On, Off

by Colleen McCullough

  “Jesus, that’s all we need! Mr. Daiman, we are busting our guts to find this killer, you have my word on that. Simply, we know nothing about him, least of all that he’s a member of the Hug — no one at the Hug has any political power! But I thank you for the warning and I’ll make sure that Travis has some protection.” He glanced from the box to the door barring the passageway that led into the main school. “Mind if I look around? And where’s the Chemistry classroom from here? Is it a lab, or a classroom?”

  “It’s just up the hall from the gym, and it’s the classroom. The lab is in the general lab area. Go ahead, Lieutenant, look wherever you like,” said Daiman, went to a chair and sat on it with his head in his hands.

  The passageway door was single, not double locked: was it ever double locked? On the tunnel side it couldn’t be opened without a key — or a credit card if it wasn’t double locked. Carmine entered the nine-foot-long tube and emerged to find himself staring at a girls’ toilet block directly across the hall.

  This killer knows everything! he thought, staggered. He grabbed her when she went into the toilets — she was notorious for that — dragged her across a three-yard hall into a three-yard tunnel and a deserted gym. Most likely he opened the door before he grabbed her. And he knew the gym would be deserted! It is on every Wednesday after school because that’s when the contractors come in to treat the floors. But they didn’t treat them yesterday because Francine went missing and they weren’t allowed in. Once he was in the gym, he rearranged the mats, put her in the bottom of the nearest box and made sure Winslow’s super-thick mat covered her completely. Did he gag her and tie her, or did he give her a shot of something to keep her out for a few hours?

  We searched every square inch of this school twice, but we didn’t find her. And when we didn’t find her, we knew she was the twelfth victim, spirited out of Travis before the squad car outside could radio base. Both times some searcher would have opened that locker and seen what was in all the others: rolled-up gym mats. Maybe whoever looked poked around inside it, but Francine didn’t move or make a noise. Then, when we were satisfied that Francine was gone — when Travis had ceased to be of any interest to us — he came back and retrieved her. I’ll put Corey on the door lock, he’s the best in the business.

  Maybe where we keep going wrong is in underrating the grind, the pain of his planning. It’s as if he had nothing else to do between each abduction than spend all of every single day scheming how he’s going to grab the next one. How far in advance does he know the identity of his next victim? Did he pick them out years ago, when they were on the brink of puberty? Has he got them all listed on a wall chart, carefully ruled in columns — name, date of birth, address, school, religion, race, habits? He has to watch them, he must have known about Francine’s weak bladder. Is he a substitute teacher, flitting from school to school with glowing references and a great reputation? That, we have to investigate starting right now.

  “Did he leave the jacket behind to jerk our strings, or did Francine manage to hide it in the mat?” he asked Patrick as he watched Paul delicately ease the unwieldy coat into a plastic bag.

  “I’d say Francine hid it,” Patrick answered. “He’s arrogant, but to leave us the jacket betrays one of his craftiest tricks. Until now, we’ve been convinced that the girls are snatched and whisked away immediately. Why tell us that he doesn’t always do that? I believe that he wants to keep us peering down the same tunnel at the same ray of light. Which means, Carmine, that this new development can’t possibly be leaked to the press. Do you trust the boy who found it? The principal?”

  “Yes, I do. How did he keep her quiet in the locker, Patsy?”

  “He drugged her. Someone this meticulous wouldn’t have made the mistake of gagging her before putting her in a relatively airless, smelly sports locker. There’s no sign she did throw up, but human beings vary and some are the vomiting type. Gagged, she would have drowned in her own vomit. No, he wouldn’t risk that. She’s too valuable, he’s planned her for at least two months.”

  “If we find her body —”

  “You don’t think we’ll find her alive?”

