground to a halt, and I’m not wasting our manpower chasing leads that go nowhere. So thanks very much, guys, but I won’t need you anymore.”

  Significantly, Larry Pisano and his men didn’t look at all indignant. Rather, they looked relieved. In being sent back to Holloman’s routine crimes, their success rate had just soared. In fact, so eager was Larry to get onto his new task that he rose to his feet without being dismissed.

  “Then you don’t need me here, Carmine, right?”

  “Right.”

  Carmine waited until the three men left the room. “What I say now goes no farther, understood?”

  “Eminently,” said Commissioner Silvestri. “You’ve formed some conclusions?”

  “Yes, sir, I have. I don’t claim that they’re the correct ones, but for the moment they suit my purposes. Some of the eleven murders—from now on we ignore Jimmy Cartwright—I believe were commissioned from out of state. The three shootings, definitely. Possibly also Peter Norton’s poisoning, Bianca Tolano’s rape, Cathy Cartwright’s killing, and the smothering of Beatrice Egmont. Each was done professionally, and I include the sex murder in that because it was so—textbook.”

  “You’re talking seven crimes, Carmine,” said Patsy, frowning.

  “Yes.”

  “What about Dee-Dee Hall?”

  “No, I think she was a personal kill. And so were Evan Pugh and Desmond Skeps.”

  “You’re forgetting Dean Denbigh. Where does he fit in?”

  “I’m not sure yet, Patsy. My instincts say a commission, but if it is, why go to such tortuous lengths with the tea packet and tea bag? Why shouldn’t they show evidence of tampering? Maybe he’s a stray.”

  “That I refuse to believe!” said Danny Marciano. “On any other day, there’s a chance, but not on April third. You’ve used up your stray with Jimmy Cartwright, Carmine.”

  “I know, I know!”

  A silence fell, suddenly so profound that the susurration of Silvestri’s state-of-the-art air conditioner was a roar.

  Silvestri broke it. “You’re proposing one murderer, Carmine.”

  “Yes. And if I’m right, he made a terrible mistake in dispatching all his victims on the same day. That meant he had to farm most of them out. But this isn’t a dodo, this is a mastermind. Therefore he knew he was making a mistake, and that says he had no choice. For some reason they all had to die on the same day, which suggests that the threat they posed is very recent and had to be acted on at once.” Carmine’s face looked both grim and elated, an expression everyone there knew: he was looking forward to—yet dreading—the hunt.

  Silvestri shook his head. “I don’t know how you manage that, Carmine, conning us into thinking your way before we really know what you’re driving at. One murderer? It’s crazy!”

  “I agree, sir, but let’s go with it! Is it any crazier than twelve murders in one day in a city the size of Holloman? In fact, to me it’s the only answer that makes any sense. If eleven people have died in such disparate ways, doesn’t it scream one killer? Mass murder happens, but it’s some psycho with a machine gun in a crowded place, or a hijacker bringing down a plane because he didn’t understand the thing he was holding. This is different.”

  “I get your drift,” the Commissioner said. “Go on.”

  “To hire professional killers says the mastermind—that’s not a word I like—has unlimited money. Why don’t I like the word ‘mastermind’? Because on at least one occasion he was very indiscreet and earned himself the nickname of Motor Mouth from Evan Pugh. That’s why we’ve found no trace of anything Pugh could have used for blackmail. The subject of the blackmail is simply something Motor Mouth said and everybody except Evan Pugh forgot. The hardest kind of blackmail to prove.”

  “It’s too far-fetched,” said Danny Marciano.

  “I agree, it is far-fetched, but not too far-fetched. Give me a better reason for three out-of-state shootings, Danny! Those harmless people were handpicked for execution by men using silencers and accustomed to fast getaways. Far too sophisticated for Holloman! One incident, yes, but three, all at the same time? Never happen. I get the feeling that the guy who commissioned these killings is laughing at us as provincial dunderheads.”

  “Then he doesn’t know you, Carmine,” said Abe loyally.

  “Oh, I think he does, Abe, if only socially. This is a small city, and I get
around.”

  “How do you intend to proceed?” Silvestri asked.

  “My usual way, sir. I’m taking all eleven cases back, and Abe and Corey as well. Sorry, guys, but I can’t do without you. If I send either of you to question people, I can be sure it’ll be done as if I did it myself. That goes for looking at evidence too. Today we concentrate on Desmond Skeps. Abe’s done the workup, but now we tighten the noose at Cornucopia.”

