Too Many Murders(118)
“With North Rock hemming me in? Possible, Captain, but not likely,” Smith said, sneering. “In this Year of Our Lord 1967, I very much doubt that spies communicate directly with their masters. The world grows more sophisticated at an ever-increasing rate, haven’t you noticed? You can look until the cows come home, but you won’t find one single thing to suggest such a puerile activity! I’ve had no opportunity to alter my bandwidths or otherwise tamper with my ham setup, but confiscate away. As soon as my lawyers swing into action, I’ll have it back—and it had better be undamaged.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Smith,” Carmine said nicely, “but if it’s any consolation, exactly the same thing is happening to your fellow Board members.”
“Answer me one thing, Captain! Your business is murder, not espionage. Espionage is a federal crime, out of your legal sphere. I take it you’ve impounded the contents of my darkroom and my radio shack with a view to searching for evidence of espionage. I can sue you,” Smith said.
“Sir!” Carmine exclaimed, looking thunderstruck. “Judge Thwaites’s warrant clearly says ‘pursuant to murder,’ and I am pursuing murder. Poison can be concealed in bottles of developer, syringes and hypodermic needles inside all kinds of equipment, cutthroat razors in a bathroom cabinet or on a tiny guillotine—you had several guillotines in your darkroom—pistols in the weirdest places. Need I go on? The contents of your kitchen also suffered.” He spread his hands in a very Italian gesture. “Until everything I confiscated has been examined, Mr. Smith, I cannot be sure it isn’t part of a murder kit.”
“Slippery,” Smith said, nostrils pinched.
“As any other greased pig, sir,” Carmine said. “Espionage is not my affair, as you so rightly point out. Apart from any other consideration, I’m not trained to look for evidence of it. Nor is anyone else in the Holloman Police Department. If Mr. Kelly of the FBI were interested in your darkroom or your radio shack, I’m sure he’d be obtaining his own warrants. What he does is his business. Mine is very definitely murder, and this morning saw what could have been yet another mass murder.”
Smith stood on his roof listening, his anger dying. “Yes, I see why this sudden spurt of activity,” he said, trying to sound reasonable, “but I resent the emphasis on Cornucopia.”
Carmine looked conspiratorial. “I’ll let you in on one sequestered piece of evidence, Mr. Smith, that might help you understand,” he said. “The sniper wasn’t a lunatic. He was a professional assassin, sufficiently skilled to hire himself out for big dollars. Which makes anyone in possession of big dollars a prime suspect in his hire. There are few multimillionaires in Holloman, apart from members of the Cornucopia Board.”
“I see,” Smith said, turned on his heel, walked to the door in the roof, and disappeared.
Carmine followed more slowly.
As it turned out, both Wal Grierson and Gus Purvey owned fully equipped darkrooms, though Smith was the only ham radio operator.
“The quality of their photography is very high,” Carmine said the next morning, “so, taking into account the fact that they could all buy and sell J. P. Morgan, we can’t impugn their patriotism because of their plush darkrooms. All we’ve done is what we set out to do—rob them of the chance to turn Cornucopia secrets into something small enough to smuggle out of the country. Though I think it’s more likely that Ulysses has already performed his darkroom magic on at least some of what he hasn’t yet passed. And I agree with Phil Smith—espionage is not our business. Our other objective was to rattle a few cages, and I think we’ve done that. Through Smith, they’ll all soon know about our assassin theory.” He looked enquiring. “Anyone got anything interesting to report?”
“I do,” Abe said, but not triumphantly. “You were right about Lancelot Sterling, Carmine—he’s a sadist. He lives on his own in a very nice condo just beyond Science Hill—no wife or kids on his horizon ever. The pictures on his walls were all photographs of muscular young men, emphasis on butt shots. He had a concealed closet full of leather, chains, handcuffs, fetters, and some pretty weird dildoes. I think he hoped I’d be content at finding that, but something about his attitude told me there were other goodies better hidden. So I kept on poking and pressing. Under a fancy chopping-block island in his kitchen I found the kind of whips that would shred flesh. They stank of blood, so I confiscated them. But the thing that turned my stomach was carried openly in his pants pocket—a change purse with a drawstring. It looked like leather, but finer than kid or chamois, light brown in color. The minute I focused on it, he started to yell about his civil rights and how dare I, and when I picked it up he went bananas. So I brought it in and gave it to Patrick.”