As if determined to produce an opposite reaction to Richard Oakes’s, Michael Donald Sykes entered into his interrogation with glee, aplomb, and faultless good humor. He was entranced with the idea that anyone could suspect him of sexual murder, and made Abe’s and Corey’s lives a misery interrogating them.
“I believe you have fixated on me,” he said solemnly, “due to the fact that I do not have Gettysburg laid out in my basement. How can I, an American, prefer to lay out Austerlitz? And what, you ask, is Marengo, if not a recipe for chicken? Napoleon Bonaparte, sirs, as a military genius put Sherman and Grant and Lee in the shade! By blood he was an Italian, not a Frenchman, and in him the old Italian genius flowered again.”
“Shut up, Mr. Sykes,” said Corey.
“Yes, Mr. Sykes, shut up,” said Abe.
But of course he didn’t. In the end they evicted him from their commandeered office, and he skipped off very pleased with himself. Passing Carmine, he stopped.
“There’s a fellow in Accounting you should question,” he said, wreathed in smiles. “That was so refreshing! And to think that when you first appeared here a week or so ago, I was scared out of my wits. But no more, no more! Your devoted followers are gentlemen who accepted my dismissal of the Civil War generals as if they heard it every day. Very kind of them!”
“Who in Accounting?” Carmine asked sharply.
“I don’t believe I’ve ever heard his name, but you can’t mistake him, Captain. No more than five feet tall, very thin, and walks with a heavy limp,” said Mr. Sykes.
Shit! Carmine grabbed Abe with one hand and Corey with the other, hustling them to the elevator. “What floors are Cornucopia General’s accounting?” he asked.
“Nineteenth, twentieth, twenty-first,” said Corey.
Which, which, which? “Twenty-one,” he said, diving into the elevator. “We’ll work our way down.”
“Jesus!” said Abe as they emerged on the twenty-first floor. “Mrs. Highman’s carpenter!”
But he wasn’t there, and the few people they encountered knew they’d seen him but had no idea where.
“Conceited idiots!” said Corey as they went down a floor. “The peons are beneath notice.”
How did I know it was too good to be true? Carmine asked himself as they emerged into a scene of controlled panic. Two ambulance medics came out of another elevator wheeling a gurney and were pounced on by half a dozen anxious people, escorted into a huge room divided into chest-high cells. Using their badges, Carmine and his team followed.
Too late, of course. The small, slight body was slumped over a desk, quite dead. It was Carmine who checked for signs of life, Abe and Corey who kept everyone else away.
“You can go, guys,” Carmine said to the medics as he picked up a phone. “He goes to the Medical Examiner.”
Within minutes the area was cordoned off. Patrick O’Donnell and his team walked in a little later. Patrick’s fair face was grim, but he didn’t speak until he had done his preliminary examination of the body.
“Cyanide, I’m betting,” he said then to Carmine. “It seems to be the poison of choice, doesn’t it? I wonder how many hands that jar you found in Dr. Denbigh’s drawstring bag has passed through? Or how full it was? The lethal dose is very small.”
“Could this have been Mrs. Dean Highman’s workman?”
“Undoubtedly, unless there are two five-foot-nothings with the left leg three inches shorter than the right in Holloman,” Patsy said. “He wore boots with the left one built up, but the limp never really disappears. The knees are out of synch, and so are the ankles. The built-up boot keeps the hips level, helps ease lumbar pain. I won’t know until I get him on my table if it’s congenital or acquired.”
“Well,” said Abe as they returned to County Services, “I guess Erica Davenport is our mastermind.”
“I agree,” said Corey positively.
“Not necessarily,” said a gloomy Carmine from the backseat. “Once we moved to interview undersized and unattractive males, the word could have gotten around faster than a fire in tinder. Mrs. Highman is a doll, but discreet she ain’t. Nor is Dotty Thwaites, Simonetta Marciano—sssh!—or Angela MacIntosh. Haven’t you noticed that this is a case full of women? I sure have. Suspects, victims, onlookers, witnesses—women, women, women! I hate cases like this! I’m out of my depth! I know two women with zippers on their mouths—one is my wife, the other is my secretary. Grr!”
The two in the front seat took the hint and said no more.