* * *
The entire police segment of County Services was boiling; as Carmine came in, cops clustered around him, offering to do anything they could. Getting through the crush took time, but it gladdened his heart too. Despite the empty pit that yawned within him, he suddenly knew that the mastermind’s days were numbered. The man had lost his cool, gotten too arrogant. Of course he hadn’t planned on killing Desdemona and the baby, but he had decided to send Carmine a warning by stranding Erica Davenport under the water of his boat shed. In broad daylight! Something had happened at the Maxwell banquet, and for four months all had seemed well. Then Evan Pugh sent a blackmailing letter, and within four days every witness of the something was dead. So around about March twenty-ninth another something had happened—something that the killer was afraid would expose him for all the world to see.
“We need a living witness,” he said to Abe and Corey when he made it in to his office.
“To what went on at Peter Norton’s table?” Corey asked.
“Yes, but we also need a living witness to whatever incident or event triggered Evan Pugh’s blackmail attempt. I think Erica Davenport knew, and now she’s dead. I could kick myself for not talking Myron out of flying home! When I saw her, I realized that she was laboring under some burden she couldn’t keep on carrying, and I wished for Myron. If he’d been here, it might have come out.” Carmine passed a hand across his face. “Now I have to tell him she’s dead.”
“We’ll get out of your way,” said Abe.
It was a long call. Though he wept, Myron wasn’t wounded to the core.
“I guess I’ve been expecting something like this,” he said. “Maybe because I think she was expecting something like it. I can’t say her own death, but definitely something awful. She was so glad to see me go! Not like she was sick of the sight of me, more as if I was just another worry. The trouble was, I couldn’t get her to tell me what was making her afraid.”
Carmine let him wander on, hating to make his suffering worse, but he had to be told how she died in case some fool in the know let it slip. Fools like Phil Smith or Fred Collins, constantly met in New York boardrooms.
And finally, after all that, Carmine had to tell him about Desdemona and Julian.
“Carmine, you’ve got to get them away!” he cried, real terror in his voice. “Listen, I was planning to ask if I could have Sophia for a while—she can finish her school year in L.A., it won’t set her back—”
“You can have her, Myron,” Carmine said. “I’d rest easier if she weren’t here, I confess.”
“Okay, okay, great, that’s great, but that’s not what I was going to say!” Myron yelled so loudly that Carmine had to hold the receiver away from his ear. “I’m sending some money to Desdemona, and you’re going to take her and Julian to London. And shut up, Carmine! I won’t take no for an answer!”
“The answer has to be no, Myron. Number one, I’m a public servant and can’t take money from millionaires—nor can my wife, that’s implicit. Number two, I’m in the middle of a case I can’t leave,” Carmine said patiently, ignoring the squawks in his ear. “And why London, of all places?”
“Because Desdemona wanted to live there before she married you, and because it’s the other side of the Atlantic from this killer,” Myron said.
“I appreciate the gesture more than I can say, you old fart, but it’s impossible. Leave it there, please.”
But it was a long call. By the time Carmine hung up, he was tired. Arguments were at the top of his pet hate list, whereas to Myron they were the food and drink of existence.
Abe and Corey weren’t in their office. Carmine went to see Patrick, hankering for a friendly face.
“You’ve told Myron?”
“Yes. He took it well, all considered. The best part of it is that he’s taking Sophia for a while. She’ll be very happy to go, they’ll spoil each other rotten, and I won’t need to worry about her. I don’t think this motherfucking killer will bother hiring someone to murder her in L.A.”
“Me neither. And, if it’s any consolation, I don’t think he would have tried to kill Desdemona if she hadn’t caught him in the boat shed. A pity, though, that she’s not from Montana or New Mexico—it would be good to have a place to send her.”
“That’s what Myron says, except that his solution is for me to accept a large sum of money and take Desdemona and Julian to London for the duration.”
Patrick laughed, then turned to his autopsy table. It was draped with a sheet. When he removed it, Carmine was forced to look at Erica Davenport’s naked body, its arms and legs grossly swollen, misshapen and discolored, its face blue-black with tongue protruding, its trunk so unmarred and proper that it did not look as if it belonged to the extremities.