Suddenly Patrick looked his full fifty-eight years. “Oh, cuz, I give up!” he cried. “I’m going home to Nessie and a sleeping pill. Otherwise I won’t be worth a hill of beans in the morning. I am to recuse myself completely?”
“Yes, Patsy,” Carmine said gently.
“Keep me in the loop?”
“I can’t. Think what ammunition we’d be handing to a defense attorney. You have to stay right out and right away.”
Desdemona had despaired of a back massage and gone to bed, from which Carmine hauled her out and subjected her to fifteen minutes of pain from sheer guilt.
“Feel any better?” he asked at the end of it.
“Not at the moment, you sadist,” she said grumpily, then relented. “But I will tomorrow, dear love, and that’s the most important thing. If caterers have extra cushions for the shorties, why don’t they have a couple of chairs with the legs sawn off for the giants like me and Manny Mayhew?”
“Because people are allowed to be five-foot-nothing, but not way over six feet,” said Carmine, smiling. He pushed a stray wisp of hair behind her ear, then leaned forward and kissed her. “Come on, my divine giantess, I’ll get you into bed with the pillows packed how you like them.”
“Is it Millie’s poison?” she asked, settling with a sigh of bliss; only Carmine knew how to get the pillows right.
“I’m afraid so.”
“It isn’t fair, Carmine. After all the years of struggle, she and Jim have to go through this?”
“Looks that way, but it’s early days. Close your eyes.”
He wasn’t long out of bed himself, thankful that Patrick had folded and his sergeants had gone home at Delia’s command — how exactly had she assumed command?
SUNDAY, JANUARY 5, 1969
They met in Carmine’s office at ten in the morning; no need yet to annoy wives with early Sunday starts, and the singles liked a sleep-in quite as much as the marrieds.
Abe, Carmine reflected as he gazed at his oldest and loyalest colleague, was settling into his lieutenant’s authority as quietly as he did everything, but there was a new smoothness and placidity in his face, caused by an extraordinary piece of good fortune. The German chemicals giant Fahlendorf Farben had awarded his two sons full scholarships to the colleges of their choice when they reached college age, to be ongoing as far as doctoral programs. For the father of two very bright boys, a huge relief; saving college fees kept parents poor. The grant had arisen out of Abe’s own police work; forbidden to accept a posted reward, Abe had declined it. So Fahlendorf Farben had given scholarships to his boys, signed, sealed, the money already invested.
Abe always worked with Liam Connor and Tony Cerutti, his personal team.
Liam was in his middle thirties and had been Larry Pisano’s man, but much preferred working for Abe now Larry was gone. Married and the father of one girl, he kept his private life well apart from his police career, which indicated, Carmine thought, a proud man in a moderate domestic situation, neither heaven nor hell. He was barely regulation height but kept himself fit, and had a pleasant face: grey-blue eyes, a lot of sandy hair, good bones. His reputation in the Holloman PD was of a man who did nothing to excess — probably why he and Abe clicked. Rational men.
Tony Cerutti was of that East Holloman Italian-American family bred many cops, his degree of blood relationship sufficiently removed from the Commissioner and Carmine, both half Cerutti. Thirty years old and a bachelor, he was dark, handsome, and charming in a slightly street-rat way; Abe always sent him after women suspects of a certain class. He was still learning to damp down the wilder side of his enthusiasm, but he was a good man, and absolutely attached to Abe, who awed him.
Carmine spoke first, outlining the disappearance of Dr. Millie Hunter’s tetrodotoxin.
“Because Paul acted so fast, both victims still had traces in their systems,” he said. “Each had a puncture wound in the left side of the back of the neck, into muscle and fat, not near bone. The injection would have been absorbed at an intramuscular rate. The dose was almost microscopic — about one half of one milligram. That makes it a hundred times more potent than cyanide. There’s no antidote and no treatment. Worst is that the victim is fully conscious until death.”
“Holy shits!” Donny exclaimed, face white. “That’s awful!”
“Very cold-blooded,” Carmine said. “Though it’s out of sequence, I’d like to continue for a moment about the poison. There must be at least five hundred milligrams left — a lot of death, though this doesn’t feel like a killer at the start of a spree, so the leftovers are more likely to go into storage. It seems that neither victim felt any pain on injection, yet we also know the killer didn’t use an ordinary hypodermic and syringe. So what’s the method of delivery, and how long before the first symptoms appeared?”