Too Many Murders

back to Holloman’s routine crimes, their success rate had just soared. In fact, so eager was Larry to get onto his new task that he rose to his feet without being dismissed.

“Then you don’t need me here, Carmine, right?”

“Right.”

Carmine waited until the three men left the room. “What I say now goes no farther, understood?”

“Eminently,” said Commissioner Silvestri. “You’ve formed some conclusions?”

“Yes, sir, I have. I don’t claim that they’re the correct ones, but for the moment they suit my purposes. Some of the eleven murders-from now on we ignore Jimmy Cartwright-I believe were commissioned from out of state. The three shootings, definitely. Possibly also Peter Norton’s poisoning, Bianca Tolano’s rape, Cathy Cartwright’s killing, and the smothering of Beatrice Egmont. Each was done professionally, and I include the sex murder in that because it was so-textbook.”

“You’re talking seven crimes, Carmine,” said Patsy, frowning.

“Yes.”

“What about Dee-Dee Hall?”

“No, I think she was a personal kill. And so were Evan Pugh and Desmond Skeps.”

“You’re forgetting Dean Denbigh. Where does he fit in?”

“I’m not sure yet, Patsy. My instincts say a commission, but if it is, why go to such tortuous lengths with the tea packet and tea bag? Why shouldn’t they show evidence of tampering? Maybe he’s a stray.”

“That I refuse to believe!” said Danny Marciano. “On any other day, there’s a chance, but not on April third. You’ve used up your stray with Jimmy Cartwright, Carmine.”

“I know, I know!”

A silence fell, suddenly so profound that the susurration of Silvestri’s state-of-the-art air conditioner was a roar.

Silvestri broke it. “You’re proposing one murderer, Carmine.”

“Yes. And if I’m right, he made a terrible mistake in dispatching all his victims on the same day. That meant he had to farm most of them out. But this isn’t a dodo, this is a mastermind. Therefore he knew he was making a mistake, and that says he had no choice. For some reason they all had to die on the same day, which suggests that the threat they posed is very recent and had to be acted on at once.” Carmine’s face looked both grim and elated, an expression everyone there knew: he was looking forward to- yet dreading-the hunt.

Silvestri shook his head. “I don’t know how you manage that, Carmine, conning us into thinking your way before we really know what you’re driving at. One murderer? It’s crazy!”

“I agree, sir, but let’s go with it! Is it any crazier than twelve murders in one day in a city the size of Holloman? In fact, to me it’s the only answer that makes any sense. If eleven people have died in such disparate ways, doesn’t it scream one killer? Mass murder happens, but it’s some psycho with a machine gun in a crowded place, or a hijacker bringing down a plane because he didn’t understand the thing he was holding. This is different.”

“I get your drift,” the Commissioner said. “Go on.”

“To hire professional killers says the mastermind-that’s not a word I like-has unlimited money. Why don’t I like the word ‘mastermind’? Because on at least one occasion he was very indiscreet and earned himself the nickname of Motor Mouth from Evan Pugh. That’s why we’ve found no trace of anything Pugh could have used for blackmail. The subject of the blackmail is simply something Motor Mouth said and everybody except Evan Pugh forgot. The hardest kind of blackmail to prove.”

“It’s too far-fetched,” said Danny Marciano.

“I agree, it is far-fetched, but not too far-fetched. Give me a better reason for three out-of-state shootings, Danny! Those harmless people were handpicked for execution by men using silencers and accustomed to fast getaways. Far too sophisticated for Holloman! One incident, yes, but three, all at the same time? Never happen. I get the feeling that the guy who commissioned these killings is laughing at us as provincial dunderheads.”

“Then he doesn’t know you, Carmine,” said Abe loyally.

“Oh, I think he does, Abe, if only socially. This is a small city, and I get around.”

“How do you intend to proceed?” Silvestri asked.

“My usual way, sir. I’m taking all eleven cases back, and Abe and Corey as well. Sorry, guys, but I can’t do without you. If I send either of you to question people, I can be sure it’ll be done as if I did it myself. That goes for looking at evidence too. Today we concentrate on Desmond Skeps. Abe’s done the workup, but now we tighten the noose at Cornucopia.”

