The Prodigal Son

“The man’s a Dominican in modern academic robes,” said the outgoing Head Scholar to Secretary Hank Howard, not bothering to keep his voice down.

Academic robes were also absorbing Solidad Vasquez, Annabelle Daiman and Desdemona. The two first-timers were overawed at the fantastic array.

“Is there anyone not in academic robes?” Solidad asked.

“By tradition, the only ladies have Chubb posts, like Dr. Millie Hunter. The Town men wear theirs not to be entirely outclassed,” said Desdemona, looking at her generous plate of smoked salmon with brown bread-and-butter enthusiastically. “Carmine has a Master’s from Chubb, and I see Fernando is in Master’s robes from—where?”

“University of Florida.” Solidad giggled. “It isn’t fair, but I notice that it’s a Holloman joke that any Florida school is a place that awards degrees in ballroom dancing and underwater basket weaving. Well, Fernando’s degree is in sociology, and it’s a respected one.”

Annabelle looked insufferably smug. “Derek’s doctorate is from Chubb,” she said.

“The hall does look as if it’s populated by peacocks,” said Desdemona. “The gold detail on some of the robes is truly astonishing. And ermine! Head Scholar Tinkerman’s purple-and-gold is the Chubb School of Divinity.”

“So that’s what’s wrong with him!” Nessie O’Donnell called.

“It’s so pretty,” said Annabelle, gazing around. “What’s the scarlet and ermine?”

But that, no one knew, though all agreed that its wearer stood out brilliantly.

Fernando was quizzing Carmine. “Is that really black guy on the high table Dr. Jim Hunter?”

“Yes. His wife’s the only woman wearing academic robes.”

“I noticed them coming in, each wearing the same gown. A handsome couple. Man, he’s huge!”

“Champion boxer and wrestler ten years ago. Came in handy.”

“I bet.”

Fernando’s remark about the Hunters as a handsome couple had intrigued Carmine; people usually didn’t see them that way, and he applauded Fernando’s perception.

But inevitably his attention went back to Dr. Thomas Tarleton Tinkerman, looking magnificent in his doctor of Divinity robes. Well, Carmine amended, he was the kind of man who would manage to make sackcloth and ashes look great. Tall and ramrod straight, he gave an impression of considerable physical strength—no nerdy weakling, he. More like a West Point graduate full bird colonel who divided his mental energies between stretching for the next promotion and coping with a new attack of hemorrhoids. Tonight was definitely a hemorrhoid night: maybe not Martin Luther, but Napoleon Bonaparte?

Handsome in a Mel Ferrer way, chiseled features that said he had the asceticism of a monk. Grey hair went well with light eyes. The corners of his mouth turned down as if he despaired of human frailty in the full knowledge that he himself had none. Conceited! That was the word for Tinkerman.

The whole of C.U.P. knew that he didn’t want to publish A Helical God. It was written for ignoramuses by an ape, not a scholar, and it cast doubt not so much on the Christian God as it did on His ministers, their reluctance to accept science as a part of God’s grand design. How Tinkerman must be writhing at the thought that he dared not use his most powerful tool—racial prejudice. No, he wouldn’t run the risk of being accused of that. His tactics would be oblique and subtle.

How expressive was a feminine back? Surprisingly so, Carmine concluded, going down the row of the high table’s ladies’ backs, all he could see. Angela M.M. bobbed up and down like a sleek yet busy bird, the two Parson wives sat haughtily straight thanks to old-fashioned corsets, and poor little Mrs. Thomas Tarleton Tinkerman looked like a plucked fowl, her shoulder blades vestigial wings, her backbone knobby beads. It was more difficult to catalogue Millie, in a University of Chicago Ph.D. gown, but certainly she wasn’t hunched over in defeat; just, it was plain, ignored by all the other women save wafty Angela. How she must be missing Dr. Jim, almost the distance of the table away from her—and who had placed her between the Parson wives?

Neither Millie nor Jim had gone to the expense of buying doctoral robes; theirs were hired, which meant a generic robe mixed-and-matched. It showed as what it was—shabby, much used by many, and not the right size.

Heart feeling twinges for the Hunters, Carmine’s attention returned to his own table to join in a merry discussion with Derek Daimon and Manny Mayhew about the merits of teaching Shakespeare to hoods.

