On Off (21 page)

“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.”

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. “Lieutenant, 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.

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.

Altogether Carmine counted eleven trains, each in motion save for the humble local at its station, their speeds varying from the rush of the Super Chief down to the crawl of one freight train hauling so many oil tanks that it had pairs of diesel locomotives inserted throughout its formidable length. And all in miniature! To Carmine it was a wonder of the world, a toy to die for.

“I’ve never seen anything like this in all my life,” he said huskily. “There aren’t the words to describe it.”

“I’ve been building it since we moved in here sixteen years ago,” said the Prof, who was cheering up rapidly. “They’re all powered by electricity, but later on today I’ll switch to steam.”

“Steam? You mean locomotives powered by wood? Coal?”

“Actually I generate the steam by burning alcohol, but the principle’s the same. It’s a lot more fun than just sending them around on household electricity.”

“I bet you and your boys have a marvelous time down here.”

The Prof stiffened, a look in his eyes that gave Carmine a chill: he might have led a charmed life, but below the depression and self-indulgence was at least some steel. “My boys don’t come down here, they’re banned,” he said. “When they were younger and the door had no locks, they trashed the place.
Trashed it!
It took me four years to repair the damage. They broke my heart.”

It was on the tip of Carmine’s tongue to expostulate that surely the boys were old enough now to respect the trains, but he decided not to horn in on Smith’s domestic business. “How do you ever get to the middle of it?” he asked instead, squinting up into the lights. “A hoist?”

“No, I go in underneath. It’s assembled in sections, each fairly small. I had a hydraulics engineer install a system that enables me to jack a section up as much as necessary, and move it to one side so I can make my alterations standing up. Though it’s more for cleaning than anything else. If I’m changing from diesel to steam, I just drive a train to the edge, see?”

The Super Chief left its route, crossed via several sets of points while other trains were stopped or diverted, and drew up at the table edge. Carmine almost imagined he could hear it clanking and hissing.

“Do you mind if I take a look at your hydraulics, Professor?”

“No, not at all. Here, you’ll need this, it’s dark under there.” The Prof handed over a large flashlight.

Of rams, cylinders and rods there were aplenty, but though he crawled through every part of the table’s underside, Carmine could find no hidden trapdoors, no concealed compartments; the floor was concrete, kept very clean, and somehow an alliance between trains and young girls seemed unlikely.

The kid in him would have been ecstatic to spend the rest of the day playing with the Prof’s trains, but once he was satisfied that the Smith basement held nothing but trains, trains, and more trains, Carmine took his leave. Eliza conducted him through the house when he asked if he might inspect it. The only thing that gave her an anxious moment was a switch lying on the sideboard in the dining room, its end ominously frayed. So the Prof beats his boys, and not softly. Well, my dad beat me until I got too big for him, mean-tempered little runt that he was. After him, U.S. Army drill sergeants were a piece of cake.

“What’s your verdict on the Groton abduction, Carmine?”

“Oh, it’s our man, but proving that is going to be hard. He has changed his pattern, rung in the new year with a new tune. As soon as Patrick gets back, talk to him. I’m taking a drive around the Hugger homes. No, no, don’t panic! Just a look-see. Though if I find anyone at home, I’m going to ask to inspect places like basements and attics. Danny, you should see what’s in the Prof’s basement! Wowee wow!”

While he was in the booth he tried the Finches, whose phone rang out unanswered. The Forbeses, he discovered, used an answering service, probably because Forbes saw so many human patients. Its cooing operator informed Carmine that Dr. Forbes was in Boston for the weekend, and gave him a Boston number. When he called it, Dr. Addison Forbes barked at him irritably.

“I’ve just heard that another girl’s been taken,” Forbes said, “but don’t look at me, Lieutenant. My wife and I are up here with our daughter Roberta. She’s just been accepted into ob-gyn.”

I am running out of suspects, Carmine thought, hung up and went back to the Ford.

Coming into Holloman city on Sycamore, he decided to see what Tamara Vilich got up to on a holiday weekend.

Having checked who it was through the glass panel, she opened her front door clad in very non-Hugger clothes: a floating garment of filmy scarlet silk slit up both sides to her hips, very sexy, not much left to the imagination. She is one of those women, he thought, who never wears underpants. A female flasher.

“You look as if you could use a decent cup of coffee. Come in,” she said, smiling, the scarlet of her raiment turning her chameleon eyes quite red and devilish.

“Nice place you have here,” he said, gazing about.

“That,” she said, “is so hackneyed it sounds insincere.”

“Just making polite conversation.”

“Then make it with yourself for a minute while I deal with the coffee.”

