with risotto, an English one with mashed potatoes.”
“English,” he said promptly. “How’s the kids?”
“Like runner beans-I can almost see them growing. Oh, I do hope they don’t shoot to seven feet!”
“So do I. That means custom-made beds, mattresses, sheets, blankets, watching for round shoulders and sway backs-”
“Carmine, stop! They might inherit their height from you.”
“Well, we’re not short. I’m five-eleven, my pa was six-one, and the Ceruttis are taller than the Delmonicos. Whether you like it or not, wife, our sons will play basketball.”
“Rather that than American football! Wake me up when you come to bed, please.”
And that was that. He phoned Malvolio’s and got Luigi.
“Do you ever go home, Luigi?” he asked, suddenly curious.
“Home is Malvolio’s. I live upstairs anyway.”
“Jesus! How long have I known you?”
“Um… 1950 or thereabouts, Carmine.”
“So it’s only taken me eighteen years to learn that you live upstairs. Any family?”
“Four boys, all in the armed services.”
“And the wife?”
“Took off with a sailor in 1944.”
“So you raised your boys alone.”
“The family helped.”
“I don’t even know your last name!”
“Silvestri. What can I do you for, Captain?”
“Is there someone can bring me over meat loaf and rice pudding in about an hour, Luigi?”
“Sure thing. I got some juicy shrimps, want a cocktail?”
“Why not?”
He fetched all the relevant files-and some that only he felt were relevant-and put them on his table. The only way to tackle the case of
Then he proceeded to break the files up: uniformed reports, detective reports, witness reports, victim reports. By the time that he was satisfied that everything was arranged according to his needs, Minnie arrived with his dinner, which went on to his formal desk together with a giant thermos of Luigi’s coffee.
He sat and ate-Luigi was right, the shrimps were juicy-until the plates were clean, then sent them back to Malvolio’s in the custody of a desk cop. Under Danny Marciano, it would have simply happened; under Fernando Vasquez, he had to fill in a form explaining why he had used a uniformed cop as a personal servant. Jesus, how he hated the bureaucratic mentality! An imp whispered that he should fill out a form explaining why he’d ordered a uniform to shine his shoes, but he pushed the little devil away; he was too busy for pranks.
Stomach full, coffee mug steaming, he started work.
Considering that the first inkling the police had of the Dodo’s existence was the rape of Maggie Drummond on Tuesday, September 24, and it was now Tuesday, November 19, Carmine realized that at no time had he been free to examine the case from its actual start on March 3 until this moment. But after tonight, that would change; he would have the Dodo at his fingertips. Even as he worked it nagged at Carmine that if the Dodo switched to two weeks, tomorrow they would have another victim, and she would be dead. Yet he couldn’t seriously think that: the Dodo might tell himself that nothing temporal ruled his forays, but three weeks did.
Shirley Constable, the first victim, on March 3, a Sunday. An embryonic Dodo, not even named because she had been so terrified that she hadn’t even remembered his notice. But in her last interview, after some weeks of treatment, she had told Liz Meyers that the man definitely wasn’t Mason Novak. The Dodo’s touch was alien. Mercedes Mendes, ten weeks later, on Monday, May 13. Even after weeks of therapy she maintained she had no boyfriend; Dr. Meyers had elicited an unknown fact about her that solved the puzzle. Mercedes was a lesbian. Leonie Coustain, raped on Tuesday, June 25, which was six weeks after Mercedes. The Dodo was growing into his final shape, gaining confidence. From then on his intervals were roughly three weeks; Esther Dubrowski on Tuesday, July 16, Marilyn Smith on Tuesday, August 6, Natalie Goldfarb on Friday, August 30, Maggie Drummond on Tuesday, September 24, Melantha Green on Tuesday, October 15, and the attempt on Catherine dos Santos on Tuesday, November 5. Why with some victims he had varied by a few days Carmine couldn’t begin to fathom. Personality traits, linked as they always were to career choices and life styles, were as varied as ethnic backgrounds, religions, family histories. Two were religiously motivated virgins, two were lesbians, the rest had fairly active sex lives without sleeping around. If they had anything in common, it was a professional career; apparently the Dodo was not drawn to women in menial jobs. All were strong personalities, if very different, and it occurred to Carmine that the Dodo harbored a degree of hatred for outgoing, independent professional women. Had he been publicly laughed at by one such? The first of his victims, for instance? The pre-rape Shirley Constable had been noted for her outspoken frankness. She had “caught” a much wanted fish, Mason Novak, who hadn’t looked at another woman since they became an item, but she was one of Carmine’s two religiously motivated virgins-a wedding ring came before sex.
Easy to see why Maggie Drummond was his last living victim; she had flipped him a more insulting bird than a dodo when she survived her rape unintimidated, despite its new horrors-his fist, the asphyxiations.
The Dodo murdered Melantha Green. She had a boyfriend steady enough to be gifted with a key to her apartment, and apparently enjoyed a safe, comfortable relationship with a fellow black in medicine. Why had the Dodo chosen her for his first killing? Her blackness? No, somehow that didn’t fit. The Dodo did nothing unreasonable according to his lights. What was unique about her?
Catherine dos Santos was not a virgin, she had admitted, though she didn’t indulge in sex regularly. Maybe she would qualify as a nun-like person, but only so far. She hadn’t put up the bars on her windows, but she had hailed them in delight when she was looking for a place to live. Why was a mystery, but Carmine felt that a part at least of her defenses-the sirens, definitely-contained an element of the practical joke. She had been dying to try her sirens out! Well, they had done their job. That she had been spared the Dodo’s attentions had to be attributed to her own ingenuity; the police had done nothing to help her, any more than had the abominable Hochners.
All of which, he decided at midnight, stretching painfully, pointed to a part of a motive for
Accepted thinking had it that rapists who murdered preyed on prostitutes because such crimes went almost unnoticed: who misses a whore? Whereas the Dodo preyed on women who were noticed. Nine women thus far, and we didn’t know about him until the seventh.
What if this kind of predator is common? Police notice boards are full of the pictures of missing young women, pretty, from good families, pursuing careers. What if a number of them can be traced to a horrifying death at the hands of a raping killer? I am looking, Carmine thought, at the tip of an iceberg.
Our Dodo knows every single one of his victims, but whatever his victims do to be entered on his list, no one save he knows. At first raping them was enough; he used them, abused them, and left them emotionally handicapped for life. Until Maggie Drummond spoke out, exposed him. My two women, Delia and Helen, brought in Dr. Liz Meyers and the rape clinic, and now he sees the damage he inflicted start to heal. But no one can heal a dead victim, so he moved up and on to murder.
Whose is the next name on his list? He’s left me no clue that I can see to identify her.
The Gentleman Walkers of Carew, he decided at one a.m., were no help to the investigation. Mark Sugarman led one group of Walkers; Mason Novak led the other group that walked on the alternate days. No name had sprung out as never walking on a Dodo night, which probably meant that the Dodo wasn’t a Walker-or that the Dodo was
