On, Off

by Colleen McCullough

  “Is he setting you up?” Patrick asked.

  “I doubt it. He’s set her up. What he was really doing was showing us that nothing we do can protect her if he decides to act.”

  “A cop killer!” said Corey savagely.

  “A child killer,” said Marciano. “We gotta stop him, Carmine!”

  “We will. I’m not letting go, Danny, no matter what.”

  The only way into Desdemona’s apartment on the tenth floor of the Nutmeg Insurance building was by speaking into an intercom and then punching a ten-number code on a special lock. The code would be changed every day and no one was permitted to write it down, even Desdemona.

  Who didn’t complain when Carmine let himself in that evening bearing brown bags full of groceries.

  “Darjeeling tea from Scrivener’s — Colombian coffee from the same — brown bread — butter — sliced ham — some TV dinners — fresh raisin bagels — mayonnaise — pickles — chocolate chip cookies — anything I thought you might like,” he said, depositing his bags on the kitchen counter.

  “Am I under siege?” she asked. “Am I not allowed to go to work or hike at the weekends?”

  “Hiking’s out, that’s for sure, but we’ll eat at Malvolio’s tonight or anywhere else you want. You don’t go out without two cops, and they won’t be reading books,” he said. “The door means I don’t have to waste good men on surveillance, but once you step through it, you’re government property.”

  “I shall hate it,” she said, plucking her coat off a hook.

  “Then let’s hope it won’t be for very long.”

  Part Three

  January & February

  1966

  Chapter 14

  Saturday, January 1st, 1966

  The phone woke Carmine from a deep sleep shortly before 8 A.M. on New Year’s Day, one of the few times in almost three months that he had decided to let body and brain sleep themselves out. Not because he had celebrated the passing of the old year; though it had been the most harrowing of his life, he had many reasons to think that the new one might be even worse. Therefore, his New Year’s Eve had been spent alone in his apartment watching the crowd in Times Square on TV. It had occurred to him to invite Desdemona up from two floors down, but he decided against it because it worried him that perhaps she was very tired of his company. If she ate out, he was the one who escorted her, paid for their dinner no matter how she carped about what he deemed no more than common courtesy. The result was that he went to bed long before midnight, had a fantastic sleep and was ready to be awakened when the phone rang.

  “Delmonico,” he said.

  “It’s Danny,” came Marciano’s voice. “Carmine, get up to New London right now. There’s been another abduction. Dublin Road, on the Groton side of the river. Abe and Corey are on their way in, so is Patrick. The New London cops will wait for you.”

  He was upright immediately, conscious of a sweat the 50°F thermostat hadn’t produced; he liked to sleep cold, it kept him from throwing the covers off. “But it can’t be,” he said, shivering. “It’s only been thirty days since Francine, the guy isn’t due to strike until the end of the month.”

  “We’re not sure it’s the same guy — the abduction took place during the night, for starters, and this is a new experience for the New London cops. Get up there and tell them what they’ve got.”

  Abe driving, they screamed the forty miles to New London, Paul and Patrick in their van behind them.

  “Thirty days, it’s only been thirty days!” Abe said as I-95 began to run into New London; he hadn’t said a word until then.

  “Take the Groton turnoff just over the bridge,” said Corey, a map spread on his knees. “It can’t be the same guy, Carmine.”

  “We’ll know in a few minutes, so take it easy.”

  The location wasn’t hard to find; every squad car in all of New London County looked to be parked up and down the verges of a street containing modest houses in fifth-of-an-acre blocks; Dublin Road, Groton.

  The house a patrolman indicated was grey-painted, a single-storey dwelling too small to qualify as ranch style. Very much the home of a workingman having pride in himself and his property. One glance at it, and Carmine knew with sinking heart that the people who lived inside were as respected as respectable. A perfect family for the killer’s purposes.

  “Tony Dimaggio,” said a man in captain’s uniform, hand out to Carmine. “A sixteen-year-old black girl named Margaretta Bewlee was snatched during the night. Mr. Bewlee seems to think through the bedroom window, but I haven’t let any of my guys near it for fear they’d destroy evidence — this is way out of our league if the Monster’s got her. Come inside,” he said, preceding Carmine. “The mother’s a basket case, but Mr. Bewlee’s holding up.”

