The first body was sprawled on the parlor floor, on its back, beside an overturned, oval-shaped coffee table. A man in his thirties. Tall, husky. His dark slacks were torn. His white shirt was torn, too, and much of it was stained crimson. He was in the same condition as Vastagliano and Ross: savagely bitten, mutilated.
The carpet around the corpse was saturated with blood, but the battle hadn't been confined to that small portion of the room. A trail of blood, weaving and erratic, led from one end of the parlor to the other, then back again; it was the route the panicked victim had taken in a futile attempt to escape from and slough off his attackers.
Jack felt sick.
“It's a damned slaughterhouse,” Rebecca said.
The dead man had been packing a gun. His shoulder holster was empty. A silencer-equipped.38 pistol was at his side.
Jack interrupted one of the lab technicians who was moving slowly around the parlor, collecting blood samples from various stains. “You didn't touch the gun? ”
“Of course not,” the technician said. “We'll take it back to the lab in a plastic bag, see if we can work up any prints.”
“I was wondering if it'd been fired,” Jack said.
“Well, that's almost a sure thing. We've found four expended shell casings.”
“Same caliber as this weapon?”
“Yep.”
“Find any of the loads?” Rebecca asked.
“All four,” the technician said. He pointed: “Two in that wall, one in the door frame over there, and one right through the upholstery button on the back of that armchair.”
“So it looks as if he didn't hit whatever he was shooting at,” Rebecca said.
“Probably not. Four shell casings, four slugs. Everything's been neatly accounted for.”
Jack said, “How could he have missed four times in such close quarters?”
“Damned if I know,” the technician said. He shrugged and went back to work.
The bedroom was even bloodier than the parlor. Two dead men shared it.
There were two living men, as well. A police photographer was snapping the bodies from every angle. An assistant medical examiner named Brendan Mulgrew, a tall, thin man with a prominent Adam's apple, was studying the positions of both corpses.
One of the victims was on the king-size bed, his head at the foot of it, his bare feet pointed toward the headboard, one hand at his torn throat, the other hand at his side, the palm turned up, open. He was wearing a bathrobe and a suit of blood.
“Dominick Carramazza,” Jack said.
Looking at the ruined face, Rebecca said, “How can you tell?”
“Just barely.”
The other dead man was on the floor, flat on his stomach, head turned to one side, face torn to ribbons. He was dressed like the one in the parlor: white shirt open at the neck, dark slacks, a shoulder holster.
Jack turned away from the gouged and oozing flesh. His stomach had gone sour; an acid burning etched its way up from his gut to a point under his heart. He fumbled in his coat pocket for a roll of Tums.
Both of the victims in the bedroom had been armed. But guns had been of no more help to them than to the man in the parlor.
The cadaver on the floor was still clutching a silencer equipped pistol, which was as illegal as a howitzer at a presidential press conference. It was like the gun on the floor in the first room.
The man on the bed hadn't been able to hold on to his weapon. It was lying on the tangled sheets and blankets.
“Smith & Wesson.357 Magnum,” Jack said. “Powerful enough to blow a hole as big as a fist right through anyone in its way.”
Being a revolver instead of a pistol, it wasn't fitted with a silencer, and Rebecca said, “Fired indoors, it'd sound like a cannon. They'd have heard it from one end of this floor to the other.”
To Mulgrew, Jack said, “Does it look as if both guns were fired?”
The M.E. nodded. “Yeah. Judging from the expended shell casings, the magazine of the pistol was completely emptied. Ten rounds. The guy with the.357 Magnum managed to get off five shots.”
“And didn't hit his assailant,” Rebecca said.
“Apparently not,” Mulgrew said, “although we're taking blood samples from all over the suite, hoping we'll come up with a type that doesn't belong to one of the three victims.”
They had to move to get out of the photographer's way.
Jack noticed two impressive holes in the wall to the left of the bed. “Those from the.357?”
“Yes,” Mulgrew said. He swallowed hard; his Adam's apple bobbled. “Both slugs went through the wall, into the next room.”
“Jesus. Anyone hurt over there?”
“No. But it was a close thing. The guy in the next room is mad as hell.”
“I don't blame him,” Jack said.
“Has anyone gotten his story yet?” Rebecca asked.
“He may have talked to the uniforms,” Mulgrew said, “but I don't think any detectives have formally questioned him.”
Rebecca looked at Jack. “Let's get to him while he's still fresh.”
“Okay. But just a second.” To Mulgrew, Jack said, “These three victims… were they bitten to death?”
“Looks that way.”
“Rat bites?”
“I'd rather wait for lab results, the autopsy—”
“I'm only asking for an
“Well… unofficially… not rats.”
“Dogs? Cats?”
“Highly unlikely.”
“Find any droppings?”
Mulgrew was surprised. “I thought of that, but it's funny you should. I looked everywhere. Couldn't find a single dropping.”
“Anything else strange?”
“You noticed the door, didn't you?”
“Besides that.”
“Isn't that enough?” Mulgrew said, astonished. “Listen, the first two bulls on the scene had to break down the door to get in. The suite was locked up tight — from the inside. The windows are locked from the inside, too, and in addition to that, I think they're probably painted shut. So… no matter whether they were men or animals, how did the killers get away? You have a locked room mystery on your hands. I think that's pretty strange, don't you?”
Jack sighed. “Actually, it's getting to be downright common.”
IX
Ted Gernsby, a telephone company repairman, was working on a junction box in a storm drain not far from Wellton School. He was bracketed by work lights that he and Andy Carnes had brought down from the truck, and the lights were focused on the box; otherwise, the man-high drainage pipe was filled with cool, stagnant darkness.
The lights threw off a small measure of heat, and the air was naturally warmer underground than on the windswept street, although not much warmer. Ted shivered. Because the job involved delicate work, he had removed his gloves. Now his hands were growing stiff from the cold.