Once Mrs. Maude Parson ascertained that the rather common girl next to her had a doctorate in biochemistry, she dried up defensively, while Mrs. Eunice Parson on Millie’s other side didn’t seem to speak to anybody. Only Angela M.M. knew that the billionaire ladies were abysmally educated, and utterly intimidated at being in this kind of company. Had Millie only known, she would have made an effort to talk to them, but what happened in reality was a Mexican stand-off: one potential conversationalist was terrified by so much money, the other two by so many brains. Poor M.M. was carrying the major burden of conversation, Angela helping valiantly, but it was not, the President of Chubb said to himself, one of the better banquets. That was what happened when you let someone like Hester Grey of C.U.P. do the seating arrangements. And Nate Winthrop instead of Doug Thwaites—was the woman mad, to demote Doug to the floor? If anyone he hated wound up in his court within the next six months, he’d throw the book at them—and his chief target would be M.M., innocent.

Millie did have a memorable exchange of words with the new Head Scholar, seated almost opposite her. It commenced when he looked her up and down as if he felt she would be more appropriately situated peddling ass on a street corner.

“I believe your father is the Holloman County Medical Examiner, Dr. Hunter?” Tinkerman asked, inspecting his chicken breast to see what the filling was—ugh!—garlic, apricot chunks, nuts for pity’s sake! Whatever happened to good old sage and onion stuffing and giblet gravy?

“Yes,” said Millie, demolishing her broiled scrod with unfeigned relish; expensive foods were rare on the Hunter table. “Dad has turned an old-fashioned coroner’s morgue into a forensics department without parallel in the state. It can perform the most difficult assays and analyses, and the autopsy techniques have changed almost out of recognition.”

“Oh, science!” said Tinkerman, screwing up his mouth. “It is the cause of all our human woes.”

Millie couldn’t help herself. “What an asinine thing to say!” she snapped, having no idea she was thrilling the Parson wives, who would have given their billions to say that to a man in doctor’s robes. “I would have said God was the cause of human woes—look at the wars fought in God’s name,” she said.

If she had thrown him into a vat of cement, he could not have grown any stiffer. “You blaspheme!” he accused.

She lifted her lip. “That answer is like trotting out a block of wood as a remedy for plague! This is 1969, not 1328. It’s permissible to question defects in the nature of God.”

“Nothing permits anyone to question anything about God!”

“That’s like saying our Constitution would be improved if it forbade freedom of speech. Science too comes from God! What we discover are more revelations about the complexity of God’s design. You should come down out of your heavenly clouds and stare through a microscope occasionally, Doctor. You might be amazed, even awestruck,” said Millie, very angry.

“I am amazed at your blindness,” he said, floundering.

“Not I, Doctor, not I! Look in a mirror.”

“Speaking of which, Tom,” said M.M. affably, “are you all set for your speech? The main course is here.”

Im answer Tinkerman got to his feet and rushed off on a bathroom run; when he finally came back he seemed to have gotten over his flash of frustrated temper, for he sat down, smiling. Millie too had had time to let her anger cool; feeling someone edge behind her, she looked beyond Mrs. Eunice Parson to see Mrs. Tinkerman settling. Their eyes met—was that sympathy?

“Do you have a degree, Mrs. Tinkerman?” she asked, sure of affirmation; Doctors of Divinity must have highly educated wives!

“Dear me, no,” said Mrs. Tinkerman. Her brown eyes blazed a moment, then went out. “I was a secretary.”

“Do you have children?”

“Yes, two girls. They went to the Kirk Secretarial College and have very good jobs. I believe that there are so many Ph.D.s in sociology that they have to work as cashiers in supermarkets, whereas good secretaries are as scarce as hen’s teeth.”

“They are indeed,” said Millie warmly. “Lucky for your husband too—no university fees to pay.”

“Yes, that was a consideration,” Mrs. Tinkerman said, her voice devoid of expression.

The peach pie arrived—yum! Poor woman, Millie thought as she smoothed her melting ice cream all over the still hot pie. She doesn’t even hate her husband, she just dislikes him. It must be hell to have to lie in the same bed. Or perhaps she doesn’t. If I were her, I would have taught myself to snore very, very loudly.

Time for the speeches, thought Carmine, shifting restlessly.

“M.M. ought to dispense with that fool high table,” said Fire Chief Bede Murphy.

“I agree,” Carmine said, “but why, Bede?”

