On, Off

by Colleen McCullough

  Carmine swallowed, impaled on those eyes. “Only God really knows the answer, but I don’t think God could be so cruel. A murder of this kind needn’t be done to watch the victim suffer. The man may well have given Mercedes drugs to make her sleep through it. Of one thing you can be sure: it was not God’s purpose to make her suffer. If you believe in God, then believe that she didn’t suffer.”

  And God forgive me for that lie, but how could I tell this devastated father the truth? He sits there, dead in mind, dead in spirit, sixteen years of love, care, worry, joy and minor sorrows gone up like a puff of smoke from a incinerator. Why should I share my opinion of God with him and make his loss worse? He has to pick up the pieces and continue; there are five other children who need him, and a wife whose heart isn’t merely broken — it’s mashed to pulp.

  “Thank you,” said Mrs. Alvarez suddenly.

  “Thank you for bearing with me,” Carmine said.

  “You comforted them immeasurably,” said Father Tesoriero on the way to the door. “But Mercedes did suffer, didn’t she?”

  “My guess is, beyond description. It’s hard to be in my line of work and believe in God, Father.”

  Two journalists had appeared on the street, one with a microphone, the other with a notepad. When Carmine emerged they ran toward him, only to be roughly shoved away.

  “Fuck off, you vultures!” he snarled, climbed into the Ford and drove away in a hurry.

  Several blocks later, sure no reporters were on his tail, he pulled to the side of the road and let his feelings overwhelm him. Did she suffer? Yes, yes, yes, she suffered! She suffered hideously, and he made sure she stayed awake for all of it. Her last glimpse of life must have been her own blood flowing down a drain hole, but her family must never know that. I’ve gone way beyond disbelief in God. I believe that the world belongs to the Devil. I believe that the Devil is infinitely more powerful than God. And the soldiers of goodness, if not of God, are losing the war.

  Chapter 4

  Monday, October 11th, 1965

  As Columbus Day wasn’t a public holiday, nothing impeded the gathering of the Hughlings Jackson Center for Neurological Research Board of Governors at 11 A.M. in the fourth-floor boardroom. Well aware that he hadn’t been invited, Carmine had every intention of sitting in. So he arrived early, took a thin china mug to the hall coffee urn, helped himself to two jelly doughnuts on a thin china plate, and had the effrontery to sit in the far end chair, which he turned to face the window.

  At least “effrontery” was what Miss Desdemona Dupre called it when she strode in to find him curling his tongue sensuously around the Board’s goodies.

  “You’re lucky, you know” was Carmine’s reply. “If the Holloman Hospital architects hadn’t decided to put the parking lot in front of the building, you’d have no view at all. As it is, you can see all the way to Long Island. Isn’t it a beautiful day? The fall is just about at its best, and while I mourn the passing of the elms, you can’t beat maples for color. Their leaves have invented new shades at the warm end of the spectrum.”

  “I didn’t realize you had either the words or the science to express yourself!” she snapped, eyes like ice. “You are sitting in the Governor-in-Chief’s chair and partaking of refreshments to which you are not entitled! Kindly pick up your traps and go!”

  At which moment the Prof walked in, propped at the sight of Lieutenant Delmonico, and sighed deeply. “Oh, dear, I hadn’t thought of you,” he said to Carmine.

  “Whether you like it or not, Professor, I have to be here.”

  President Mawson MacIntosh of Chubb University arrived before the Prof could answer, beamed at Carmine and shook him warmly by the hand. “Carmine! I might have known that Silvestri would put you on this,” said M.M., as he was universally known. “I am tremendously cheered. Here, sit next to me. And don’t,” he added in a conspiratorial whisper, “waste your tastebuds on the doughnuts. Try the apple Danish.”

  Miss Desdemona Dupre made a small sound of suppressed fury and marched out of the room, colliding with Dean Dowling and his own neurology professor, Frank Watson. He who authored “the Hug” and its staff of “Huggers.”

