The Sleepless (50 page)

Victor said, ‘Verna Latomba was tied up and tortured the same way that Elaine Parker was tortured – the same way that Sissy O’Brien was tortured – except that, with Verna, they didn’t have the time to go too far.’ 

Thomas lit a cigarette, and put in dryly, ‘The way we figure it so far is that Ralph Brossard did some kind of a Tarzan act. He swung his way into Patrice Latomba’s apartment from the balcony just above. God alone knows why. He was under suspension for shooting Latomba’s baby son. I would have thought he would have stayed well clear of Seaver Street, and Patrice Latomba in particular. He made his way into the kitchen, where Verna was tied to the kitchen table. We’ve established that much – although we don’t know who tied her up, or why. There were several witnesses, but they had all vamoosed. Whoever it was, they must have tortured her, because there was blood on the table which has been provisionally identified as hers. 

‘It looks like Brossard shot one of the perps, because there was blood sprayed all over the window, as well as a bullet-hole, probably caused by a slug from Detective Brossard’s .44. There was another slug lodged in one of the kitchen cabinets, another .44, which bore considerable signs of flattening and scoring, as if it might have passed through a soft piece of furniture, or a human body. 

‘However, the only corpses that were discovered were those of Verna Latomba and Ralph Gossard. Verna’s face was critically burned on the kitchen gas ring; and then she was shot at point-blank range with a .45 – not Brossard’s gun, for sure. Brossard’s left arm was severely charred. It looked like he was responsible for burning Verna. But he was shot by the same .45.’ 

‘What’s your guess, then?’ asked Michael, swallowing more almonds, and almost choking himself. 

‘Somebody forced Brossard to burn Verna, and then shot the both of them.’ 

‘But why?’ asked Michael. ‘What was the motive?’ 

‘Revenge, who knows?’ 

‘Revenge? Revenge for what? I can understand somebody shooting Detective Brossard, because of what he did to Latomba’s baby. I can understand somebody shooting Verna. An ex-lover, maybe; or a vengeful redneck. But who would shoot both of them? What for?’ 

Victor put in, ‘The other thing that’s worrying me is, whose blood did we find on the window? There was no indication that a bleeding body had been dragged or carried through the kitchen, and no further bloodstains in the living-room, landing or stairs. Yet whoever it was that Brossard hit, he must have taken a massively invasive bullet wound, and his chances of staunching the flow of blood and walking out of the apartment must have been absolutely nil.’ 

Thomas blew smoke out of his nostrils. ‘It’s bizarre. The whole damn thing’s totally bizarre. If I didn’t know better, I’d say that we were dealing with zombies. The curse of the living dead.’ 

Michael said, ‘Run that bit by me again – that bit about Detective Brossard burning Verna.’ 

‘Well,’ said Victor, ‘his left hand was burned right down to the bone, most of the flesh had carbonized. There was severe burning all the way up the forearm, and extensive shriveling of the skin around the upper arm and shoulder, with second-degree burns to the underarm and left torso and first-degree burns to the left-hand side of the face. 

‘Judging from the criss-cross hob marks across her face, Verna had been forced right down onto the gas ring, and held there for nearly a minute.’ 

Michael slowly massaged the back of his neck. His muscles were knotted up, and his shoulders were completely rigid. He wished Thomas wouldn’t give him such encouraging smiles. He would almost have preferred it if Thomas had been angry with him. At least he would have felt that he was being punished for what he had done. 

‘Have you ever been burned?’ he asked Thomas. 

Thomas shook his head. But Victor said, ‘I understand what you’re driving at. Burns are incredibly painful. They’re so painful that burns victims often beg to be killed, rather than suffer.’ 

Michael nodded. ‘So how did these mysterious perpetrators persuade Detective Brossard to hold Verna Latomba’s face down on the gas ring while his own hand was being burned off? Even with a gun at his head, I don’t think that would have been possible. He couldn’t have endured the pain.’ 

‘Maybe he was held there physically.’ 

‘I can’t see how. Anybody who forced him to keep his hand on top of Verna Latomba’s burning head would have been burned just as seriously themselves.’ 

Thomas crushed out his cigarette and nodded. ‘You’re right, of course. So what’s your theory?’ 

