On, Off

full of the murder of Mercedes Alvarez and the disappearance of Verina Gascon, also feared dead, but no sharp reporter had yet picked up on police vibes that they were dealing with a multiple rapist/killer of carefully reared, sheltered, teenage girls – or that Caribbean origins might play a part.

There was a message on Carmine’s desk that Otis Green was out of the hospital, at his home, and anxious to see him. Another said Patrick also wanted to see him. Abe was in Bridgeport making enquiries about Rachel Simpson, and Corey had been given the double job of Nina Gomez in Hartford and Vanessa Olivaro in New Britain. As Guatemala had one coast on the Caribbean, the new emphasis was definitely Caribbean.

Since Patrick was just an elevator ride away, Carmine went to see him first. He was in his office, his desk littered with brown paper bags.

“I know you’ve seen plenty of these already, but you don’t know as much about them as I do,” Patrick said, waiting while his cousin poured freshly brewed coffee from a percolator.

“So tell me,” said Carmine, sitting down.

“As you see, they do indeed come in all shapes and sizes.” Patrick held up a specimen 12 x 6 inches. “This holds six hundred-gram rats, this rather larger one holds four two-hundred-fifty-gram rats. A researcher rarely uses rats bigger than two-hundred-fifty grams, but as rats continue to grow for as long as they live, they can get up to the size of a cat or even a small terrier. However, no one at the Hug uses rats that large.” He held up a 24 x 18 inch bag. “For reasons that escape me, the Hug cats are all large male animals, just as the rats are all males. And the monkeys. This is a cat bag. I went over to the Hug first thing this morning and managed to have words” – not an unfair summary of the encounter, Carmine was sure – “with Miss Dupre, who deals with all purchasing and stock taking. The bags are specially made by a firm in Oregon. They consist of two layers of very stout brown paper separated by a three-millimeter-thick padding of fiber made from sugarcane bagasse. You’ll note that there are two plastic discs on the outside of the bag. Fold the top of the bag over twice and the two discs lie in close proximity to each other. The picture wire on the top disc is twisted in a figure-of-eight around the bottom one and the bag can’t come open. Same way you’d close an interdepartmental memo envelope, except that its tie is thread. A dead animal will keep inside a bag without body fluids leaking through for up to seventy-two hours, but no carcass is kept half so long in a bag. Any animals that die over the weekend aren’t found until Monday unless the researcher is in over the weekend. He’ll put the carcass in a bag, but then throws the bag into one of the freezers that dot his floor. His technician then takes it down to animal care on Monday morning, though it won’t go to the incinerator until Tuesday morning.”

Carmine held a bag up to his nose and sniffed intently. “I see that they’re treated with a deodorant.”

“Correct, as Miss Dupre would put it. What a snooty bitch!”

“It’s just too much!” cried the Prof to Carmine when they met in the Hug foyer. “Did you read what that antivivisectionist idiot wrote in the Holloman Post? We medical researchers are pure sadists, indeed! It’s your fault, trumpeting about the murder!”

Carmine had a temper, usually well controlled, but this was more than he could stomach. “Considering,” he said bitingly, “that I’m only here in the Hug because a number of innocent young girls have suffered as I’m darned sure no animal ever has in the Hug, you would do better to focus your attention on rape and murder than on antivivisectionism, sir! Where the hell are your priorities?”

Smith rocked. “A number? You mean more than one?”

Sit on your rage, Carmine, don’t let this introverted specimen of splendid isolation get under your skin! “Yes, I mean a number! Yes, I mean more than one – many more! You have to know, Professor, but the information is strictly classified. It’s high time you took this seriously, because your singularity is anything but a singularity! It’s multiple! Hear me? Multiple!”

“You must be mistaken!”

“I am not,” Carmine snarled. “Grow up! Antivivisectionism is the least of your worries, so don’t come whining to me!”

There were three-family houses in the Hollow in far worse condition than Otis’s. Around Fifteenth Street, where Mohammed el Nesr and his Black Brigade lived, the houses had been gutted, their windows boarded up with plywood, their walls inside lined with mattresses. Here on Eleventh Street was shabbiness, peeling paint, evidence that the absentee landlords didn’t bother with maintenance, but when a still simmering Carmine trod up the stairs to the Green’s apartment on the second floor he found what he had expected to find: clean premises, nice homemade drapes and dust covers on the upholstery, polished wooden surfaces, rugs on the floor.

Otis lay on the sofa, a man of about fifty-five years, fairly trim but with enough loose skin to suggest that at one time he had carried forty pounds more than he did now. His wife, Celeste, hovered aggressively. She was somewhat younger than Otis and dressed with a certain elegant flashiness that fell into place after he learned she was from Louisiana. Frenchified. A third person cluttered up the room, a young, very black man with the same mannerisms as Celeste, though he utterly lacked her looks or her way with clothes; he was introduced as Wesley le Clerc, Celeste’s nephew and the Green’s boarder. The look in his eyes told Carmine that he had a very big racial chip on his shoulder.

Neither wife nor her nephew was willing to leave, but Carmine didn’t have to exert his authority: Otis exerted his.

“Go away and leave us be,” he said curtly.

Both of them left immediately, Celeste with warnings of what would happen to Carmine if he upset her husband.

“You have a loyal family,” said Carmine as he perched on a large, clear plastic ottoman filled with red plastic roses.

“I got a loyal wife” from Otis, followed by a snort. “That kid’s a menace. Wants to make a name for hisself in the Black Brigade, says he’s found the prophet Mohammed an’ is gonna call hisself Ali somethin’ or other. It’s the roots thing, like with any people stolen in millions, but far as I know, the le Clercs come from a part of Africa worshipped King Kong, not Allah. I am an old-fashioned man, Lieutenant, don’t hold with tryin’ to be someone I ain’t. I go to the Baptist church an’ Celeste goes to the Catholic church. I been a black man in a white man’s army, but if the Germans and the Japs had won, I’d a been a helluva lot worse off, is how I see it. I got a little money in the bank, an’ when I retire, I am goin’ back to Georgia to farm. I had it up to here” – he put his hand to his throat -

“with Connecticut winters. Still an’ all, that’s not why I wanted to see you, sir.”

“Why did you want to see me, Mr. Green?”

“Otis. To get it outta the way. How many people know what I found in that fridge?”

“Hardly any, and we’re trying to keep it that way.”

“It was a little girl, wasn’t it?”

“No. Not a child, at any rate. We know she was from a family of Dominicans, and we know she was sixteen years old.”

“So she black, not white.”

“I’d prefer to say she was neither, Otis. A mixture.”

“Lieutenant, this is a terrible sin!”

“Yes, it is.”

Carmine paused while Otis muttered under his breath, let him calm down, then broached the subject of bags.

“Is there a usual pattern to the number and size of the bags in the fridge, Otis?”

“I guess so,” Otis said after some thought. “I mean, I know when Mrs. Liebman’s doin’ decerebrations ’cos there’s four to six cat bags. Otherwise, it’s mostly rat bags. If a macaque dies, the way we thought Jimmy had, then there’s a real big bag, but I will always know what’s in it ’cos Cecil will be cryin’ his heart out.”

“So when there are four to six cat bags in the fridge, you know that Mrs. Liebman has been decerebrating.”

“’s right, Lieutenant.”

“Can you remember any time in the past when there were four to six cat bags in the fridge that Mrs. Liebman couldn’t have had anything to do with?”

Otis looked surprised, tried to sit up.

“You want your wife in jail for murdering me, Otis? Lie back down, man!”