  “I’ll be there as soon as I take Dr. O’Donnell to the outside of the window. Thanks for your forbearance, Tony.”

  The family was blue-black: father, mother, a young teenaged girl and two boys coming up toward their teens.

  “Mr. Bewlee? Lieutenant Delmonico. Tell me what happened.”

  He was that shade of grey that spoke of extreme travail in dark-skinned people, but he managed to control his feelings; to lose hold of them might mean all the difference to Margaretta, and he knew it. His wife, still in robe and slippers, sat as if turned to stone, eyes glazed over.

  Mr. Bewlee drew a breath. “We toasted the New Year, then we went to bed, Lieutenant. All of us — no night owls here, so we could hardly keep our eyes open.”

  “Did you drink something alcoholic, like sparkling wine?”

  “No, just fruit punch. This isn’t a drinking house.”

  His face was clouding; when he couldn’t seem to grasp what came next, he gazed at Carmine imploringly. Help me, help me!

  “Where do you work, Mr. Bewlee?”

  “I’m a precision welder at Electric Boat, due for a pay raise in a couple of weeks. We’ve just been waiting for the raise to move house, buy something bigger.” The tears flowed and he halted.

  “Introduce your children to me, Mr. Bewlee.”

  Their father collected himself, sure he could manage that. “This is Linda, she’s fourteen. Hank’s eleven, Ray’s ten. We have a little guy, Terence. He’s two and sleeps in our bedroom. Linda took him next door to Mrs. Spinoza. We figured he didn’t need — didn’t need —” He broke down, buried his face in his hands, battled to compose himself. “I’m sorry, I can’t —”

  “Take your time, Mr. Bewlee.”

  “Etta — that’s what we call her — and Linda share a room.”

  “Share?”

  “That’s right, Lieutenant. There’s two of them in there. We didn’t get up real early, but when my wife started making us some breakfast, she called out to the girls. Linda said Etta was in the bathroom, but it turned out the boys were, not Etta. So we started looking for her, couldn’t find her. That was when I called the police. All I could think of was the Monster. But it can’t be him, can it? He’s not due yet, and Etta’s like the rest of us — black. I mean, we’re real black. He wouldn’t want our little girl, Lieutenant.”

  How could he answer that? Carmine turned to Etta’s sister. “Linda, is that right?” he asked, smiling at her.

  “Yes, sir,” she managed, weeping.

  “I’m not going to say, don’t cry, Linda, but you can help your sister best if you answer me, okay?”

  “Okay.” She mopped her face.

  “You and Etta went to bed at the same time, right?”

  “Yes, sir. Half after midnight.”

  “Your daddy says all of you were sleepy. Is that true?”

  “Whacked,” said Linda simply.

  “So you both went straight to bed.”

  “Yes, sir, soon as we said our prayers.”

  “Does Etta mind saying her prayers?”

  Linda’s eyes dried; she looked shocked. “No, sir, no!”

  “Did you talk any after you were in bed?”

  “No, sir
, least I didn’t. I was asleep soon as I lay down.”

  “Did you hear any noises during the night? Wake up to go to the bathroom?”

  “No, sir, I slept until Mom called us. Though I did think it was funny that Etta was up ahead of me. She’s a real tiger for sleeping in. Then I thought she must have snuck off to beat me to the bathroom, but when I banged on the door, Hank answered.”

  The child had a beautiful face, liquid dark eyes, a perfect skin, very full lips that would drive a dedicated monk to break his vows, with their clean-cut margins and a turn to them that always whispered to Carmine of tragedy. A black girl’s lips, dark maroon shading to pink where they met in that heart-rending fold. Did Margaretta have this same face?

  “You don’t think that Etta could have snuck out, Linda?”

  The big eyes grew bigger. “Why would she?” Linda asked, as if that was an answer in itself.

  Yes, why would she? She’s as sweet and docile and lovely as all the others. She still says her prayers at bedtime.

  “How tall is Etta?”

  “Five-nine, sir.”

  “Has she got a good figure?”