Carmine looked directly at his boss. “You may get some pressure from Hartford on this if we ask too many awkward questions. Or even from Washington. I also have to inform you that my fool friend, Myron Mandelbaum, is smitten with Cornucopia’s legal officer, a woman named Erica Davenport. I’ve warned him off and he knows he can’t invite her to my home, but I don’t want any flak coming your way because of him.”

Silvestri remained unruffled. “What’s a bit more flak from Hartford and Washington, when I have a press conference in a few minutes? The sharks are in a feeding frenzy over Skeps’s death, so I intend to throw them chunks of Skeps. Keep them chomping at his carcass. Twelve murders? What twelve murders? I’ll be firm that we have no local suspects for Skeps’s murder, of course. That’s why the FBI is here. We’re looking in New York and other financial capitals. That’s the way I’m going to play it, one press conference after another. Keep the sharks way away from Holloman.” He waved a hand. “Go away! I have to think.”

Carmine went, frowning. FBI? What did Silvestri mean?

The Cornucopia building stood on the corner of Maple and Cromwell, downtown in the shopping and business district, and was only a year old; at forty storeys it was the tallest structure in Holloman. The penthouse was Desmond Skeps’s residence, while the lower thirty-nine storeys housed the head offices of all of Cornucopia’s many companies, with Desmond Skeps’s own offices located on the thirty-ninth floor. Curiously, he had provided no direct access between his working and living quarters; in order to enter the penthouse, he had to leave his offices and travel back down to the first floor and his private elevator to the penthouse. I suppose, thought Carmine, it keeps business truly separated from pleasure.

The downstairs foyer was sheathed in multicolored marble and adorned with lush palms in handmade marble pots; a closer inspection revealed that the palms could be lifted out holus-bolus in smaller, plastic pots. There was an enquiry desk and a visitor’s desk whose lone attendant’s job was to pin a tag on each visitor. Those who worked inside the building took no notice of anyone on their way in or out. One bank of elevators served floors two to nineteen, the other floors twenty to thirty-nine; the penthouse elevator stood alone at the blind end and had NO ADMITTANCE painted on a wooden stand in front of its shiny copper doors.

Armed with a key, Carmine triggered the doors, which opened onto an interior plush with squabbed tannish- pink leather, a rosso antico marble floor, and carved and gilded trims. The panel bore only two buttons: UP and DOWN. How arrogant, he thought, amused. At the top it opened directly into the apartment, which was huge. First was a foyer the size of most living rooms, then a living room the size of most houses, with glass walls on two sides; one overlooked North Holloman, and one Long Island Sound and the Harbor. Carmine could see his own home’s jetty clearly, and his square tower with the widow’s walk. A low-powered telescope on a tripod made him wonder what else Desmond Skeps had seen, and in more homes than Carmine’s. Mr. Skeps, he thought, I do not like you. Privacy is our last defense against the barbarian, and you are as big a barbarian as federal governments.

The decor was interior decorator beige, conservative and safe, nor were there any precious objects scattered around to suggest that Skeps collected art or even kitsch. The pictures on the walls were second-rate watercolors the decorator had probably passed off as first-rate, though in the bedroom this individual had gone for etchings torn out of over-sized Victorian books and framed. The bill had undoubtedly been astronomical, but Carmine spared no pity for a man who didn’t know second-rate when he saw it.

Skeps had been murdered not in his bed but on his massage couch, a taller, narrower item of furniture that would have suited his murderer’s intentions admirably. Either he had climbed onto it voluntarily, or the murderer was strong enough to lift him there bodily after his glass of single malt Glenlivet and chloral hydrate. Certainly he wouldn’t have consumed the Scotch lying flat out on what was to become his deathbed. A strong killer, Carmine said to himself, thinking of the bear trap. These two killings were done personally, and they argued great physical strength. Look for someone rolling in money and built like Mr. Universe and you won’t go far wrong. But what if no one was both? What if no one was either?