On, Off

“The box should be full, the mats stacked like frankfurters. Some of the other boxes had too many – more like sardines. And my super-thick mat wasn’t rolled up at all. It was folded back and forth from side to side of the box. The one with the cuff of Francine’s jacket showing was right on top of it. I had a funny feeling, so I pulled the cuff and it slid right out.”

The floor around the box was strewn with five unrolling mats; Carmine surveyed them with a sinking heart. “I don’t suppose you remember which mat held the jacket?”

“Oh, yes, sir. The one still in the box on top of my mat.”

“Winslow, my man,” said Carmine, shaking the youth’s hand warmly, “I am rooting for you for a gold medal in sixty-eight! Thank you for your care and your good sense. Now go home, but don’t talk about any of this, okay?”

“Sure,” said Winslow, wiped his cheeks and walked off, his gait reminiscent of a big cat.

“The whole school is grieving,” said the principal.

“With good reason. Can I dial out on that phone? Thanks.”

He asked for Patrick, still there. “Come yourself if you can, but if you can’t, send Paul, Abe, Corey and all your gear, Patsy. Maybe we’ve found something useful.”

“Do you mind waiting with me, Mr. Daiman?” he asked when he returned to the box, lid down, Francine’s jacket lying on it.

“No, of course not.” Daiman cleared his throat, shifted on his feet, took a deep breath. “Lieutenant, I would not be doing my duty if I didn’t inform you that trouble is coming.”

“Trouble?”

“Racial trouble. The Black Brigade is campaigning hard for support using Francine’s disappearance as a platform. She’s not Hispanic, and on the forms she fills out she calls herself black. I never argue with my light- colored students about how they think of themselves racially, Lieutenant – to me, that would be a denial of their rights. Like the new concepts about indigenousness, that only an indigenous person can decide whether they are or are not.” He shook himself, looked wry. “I’m straying. The point is that some of my more irascible students have been saying that this is a white killer of black girls, and that the police aren’t bothering to catch him because he’s a powerful member of the Hug with all kinds of political influence. Since my school is fifty-two percent black and forty-eight percent white, unless I can keep the lid on the Black Brigade kids, we could have a mess of trouble.”

“Jesus, that’s all we need! Mr. Daiman, we are busting our guts to find this killer, you have my word on that. Simply, we know nothing about him, least of all that he’s a member of the Hug – no one at the Hug has any political power! But I thank you for the warning and I’ll make sure that Travis has some protection.” He glanced from the box to the door barring the passageway that led into the main school. “Mind if I look around? And where’s the Chemistry classroom from here? Is it a lab, or a classroom?”

“It’s just up the hall from the gym, and it’s the classroom. The lab is in the general lab area. Go ahead, Lieutenant, look wherever you like,” said Daiman, went to a chair and sat on it with his head in his hands.

The passageway door was single, not double locked: was it ever double locked? On the tunnel side it couldn’t be opened without a key – or a credit card if it wasn’t double locked. Carmine entered the nine-foot-long tube and emerged to find himself staring at a girls’ toilet block directly across the hall.

This killer knows everything! he thought, staggered. He grabbed her when she went into the toilets – she was notorious for that – dragged her across a three-yard hall into a three-yard tunnel and a deserted gym. Most likely he opened the door before he grabbed her. And he knew the gym would be deserted! It is on every Wednesday after school because that’s when the contractors come in to treat the floors. But they didn’t treat them yesterday because Francine went missing and they weren’t allowed in. Once he was in the gym, he rearranged the mats, put her in the bottom of the nearest box and made sure Winslow’s super-thick mat covered her completely. Did he gag her and tie her, or did he give her a shot of something to keep her out for a few hours?

We searched every square inch of this school twice, but we didn’t find her. And when we didn’t find her, we knew she was the twelfth victim, spirited out of Travis before the squad car outside could radio base. Both times some searcher would have opened that locker and seen what was in all the others: rolled-up gym mats. Maybe whoever looked poked around inside it, but Francine didn’t move or make a noise. Then, when we were satisfied that Francine was gone – when Travis had ceased to be of any interest to us – he came back and retrieved her. I’ll put Corey on the door lock, he’s the best in the business.

Maybe where we keep going wrong is in underrating the grind, the pain of his planning. It’s as if he had nothing else to do between each abduction than spend all of every single day scheming how he’s going to grab the next one. How far in advance does he know the identity of his next victim? Did he pick them out years ago, when they were on the brink of puberty? Has he got them all listed on a wall chart, carefully ruled in columns – name, date of birth, address, school, religion, race, habits? He has to watch them, he must have known about Francine’s weak bladder. Is he a substitute teacher, flitting from school to school with glowing references and a great reputation? That, we have to investigate starting right now.

“Did he leave the jacket behind to jerk our strings, or did Francine manage to hide it in the mat?” he asked Patrick as he watched Paul delicately ease the unwieldy coat into a plastic bag.

“I’d say Francine hid it,” Patrick answered. “He’s arrogant, but to leave us the jacket betrays one of his craftiest tricks. Until now, we’ve been convinced that the girls are snatched and whisked away immediately. Why tell us that he doesn’t always do that? I believe that he wants to keep us peering down the same tunnel at the same ray of light. Which means, Carmine, that this new development can’t possibly be leaked to the press. Do you trust the boy who found it? The principal?”

“Yes, I do. How did he keep her quiet in the locker, Patsy?”

“He drugged her. Someone this meticulous wouldn’t have made the mistake of gagging her before putting her in a relatively airless, smelly sports locker. There’s no sign she did throw up, but human beings vary and some are the vomiting type. Gagged, she would have drowned in her own vomit. No, he wouldn’t risk that. She’s too valuable, he’s planned her for at least two months.”

“If we find her body -”

“You don’t think we’ll find her alive?”

Carmine gazed at his cousin with what Patrick called his “scornfully stern look.” “No, we’re not going to find her alive. We don’t know where to search, and all the places we’d like to search, we can’t. So when we find her body,” he went on, “you’d better go over her skin with a microscope. There’s a prick in it somewhere because he wouldn’t have had time to inject her where a good pathologist couldn’t find the mark. Odds are he’ll have used a very fine needle, and this time the body parts might not be in such good shape.”

“Maybe,” said Patrick wryly, “I could borrow the Hug’s Zeiss operating microscope. Mine’s shit by comparison.”

“With our unlimited budget, I don’t see why you can’t order one. It mightn’t come in time for Francine, but once you have it, I’m sure you’ll find plenty of use for it.”

“What I love most about you, Carmine, is your gall. They’ll crucify you, because I won’t put my name on the requisition.”

“Fuck them,” said Carmine. “They don’t have to see all those poor families. I have nightmares about the heads.”

Chapter 9

Friday, December 10th, 1965

Ten days went by with no sign of Francine Murray, though Francine Murray was not on Ruth Kyneton’s mind that morning. Even through the worst of winter, Ruth Kyneton preferred to use the outside line than shove her freshly laundered linens in one of those dryer things. You couldn’t beat the smell of clothes dried in sweet, clean air. Besides, she strongly suspected that the artificially scented anti-static fabric conditioners advertised on TV were actually a government plot to impregnate the skins of loyal, law-abiding Americans with