On, Off

Chapter 18

Monday, January 24th, 1966

The logical journal to search for a person advertising for a partner in anything from business through sex to murder was the National Enquirer, which was read clear across the country and available in any supermarket at the cashier’s desk among the gum and magazines. After talking to the three psychiatrists who made murder their speciality, Carmine was able to equip Abe and Corey with some key words before shipping them off to read the personals between January of 1963 and June of 1964. The Ghost may have been in his gruesome collaboration before the first girl disappeared, or he might have seen how much easier his task would be with a helper after he commenced his killing career.

The nature of the bait was now fairly clear to Carmine: an object of pity, of irresistible appeal to a soft-hearted, sensitive young woman. So he abandoned that line of thought to move on to what kind of premises housed the girls while they were raped and killed and stored. The general police feeling was that the killing premises were makeshift; only Patrick saw Carmine’s point that the killing premises were anything but makeshift. Anyone so persnickety that he lined up a notice would want his “laboratory” perfect.

After the discovery of Margaretta Bewlee’s body on a Hugger property, the Huggers fell over themselves to offer permission to the police to search anywhere they liked. Even Satsuma, Chandra and Schiller crumbled. Maurice Finch’s mushroom tunnel was just that; another search of Benjamin Liebman’s mortuary yielded nothing; Addison Forbes’s “eyrie” consisted of two round rooms, one above the other, overfilled with neatly stacked or shelved professional reading materials; the Smith basement was pure train heaven; Walter Polonowski’s cabin was a love nest, decorously posed photographs of Marian everywhere, a big bed, not much of a kitchen. Paola Polonowski had seized her opportunity and gone up to the cabin in the wake of the police, with the result that Polonowski was now living in it with Marian, and looking a great deal happier. Hideki Satsuma’s retreat turned out to be near the corner of the Cape Cod elbow in Orleans, an architect-designed bachelor pad that held nothing more indictable than a huge amount of pornography heavily into violence, though not murder. No real surprise to Carmine, whose time in Japan had shown him the Japanese penchant for pictorial pornography. Dr. Nur Chandra was just “being bloody-minded” as Desdemona would have phrased it; his secret activity in the cottage he used consisted of a new generation computer that he was trying to program without enlisting one of those amazing young Chubb medical students who paid their way through school by devising programs for specific scientific purposes. Chandra was so sure of his Nobel Prize that he would speak of his work to no one, especially a super-bright, ambitious young Chubb medical student. The Ponsonby forest was a forest; no cabins, sheds, barns, underground anythings. And Kurt Schiller’s worst secret was a photograph of himself, his father, and Adolf Hitler. Papa had been a highly decorated U-boat captain invited to meet der Fuhrer and bring his towheaded little son along; Hitler loved towheaded children with brave fathers. Schiller Senior had gone down with his submarine when it encountered a depth-charge in 1944; Kurt was ten years old at the time.

Therefore, according to Silvestri, Marciano and the rest of Connecticut’s various senior policemen, the killing premises must be makeshift. Were they not, someone would have noticed.

But they are not makeshift, Carmine said to himself. If I were the Ghost, what would I want? Pristine surroundings, that’s what. Surfaces that could be hosed down, scrupulously cleaned. That means tiles rather than concrete, metal rather than wood or rock. I’d want an operating room. Two Ghosts could build it if they were both skilled with their hands; they could even wire it for electricity. What they probably couldn’t do was plumb it, yet it had to be plumbed. A high-pressure water supply, adequate drains, and connection to either a sewer or a septic system. The Ghosts would want a bathroom too, for themselves if not for their victim. Her they probably bed panned, sponge bathed.

So while Abe and Corey waded their way through the National Enquirer personals, Carmine checked every Hugger property for unsuitably large power or water bills. Unfortunately the more prosperous Huggers lived where they tapped for well water rather than used a piped supply, but no one’s electricity bill was huge. A generator? Possible, if the noise could be muffled. From that fruitless exercise he waded through plumbing contractors and more humble self-employed plumbers from one end of Connecticut to the other. Looking for a lucrative job that involved installation of what would have been described as a private gymnasium or a plush recreational facility or even a pool house. Those he did find turned out to be genuine, all located in Fairfield or Litchfield counties. He was aware that the kind of thing he was asking about spelled someone with money, but he had always thought that the Ghost had plenty of money. Wherever he looked, he came up with nothing. That said one of three things: the first, that the two Ghosts were able to do their own plumbing; the second, that they had hired a plumber whom they paid generously with cash so he would keep quiet about the job and not pay tax; and the third, that the Ghosts had rented or bought premises already suitable for their purposes, such as a veterinary clinic or surgeon’s rooms. He called around to see how many veterinary clinics and surgeons’ rooms had changed hands late in 1963, but those that had changed hands were bona fide. The usual nothing, nothing, nothing.

Because the pink lace dress was adorned with 265 rhinestones, and every one had to be examined to make sure it held only one set of prints, presumably the seamstress’s, it was six days before Carmine could show the garment to Desdemona.

He buzzed her intercom feeling more goofy and anxious than he had in high school when the girl of his dreams at the time said yes, he could take her to the prom. Mouth dry, heart in it – all he lacked was the corsage.

“Desdemona, it’s Carmine. On business. Don’t open the door, I’ll key the combination in.”

“How are you?” he asked, shedding his layers and putting the dress box – shit, what would she think? – on the table.

She looked neither glad nor sorry to see him. “I’m well but bored to death,” she said. Then, flicking a finger at the dress box, “What’s that?”

“Something I had to assure the Commissioner you wouldn’t talk about to anyone. I knew you wouldn’t, he doesn’t. You mightn’t know that the last victim, Margaretta Bewlee, was found wearing a child’s party dress. We can’t trace it, but I thought maybe with your eye for fancy work, you could tell us something about it.”

She had the box open and was shaking out the dress in a second, then held it, turned it around, finally spread it on the table. “I take it that the last girl wasn’t chopped into bits?”

“No, just the head was removed.”

“The newspapers said she was tall. This wouldn’t fit her.”

“It didn’t, but she was wedged into it all the same. Her shoulders were too broad for him to button it down the back, and that leads to my first question – why buttons? Everything these days is zipped.”

Paul had fastened the buttons, which sparkled like genuine jewels under the table light. “That’s why,” she said, fingering one. “A zipper would have spoiled the effect. These glitter.”

“Have you ever seen a dress like this?”

“Only on a pantomime stage when I was a child, but it was makeshift due to clothes rationing. This is very pretentious.”

“Is it handmade?”

“To some extent, but probably not as much as you assume. The rhinestones have been sewn on, yes, but by a specialist who can wallop them on faster than you can eat pot roast. The person is a piece-worker, so she sticks her needle through the hole, loops her strand of cotton around the rhinestone once, then tacks her needle through the lace to the next rhinestone – see?”

Carmine saw.

“Some of them are missing because they weren’t sewn on firmly enough, and they come off in a chain as long as the strand of cotton in the needle – see?”

“I thought Paul might have done that in the lab.”

“No, it’s more likely to have happened with rough handling, and I can’t imagine it would receive that in a pathology lab.”

“So what you’re saying is that the dress is affordable?”

“If you have something over a hundred dollars to spend on a frock that the child would probably only wear once or twice, then yes. It’s a profit exercise, Carmine. Whoever makes and sells these knows how often the frock will be worn, so they cut as many corners as they can. The lining is synthetic, not silk, and the underskirt is cheap net