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The three men stood looking at Margaretta, and at that very peculiar dress.

“I didn’t see Sophia enough during the years when she wore party dresses,” Carmine said, “but with all those girls, Patsy, you must have seen dozens of party dresses. This isn’t a young woman’s dress, is it? It’s a child’s party dress she’s been wedged into.”

“Yes. When we lifted her we found that it wasn’t buttoned up the back. Margaretta’s shoulders are way too broad, but her arms are thin, so he was able to make her look okay from the front.”

The dress had small, puffed sleeves with narrow cuffs, and a waist that allowed for a child’s body — wide and a little tubby. On a ten-year-old child it would probably have reached the knees; on this young woman it barely covered the tops of her thighs. The shell-pink lace was French-made, Carmine guessed; expensive, proper lace embroidered on to a base of fine, strong net. Then later someone else had sewn what looked like several hundred transparent rhinestones all over it in a pattern that echoed that of the lace; each rhinestone was perforated at its tip to take a fine needle and thread. Painstaking manual labor that would add multibucks to its price tag. He would have to show this to Desdemona for a really accurate estimate of its quality and cost.

He watched Patrick and Paul ease Margaretta out of the odd garment, which had to be preserved intact. One of the reasons why he loved his cousin so much lay in Patrick’s respect for the dead. No matter how repulsive some of the bodies he encountered were — fecal matter, vomitus, unmentionable slimes — Patrick handled them as if God had made them, and made them with love.

Deprivation of the dress left Margaretta in a pair of pink silk panties reaching up to her waist and down to her thighs: modest panties. The crotch was bloodstained, but not grossly so. When they were peeled off, there was the plucked pudendum.

“It’s our guy for sure,” Carmine said. “Any idea before you start how she died?”

“Not from blood loss, for certain. Her skin’s just about its right color and there’s only one incision of the neck, the one that decapitated her. No ligature marks on her ankles, though I think she was tied down with the usual canvas band across her chest. He might have put another over her lower legs between rapes, but I’ll have to look a lot closer to verify that.” His lips thinned. “I think this time he raped her to death. Not much blood externally, but she’s very swollen in the abdomen for someone who hasn’t begun to decay. Once she was dead, he put her in a freezer until he was ready to dump her.”

“Then,” said Carmine, backing away from the table, “I’ll wait for you in your office, Patsy. I was going to see this one through, but I don’t think I can.”

Marciano met him outside. “You look kinda white around the gills, Carmine. Had any breakfast?”

“No, and I don’t want any either.”

“Sure you do.” He sniffed Carmine’s breath. “Your trouble is, you’ve been drinking.”

“You call Manischevitz drinking?”

“No. Even Silvestri would classify it as grape juice. Come on, pal, you can fill me in at Malvolio’s.”

Then he had it. Not a ghost.
Two
ghosts.

How much easier two of them would make it! The speed and the silence, the invisibility. Two of them: one to dangle a bait, the other to execute the snatch. There
had
to be a bait, something that a sixteen-year-old girl as pure as the driven snow would take as eagerly as a salmon the right fly. A waif of a kitten, a puppy all grimed and abused?

Ether…Ether! One of them dangled the bait, the other came up behind like lightning and clamped a pad soaked in ether over the girl’s face — no chance to scream, no risk of a bite or a hand’s slipping for a moment to allow a cry. The girl would be out to it in seconds, sucking ether into her lungs as she struggled. Then two of them to whisk her away, give her a shot, get her into a vehicle or into a temporary hiding place. Ether…The Hug.

“He’s okay. Couldn’t not be, with that wife.”

“So the Hug’s still up shit creek, right?”

“Or someone wants to make it seem that way, Mrs. Liebman.” He paused, could see no point in dissimulating. “Do you have any ether in the O.R.?” he asked.

“Sure, but it’s not anesthetic ether, just ordinary anhydrous ether. Here,” she said, leading the way into the anteroom, where she pointed at a row of cans sitting on a high shelf.

“Would it act as an anesthetic?” he asked, plucking a can off the shelf to examine it. About the size of a large can of peaches, but with a short, narrow neck surmounted by a metal bulb. Not a lid, but a seal. The stuff must be so volatile, he thought, that not the tightest lid known would keep it from evaporating.

“I use it as an anesthetic when I’m decerebrating cats.”

“You mean when you remove their brains?”

“You’re learning, Lieutenant. Yes.”

“How do you etherize them, ma’am?”

For answer she hauled a container made of clear Plexiglass out of a corner; it was about thirteen inches square, thirty inches high, and had a tightly fitting lid secured by clamps. “This is an old chromatography chamber,” she said. “I put a thick towel on the bottom, empty a whole can of ether onto the towel, pop the cat inside and shut the lid. Actually I do it outside on the fire stairs, better ventilation. The animal passes out very quickly, but can’t hurt itself on these smooth sides before it does.”

“Does it matter if it hurts itself when it’s about to lose its brain without ever waking up?” Carmine asked.

She reared back like a cobra about to strike. “Yes, you sap, of course it matters!” she hissed. “No animal is ever subjected to pain or suffering in
my
O.R.! What do you think this is, the cosmetic industry? I know some vets who don’t treat their animals as well as we do!”

“Sorry, Mrs. Liebman, I didn’t mean to offend you. Blame it on ignorance,” said Carmine, groveling abjectly. “How do you get the can open?” he asked, to change the subject.

“There’s probably a tool for it,” she said, mollified, “but I don’t have one, so I use an old pair of rongeurs.”