She vanished in the direction of the kitchen, leaving him to absorb her decor at his leisure. Her taste ran to ultra modern: brilliant colors, good leather seating, chrome and glass rather than wood. But he hardly noticed, his attention riveted on the paintings assaulting her defenseless walls. In pride of place was a triptych. The left panel showed a nude, crimson-colored woman with a grotesquely ugly face kneeling to adore a phallic-looking statue of Jesus Christ; the center panel showed the same woman sprawled on her back with her legs wide open and the statue in her left hand; the right panel showed her with the statue jammed into her vagina and her face flying into pieces as if struck by a mercury-tipped bullet.

Having taken in its message, he chose a seat from which he couldn’t see the revolting thing.

The other paintings displayed more violence and anger than obscenity, but he wouldn’t hang a one of them on his walls. A faint reek of oil paints and turpentine told him that Tamara was probably the artist, but what drove her to these subjects? A rotting male corpse hanging upside down from a gallows, a quasi-human face snarling and slavering, a clenched fist oozing blood from between its fingers. Charles Ponsonby might approve, but Carmine’s eye was shrewd enough to judge that her technique wasn’t brilliant; no, these weren’t good enough to interest a finicky connoisseur like Chuck. All they had was the power to offend.

Either she’s sick, or she’s more cynical than I suspected, he thought.

“Like my stuff?” she asked, rejoining him.

“No. I think it’s sick.”

Her fine head went back, she laughed heartily. “You mistake my motives, Lieutenant. I paint what a certain market wants so badly it can’t get enough. The trouble is my technique isn’t as good as the masters in the field, so I can only sell my work for its subject matter.”

“The implication, for peanuts. Right?”

“Yes. Though one day maybe I will be able to earn a living at it. The real money is in limited editions of prints, but I’m not a lithographer. I need lessons I can’t afford.”

“Still paying off the Hug embezzlement, huh?”

She uncoiled from her chair like a spring and returned to the kitchen without answering.

Her coffee was very good; he drank thirstily, helped himself to an apple Danish fresh out of the freezer.

“You own the premises, I believe,” he said, feeling better.

“Been checking up on people?”

“Sure. It’s a part of the job.”

“Yet you have the gall to sit in judgement of my work. Yes,” she went on, stroking her throat with one long, beautiful hand, “I own this house. I rent the second floor to a radiology resident and his nurse wife, and the top floor to a couple of lesbian ornithologists who work at the Burke Biology Tower. The rent’s saved my bacon since my — er — little slip.”

That’s right, Tamara, brazen it out, it suits you better than indignation. “Professor Smith implied that your husband of that time masterminded you.”

She leaned forward, feet tucked under her, lifted her lip in contempt. “They say you won’t do what you don’t want to do, so what do you think?”

“That you loved him a great deal.”

“How perceptive of you, Lieutenant! I suppose I must have, but it seems an eternity ago.”

“Do you let your tenants use the basement?” he asked.

Her creamy lids fell, her mouth curved slightly. “No, I do not. The basement is mine.”

“I have no warrant, but would you mind if I looked around?”

Her nipples popped out as if she were suddenly cold. “Why? What’s happened?” she asked sharply.

“Another abduction. Last night, in Groton.”

“And you think, because I paint what I paint, that I’m a psycho with a basement soaked in blood. Look where you want, I don’t give a fuck,” she said, and walked into what he realized had once been a second bedroom, but now was her studio.

Carmine took her at her word, prowled around the basement to find nothing worse than a dead rat in a trap; had he liked her, he would have removed it for her, but as he didn’t, he didn’t.

Her bedroom was very interesting; black leather, black satin sheets on a bed whose frame was stout enough to take manacles, a zebra skin on the black carpet with its head intact and two glowing red-glass eyes. I bet, he thought, walking about quietly, that you’re not on the receiving end of the whips, honey. You are a dominatrix. I wonder who is being flogged?

A photograph in an ornate silver frame stood on the bedside table on what he guessed was her side of the bed; an elderly, stern woman who looked enough like Tamara to be Mom. He picked it up in what, had she entered the room, would have seemed an idle manner, then slid its back out quickly. Bingo! Paydirt. Behind Mom lay a full-length picture of Keith Kyneton; he was stark naked, built like Mr. Universe, and up like a fifteen-year-old. Another thirty seconds and Mom was back on the table. Why don’t they realize that hiding one photo behind another is the oldest trick in the Book of Deceptions? Now I know all about you, Miss Tamara Vilich. You might be flogging others, but not him — his work would suffer. Do you play games together, then? Dress him up as a baby and paddle his backside? Play a nurse giving him an enema? Or a strict schoolteacher dishing out humiliations? A hooker picking him up in a bar? Well, well!