  Carmine looked directly at his boss. “You may get some pressure from Hartford on this if we ask too many awkward questions. Or even from Washington. I also have to inform you that my fool friend, Myron Mandelbaum, is smitten with Cornucopia’s legal officer, a woman named Erica Davenport. I’ve warned him off and he knows he can’t invite her to my home, but I don’t want any flak coming your way because of him.”

  Silvestri remained unruffled. “What’s a bit more flak from Hartford and Washington, when I have a press conference in a few minutes? The sharks are in a feeding frenzy over Skeps’s death, so I intend to throw them chunks of Skeps. Keep them chomping at his carcass. Twelve murders? What twelve murders? I’ll be firm that we have no local suspects for Skeps’s murder, of course. That’s why the FBI is here. We’re looking in New York and other financial capitals. That’s the way I’m going to play it, one press conference after another. Keep the sharks way away from Holloman.” He waved a hand. “Go away! I have to think.”

  Carmine went, frowning. FBI? What did Silvestri mean?

  The Cornucopia building stood on the corner of Maple and Cromwell, downtown in the shopping and business district, and was only a year old; at forty storeys it was the tallest structure in Holloman. The penthouse was Desmond Skeps’s residence, while the lower thirty-nine storeys housed the head offices of all of Cornucopia’s many companies, with Desmond Skeps’s own offices located on the thirty-ninth floor. Curiously, he had provided no direct access between his working and living quarters; in order to enter the penthouse, he had to leave his offices and travel back down to the first floor and his private elevator to the penthouse. I suppose, thought Carmine, it keeps business truly separated from pleasure.

  The downstairs foyer was sheathed in multicolored marble and adorned with lush palms in handmade marble pots; a closer inspection revealed that the palms could be lifted out holus-bolus in smaller, plastic pots. There was an enquiry desk and a visitor’s desk whose lone attendant’s job was to pin a tag on each visitor. Those who worked inside the building took no notice of anyone on their way in or out. One bank of elevators served floors two to nineteen, the other floors twenty to thirty-nine; the penthouse elevator stood alone at the blind end and had NO ADMITTANCE painted on a wooden stand in front of its shiny copper doors.

  Armed with a key, Carmine triggered the doors, which opened onto an interior plush with squabbed tannish-pink leather, a rosso antico marble floor, and carved and gilded trims. The panel bore only two buttons: UP and DOWN. How arrogant, he thought, amused. At the top it opened directly into the apartment, which was huge. First was a foyer the size of most living rooms, then a living room the size of most houses, with glass walls on two sides; one overlooked North Holloman, and one Long Island Sound and the Harbor. Carmine could see his own home’s jetty clearly, and his square tower with the widow’s walk. A low-powered telescope on a tripod made him wonder what else Desmond Skeps had seen, and in more homes than Carmine’s. Mr. Skeps, he thought, I do not like you. Privacy is our last defense against the barbarian, and you are as big a barbarian as federal governments.

  The decor was interior decorator beige, conservative and safe, nor were there any precious objects scattered around to suggest that Skeps collected art or even kitsch. The pictures on the walls were second-rate watercolors the decorator had probably passed off as first-rate, though in the bedroom this individual had gone for etchings torn out of over-sized Victorian books and framed. The bill had undoubtedly been astronomical, but Carmine spared no pity for a man who didn’t know second-rate when he saw it.

  Skeps had been murdered not in his bed but on his massage couch, a taller, narrower item of furniture that would have suited his murderer’s intentions admirably. Either he had climbed onto it voluntarily, or the murderer was strong enough to lift him there bodily after his glass of single malt Glenlivet and chloral hydrate. Certainly he wouldn’t have consumed the Scotch lying flat out on what was to become his deathbed. A strong killer, Carmine said to himself, thinking of the bear trap. These two killings were done personally, and they argued great physical strength. Look for someone rolling in money and built like Mr. Universe and you won’t go far wrong. But what if no one was both? What if no one was either?

  Patsy’s boys had been over the crime scene meticulously, so he didn’t bother going over it again. What he wanted was to get an idea of Desmond Skeps from his living arrangements.

  He knew what the rest of the world knew already, and from the same sources: gossip magazines, columnists, an occasional serious article in the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times. Skeps’s father, a successful manufacturer of automobile parts, had seen the war clouds gathering over Europe in 1938, and had not overlooked Southeast Asia either. He had founded Cornucopia (the name, he said, simply meant a horn of plenty) to manufacture artillery, then branched into airplane engines and machines of war. After Pearl Harbor his empire mushroomed, and it never ceased to grow. Now, in 1967, it manufactured surgical instruments and equipment, guns and howitzers, turbine engines, generators, atomic reactors, missiles, and small arms, and had branched into plastics, particularly those with military importance. Cornucopia had a huge research facility and was on the cutting edge of all it manufactured; it also held a large number of defense contracts for the armed services.

