On, Off

there. We follow him to his victim’s home and we let him grab her before we grab him. Between the grabbing, the tunnel and the O.R., he can’t possibly walk out of court a free man,” said Marciano.

“It’s circumstantial, is the problem,” Silvestri grumbled. “Ponsonby has committed at least fourteen murders, but our body count is four. We know the first ten victims were incinerated, but how are we going to prove that? Do you read Ponsonby as the confessing type? I sure as hell do not. Since sixteen-year-old girls run away from home every day, there are ten murders we’ll never convict him for. Everything rides on Mercedes, Francine, Margaretta and Faith, but nothing ties him to any of them beyond a supposition as frail as blown glass. Danny is right. Our only hope is to catch him in the act. Bust in there now, and he’ll walk. His lawyers will be good enough to persuade a jury to let Hitler or Stalin walk.”

They glared at each other, faces perplexed and angry.

“We have another problem,” Carmine said. “Claire Ponsonby.”

Commissioner Silvestri was not a profane man, but today – a Sunday too – he was breaking his own rules. “Shit! Piss!” he hissed. Then, in a bark, “Fuck!”

“How much do you think she knows, Carmine?” Patrick asked.

“I can’t even guess, Patsy, and that’s the truth. I do know that she’s genuinely blind, her ophthalmologist says so. And he is Dr. Carter Holt, now Professor of Ophthalmology at Chubb. Yet I’ve never seen a more adept blind person than she is. If she’s the bait dangled in front of a nunnish sixteen-year-old filled with the desire to do good, then she’s an accomplice to rape and murder even if she never enters Ponsonby’s O.R. What better bait than a blind woman? However, a blind woman is very noticeable, which is why I’m inclined to dismiss the theory. She’d be walking ground she doesn’t know the way she knows Six Ponsonby Lane, so how fast could she move? How would she know her target unless Chuck is at her side? Oh, I’ve spent a lot of this morning wondering about Claire! I keep seeing her outside St. Martha’s school in Norwalk – did you know that the sidewalk has been in bad shape for over a year due to council repairs to pipes? With two girls disappearing in the same place, someone would have noticed her. To me, Claire would have needed practice walks on a sidewalk mined with holes. I wound up concluding that Claire would be more a handicap to Chuck than an asset. I guess she could have watched the victim as he drove back to his lair, but that seems flimsy. Yet he must have had a sighted accomplice – who was the chauffeur, for instance?”

“You want to rule out Claire?” Silvestri asked.

“Not entirely, John. Just as an unlikely abduction helper.”

“I agree she shouldn’t be ruled out entirely,” said Patrick, “but I can’t believe she’s capable of much help of any kind. That’s not to say she doesn’t know what her brother’s been doing.”

“There’s a colossal bond between them. Now we know what their childhood was like, the bond makes more sense. Their mother murdered their father, I’d stake my life on it. Which means Ida Ponsonby was mentally unstable long before Claire came home to look after her. It must have been hell.”

“Would the children have known of the murder, Carmine?”

“I have no idea, Patsy. How would Ida have gotten home in a blizzard in 1930? Presumably in Leonard’s car, but did they plough the roads back then? I don’t remember.”

“The main ones, sure,” said Silvestri.

“She must have had blood on her. Maybe the kids saw it.”

“Speculations!” Marciano said with a snort. “Let’s stick to the facts, guys.”

“Danny’s right as usual,” said Silvestri, paying him back by putting the cigar butt under his nose. “We start watching people tomorrow night, so we’d better work out the changes now.”

“The most important change,” said Carmine, “is that Corey, Abe and I watch the tunnel entrance in the reserve.”

“What about the dog?” Patrick asked.

“A complication. I doubt it would eat drugged meat, guide dogs are trained not to take food from strangers or off the ground. And as it’s a spayed female, it won’t stray looking for canine company. It hears us, it will bark. What I can’t be sure of is that Chuck won’t take Biddy with him to guard the tunnel door in his absence. If he does, the animal will smell us.”

Patrick laughed. “Not if you’re wearing eau de skunk!”