  M.M., whom Carmine knew well from several awkwardly delicate internal Chubb cases, looked far more imposing than that other President, he of the United States of America. M.M. was tall, perfectly dressed, trim in the waist, his handsome face crowned by a head of luxuriant hair whose original auburn had transformed to a wonderful apricot. An American aristocrat to his fingertips. Despite his height, L.B.J. paled to insignificance whenever the two men stood side by side, which they did occasionally. But persons ofM.M.’s august lineage would far rather preside over a great university than over an undisciplined bunch of rowdies like Congress.

  On the other hand, Dean Wilbur Dowling looked the psychiatrist he was: untidily dressed in a combination of tweed, flannel and a pink bow tie with red polka dots, he wore a bushy brown beard to counterbalance his egg-bald head, and stared at the world through horn-rimmed bifocals.

  And on the few times that he had seen Frank Watson, Carmine was always reminded of Boris out of The Adventures of Rocky and Bull-winkle. Watson dressed in black and had a long, thin face whose upper lip bore a lounge-lizard’s black mustache; sleek black hair and a permanent sneer completed the Boris similarity. Yes, Frank Watson was definitely the kind of person who drank regularly from a cup of vitriol. But surely he wasn’t on the Hug’s Board of Governors?

  No, he wasn’t. Watson ended his conversation with the Dean and slithered away with a metaphorical flourish of a black cape he wasn’t wearing. Interesting guy, thought Carmine. I will have to see him.

  The five Parson Governors trooped in as a group, and knew better than to query Carmine’s presence when M.M. made a subtly effusive introduction.

  “If anyone can get to the bottom of this unspeakable affair, Carmine Delmonico can,” M.M. ended.

  “Then I suggest,” said Roger Parson Junior, taking the chair at the end of the table, “that we put ourselves at Lieutenant Delmonico’s disposal. After, that is, he has told us precisely what has happened and what he intends to do in the future.”

  The Parson contingent looked so alike that anyone would have picked them as closely related; even the thirty years’ difference in age between the three elderly and two youthful members of the clan made little difference. They were a trifle over medium height, thinly stooped, with long necks, beaky noses, prominent cheekbones, downturned mouths and scant heads of lank, indeterminately brown hair. Their eyes, to a man, were grey-blue. Now, M.M. looked like a regal tycoon, whereas the Parsons looked like academic paupers.

  Carmine had spent some of his weekend in researching them and the Parson group of companies. William Parson, the founder (and uncle of the present Governor-in-Chief) had started with machine parts and parlayed his holdings until they stretched from motors to turbines, and surgical instruments through typewriters to artillery. The Parson Bank had come into being at exactly the right time to go from strength to strength. William Parson had left it rather late to marry. His wife produced one child, William Junior, who turned out to be mentally retarded and epileptic. The son died in 1945, aged seventeen, and the mother followed in 1946, leaving William Parson alone. His sister, Eugenia, had married and also produced only one child, Richard Spaight, now head of the Parson Bank and a Hug Governor.

  William Parson’s brother, Roger, was a drunkard from an early age and absconded in 1943 to California with a sizeable slice of the company profits, abandoning his wife and two sons. The affair was hushed up, the loss absorbed, and both Roger’s boys had proven loyal, devoted and extremely capable heirs for William; their sons came out of the same mold, with the result that in this year of 1965 Parson Products stock had been blue chip for decades. Depressions? Chicken feed! People still drove cars that needed motors, Parson Turbines made diesel turbines and generators long before jet planes flew, girls went on pounding typewriters, surgical operations kept increasing, and co
untries were always blazing away at each other with Parson guns, howitzers and mortars, big, medium and small.

  In an interesting aside, Carmine had discovered that the family black sheep, Roger, having sobered up in California, had founded the Roger’s Ribs chain, married a movie starlet, done very nicely for himself, and died on top of a whore in a seedy motel.

  The Hug had come out of William Parson’s desire to do something in memory of his dead son, but its birth pangs had not been easy. Naturally Chubb University expected to head it and manage it, but such was not Parson’s intention. He wanted affiliation with Chubb, but refused to yield up its governance to Chubb. In the end Chubb had crumbled after being presented with an ultimatum of horrific proportions. His research center, said William Parson, would, if necessary, be attached to some sordid, non-Ivied, tin-pot institution of learning out of the state. When a Chubber like William Parson said that, Chubb knew itself beaten. Not that Chubb hadn’t come in for a slice of the pie; 25 percent of the annual budget was paid to the university for affiliation rights.