“Fire hazard, for starters. Too narrow for a table seating people down both sides. I’ve been noticing it all evening. On a bathroom run they have to squeeze past, and some of the guys put their palms on the shoulders of those sitting down. Must be annoying. I mean, would you want to palm M.M.’s acres of gold detail? Or that snooty bastard who’s the incoming Head Scholar? And tell me why Chubb thinks the Town would be offended if it weren’t invited to these bean feasts? The whole Town and Gown rigmarole gives Ginny and me the shits. Our Saturday nights are ours! We went to a lot of trouble to make sure no babysitting the grandkids on a Saturday, and then what? We’re here! The food’s good, but Ginny can broil scrod too.”

“A brilliant summation,” said Fernando, grinning.

“I mean, the bathroom run palming is unnecessary,” Bede went on. “There’s plenty of room down here on the floor to put a fourth and even a fifth table. Then they could put marble busts of Tom Paine and Elmer Fudd up on the dais, surrounded by orchids and lilies.”

“The one who really dislikes being palmed on a bathroom run is our new Head Scholar,” said Carmine, winking at Desdemona, whose eyelids were beginning to droop. Come on, M.M., turn down the thermostats!

“According to Jim and Millie, Tinkerman despises the whole world,” said Patrick. He sipped, grimaced. “Oh, why do they always fall down on the coffee?”

“C.U.P. doesn’t like its new Head Scholar,” said Manfred Mayhew, contributing his mite. “It’s all over County Services that he’s a Joe McCarthy kind of fella—witch hunts, though not for commies. Non-believers.”

“I fail to see how the head of an academic publishing house can conduct witch hunts,” said Commissioner Silvestri.

“That’s as may be, John, but they’re still saying it.”

“Then why haven’t I heard the slightest whisper?” the Commissioner demanded.

“Because, John,” said Manfred, taking the plunge, “you are an eagle in an eyrie right up in a literal tower, and if it’s built of brick instead of ivory, that’s only an architectural reality. To those of us who live below you, John, it is a genuine ivory tower. If Carmine and Fernando don’t tell you, you don’t know—and don’t say Jean Tasco! She’s got a titanium zipper on her mouth.”

Gloria Silvestri’s coffee had gone down the wrong way: Carmine and Fernando were too busy fussing around her to make any comments—or let their eyes meet. Masterly, Manfred!

Mawson MacIntosh had slipped the cord holding his reading half glasses around his neck and had gathered his notes together; he was a wonderful speaker and as extemporaneous as he wished to be—tonight, judging from his notes, only partially. Not before time, thought Carmine, feeling the cool air on the back of his neck. M.M. had turned the thermostats down, which meant no naps in a warm hall. Desdemona would wake up in a hurry, as would all the women, more scantily clad than the enrobed men.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” M.M. said, on his feet and using the most democratic form of address, “we meet tonight to celebrate in honor of two men and one institution …”

What else M.M. said Carmine never remembered afterward; his attention was riveted on Dr. Thomas Tarleton Tinkerman, still seated, and looking very distressed. His crisp white handkerchief was out, fluttering at his face, beaded in sweat, and he was gasping a little. The cloth billowed down to the table as he put his hands up to his neck, wrenching at his tie, more constricting than usual because it held his hood on and kept his gown in perfect position.

“Patsy!” Carmine rapped. “Up there, up there!” Over his shoulder he said to Desdemona as he followed his cousin, “Call an ambulance, stat! Resuscitation gear on board. Do it, do it!”

Desdemona was up and running toward the banquet supervisor as Carmine and Patrick mounted the dais, scattering its occupants before them. M.M. had had the good sense to be gone already, his chair thrust at a startled waiter.

“Down, everybody, off the dais!” M.M. was shouting, “and get your chairs out of the way! Women too, please. Now!”

“Nessie will have sent someone young and fast for my bag, but we’re parked over on North Green,” said Patrick, kneeling. The new Head Scholar’s gown, hood and coat were removed and the coat rolled into a pillow; Patrick ripped open Tinkerman’s dress shirt to reveal a well muscled, laboring chest; he was fighting desperately to breathe. Came a very few weak retches, some generalized small jerks and tremors, then Tinkerman lay staring up at Patrick and Carmine wide-eyed, in complete knowledge that he was dying. Unable to speak, unable to summon up any kind of muscular responses. Eyes horrified.

Millie hovered in the background: Patrick turned his head. “Is there any antidote? Anything we can at least try?”

“No. Absolutely nothing.” She sounded desolate.

The ambulance arrived three minutes from Desdemona’s call, bearing resuscitation equipment and a physician’s associate.