  Skeps’s job was enormous, but not hands-on in any way. He had about fifty managing directors, and they didn’t lay their hands on much either; about three or four down the pecking order saw the first such men, Carmine guessed. Well, that was what happened in any conglomerate, and Cornucopia was a modest conglomerate. The physical description he had of Skeps was of a tall, thin, dark and ungainly man who was magnetically attractive to women. That was the power operating, of course, the same as with Myron Mendel Mandelbaum. Once married to a very beautiful woman, he had driven her away with his jealousy, and he had not married again. There was one child, a boy, now aged thirteen, who went to the Trinity Grey School. His name—no surprise—was Desmond Skeps III. His mother had full custody, which indicated Skeps had done something pretty bad to blot his copybook.

  What Skeps thought of his son or the boy’s mother was hard to tell, as no photograph or portrait of either hung in the apartment. He would have to see the mother, of course, but that necessitated a trip to Orleans, on Cape Cod, where Philomena Skeps lived. So, at the moment, according to his information, did the boy, convalescing from some serious illness. He had been out of school already for five weeks and wasn’t expected back at school before Trinity Grey closed for the academic year. Which probably meant he would have to repeat. No fun, that.

  “What do you think?” he asked Abe and Corey after their tour.

  “That someone beat the ME’s boys here,” said Corey.

  “I agree,” said Abe, pointing to a vase that had been dusted twice for prints, only the color of the powder giving it away.

  Carmine scowled. “My mistake,” he said. “I figured we’d do better to get the smaller fry out of the way before tackling Mr. Skeps, a real whale. I’m scared he won’t give us latitude for the rest. The question is, was anything removed, and if it was, what, why, and by whom?”

  “An arm of the Justice Department,” Abe said.

  “FBI—the Commissioner has heard something, he dropped a hint. But he didn’t get it from an official source, nor long before our arrival. Jeez, I hate that!” Carmine cried. “Why not come to us and tell us they’re interested instead of floundering around like cock-roaches on a wedding cake?”

  “They’ll be downstairs in the offices,” Corey
said, looking aggressive.

  “We play it cool, guys,” said Carmine.

  The agency, they learned as they ducked under the police rope at the entrance to Desmond Skeps’s offices, was indeed the FBI. He was standing, all six foot five and two-fifty pounds of him, in the middle of the main office supervising two Cornucopia janitors removing a four-drawer filing cabinet precariously perched on a dolly. He was a good-looking man with thick dark hair and dark eyes, but how he got to be an agent in the field was a puzzle to the three Holloman cops; his sheer size made him far too memorable for most investigative purposes.

  “At your size, Mister, why don’t you just pick it up and carry it? Or is that beneath your dignity?” Carmine asked affably.

  The giant jumped, tried to look commandingly superior, and failed. “I hope you’re not going to be obstructive,” he said, flashing his credentials. “I’m Special Agent Ted Kelly of the FBI, and this is vital evidence.”

  “Have you got a warrant?” Carmine asked.

  “No, but I can get one faster than your cat can lick her ear,” he said, “so don’t even think of it.”

  “My cat’s ear is squeaky-clean, Special Agent Kelly. I have a warrant right here, so I’m taking the vital evidence by the power vested in me by the State of Connecticut, County of Holloman. The name’s Carmine Delmonico. This is Abe Goldberg, and that’s Corey Marshall. Guys, wheel my evidence out. And you, Special Agent Kelly, are contaminating my crime scene. Why don’t you go get your pieces of paper, then come back and make your seizures legal?”

  “I would get you, wouldn’t I?” Kelly asked, his face flushed. “I can’t say I wasn’t warned.”

  Carmine lifted the rope. “Goodbye, Mr. Kelly. And don’t come back until you’re willing to share everything you’ve got with the Holloman Police Department.”

  Shit! he thought as he was left victor on the field. That filing cabinet means I won’t be home early tonight, no matter what tricks Myron is up to; by tomorrow the Feds will have pulled enough strings to get their evidence back. No other filing cabinet has been targeted, so whatever Special Agent Kelly hopes to find lies within this one alone. And why do I think there’s more to this than a routine FBI presence? He went to the nearest phone and dialed.