unlock them until the first thaw. The house has real good forced-air heating, and it’s far too cold for the girls to open a window. The winter’s ten degrees colder here than it is in Holloman.”
Paul came in, shaking his head.
“Then let’s start looking at every inch in here – we bag all Margaretta’s bedclothes, with special attention to that pillowcase. Carmine,” Patrick said as his cousin was leaving the room, “if this girl is tall, thin and black black, he’s changed
“Care to bet?”
“Thirty days – a different abduction technique – a different type of girl – that’s what you’re asking me to believe.”
“Yes, I am. The most important factor hasn’t changed. This girl is as pure and untouched as the others. What changes there are don’t tell me that we’ve managed to scare him much. He’s working to a master plan, and this is a part of it. Twelve girls in twenty-four months. Maybe now he’s going to do twelve girls in twelve months. It’s New Year’s Day. Maybe their size and skin color are irrelevant to his second dozen, or else Margaretta is his new type.”
Patrick sucked in his breath audibly. “You think he’s going to change what he does to them too, don’t you?”
“That’s what my instincts are telling me, yes. But never doubt one thing, Patsy. This is our guy. It’s not someone else.”
Carmine left Abe and Corey to come back with Patrick; it fell to them to do the plod from door to door on Dublin Road, to ask if anyone had seen or heard anything. Not much chance on New Year’s, between the parties and the booze.
It was 10.30 A.M. when the Ford turned into the Smith driveway, a long, twisting one ending at a very large and traditional white clapboard house on a knoll, its Georgian-paned windows flanked by dark green shutters. Not pre-Revolutionary, but not new either. Five acres of land, naturally forested save for where the house stood; no gardeners in the Smith family.
A pretty woman around forty answered the door; the Prof’s wife, no doubt. When Carmine introduced himself she held the door wide open and admitted him to a house as traditionally furnished as its exterior suggested; nice things, no expense spared, but unadventurous tastes guiding the decor. Clearly the Smiths could afford to buy whatever they fancied.
“Bob’s here somewhere,” Eliza said vaguely. “Would you like a cup of coffee?”
“Thanks, I would.” Carmine followed her through to a kitchen artfully tweaked to look a hundred years older than it was, from wormholes to fading paint.
Two teenaged boys came in as Eliza handed the visitor his coffee. The eagerness natural in males of their age was absent; Carmine was used to boys who bombarded him with questions, as they invariably thought his calling a glamorous one and murder better than anything on TV. Yet the Smith sons, introduced as Bobby and Sam, looked more frightened than curious. As soon as their mother gave them permission they left, under orders to find their father.
“Bob’s not well,” Eliza said, sighing.
“The strain must be considerable.”
“No, it’s not really that. His trouble is that he’s not used to things going wrong, Lieutenant. Bob has led a charmed life. The proper Yankee forebears, a lot of money in the family, top of every class he’s ever been in, got everything he ever wanted, including the William Parson Chair. I mean, he’s only forty-five – do you realize that he wasn’t turned thirty when the Chair was handed to him? And it’s gone like a dream! Accolades galore.”
“Until now,” said Carmine, stirring his coffee, which smelled too old to taste good. He sipped, discovered his nose was right.
“Until now,” she agreed.
“Last time I saw him, I thought he seemed depressed.”
“Very depressed,” Eliza said. “The only time he ever cheers up is when he goes down to the basement. That’s what he’ll do today. And again tomorrow.”
Professor Smith came in, looking hunted. “Lieutenant, this is unexpected. Happy New Year.”
“No, sir, it isn’t happy. I’ve just come from Groton and another abduction a month too early.”
Smith slumped into the nearest chair, face bleached to chalk. “Not at the Hug,” he said. “Not at the Hug.”
“In Groton, Professor.
Eliza got to her feet briskly, beamed artificially. “Bob, show the Lieutenant your folly,” she said.
You are brilliant, Mrs. Smith, said Carmine to himself. You know I’m not visiting to wish anyone a happy New Year, and am about to ask if I can take an unofficial look around. But you don’t want your husband refusing a pleasant request, so you’ve taken the bull by the horns and pushed the Prof into a co-operation he won’t feel like tendering.
“My folly? Oh, my folly!” Smith said, then brightened. “My folly, of course! Would you like to see it, Lieutenant?”
“I would indeed.” Carmine abandoned the coffee without regret.
The door to the basement was equipped with several locks that had been installed by a professional, and took Bob Smith some time to open. The wooden stairway was poorly lit; at its bottom the Prof flicked a switch that threw the whole of a huge room into stark, shadowless light. Jaw dropped, Carmine gaped at what Eliza Smith had called a folly.
A roughly square table fifty feet on each side filled the basement. Its surface was realistically landscaped into rolling hills, valleys, a range of alps, several plains, forests of perfect, tiny trees; rivers flowed, a lake sat beneath the flanks of a volcanic cone, water fell over a cliff. Farmhouses peeped, a town lay on one plain, another town lay wedged between two hills. And everywhere glittered the twin silver tracks of a miniature railroad. The rivers were bridged with steel girders correct down to rivet bumps, a chain-driven ferry crossed the lake, a beautiful arched viaduct carried the tracks through the alps. On the outskirts of the towns were railroad stations.
And what trains! The streamlined Super Chief ran at a fast clip amid the trees of a forest, negotiated a towering suspension bridge flawlessly. Two diesel locomotives hauled a freight train of coal wagons; another consisted of oil and chemical tanks, and a third of wooden boxcars. A local suburban train stood at one town station.
Altogether Carmine counted eleven trains, each in motion save for the humble local at its station, their speeds varying from the rush of the Super Chief down to the crawl of one freight train hauling so many oil tanks that it had pairs of diesel locomotives inserted throughout its formidable length. And all in miniature! To Carmine it was a wonder of the world, a toy to die for.
“I’ve never seen anything like this in all my life,” he said huskily. “There aren’t the words to describe it.”
“I’ve been building it since we moved in here sixteen years ago,” said the Prof, who was cheering up rapidly. “They’re all powered by electricity, but later on today I’ll switch to steam.”
“Steam? You mean locomotives powered by wood? Coal?”
“Actually I generate the steam by burning alcohol, but the principle’s the same. It’s a lot more fun than just sending them around on household electricity.”
“I bet you and your boys have a marvelous time down here.”
The Prof stiffened, a look in his eyes that gave Carmine a chill: he might have led a charmed life, but below the depression and self-indulgence was at least some steel. “My boys don’t come down here, they’re banned,” he said. “When they were younger and the door had no locks, they trashed the place.
It was on the tip of Carmine’s tongue to expostulate that surely the boys were old enough now to respect the trains, but he decided not to horn in on Smith’s domestic business. “How do you ever get to the middle of it?” he asked instead, squinting up into the lights. “A hoist?”
“No, I go in underneath. It’s assembled in sections, each fairly small. I had a hydraulics engineer install a system that enables me to jack a section up as much as necessary, and move it to one side so I can make my alterations standing up. Though it’s more for cleaning than anything else. If I’m changing from diesel to steam, I just drive a train to the edge, see?”
The Super Chief left its route, crossed via several sets of points while other trains were stopped or diverted, and drew up at the table edge. Carmine almost imagined he could hear it clanking and hissing.
