“Yes, into the cleft where the deserted mansion is.”
“Do you think-?”
“We’ll reach it tomorrow, but we won’t find Kurt there. Would you use it if you were a kidnapper, knowing it will be gone over the way a chimpanzee picks for lice? A whole week has to elapse between demand and ransom payment-no, they’ve stashed Kurt in a place virtually impossible to find.”
“Oh, Carmine!” she cried. “People are so diabolical-and so
“Murder of any kind is diabolical.” Carmine gave his wife a shrewd glance. “The shadows are too long, lovely lady. Let’s go home to our kids.”
CHAPTER IV
“We’re searching on a proper grid, Frau von Fahlendorf… That makes it more likely that we’ll find your brother’s prison, but we’re working in ignorance… I don’t think you need fear that our police efficiency isn’t up to the task… Yes, ma’am, that is correct, but we cannot tell our journalists what to say. We have freedom of the press, and the trashier ones tend to make things up if the story isn’t dramatic enough… I agree, this is one story doesn’t need embroidering, but… Thank you, Frau von Fahlendorf… Good afternoon.”
“Phew!” Helen exclaimed, putting the phone down. “They really do think they’re the only ones can do anything, don’t they? She’s an autocrat, the Frau. She either suspects or knows that the kidnappers are German, so she’s on the defensive. Was I okay, sir?”
“You did well,” said Carmine. “What intrigues me is that the family von Fahlendorf hasn’t sent someone to Holloman, though they’ve had the weekend to do it. It’s where Kurt is, no matter where the kidnappers are. That raises some possibilities: one is that Dagmar knows Kurt is already dead, and another, that Dagmar knows they’re going to get Kurt back alive. I ask myself, is someone in Germany, acting for the kidnappers, in direct contact with Dagmar, who would rather trust villains from her own part of the world than good guys from a country she doesn’t know? A country, moreover, that stole her beloved Kurtchen. She’s forgotten it was his choice to emigrate.”
“To me, the most important point,” said Delia, “is why the family hasn’t sent someone here? What if we find Kurt alive? The poor chap won’t be greeted by one family face, and that positively stinks. Even my potty papa would come for me.”
“That tells me they know he’s dead,” said Nick.
“They’re going to refuse to pay the ransom?” Helen asked.
“It kind of looks that way,” Carmine answered.
“In which case, why does Dagmar keep trying to get the bank and account number out of us?” Delia asked.
“So they can say we gave it to them,” Carmine said.
“They could say that anyway,” Nick said.
“That’s true,” from Delia. “The other answer is that there’s no one to send here. Dagmar must suspect her husband is behind it, the Baron is senile, and the mother is retiring and giving her money to the grandchildren. She might be senile too.”
“That flies,” said Nick.
“He tried to steal her industrial secrets once. I imagine Dagmar must suspect Josef of the kidnapping,” Carmine said.
“She genuinely may not suspect him.” Helen squeezed her hands together. “Oh, I wish I knew the family! I wish I was there!”
“I couldn’t agree more, Helen,” said Delia. “Not knowing the suspects, how can we solve the case?”
“What about the FBI?” Nick asked. “They have better foreign contacts than the police department of a small city.”
“Not a brass monkey, according to Hunter Wyatt,” Carmine said. “Like us, he’s convinced it’s a German job.”
Corey and Abe came in.
Corey was looking haggard. Everyone in Detectives knew why; he had to face an enquiry over Morty Jones’s death, and he had also to face Carmine. Both were postponed until the search for Kurt von Fahlendorf was over, but that moment was drawing closer with every tick of the clock.
“Anything?” he asked.
“Nothing.”
Abe Goldberg didn’t look hopeful, and that was a bad sign. As he had an uncanny instinct for hidden doors and vents going nowhere, he was Carmine’s secret compartments expert; for that reason Carmine had allocated him a strip of territory to the south and west of Holloman Harbor, an industrial wasteland beyond the airport where functioning factories and workshops were mixed with buildings and sweat shops long abandoned. Though it had streets, it was a wilderness of sorts, bounded by the Holloman jail and I-95.
“Not a sausage, as you’d say, Delia,” Abe said. “I’ve been searching for four days without a twitch or a tremble, and that’s bad. I don’t think he’s there, but I haven’t finished, so I’ll keep on going, Carmine.”
“You do that, Abe. If he is there, you’ll find him.”
Today was Tuesday, October 22, and the search had been in full swing since dawn of last Friday. Desdemona was taking his place today, allowing Carmine time to check up on the Dodo. The first phase of this consisted in a short walk to the Medical Examiner’s; Patrick was in his office. When his first cousin came in Patrick’s face lit up and he pointed at the coffee pot. “Just brewed,” he said, putting his pen down.
“The autopsy on Melantha Green,” said Carmine, sitting with a mug of fresh coffee. “The last of the bloodwork hadn’t come through when Kurt von Fahlendorf was kidnapped, and we’ve been on that non-stop ever since. What goes?”
“Nothing helpful,” Patrick said, pouring himself coffee. “She had amphetamine in her bloodstream, I suspect self-administered to keep awake and on top of a crushing workload. There was no other substance present. His anesthetic was crude-a clip on the jaw that probably stunned her but didn’t knock her out. She was known to have a black belt in judo, hence the clip, which wasn’t hard enough to cause any meningeal bleeding. Her death was due to asphyxiation.” Patrick sipped. “The young man was killed by someone who can shoot. The throat shot was perfect, the second bullet overkill. He used a.22 pistol.”
“No one heard the shots, yet the other apartment was tenanted and its inhabitants were actually awake-the wife was sick to the stomach,” Carmine said. “He used a silencer.”
“Must have done, but not a home-made device. I doubt the Dodo was interested in the young man. Two shots, then he went back to cleaning up after Melantha.”
“Did he wash Melantha with soap and water?”
“No, he simply wiped her down with xylene. That you know.”
“Good coffee, cuz, but bad news,” said Carmine, smiling. “Anything else on any other case?”
“No, but something else on the Dodo. I think you should go talk to Nick and Delia.”
“I just left them!”
“Sorry about that.”
“Shit!” Carmine put his half drunk coffee down. “Maybe I can catch them before they go searching their grid.”
But it was Corey he encountered in the parking lot. His lieutenant flinched, but had the sense to stop.
“You’re in big trouble, Cor.”
“I don’t see why.”
“A man on your team is dead.”
“That’s not my fault.”
“In one way, it is. Several other people noticed that Morty was depressed, and I even spoke to you about it. You sneered.”
“Now isn’t the time to have this, Carmine. I’m going to my search area right this second.”
