“Take your time, Mr. Bewlee.”
“Etta – that’s what we call her – and Linda share a room.”
“Share?”
“That’s right, Lieutenant. There’s two of them in there. We didn’t get up real early, but when my wife started making us some breakfast, she called out to the girls. Linda said Etta was in the bathroom, but it turned out the boys were, not Etta. So we started looking for her, couldn’t find her. That was when I called the police. All I could think of was the Monster. But it can’t be him, can it? He’s not due yet, and Etta’s like the rest of us – black. I mean, we’re real black. He wouldn’t want our little girl, Lieutenant.”
How could he answer that? Carmine turned to Etta’s sister. “Linda, is that right?” he asked, smiling at her.
“Yes, sir,” she managed, weeping.
“I’m not going to say, don’t cry, Linda, but you can help your sister best if you answer me, okay?”
“Okay.” She mopped her face.
“You and Etta went to bed at the same time, right?”
“Yes, sir. Half after midnight.”
“Your daddy says all of you were sleepy. Is that true?”
“Whacked,” said Linda simply.
“So you both went straight to bed.”
“Yes, sir, soon as we said our prayers.”
“Does Etta mind saying her prayers?”
Linda’s eyes dried; she looked shocked. “No, sir, no!”
“Did you talk any after you were in bed?”
“No, sir, least I didn’t. I was asleep soon as I lay down.”
“Did you hear any noises during the night? Wake up to go to the bathroom?”
“No, sir, I slept until Mom called us. Though I did think it was funny that Etta was up ahead of me. She’s a real tiger for sleeping in. Then I thought she must have snuck off to beat me to the bathroom, but when I banged on the door, Hank answered.”
The child had a beautiful face, liquid dark eyes, a perfect skin, very full lips that would drive a dedicated monk to break his vows, with their clean-cut margins and a turn to them that always whispered to Carmine of tragedy. A black girl’s lips, dark maroon shading to pink where they met in that heart-rending fold. Did Margaretta have this same face?
“You don’t think that Etta could have snuck out, Linda?”
The big eyes grew bigger. “Why would she?” Linda asked, as if that was an answer in itself.
Yes, why would she? She’s as sweet and docile and lovely as all the others. She still says her prayers at bedtime.
“How tall is Etta?”
“Five-nine, sir.”
“Has she got a good figure?”
“No, she’s thin. It depresses her because she wants to be a star like Dionne Warwick,” said Linda, who showed every evidence that she too would be tall and thin. Tall and thin. Black.
“Thank you, Linda. Did anyone else hear a noise last night?”
Nobody had.
Then Mr. Bewlee produced a photograph; Carmine found himself gazing at a girl who looked just like Linda. And like the others.
Patrick came in on his own, carrying his bag.
“Which door down the hall, Linda?”
“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.”
Carmine left Abe and Corey to come back with Patrick; it fell to them to do the plod from door to door on Dublin Road, to ask if anyone had seen or heard anything. Not much chance on New Year’s, between the parties and the booze.
It was 10.30 A.M. when the Ford turned into the Smith driveway, a long, twisting one ending at a very large and traditional white clapboard house on a knoll, its Georgian-paned windows flanked by dark green shutters. Not pre-Revolutionary, but not new either. Five acres of land, naturally forested save for where the house stood; no gardeners in the Smith family.
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.