Too Many Murders(7)

There were a series of stainless steel doors in one wall, a total of sixteen altogether, and the room was a hushed hive of industry as two technicians worked to clear autopsied bodies out of the drawers while not confusing them with murder victims and others as yet uninserted into drawers. Outside on the loading dock, Carmine knew, there would be vans or retired hearses sent from funeral homes to pick up released bodies, their crews grumbling at the ME’s insistence that they come right now, at once, no delay!

He walked through into the autopsy suite, where Patrick stood at the side of a long stainless-steel table fitted with a huge sink at one end and drain channels along either side. A pair of ordinary wholesale meat scales hung in a convenient spot, and several carts of covered instruments were arranged nearby.

Evan Pugh had been freed from the bear trap; it lay on a marble-topped bench some distance away, fenced off by carts. Carmine went to it first and stood staring at it, too wise to touch it. If Patsy had erected a fence around it, then it was highly dangerous. Spread out, as it was now, it was fully two feet wide at its hinged base, its stained, terrible teeth a good two inches long. Not barbed, not serrated, just knife-sharp. The base, which had been bolted to the closet ceiling, was wide enough for a man to put his feet on, one to either side of the hinge—the usual way, Carmine concluded, for its user to pull it apart and set it. There were six bolt holes, three in either side plate, marking the middle and each end. These had not been a part of the trap when it was made but had been added very recently. Every other surface was well rusted, whereas the holes gleamed with fresh metal. The killer had reamed them out himself.

“Don’t even breathe on it, Carmine,” Patrick said from the table. “It’s on a hair trigger, and I’m not exaggerating. Whoever cleaned it up for this exercise used naval jelly on the spring to remove the rust and adjusted the pressure on the plate to trigger it with any old kind of tug, even from a weakling like our victim. What fascinates me is the size of the killer’s balls, to handle his device so coolly that he was able to screw his bolts in all the way to their heads without setting it off. Jesus! I break out in a sweat just thinking about it.”

Carmine moved to the table. “Any clues, Patsy?”

“A couple of doozies, actually. Here, read this. It was in his pants pocket.”

“Well, it sure answers a lot,” Carmine said, putting the clear plastic envelope back among Pugh’s other possessions. “Among other things, it explains the money. Have you opened the package? Does it contain a hundred grand?”

“I don’t know. I thought I’d save that treat for you. I did wash the blood off it and remove the first layer of wrap, though I doubt I’ll find any prints on it apart from Pugh’s.”

Carmine took the brick and a pair of utility scissors and sliced the food wrap’s many layers down to bedrock. Expecting blank paper beneath an outer layer of real notes, he was astonished to find that every note was a genuine hundred-dollar bill. There had been an outbreak of counterfeit hundred-dollar bills a year ago and he had been shown what to look for, but these were genuine. What kind of blackmail victim could afford to drop a thousand C-notes in the course of a murder?

“The money only complicates matters,” he said, putting it in a steel dish and lidding it before peeling off his gloves. “There is a hundred thousand here, brand-new, but the numbers aren’t fully consecutive. I’ll have to hand it over to the Feds to find out its origins.” He leaned his rump on a wall sink and contemplated the money dish sourly. “Motor Mouth … I wonder what Motor Mouth said to warrant not only murder but the sacrifice of so much money? Whoever he is, he knew he had no hope of retrieving his outlay—or his letter. Which says he’s not worried, that he doesn’t think we stand a chance of discovering his real name or what the subject of the blackmail was.”

“Blackmail aside, Carmine, one motive is hate,” said Patsy, inserting a probe inside one vicious chest wound. “The object here is physical agony, a slow death.”

“But not a public lesson.”

“No. A private vendetta. Motor Mouth isn’t concerned about the details of his crime becoming public, but all his spleen was directed at Evan Pugh. Whoever he is, he’s not an attention seeker.”

“I’m guessing this was Pugh’s first attempt at blackmail. Man, I’d love to get my hands on Pugh’s letter of March twenty-ninth!” Carmine clenched his hands. “But Motor Mouth will have burned it. Say he got it on March twenty-ninth. That means he cooked up this incredible retaliation within four or five days. And he must know Pugh left no evidence of the blackmail behind. So it’s not pictures, letters, memos, anything visual or auditory. Pugh had no safety deposit key, even one he’d think was cunningly hidden. No bus or train station locker key either. Of course he might have sent something to his parents, but I’m guessing he didn’t.”