  Carmine also knew that the Board of Governors met every three months. The four Parsons and Cousin Spaight came up from their New York City apartments by limousine and stayed in suites at the Cleveland Hotel opposite the Schumann Theater for the night after the meeting. This was necessary because M.M. always gave them a dinner, hoping that he would be able to coax the Parsons into endowing a building that would one day house the William Parson art collection. This most important collection in American hands had been bequeathed to Chubb in William Parson’s will, but its delivery date was left to the discretion of his heirs, who thus far had preferred to hang on to even the tiniest Leonardo cartoon.

  When the Prof’s hand went out to start the reel-to-reel tape recorder, Carmine held up his own.

  “Sorry, Professor, this meeting is absolutely confidential.”

  “But — but — the minutes! I thought that if Miss Vilich was excluded, she could type up the minutes from tape.”

  “No minutes,” said Carmine firmly. “I intend to be frank and detailed, which means nothing I say goes out of this room.”

  “Understood,” said Roger Parson Junior abruptly. “Proceed, Lieutenant Delmonico.”

  When he finished, the silence was so complete that a sudden sough of wind outside sounded like a roar; to a man they were ashen, trembling, open-mouthed. In all the times he had met M.M., Carmine had never seen the man thrown off balance, but in the wake of this report even his hair seemed to have lost its luster. Though perhaps only Dean Dowling, a psychiatrist famous for his interest in organic psychoses, fully understood the implications.

  “It can’t be anyone at the Hug,” said Roger Parson Junior, dabbing at his lips with a napkin.

  “That has yet to be established,” Carmine said. “We have no particular suspects, which means that all the members of the Hug are under suspicion. For that matter, we can’t rule out any persons in the Medical School.”

  “Carmine, do you genuinely believe that at least ten of these missing girls have been incinerated?” asked M.M.

  “Yes, sir, I do.”

  “But you haven’t offered any real evidence of it.”

  “No, I haven’t. It’s purely circumstantial, but it fits what we do know — that were it not for the vagaries of chance, Mercedes Alvarez would have been completely incinerated by last Wednesday.”

  “It’s disgusting,” whispered Richard Spaight.

  “It’s Schiller!” cried Roger Parson III. “He’s old enough to have been a Nazi.” He rounded on the Professor fiercely. “I told you not to hire Germans!”

  Roger Parson Junior rapped the table sharply. “Young Roger, that is enough! Dr. Schiller is not old enough to have been a Nazi, and it is not the business of this Board to speculate. I insist that Professor Smith be supported, not upbraided.” His annoyance at his son’s outburst still in his eyes, he looked at Carmine. “Lieutenant Delmonico, I thank you very much for your candor, however unwelcome it may be, and I direct all of you to maintain silence on every aspect of this tragedy. Though,” he added rather pathetically, “I suppose we must expect that some of it at least will leak to the press?”

  “That’s inevitable, Mr. Parson, sooner or later. This has become a statewide investigation. Those in the know are on the increase every day.”

  “The FBI?” Henry Parson Junior asked.

  “Not so far, sir. The line between a missing person and a kidnap victim is thin, but none of the families of these girls has ever received a ransom demand, and the matter remains at the moment confined to Connecticut. But rest assured, we will consult any agency that might be able to help,” said Carmine.

  “Who is heading the investigation?” asked M.M.

  “For want of someone better, sir, at present I am, but that could change. There are so many different police departments involved, you see.”

  “Do you want the job, Carmine?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then I shall call the Governor,” said M.M., positive of his power, and why not?

  “Would it help if Parson Products offered a large reward?” asked Richard Spaight. “Half a million? A million?”

  Carmine blanched. “No, Mr. Spaight, anything but! For one thing, it would focus press attention on the Hug, and for another, massive rewards only make the police’s task harder. They bring every cuckoo and zealot out of the woodwork, and while I can’t say a reward wouldn’t produce a good lead, the chances are so slight that following up thousands and thousands of reports would tax police reserves beyond endurance for the sake of a carload of nothing. If we continue to get nowhere, then maybe twenty-five thousand in reward money could be offered. Take my word for it, that’s plenty.”