Michael took the zinc-and-copper disc out of his pocket, and put it down on the table. ‘I think he could have been hypnotized. He could have burned Verna Latomba under hypnotic suggestion.’ 

Thomas picked up the disc and turned it over in his fingers. ‘I didn’t think that hypnotists could force people do anything against their nature.’ He turned to Victor, and added, ‘If I thought they could, do you think I would have sent Megan to see Dr Loeffler?’ 

It was supposed to be a joke, but it gave Michael an appalling sensation in his stomach, as if he had driven over a humpback hill too fast. 

Victor said, ‘That’s a myth, I’m afraid, that belief that you can’t make people hurt themselves, or do anything that they wouldn’t normally do. Once you’re under hypnosis, you don’t feel pain. People have had major surgery under hypnosis, with no anaesthetic whatsoever, and they haven’t felt anything.’ 

‘But pushing Verna Latomba’s face down onto a lighted gas ring –’ 

‘He may not even have realized that it was a lighted gas ring. He may have been under the impression that he was doing nothing more than effecting a straightforward arrest. Or maybe something totally different. It really all depends how suggestible he was.’ 

Thomas checked his watch. ‘I have to get back to headquarters. I’ve fixed up a press conference for three o’clock. I think it’s time the public were told all of the grisly details of what happened to Elaine Parker and Sissy O’Brien and Joe, too – as well as Ralph Brossard and Verna Latomba.’ 

‘You’re going to release
everything?’
asked Victor. 

Thomas nodded. ‘It can’t hurt. I mean, what progress have we made? Absolutely zilch. We’ve been holding back some of the more bizarre details, like the holes in the back, and the cat thing, in case we made a collar. But we’re nowhere. All we can hope for now is that somebody might remember some seemingly irrelevant detail that ties all of these homicides together. Like, where did they get the metal tubes for piercing the victims’ suprarenal glands? Like, where do they buy their razor wire? Like, whose cat went missing when Sissy O’Brien was tortured?’ 

‘All right, then,’ said Victor, finishing his beer. ‘We’ll catch you later.’ 

Thomas picked up the bill. Before he left, however, he turned to Michael and said, ‘This hypnosis – do you really think it’s going to help Megan very much?’ 

Michael hesitated, and then shrugged. ‘It’s like any therapy, I guess. It’s only as good as the patient’s will to get better. But – well, from what I’ve seen, Megan has plenty of that.’ 

Thomas thought for a moment, then lifted his hand in a wordless farewell, and walked out of the restaurant. 

As soon as he had gone, Victor said, ‘Come on – what is it? What are you holding out on?’ 

Michael produced the envelope that Joe had left for him, with all the pictures of assassinated presidents. ‘It’s not that I don’t trust Thomas. It’s just that I wanted you to take a look at these first, and then we can decide what we’re going to do with them. Me, I’m fifty-fifty. I mean this is seriously heavy stuff. I’m fifty percent in favour of burning them, and pretending that I never saw them, and I’m fifty percent in favour of keeping them, and using them to prove that John O’Brien didn’t die accidentally, any more than Abraham Lincoln died accidentally.’ 

Victor looked through the photographs with a sober expression on his face. At last he took off his spectacles and folded them up. ‘This is either Joe Garboden in the last stages of paranoia; or else it’s the most devastating discovery in the history of the last two hundred years.’ 

Michael nodded, grimly. ‘My feelings exactly. But I can’t make up my mind which it is. I’m scared that Joe might have been right; but I’m equally scared that he was wrong, and that I’m going to wind up like him, seeing conspiracies in everything that anybody does. Look at those three people, crossing the street together! It’s a conspiracy!’ 

Victor turned around, put on his glasses, peered across the street, and then laughed. ‘There’s no way that you could know it, but those three people all work for the Boston coroner’s office. So, yes, I guess you could say that they were some kind of a conspiracy. A lunch-club, eating fried clams and Misery Island shrimp and talking about diseased liver sections.’ 

‘Exactly,’ said Michael. ‘You’ve made your point. But I’m really worried. The O’Brien case has all kinds of weird implications that I don’t even want to discuss with Thomas, they’re so weird.’ 

