“As a person, or as a researcher?”
“Both, I guess.”
“As a researcher, he’s an acknowledged world authority on the structure of the limbic system, which is why the Prof pinched him from Frankfurt.” She smiled, something she didn’t do often enough; her smile transformed a rather plain face into quite an attractive one. “As a person, I like him. The poor chap labors under some frightful handicaps apart from his nationality.”
“Like homosexuality?”
“That bird again?”
“Most men don’t need a bird to whistle that, Desdemona.”
“True. Women are more easily deluded, because women tend to view pleasant and gentle men as good husband material. Many of them prefer their own sex, which wives don’t find out until a few children later. It happened to two friends of mine. However, Kurt is pleasant and gentle but doesn’t pursue women so he can reproduce himself. Like all the researchers, he lives for his work, so I don’t think his homosexual affairs are long- standing. Or, if he does have a regular boyfriend, I imagine the boyfriend doesn’t see enough of him.”
“You’re very dispassionate,” he said.
“That’s because I’m not really involved. Candidly, I think Kurt came to America to start afresh, and put himself in a geographical location that means he can travel to New York City and the homosexual scene whenever he likes. What he forgot – or perhaps didn’t know – was how many people in the American medical professions are of Jewish extraction. It’s twenty years since the War ended with all those ghastly concentration camp revelations, but the memories are still very much alive.”
“In you too, I imagine,” he said.
“Oh, for me it was mostly the horrors of food and clothing rationing – what you’d call peanuts. Bombs and V-2s, but not where I lived well outside Lincoln.” She shrugged. “Still and all, I like Kurt Schiller, and until this awful business happened, so did everyone else, including Maurie Finch, Sonia Liebman, Hilda Silverman and the technicians. I remember Maurie saying at the time he learned Kurt had the pathology job that he’d done battle with his conscience, and his conscience said he mustn’t be the one to cast the first stone at a German young enough not to have participated in the Holocaust.” She glanced at her watch, the cheapest Timex she could find. “I must go, but thank you, Carmine. The food was just what I fancied, the environment truly gorgeous, and the company – why, quite bearable.”
“Bearable enough to do it again next Wednesday?” he asked, pulling her to her feet as if she weighed half of her 160 pounds.
“If you like.”
He took her down in the elevator and insisted on walking her to her Corvette.
An interesting woman, he thought as he watched the car growl away. There’s more to her than a complex about her height. Get her talking and she forgets to tower. Dresses in cheap shit, hacks at her hair herself, doesn’t have any jewelry. Does that make her stingy, or merely indifferent to the way she looks? I don’t think she’s either. Not surprising to find out she’s a keen hiker. I can see her striding along the Appalachian Trail in big boots – a feminine Tom Bombadil. No flare of attraction between us, that was a relief. Since I’d bet the contents of my walls that she’s not the Connecticut Monster, Miss Desdemona Dupre is the logical Hugger to cultivate.
Ah! A good night’s work.
Chapter 6
“We’re getting nowhere,” said Carmine to Silvestri, Marciano and Patrick. “It’s coming up for two months since Mercedes was abducted, and we’ve lifted every stone in Connecticut to look under it. I don’t think there’s a deserted house, barn or shed in the whole state that we haven’t turned inside out, or a forest we haven’t tramped through. If he sticks to his pattern, he’s already got his next victim marked out, but we know no more about him or the identity of his next victim now than we did on Day One.”
“Maybe we ought to be looking in houses, barns and sheds that are not deserted,” said Marciano, always the one impatient at official restrictions.
“Sure, that’s agreed,” Silvestri said, “but you know very well, Danny, that no judge would issue us with a search warrant as things stand at the moment. We need
“It could be that we’ve frightened the killer off,” Patrick said. “He mightn’t snatch another victim. Or if he does, it might be in another state. Connecticut’s not huge. He could live here and still snatch in New York, Massachusetts or Rhode Island.”
“He’ll snatch, Patsy, and inside Connecticut. Why inside Connecticut? Because it’s his turf. He feels like he owns it. He’s not a foreigner here, this is home, sweet home. I think he has lived here for long enough to know every town and village.”
“How long would that take?” Patrick asked, intrigued.
“Depends whether he’s a traveling man, doesn’t it? But I’d say five years, minimum –
“That doesn’t knock too many Huggers out of the running.”
“No, Patsy, it doesn’t. Finch, Forbes, Ponsonby, Smith, Mrs. Liebman, Hilda Silverman and Tamara Vilich are Connecticut born and bred, Polonowski’s been here for fifteen years, Chandra for eight, and Satsuma for five.” Carmine scowled. “Let’s change the subject. John, are the press co-operating?”
“Really well,” Silvestri answered. “It’s going to be much harder for him to snatch this kind of girl. In another week the warnings will be going out – newspapers, radio, TV – with good pictures of the girls and emphasis on Caribbean Catholic origin.”
“What if he switches his type of girl?” asked Marciano.
“I am
“Carmine, all of us in this room know that most murderers are pretty dumb,” Patrick said, sounding thoughtful, “and that even when they’re smart, they’re not brilliant. Rat cunning, or lucky, or maybe competent. But this guy is way ahead of the pack – including us. What I’m wondering is, will he obey the rules the psychiatrists have laid down? What if he’s a psychiatrist himself? Like Professor Smith? Polonowski? Ponsonby? Finch? Forbes? I looked them up in the Chubb book, and they’ve all got D.P.M.s – Diplomas of Psychiatric Medicine. They’re not merely neurologists, they’ve gone the whole hog.”
“Shit,” said Carmine. “I just saw D.P.M. I don’t deserve to be heading this task force.”
“Task forces are cooperatives,” Silvestri soothed. “We know now, and what difference does it make?”
“Could it be a woman?” Marciano asked, frowning.
“According to the psychiatrists, no, and for once I agree with them,” Carmine said positively. “This kind of killer preys on women but isn’t one. Maybe he’d like to be one who looks like our girls – who the hell knows? We’re fumbling in the dark.”
Desdemona had abandoned walking to and from work, telling herself she was a fool, but unable to conquer the feeling that dogged her every step through those fallen leaves – someone was following her, someone too clever to be caught. The very thought of leaving her beloved Corvette in an open parking lot on the edge of a ghetto went against the grain, but she couldn’t help herself. If the thing was stolen, then she’d have to pray it came back in one piece. Even so, she couldn’t bring herself to tell Carmine what had happened, though she knew he wouldn’t laugh. And as she was neither of Caribbean ancestry nor a bare five feet tall, she didn’t think for a moment that her stalker had anything to do with what plagued him.
Eating pizza with him in his apartment, she thought him as tense as a cat whose territory had been usurped by a dog; not that he was curt, just – the Americans had an excellent word for it – twitchy.
Well, she was twitchy herself, blurted out her news. “Kurt Schiller attempted suicide today.”
“And no one