  “Then,” said Roger Parson Junior, getting up and heading for the coffee, “I suggest we adjourn until Lieutenant Delmonico can give us some new developments. Professor Smith, you and your people must give the Lieutenant complete co-operation.” He started to pour into a cup and stopped, aghast. “The coffee’s not made! I need a coffee!”

  While the Prof fluttered about apologizing and explaining that Miss Vilich normally dealt with the coffee toward the end of the meeting, Carmine switched the several percolators on and bit into an apple Danish. M.M. was right. Delicious.

  Before Carmine left his office that afternoon, Commissioner John Silvestri barreled through the door to tell him that word had come from Hartford that there was to be a special police task force operating out of Holloman, as Holloman had the best police laboratories in the state. Lieutenant Carmine Delmonico was appointed to head the special task force.

  “Budget, unlimited,” said Silvestri, looking even more like a large black cat than usual, “and ask for any cops you want from anywhere in the state.”

  Thank you, M.M., said Carmine to himself. I have a virtual carte blanche, but I’m willing to bet my badge that the press will know everything before I leave this office. Once the public servants get in on the act, tongues are bound to wag. As for the Governor — multiple murders, especially of admirable citizens, add up to political odium.

  To Silvestri he said, “I’ll visit every police department in the state personally to brief them, but for the moment I’m happy to keep the special task force to me, Patrick, Abe and Corey.”

  Chapter 5

  Wednesday, October 20th, 1965

  Two weeks had gone by since the discovery of Mercedes Alvarez in the Hug dead animal refrigerator, and the tide of news items in the newspapers and on TV and radio had begun to ebb in an informational vacuum. Not a whisper of incineration had leaked, which amazed the special task force. Apparently pressure from on high by all kinds of influential and political people had suppressed this as too sensitive, too nightmarishly disturbing. Of course the Caribbean factor had been harped on remorselessly. The number of victims had been set at eleven; no case prior to Rosita Esperanza in January of 1964 had come to light, including in any other state of the Union. Of course the killer had been given a
nickname by the press: he was the Connecticut Monster.

  Hug existence was no longer just a matter of a minor triumph in the behavior of potassium ions through the neuronal cell membrane, or a major triumph when Eustace had a focal temporal lobe seizure upon a tickling electrical stimulation of his ulnar nerve. Now Hug existence was fraught with tensions that exhibited themselves in sideways glances, statements cut off in mid-utterance, uneasy avoidance of the subject never far from any Hugger mind. One small comfort: the cops seemed to have given up visiting, even Lieutenant Delmonico, who for eight days had haunted every floor.

  The cracks that were appearing in the Hug’s social structure mostly radiated from the figure of Dr. Kurt Schiller.

  “Stay away from me, you Nazi cur!” Dr. Maurice Finch shouted at Schiller when he came enquiring about a tissue sample.

  “Yes, you are allowed to call me names,” Schiller retorted, gasping, “but I dare not retaliate, here among American Jews!”

  “If I had my way, you’d be deported!” Finch said, snarling.

  “You cannot blame a whole nation for the crimes of a few,” Schiller persisted, face white, fists clenched.

  “Who says I can’t? You were all guilty!”

  Charles Ponsonby broke it up, took Schiller by the arm and escorted him to his own domain.

  “I have done nothing — nothing!” Schiller cried. “How do we know — really know! — that the body was cut up to be incinerated? It is gossip, wicked gossip! I have done nothing!”

  “My dear Kurt, Maurie’s reaction is understandable,” Charles said. “He had cousins who went to the ovens at Auschwitz, so the very thought of incineration is — well, profoundly disturbing to him. I also understand that it isn’t easy to be on the receiving end of his emotions. The best thing you can do is keep out of his way until things die down. They will, they always do. For you’re quite correct — it’s just gossip. The police haven’t told us a thing. Keep your chin up, Kurt — be a man!” This last was said with an inflection that caused Schiller to put his head in his hands and weep bitterly.