  Carmine gazed at his cousin with what Patrick called his “scornfully stern look.” “No, we’re not going to find her alive. We don’t know where to search, and all the places we’d like to search, we can’t. So when we find her body,” he went on, “you’d better go over her skin with a microscope. There’s a prick in it somewhere because he wouldn’t have had time to inject her where a good pathologist couldn’t find the mark. Odds are he’ll have used a very fine needle, and this time the body parts might not be in such good shape.”

  “Maybe,” said Patrick wryly, “I could borrow the Hug’s Zeiss operating microscope. Mine’s shit by comparison.”

  “With our unlimited budget, I don’t see why you can’t order one. It mightn’t come in time for Francine, but once you have it, I’m sure you’ll find plenty of use for it.”

  “What I love most about you, Carmine, is your gall. They’ll crucify you, because I won’t put my name on the requisition.”

  “Fuck them,” said Carmine. “They don’t have to see all those poor families. I have nightmares about the heads.”

  Chapter 9

  Friday, December 10th, 1965

  Ten days went by with no sign of Francine Murray, though Francine Murray was not on Ruth Kyneton’s mind that morning. Even through the worst of winter, Ruth Kyneton preferred to use the outside line than shove her freshly laundered linens in one of those dryer things. You couldn’t beat the smell of clothes dried in sweet, clean air. Besides, she strongly suspected that the artificially scented anti-static fabric conditioners advertised on TV were actually a government plot to impregnate the skins of loyal, law-abiding Americans with substances designed to turn them into zombies. Every time you turned around, Congress was trampling on someone’s rights in favor of drunks, skunks and punks, so why not fabric conditioners, bathroom deodorants and fluoride?

  She hung out her washing the proper way: fold a corner over the previous one to make it thick, pin them together, then tuck its far corner under the corner of the next item and pin them together, her mouth stuffed with pins, more in the pockets of her apron. Yep, her way meant half the number of pins and a line so crowded that no wire showed; finished, she levered a forked sapling under the line to stop it from sagging. The good thing about today was that it wasn’t cold enough to freeze things while they were wet. Purist though she was, Ruth never relished wrestling with frozen washing.

  Throughout this exercise she had been aware that the three curs from farther down Griswold Lane were fighting at the bottom of her yard; they were bound to move on up because curs always did, and she was not about to let curs soil her blindingly white whites, her vividly vivid colors. So she returned to the house to fetch a straw broom and marched resolutely down the yard to where, at the end of it, a streamlet trickled. The streamlet was a nuisance — kept the ground from freezing quickly, admittedly, but it created mud. The curs would be caked in slimy black mud.

  “Git!” she shouted, descending like a witch dismounted from her broom, waving it about viciously. “Git, you mangy critters, git! Go on, git!”

  The dogs were squabbling amicably rather than fighting, all three tugging at a long, fleshy bone smeared in mud, and were unwilling to give up this prize until Ruth’s broom swiped two of them so hard that they fled, yelping, to stand some distance off and wait for her to give up. The third dog, pack leader, crouched and put its ears back, growling and snarling at her. But Ruth had lost interest in the curs; the bone was double, and had a human foot attached.

  She didn’t scream or faint. The broom still in her hands, she walked back to the house to call the Holloman police. That done, she stationed herself on the edge of the mud to stand guard until help arrived while the dogs, thwarted yet undefeated, circled.

  Patrick cordoned off the whole area of the streamlet and concentrated first on the grave, only ten yards
from where the dogs had competed for their find.

  “My guess is that the raccoons were first,” he said to Carmine, “but I’m positive that she — yes, this has to be Francine — was deliberately buried in order to be unearthed soon after. Just twelve inches down. Eight of the ten pieces are still in situ. Paul found the right humerus in some bushes — raccoons. The left tib-fib and foot were what alerted Mrs. Kyneton. I’ve got reliable people searching, but I don’t think the head is here.”

  “Nor do I,” Carmine said. “And it comes back to the Hug.”

  “Looks that way. My guess is he’s got a grudge.”

  Carmine left Patrick to it and plodded up to the house to find Ruth Kyneton ready and able to talk, though she was by no means indifferent to Francine Murray’s fate.