The rest of them reared back, appalled.

“Jesus, Patsy, no!”

“Well, Abe and Corey, at any rate,” Patrick modified, looking devilish. “Even one of you would be enough.”

“One of us won’t be wearing eau de skunk, and that’s me,” Carmine said, scowling. “There must be another way.”

“Not without tipping Ponsonby off. We can’t kidnap the dog, that’s for sure. This isn’t some yokel with a half- baked plan, this is an M.D. who’s been ahead of us every inch of the way. If the dog goes missing, he knows we’re on to him, and that will be the end of his abductions,” Patrick said. “The ace up his sleeve is his tunnel door in the reserve, and we have to make him think it’s still his secret. He may be protecting it – trip wires, alarm bells or buzzers you step on like a land mine, a light up a tree – before you go near it, check it out, for God’s sake. So sure, he’ll be using the dog. How, I don’t know, just that he will. If I were he, I’d slip a little Seconal in Claire’s last drink for the evening.”

“Patsy, you are so devious!” said Silvestri, grinning.

“Not in Carmine’s league, John. Come on, everything I’ve said is logical.”

“Yes, I know. But where do we find eau de skunk?”

“I have a whole bottle of it,” Patrick said with a purr.

Carmine looked at Silvestri, menace in his face. “Then the Holloman police budget will have to include literal gallons of tomato juice. I can’t ask Abe and Corey to dab eau de skunk behind their ears without offering them a bathtub full of tomato juice in the mornings.” He frowned, looked frustrated. “Do we have a bathtub anywhere in the cells, or just showers?”

“There’s a big iron tub in a room out the back in the old part of the building. Right about the time Leonard Ponsonby was clubbed to death, it was used to pacify lunatics before they got sent off with the men in white coats,” said Marciano.

“Okay, have someone scrub the place out and disinfect it. Then I want that tub brimming with tomato juice, because I think Abe and Corey both have to wear it. If they’re forced to split up, the dog won’t smell the clean one.”

“It’s a deal,” said Silvestri, his expression indicating that he deemed the meeting over.

“Whoa! We can’t break up yet,” said Carmine. “We still have to discuss possibilities. Like, is Ponsonby working alone, or does he have an accomplice we know nothing about? Assuming that Claire isn’t involved, why suddenly do we dismiss the likelihood that there are two Ghosts? Ponsonby does have a life outside the Hug and his home. He’s known to go to art exhibitions, even if that means he takes a day or two off work. From now on we tail him wherever he goes. Our best people, Danny, our very best. Smooth as silk, male and female – and no clumsy two- way radios. The new lapel mikes to switch personnel, so no relief tails are to get out of radio range – the devices are as weak as weasel piss. Our technical stuff is improving, but we could really use a Billy Ho and a Don Hunter. If the Hug does fold, John, it might be a good idea to bring them on board. Attach them to Patsy’s department, which maybe ought to incorporate the word ‘forensics’ in its name. And don’t say it, John! Find the money, goddamn it!”

“If Morton Ponsonby were alive, we’d know the identity of the second Ghost,” said Marciano.

“Danny, Morton Ponsonby is not alive,” Carmine said patiently “I’ve seen his grave, and I’ve also seen his autopsy report. No, he wasn’t murdered, just dropped dead very suddenly. No poisons detected, though no real cause of death found.”

“Mad Ida might have struck again.”

“I doubt it, Danny. Apparently she was a little thing, and Morton Ponsonby was a healthy male adolescent. Hard to smother with a pillow. Besides, no fluff in the airway.”

“Maybe there was a fourth child,” Marciano persisted. “Ida mightn’t have registered its birth.”

“Oh, let’s not get carried away!” Carmine cried, clawing at the air. “First off, with Leonard dead, who was to father this mysterious fourth child? Chuck? Get real, Danny! The presence of a kid gets known – these weren’t newcomers to Ponsonby Lane, they owned Ponsonby Lane! Been in the district since shortly after the Mayflower. Look at Morton. Off the planet, but folks knew he existed.