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“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.”

“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.

“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 news 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.”

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

Which answers the riddle of why they live in this semi-slum, thought Carmine, his gaze passing from Hilda to Ruth, who looked just as worried about Keith. The United Women of Keith.

“What time did you get home last night, Miss Silverman?”

“Not long after six.”

“What time did you go to bed?”

“At ten. I always do.”

“So you don’t wait up for your husband?”

“There’s no need. Ruth does. I’m the major earner at the moment, you see.”

The sound of a car pulling into the drive galvanized both women; they leaped up, rushed to the front door and hopped about like two basketballers jockeying for position.

Wow! was Carmine’s reaction when Keith Kyneton walked in. Definitely a prince, not a frog from Dayton, Ohio, anymore. How had the transformation happened, and where? His looks and his physique were undeniable, but what fascinated Carmine were the clothes. Everything of the very best, from his tailored gabardine slacks to his tawny cashmere sweater. The well-dressed neurosurgeon after a hard day in the O.R., while his wife and mother bought off the rack at Cheap & Nasty.

Having shaken off his women, Keith stared at Carmine with hard grey eyes, his generous lips thinned. “Are you the one who pulled me out of the O.R.?” he demanded.

“That’s me. Lieutenant Carmine Delmonico. Sorry about it, but I presume Chubb’s got another neurosurgeon to pinch-hit?”

“Yes, of course it has!” he snapped. “Why am I here?”

When he heard why he was here, Keith collapsed into a chair. “Our backyard?” he whispered.
“Ours?”

“Yours, Dr. Kyneton. What time did you come in last night?”

“About two-thirty, I think.”

“Did you notice anything different about the place where you parked your car? Do you always park it out front, or do you put it in the garage?”

“In dead of winter I put it in the garage, but I’m still leaving it outside,” he said, gazing not at Ruth but at Hilda. “It’s a year-old Cadillac, starts like a dream on a cold morning.” He was regaining his high opinion of himself. “Truth is, I am whacked by the time I get home, really whacked.”

A new Caddy while your wife and your mother drive fifteen-year-old clunkers. What a piece of shit you are, Dr. Kyneton. “You didn’t answer my question, Doctor. Did you notice anything out of the ordinary when you got home last night?”

“No, nothing.”

“Did you notice that last night was kinda damp and soggy?”

“I can’t say that I did.”

“Your driveway is unsealed. Were there strange tire tracks?”

“I
told
you, I didn’t notice anything!” he cried fretfully.

“How often do you work late, Dr. Kyneton? I mean, is Holloman overloaded with patients requiring your particular skills?”

“Since ours is the only unit in the state with the equipment to perform cerebrovascular surgery, we do tend to be overloaded.”

“So coming home at two or three in the morning is the norm?”

Kyneton chewed his lip, suddenly looked away from his mother, his wife, his interrogator. Hiding something. “It’s not always the O.R.,” he said sulkily.

“If not the O.R., then what?”

“I am a postdoctoral fellow, Lieutenant. I give lectures that have to be prepared, I have to write extremely detailed case notes, I have to do teaching rounds in the hospital, and I’m kept busy training neurosurgical residents.” His gaze remained deflected.

“Your wife tells me that you’re going to buy into a private neurosurgical practice.”

“That’s right, I am. A group in New York City.”

“Thank you, Miss Silverman, Dr. Kyneton. I may have other questions later, but this will do for the present.”

“I’ll walk you out,” said Ruth Kyneton.

“I really don’t need walking out,” Carmine said gently when they reached the porch and the front door was shut.

“Glad to know there’s two of us ain’t fools.”

“Is that your opinion of them, Mrs. Kyneton? Fools?”

She sighed, kicked a pebble off the boards into the night. “I reckon the fairies musta brought Keith — never fitted in, all airs and graces before he went to kindergarten. But I’ll give him this — he worked his guts out to get an education, improve himself. And I love him for it something chronic. Hilda suits him, y’know. I guess it don’t look like that, but she does.”

“If this private practice comes off, what about you?” he asked, sounding gruff.

“Oh, I ain’t going with them!” she said cheerfully. “I’m gonna stay right here on Griswold Lane. They’ll look after me.”

There were a lot of things Carmine wanted to say, but didn’t. Instead, “Good night, Mrs. Kyneton. You’re some woman.”