  “Poor little baby! Shoulda been him dog’s meat, only that’s too good. I’d boil him in oil — sit him in it and light the fire with my own hands, then watch him cook real slow,” she said, one hand pressed against her midriff. “Mind if I have a drink of tea, Lieutenant? It settles my stomach.”

  “If I can have one too, ma’am.”

  “Why us?” she asked. “That’s what I’d like to know.”

  “So would I, Mrs. Kyneton. But more importantly, did you see or hear anything last night?”

  “You sure it was last night?”

  “Fairly sure, but tell me anything unusual that’s happened on any night for the last nine of them.”

  “Nothing,” she said, putting a tea bag in each of two mugs. “Never heard no noises. Oh, them dogs barked, but they bark all the time. The Desmonds had a barney — screams, yells, things breaking — night before last. That happens regular. He’s an alkie.” She reflected for a moment. “So’s she.”

  “Would you hear anything if you were asleep?”

  “Don’t sleep much, and never until my son comes home,” Ruth said, swelling with pride. “He’s a brain surgeon at Chubb, deals with them little bubbles on veins that burst like a water main.”

  “Arteries,” Carmine corrected automatically; a Hug education was beginning to make itself apparent.

  “Right, arteries. Keith’s the best they got at repairing them bubbles. I always think of it like patching the inner tube on an old bicycle. Did a lot of that when I was a girl. Maybe that’s where Keith gets it from. Dunno where else.”

  If I were not so worried and angry, Carmine thought, I could fall in love with this woman. She’s an original.

  “Keith. He’s Miss Silverman’s husband.”

  “Yep. They’ve been married coming up for three years.”

  “I take it that Dr. Kyneton comes home late often?”

  “All the time. The operations take hours and hours. He’s a tiger for work, my Keith. Not like his old man. He couldn’t work on a chain gang. Yep, I always wait up for Keith, make sure he eats. Can’t sleep until he’s in.”

  “Was he late last night? The night before?”

  “Two-thirty last night, one-thirty the night before.”

  “Does he make a lot of noise when he comes in?”

  “Nope. Quiet as a corpse. Makes no difference — I still hear him. He cuts the engine on his car and coasts down the lane, but I can hear him,” said Ruth Kyneton positively. “I listen.”

  “Was there a moment last night when you thought you heard him, but he didn’t come in? Or the night before?”

  “Nope. The only one I heard was Keith.”

  Carmine drank his tea, thanked her, decided to go. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t talk about this to anyone except your family, Mrs. Kyneton,” he said at the door. “I’ll be back to see them as soon as I can.”

  Patrick had finished washing the body parts and assembling them on his table when Carmine walked in.

  “They were so covered in mud, humus and leaves that getting anything useful will be a miracle,” Patrick said. “I’ve saved all the washing fluid — distilled water — and I took a sample of the stream water. This time I have more to work with,” he went on, sounding content. “The rape pattern is the same — a succession of increasingly large sheaths or dildoes, vaginal and anal penetration. But see that straight line of bruising on the upper arms just below the shoulders, and that other straight line of bruising below the elbows? She was tied down with something about fifteen inches wide, heavy fabric like canvas. The contusions occurred when she struggled, but she couldn’t free herself. It also tells us that this killer isn’t interested in breasts. He bound them flat under a canvas restraint that hid them from sight. That means she was lying on a table. As to why he didn’t just manacle her wrists or tie her hands down, I don’t know. Keeping her legs free is more logical, he needed to move them around.”

  “How long was she alive after she was grabbed, Patsy?”

  “About a week, but I don’t think he fed her. The digestive tract was empty. Mercedes had been fed on cornflakes and milk. Though all we had of Mercedes was the torso, I think he changed some of his habits for Francine. Or maybe each victim is a little different. Without the bodies, we’ll never know.”

  “How long had she been dead?” Carmine asked.