  “No, she’s thin. It depresses her because she wants to be a star like Dionne Warwick,” said Linda, who showed every evidence that she too would be tall and thin. Tall and thin. Black.

  “Thank you, Linda. Did anyone else hear a noise last night?”

  Nobody had.

  Then Mr. Bewlee produced a photograph; Carmine found himself gazing at a girl who looked just like Linda. And like the others.

  Patrick came in on his own, carrying his bag.

  “Which door down the hall, Linda?”

  “The second on the right, sir. My bed’s on the right.”

  “See anything to say that he came in the window, Patsy?”

  “Not a thing, except that both the inner and the outer set have ordinary window locks that weren’t engaged. The ground outside is frozen solid. Grassy in summer, but died right back at the moment. The sill looks as if it hasn’t been touched since the outer windows went on last October, or whenever the insect screens were removed. I left Paul out there to make sure I didn’t miss anything, but I don’t think I did.”

  They entered a room barely large enough to accommodate two burgeoning young women, but it was extremely neat and well cared for; pink-painted walls, a braided pink mat between two single beds, one to left and right of the window. Each girl had a closet beyond the foot of her bed. A big poster of Dionne Warwick and a smaller one of Mary Bell were tacked on the wall above Margaretta’s bed; Linda’s bed was provided with a shelf that held a half dozen teddy bears.

  “Quiet, sound sleepers,” said Patrick. “The bedclothes are hardly disturbed.” He moved to Margaretta’s bed and bent to put his nostrils a scant millimeter from the pillow. “Ether,” he said. “Ether, not chloroform.”

  “Are you sure? It evaporates within seconds.”

  “I’m sure. My nose is good enough to go into the perfume trade. It got trapped in this fold, see? Gone already. Our pal clamped a pad soaked in ether over her face, picked her up and took her out through the window.” Patrick went to the window and pushed the inner one up with a gloved hand, then the outer one. “Listen to that — not a sound. Mr. Bewlee takes care of his home.”

  “Unless our pal did the lubricating.”

  “No, my money’s on Mr. Bewlee.”

  “Jesus, Patsy, he’s cool! A girl who measures five-nine in bare feet, would weigh one-ten, and her sister sleeping not three yards away — if Linda had woken —”

  “Kids sleep like the dead, Carmine. Margaretta probably never really woke up, looking at the bedclothes — no sign of a struggle. Linda slept through it, oblivious. He would have done the whole thing in two minutes, tops.”

  “Then the question is, who left the windows unlocked? Did Mr. Bewlee not check them regularly, or did our pal pay a visit ahead of time and do it?”

  “He visited ahead of time. I figure Mr. Bewlee locks them at the start of the real cold weather and then doesn’t unlock them until the first thaw. The house has real good forced-air heating, and it’s far too cold for the girls to open a window. The winter’s ten degrees colder here than it is in Holloman.”

  Paul came in, shaking his head.

  “Then let’s start looking at every inch in here — we bag all Margaretta’s bedclothes, with special attention to that pillowcase. Carmine,” Patrick said as his cousin was leaving the room, “if this girl is tall, thin and black black, he’s changed all of his parameters. Maybe it’s not the same guy.”

  “Care to bet?”

  “Thirty days — a different abduction technique — a different type of girl — that’s what you’re asking me to believe.”

  “Yes, I am. The most important factor hasn’t changed. This girl is as pure and untouched as the others. What changes there are don’t tell me that we’ve managed to scare him much. He’s working to a master plan, and this is a part of it. Twelve girls in twenty-four months. Maybe now he’s going to do twelve girls in twelve months. It’s New Year’s Day. Maybe their size and skin color are irrelevant to his second dozen, or else Margaretta is his new type.”

  Patrick sucked in his breath audibly. “You think he’s going to change what he does to them too, don’t you?”

  “That’s what my instincts are telling me, yes. But never doubt one thing, Patsy. This is our guy. It’s not someone else.”

  Carmine left Abe and Corey to come back with Patrick; it fell to them to do the plod from door to door on Dublin Road, to ask if anyone had seen or heard anything. Not much chance on New Year’s, between the parties and the booze.