Haltingly, discursively, he told Victor all about the hypnotic trance that he and Megan had put themselves into. Victor listened with his head bowed so that Michael could see that the hair in his parting was thinning. He told Victor all about the erotic feelings that ‘Mr Hillary’ had aroused in him; and he also told him that Megan must have felt the same way. But he drew the line at telling Victor that he and Megan had made love, or had sex, or whatever it was that they had done together on the floor of the Boyles’ apartment He could see Megan’s face now, anointed with his ejaculation, and he felt his cheeks burning with embarrassment. 

‘Do you think what you saw in your trance was real?’ asked Victor. 

‘Mr Hillary’s real. We saw his name in Dr Rice’s notebook.’ 

Victor thought for a while, and then he said, ‘I don’t know. I think we’re getting way out of our depth. The whole key to this matter is who’s been pulling the strings. Who insisted that the O’Brien family’s remains had to go to Boston Central, so that Raymond Moorpath was in charge of the post-mortem examinations? Who told Raymond Moorpath what the results of those post-mortem examinations were going to be? Who directed Commissioner Hudson and Edgar Bedford to accept Raymond Moorpath’s findings?’ 

‘Maybe that was all “Mr Hillary’s” doing, too,’ Michael suggested. 

Victor pulled a face. ‘We don’t know yet, do we? I believe what you’ve seen in your trances. I’m pretty sure that “Mr Hillary” actually exists. But “Mr Hillary” could easily be altering your perception of what’s true and what’s imaginary, just to put you off the track. We’re into the world of hypnosis, now, Michael. You’re flying by the seat of your psychological pants.’ 

Michael looked down at the half-empty dish of almonds, and decided not to eat any more. ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘I think we should talk to Raymond Moorpath.’ 

‘Do you think he’ll talk to you?’ 

‘Well ... Raymond’s pretty pompous these days, and full of himself. But he and I do go back a few years. Maybe he will, maybe he won’t. But it’s still worth trying.’ 

‘You’re trying to save the world, right?’ 

‘That’s it. I’m trying to save the world. Cock-a-doodle-doo.’ 

They walked out of Venus Seafood and crossed the street to Michael’s car. The early afternoon was baking hot, and heat rippled up from the pavement like the transparent ripples of an incoming tide. They didn’t notice the two young men in dark glasses standing in the doorway of the narrow brick building opposite. Neither did they notice the saddle-bronze Lincoln Town Car starting up its engine, only three cars away, and nudging its way into the traffic close behind them. 

Victor took off his glasses and tiredly pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘I feel like I’ve been awake for ever,’ he said. 

They drove to Boston Central and parked in the doctors’ parking lot. The entrance to the emergency ward was crowded with ambulances and police cars and people rushing everywhere. Michael stopped a thin-faced cop with a droopy Wyatt Earp moustache and asked him what was happening. 

‘Blue Hill Avenue, it’s a fucking war. Seven people hit by machine-gun fire. Three cops down, two of them dead for sure.’ 

Michael and Victor walked around to the hospital’s main entrance, but even as they did so three more ambulances arrived, their lights flashing and their sirens whooping. Toward the south of the city, more smoke was rising, and there was a rubbery smell of burning on the wind. The rioting had been going on for nearly a week now, and every day the smoke had been rising from Roxbury, and in the way that people quickly learn to adapt to almost anything, the people of Boston scarcely noticed it now, they just went about their business and left half of their community to burn. Call it adaptability, call it cynicism: but it wasn’t
their
half, after all. 

All the same, there was a feeling throughout the Hub that things were getting worse, rather than better, that the city’s foundations were beginning to shift. The president had been interviewed on television this morning, and he had started to talk about ‘strong and sweeping action ... to root out urban terrorism ... (which) this is – no more, no less.’ 

They asked at the desk to speak to Dr Moorpath. The harassed receptionist told them to wait, she didn’t know where Dr Moorpath was. He wasn’t in his office: maybe he was down in pathology. They sat and waited for almost ten minutes; and then Michael jerked his head toward the elevators and said, ‘Time for some independent action,
mon ami.
’
The receptionist – answering two telephone calls simultaneously whilst trying to explain to a huge Nigerian woman how to find Liposuction – didn’t even see them go.