These looked like a large pair of pliers, except that two scooped ends met in opposition and nibbled away at whatever was put between them. Like the soft metal bulb of a can of ether, as Sonia Liebman proceeded to demonstrate. Carmine retreated from the smell that seemed to spring out of the can faster than a genie.

“Don’t you like it?” she asked, surprised. “I love it.”

“Do you know how much ether you have in stock?”

“Not to an accurate count — it’s neither valuable nor important. When I notice the shelf supply is getting low, I simply order more. I use it for decerebrations, but it’s also used to clean glassware if an investigator is going to do a test that requires no residues of any kind.”

“Why ether?”

“Because we have plenty of it, but some investigators prefer chloroform.” She frowned, looked suddenly enlightened. “Oh, I see what you’re getting at! Ether doesn’t last in the body, Lieutenant, anymore than it clings to glassware. A few respirations blow it away, straight out of the lungs and the bloodstream. I can’t use Pentothal or Nembutal to anesthetize a decerebrate because they hang around in the brain for hours. Ether is gone — poof!”

“Couldn’t you use an anesthetic gas?”

Sonia Liebman blinked, as if amazed at his density. “Sure I could, but why? Humans can co-operate, and they don’t have fangs or claws. With animals, it’s a shot of parenteral Nembutal or the ether chamber.”

“Is the ether chamber common in research laboratories?”

That did it! She turned away and began to sort through a pile of surgical instruments. “I wouldn’t know,” she said, voice as cold as the air outside. “I worked out the technique for myself, and that’s all that matters as far as I’m concerned.”

Feeling as if he should back out of her presence, bowing deeply all the way, Carmine left Mrs. Liebman to fulminate about the total stupidity of cops.

“No, but I smelled it in a tight fold of the pillowcase at the time we reached the Bewlee house.”

“Did she lose blood when her head was removed?” Abe asked.

“Only a very little. She’d been dead for some hours when he did that. Because of her height, he seems to have used a band across each leg as well as the chest band to restrain her.”

“If she died prematurely, why wait thirteen days to dump her? What did he do with her?” Corey asked.

“Put her in a freezer big enough to lie her flat.”

“Has she been identified?” Carmine asked.

Patrick’s face twisted. “Yes, by her father. He was so calm! She has a small scar on her left hand — a dog bite. The moment he found it, he said she was his daughter, thanked us, and left.”

The room fell silent. How could I deal with that were she Sophia? Carmine wondered. No doubt the rest of us here feel the blade more keenly, they’ve all got daughters who didn’t go to California before the ties were properly forged. Hell is too good for this beast.

“Patsy,” Carmine said, breaking the moment, “is it possible that there were two of them?”

“Two?” Patrick asked blankly. “You mean two killers?”

“Yes.”

Silvestri chewed on his cigar, grimaced, dropped it in his waste-basket. “Two like
him?
You’re joking!”

“No, John, I’m not. The longer I think about this series of abductions, the more convinced I become that it took two people to do them. From there to two killers is an obvious step.”

“A step a thousand feet high, Carmine,” said Silvestri.
“Two
monsters? How could they find each other?”

“I don’t know, but maybe something as common as an ad in the
National Enquirer
personal columns. Guarded, but clear as crystal to someone with the same tastes. Or maybe they’ve known each other for years, even grew up together. Or maybe they met by accident at a cocktail party.”

Abe looked at Corey and rolled his eyes; they were thinking about sitting for days in the
National Enquirer
morgue reading to find an ad at least two years old.

“You’re shoveling shit uphill, Carmine,” said Marciano.

“I know, I know! But forget for a moment how they got together and concentrate on what happens to the victim. I realized that there has to be a bait. These aren’t the kind of young women who would be lured off by an invitation from some man, or fall for an offer of a screen test, any of the ploys that work on less carefully brought up girls. But think how hard it would be for one man to make the snatch without a bait!”

Carmine leaned forward, getting into stride. “Take Mercedes, who closes the lid on the piano, says goodbye to Sister Theresa, and lets herself out the music annex door. And somewhere quiet, with nobody else around, Mercedes sees something so irresistible that she has to go closer. Something her heart goes out to, like a half-starved kitten or puppy. But as it’s got to be in the exact right spot, there’s someone else mourning over the animal too. While Mercedes is engrossed, the other man strikes. One to dangle the bait, one to grab. Or Francine, somewhere near the toilet block, or else actually inside it. She sees the bait, her heart goes out, she’s grabbed. There are just too many people still in the school to risk getting her out of Travis, so they put her in the sports locker. How much easier to do that in a hurry if there are two of them! It’s Wednesday, the gyms are deserted, and the Chemistry classroom is right near to that toilet block. With Margaretta, there’s a sister sleeping not three yards away. No bait, but would this killer run the risk of Linda when he plans so meticulously? The bait half has a new role, to watch Linda and act if she stirs. When she doesn’t, it’s a piece of cake for two men to get a tall girl out a window, one inside, one outside.”

“Why do you make things so hard for yourself?” Patrick asked.

“Things are as hard as they have to be, Patsy. If one killer isn’t enough, then we have to think there are two.”

“I agree,” Silvestri said suddenly, “but we don’t breathe a word about Carmine’s theory outside the people in this room.”

“One other thing, John. The party dress. I’d like to show it to Desdemona Dupre.”

“Why?”

“Because she does incredible embroidery. There are no labels on the dress, no one’s ever seen anything like it before, and I want to try to find out where to start looking for the person who made it. That means I need to know how much it would cost if it was bought in a store, or how much someone like Desdemona would charge for custom making it. She does commissions, she’ll know.”

“Sure, once it’s had the works from Paul — and if you trust her not to spill the beans about it.”

“I trust her.”