  “Maximum, thirty hours. Probably less. She was buried last night, not the night before, but I’d say before midnight. He didn’t keep her long after she died, but I can tell you that she died from loss of blood. Look at her ankles.” Patrick pointed.

  Carmine hadn’t gotten that far; he stiffened. “Ligature welts,” he breathed.

  “Not a part of his method of restraint. They weren’t on for more than an hour. Oh, but he’s clever! No fibers or slivers from those welts, I know it in my bones. My guess is that he strung her up with single-strand stainless steel wire that he rigged to make sure that the joins were never in contact with her flesh. The wire bit in, but it didn’t break the skin by sawing at it or catching on it anywhere. These kids are small and light, weigh about eighty pounds. Like Mercedes, he cut her throat to bleed her out first, then decapitated her later — not such a long wait between the two for Francine compared to Mercedes.”

  “Tell me there’s semen.”

  “I doubt it.”

  “You’ll test the wash water for semen too?”

  “Carmine! Is the Pope a Catholic?”

  “I hope so,” said Carmine, squeezing his cousin’s arm.

  From there it was on to Silvestri’s office, Marciano ambling in his wake; Abe and Corey were still out at Griswold Lane, asking its inhabitants if they had seen or heard anything unusual.

  He filled Silvestri and Marciano in.

  “Is it possible,” Marciano asked afterward, “that this guy doesn’t belong to the Hug, but has a grudge against the place or someone in it?”

  “That begins to look more and more likely, Danny. Though I wish I could be sure that all the Huggers really were where they were supposed to be Wednesday of last week when Francine was snatched. It would have taken a good twenty minutes to get from the Hug to Travis and back again — at a jog. Whereas Miss Dupre didn’t locate the senior Huggers for thirty minutes. However, they do seem to have been together on the roof, and as there are only seven of them, I’m sure a twenty-minute absence followed by heavy breathing on return would have caused comment. Dr. Addison Forbes might not have reappeared breathing heavily, I take that into account. Leaving that aside, the killer definitely wants us to believe that his murders are connected to the Hug. Otherwise why choose the Kynetons’ as a dump site? He wanted her found quickly, so he hardly scraped away enough mud to cover her. Every scavenger for a mile must have come running. He’s pissing on someone or something, but who or what I don’t know.”

  “You don’t think the Kynetons have anything to do with it?” Silvestri asked.

  “I haven’t checked Hilda and Keith out yet, but Ruth Kyneton is a straight shooter.”

  “Where do you go from here?”

  “I’ll see Hilda and Keith today, but I’m going to put off the other Huggers until Monday. I want them to stew over the weekend watching new
s bulletins and listening to all the TV couch cops.”

  “He’s going to keep on killing, isn’t he?” Marciano asked.

  “He can’t stop, Danny. We have to stop him.”

  “What about that new bunch of psychiatrists the FBI and NYPD consult? No help from them?” Silvestri demanded.

  “Same old song, John. Nobody knows much about the multiple killer. The shrinks yack about ritual and obsession, but they can’t come up with anything helpful. They can’t tell me what this guy looks like, or how old he is, or what kind of job he has, or his childhood, or his level of education — he’s an enigma, a total fucking mystery —” Carmine stopped, swallowed, closed his eyes. “Sorry, sir. It’s getting to me.”

  “It’s getting to all of us. Thing is, maybe there are more of these multiple killers out there than we know about,” Silvestri said. “Too many more like our killer, and someone’s going to have to do something to help catch them. Our guy got away with ten murders before we even knew he existed.” He got out a new cigar to chew. “Just plug away at it, Carmine.”

  “I intend to,” said Carmine, getting to his feet. “Sooner or later the bastard’s going to slip, and when he does, I’ll be there to break his fall.”

  “Oh, this could ruin Keith!” Hilda Silverman cried, her face white. “Just when he’s got a great offer — it isn’t fair!”

  “Offer of what?” Carmine asked.

  “A partnership in a private practice. He’ll have to buy in, of course, but we’ve managed to save enough to do that.”