“Oh, yes, he’s had plenty of practice.”
“But he left his garotte behind. Does that mean he’s finished playing with this toy?” Abe asked.
“I’d say so.”
“Do you still think Desdemona Dupre is a red herring?” asked Corey, more upset then the others; Charlie’s wife was great friends with his own wife.
“I can’t believe she’s anything else!” Carmine cried, hands in his hair. “She’s no dummy – if she knew anything, she’d have told me.”
“What’s your theory on her, Carmine?” Silvestri asked.
“That he picked her for several reasons. One, that she’s a loner. Easier to get at. Another, that she’s about as far from his victim type as women can get. And maybe most important of all, he knows that Desdemona is the one Hugger I make use of, always have done. The note – notice – calls her a sneak.”
“What about the notice?” Silvestri pressed.
“Oh, it’s a doozy, sir! I mean, the phraseology is more an international English than it is American. He punctuates. ‘Dago’ is used here, but it’s old-fashioned. These days we’re Wops. He indicated his degree of education by referring to me as Othello, whose wife was Desdemona.” He caught the look on Corey’s face and extrapolated. “A real piece of goods named Iago worked on Othello’s possessiveness, his passion for Desdemona. Made Othello think she was unfaithful. So Othello strangled her. Given the circumstances, a garotte was probably as close to strangulation as he could get.”
“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 -”