“The guy who put the bear trap up knew his construction,” he said. “The bolts must be fixed in a joist or beam. The thing didn’t move a fraction of an inch when it was sprung.”
“Well, at least it is sprung, Carmine. My guys will be able to detach it. Have you seen enough?”
“I guess so. But do you believe this, Patsy?”
“No. This one makes twelve inside eighteen hours.”
“I’ll see you in the morgue.”
Carmine’s cohorts, Abe Goldberg and Corey Marshall, were standing by Evan Pugh’s desk looking dazed.
“Twelve, Carmine?” Corey asked as Carmine joined them.
“Twelve, and almost all different. Though this one takes the grand prize, guys—a bear trap. The victim’s a skinny milquetoast, so it crushed him hard enough to kill him.”
“Twelve!” said Abe in tones of wonder. “Carmine, in all the history of Holloman, there have never been twelve murders in one day. Four was tops when those biker gangs had a shoot-out in the Chubb Bowl parking lot, and that was simple, not even much of a surprise. You cleared it up in less than a week.”
“Well, I doubt I’m going to do the same here,” Carmine said, looking grim.
“No,” said both his sergeants in chorus.
“Still,” said Abe, trying to comfort his boss, “not all the cases are yours. I know Mickey McCosker and his team can’t be spared from their drug investigation, but Larry Pisano is already working the shootings. That’s three down, only nine to go with this one.”
“They’re all mine, Abe, you know that. I’m captain of detectives. What it’s going to mean is that each of you gets one victim to work—you know my methods better than Larry’s boys.” He frowned. “But not tonight. Go home, have a decent home-cooked feed and a good sleep. The Commissioner’s office at nine in the morning, okay?”
They nodded and left.
Carmine dallied, taking in the relatively spacious student room, and the rather glaring disparity between his murder victim’s side and the side belonging to the young man who had found him.
Tom Wilkinson was waiting in a room set aside by the Dean as his temporary quarters; one of Patsy’s technicians had escorted him into his own digs once a sheet was up over Evan’s closet door, and supervised his selection of clothes, books, oddments. After a look at the technician’s list, Carmine went back to examining the room. The two young men may as well have painted a line down its middle, so different were the two sides. Tom was haphazard and untidy, including the interior of his closet, whereas Evan Pugh was an obsessive. Even the notes pinned to his corkboard were squared off and neat. A quick perusal of them betrayed no hint as to why he had been murdered; they were just reminders to pick up his dry cleaning on such-and-such a date, shop for stamps, new socks, stationery. The photographs were all of a warmer place than Holloman—palm trees, brightly colored houses, beaches. And a mansion outside which a man and woman in their forties stood, clad in evening dress and looking prosperous.
When the desk yielded nothing further, Carmine went to see Tom Wilkinson, sitting miserably on the side of his new bed. He was very different from Evan Pugh, a single glance showed that: tall, handsome in a blond way, athletic, with wide blue eyes that stared at Carmine in a mixture of fear, horror and curiosity. Not the eyes of a bear trap killer, Carmine decided. The young fellow was cheaply dressed—no camelhair and cashmere here.
He tried not to babble his story of the blood leaking out of Evan’s closet, his calling to Evan, the lack of an answer, his opening of the closet door. After that he found it harder to be logical, but Carmine gave him time to recover, then learned that Tom hadn’t lingered to ascertain any details of the mess inside. Some pre-meds might have; a ghoulish tendency often went with the territory. If he had seen the money, he wasn’t admitting it, and Carmine was inclined to believe that he hadn’t. This pre-med student was scraping to find the money to stay at Paracelsus and would have been sorely tempted to filch the packet before anyone else knew it was there. He bore no blood on his clothes, and he had stepped around the puddle when he entered the closet. On his way out he hadn’t been as careful, but the path guy who escorted him back into the room had taken his sneakers, he explained, wriggling his toes through the holes in his socks. The sneakers were new, he’d miss them, so—um—? Carmine found himself promising to have the shoes returned as soon as possible.
“Did you like your roommate?” Carmine asked.
“No,” said Tom bluntly.
“Why?”