  It was 10.30 A.M. when the Ford turned into the Smith driveway, a long, twisting one ending at a very large and traditional white clapboard house on a knoll, its Georgian-paned windows flanked by dark green shutters. Not pre-Revolutionary, but not new either. Five acres of land, naturally forested save for where the house stood; no gardeners in the Smith family.

  A pretty woman around forty answered the door; the Prof’s wife, no doubt. When Carmine introduced himself she held the door wide open and admitted him to a house as traditionally furnished as its exterior suggested; nice things, no expense spared, but unadventurous tastes guiding the decor. Clearly the Smiths could afford to buy whatever they fancied.

  “Bob’s here somewhere,” Eliza said vaguely. “Would you like a cup of coffee?”

  “Thanks, I would.” Carmine followed her through to a kitchen artfully tweaked to look a hundred years older than it was, from wormholes to fading paint.

  Two teenaged boys came in as Eliza handed the visitor his coffee. The eagerness natural in males of their age was absent; Carmine was used to boys who bombarded him with questions, as they invariably thought his calling a glamorous one and murder better than anything on TV. Yet the Smith sons, introduced as Bobby and Sam, looked more frightened than curious. As soon as their mother gave them permission they left, under orders to find their father.

  “Bob’s not well,” Eliza said, sighing.

  “The strain must be considerable.”

  “No, it’s not really that. His trouble is that he’s not used to things going wrong, Lieutenant. Bob has led a charmed life. The proper Yankee forebears, a lot of money in the family, top of every class he’s ever been in, got everything he ever wanted, including the William Parson Chair. I mean, he’s only forty-five — do you realize that he wasn’t turned thirty when the Chair was handed to him? And it’s gone like a dream! Accolades galore.”

  “Until now,” said Carmine, stirring his coffee, which smelled too old to taste good. He sipped, discovered his nose was right.

  “Until now,” she agreed.

  “Last time I saw him, I thought he seemed depressed.”

  “Very depressed,” Eliza said. “The only time he ever cheers up is when he goes down to the basement. That’s what he’ll do today. And again tomorrow.”

  Professor Smith came in, looking hunted. “Lieut
enant, this is unexpected. Happy New Year.”

  “No, sir, it isn’t happy. I’ve just come from Groton and another abduction a month too early.”

  Smith slumped into the nearest chair, face bleached to chalk. “Not at the Hug,” he said. “Not at the Hug.”

  “In Groton, Professor. Groton.”

  Eliza got to her feet briskly, beamed artificially. “Bob, show the Lieutenant your folly,” she said.

  You are brilliant, Mrs. Smith, said Carmine to himself. You know I’m not visiting to wish anyone a happy New Year, and am about to ask if I can take an unofficial look around. But you don’t want your husband refusing a pleasant request, so you’ve taken the bull by the horns and pushed the Prof into a co-operation he won’t feel like tendering.

  “My folly? Oh, my folly!” Smith said, then brightened. “My folly, of course! Would you like to see it, Lieutenant?”

  “I would indeed.” Carmine abandoned the coffee without regret.

  The door to the basement was equipped with several locks that had been installed by a professional, and took Bob Smith some time to open. The wooden stairway was poorly lit; at its bottom the Prof flicked a switch that threw the whole of a huge room into stark, shadowless light. Jaw dropped, Carmine gaped at what Eliza Smith had called a folly.

  A roughly square table fifty feet on each side filled the basement. Its surface was realistically landscaped into rolling hills, valleys, a range of alps, several plains, forests of perfect, tiny trees; rivers flowed, a lake sat beneath the flanks of a volcanic cone, water fell over a cliff. Farmhouses peeped, a town lay on one plain, another town lay wedged between two hills. And everywhere glittered the twin silver tracks of a miniature railroad. The rivers were bridged with steel girders correct down to rivet bumps, a chain-driven ferry crossed the lake, a beautiful arched viaduct carried the tracks through the alps. On the outskirts of the towns were railroad stations.

  And what trains! The streamlined Super Chief ran at a fast clip amid the trees of a forest, negotiated a towering suspension bridge flawlessly. Two diesel locomotives hauled a freight train of coal wagons; another consisted of oil and chemical tanks, and a third of wooden boxcars. A local suburban train stood at one town station.