“His airway’s still patent,” Patrick said, slipping a bent, hard plastic tube into Tinkerman’s mouth. “Everything’s paralyzed, but I was lucky. I’m in the trachea. I can bag breathe him and keep oxygen flowing into his lungs, but he can’t expand them himself, not one millimetre. The chest wall and the diaphragm are totally nerveless.” Again Patrick turned to Millie. “Is he conscious? He seems to be.”

“Higher cerebral fuction isn’t affected, so—yes, he’s conscious. He’ll remain conscious. Watch what you say.” She pushed in beside him and took one hand. “Dr. Tinkerman, don’t be afraid. We’re getting lots of air to your lungs, and we’re taking you to the hospital by ambulance right now. You just hang on and pray—we’ll get you through.” She got up. “Like that, Dad. He’s terrified.”

By the time the ambulance screamed into the Holloman Hospital E.R., Head Scholar Thomas Tarleton Tinkerman was dead. The tiny muscles that fed vital substances to his internal organs and pumped the waste products out had succumbed to the poison. Fully conscious and in complete awareness of his imminent death, not able to speak or even move his eyelids, Tinkerman was pronounced dead when awareness left his gaze: to Carmine, who had seen many men die, it always looked like literal lights out. One moment something was there in the eyes; the next moment, it was gone.

The body was expedited to the morgue at the express command of the Medical Examiner, but the syringe containing a blood sample beat the corpse by an hour and a half. Paul Bachman had sent a technician on a motor cycle to Ivy Hall to collect it. On analysis it revealed the dwindling metabolites of tetrodotoxin. No one knew its half life, so the dosage was at best a guess.

“It would seem to me,” said Patrick, “that Dr. Tinkerman received more of the toxin than John Hall. There’s a fresh puncture wound on the back of his neck to the left side of the spinal column, so I’m assuming it was injected. Not enough gastric symptoms for ingestion, and death was too swift. About ten minutes from the onset of noticeable symptoms. Had the blood been examined for toxins at the usual pace, it would have metabolized to nothing before any screen for neurotoxins was suggested. The cause of death, while highly suspect, would have been a mystery. The same can be said for John Hall, though we were slower, the traces fewer.”

Carmine sighed. “So Abe gets John Hall and I get Dr. Tinkerman. Thomas Tarleton Tinkerman—a poseur, hence the fancy middle name, Tarleton. Tinkerman wouldn’t have suited the ideas our Head Scholar had about himself. He was a conceited man.” He had removed his bow tie and opened the collar of his shirt, and looked more comfortable.

They were sitting in Patrick’s office with a pot of his excellent coffee; Delia, Nick, Buzz, Donny and four uniforms were at Ivy Hall taking down names, addresses, phone numbers and brief statements, and Delia had already confiscated the table plans. There was no point in asking Judge Thwaites for a warrant to search any persons present; he was as cross as only he could be when things did not go to plan—and especially when he’d been kicked off the head table to make room for that kiss-ass mediocrity, Mayor Nathan Winthrop. It would be many weeks before the Judge forgave anyone present at the banquet, even if for no greater crime than witnessing his humiliation. If John Silvestri refused to beard him, no one could.

“So someone is going to waltz out of Ivy Hall with a home-made injection apparatus in his pocket,” mourned Patrick.

“Not necessarily,” Carmine said. “How many people know Doug Thwaites as well as we do, huh? Depending who the guilty party is, the gear might be in a trash can. Delia’s got it under full control, the trash cans are sequestered under guard along with the rest of Ivy Hall. For this kind of case, we’re limited in manpower, so the forensic search of Ivy Hall may be postponed a little.”

“Delia is going to wind up Commissioner,” Patrick said.

Carmine flashed him a grin, but refrained from taking the bait. “I’m hoping the injection apparatus has been abandoned,” he said. “There won’t be any more injection murders, I’d be willing to bet on that. Or any more murders at all. So why keep the device? It’s not a hypodermic and syringe in the formal sense, is it? Couldn’t have been done in either case—too public, and you can’t make giving an injection look like anything else. I see something no bigger than one of Desdemona’s thimbles, though what can replace a piston-plunger is beyond me. A very short, fine gauge hypodermic he had to have, but attached to something other than a syringe. A man would hardly feel the prick, especially if it were accompanied by a comradely slap. Look at snakes and spiders. They have a reservoir for the venom and a channel down the back of a tooth or a tube through the middle of a fang.”

“You really do believe he expected to get away with it!” Patrick said, astonished.

“What poisoner doesn’t? This is one cocksure bastard, Patsy. I had a funny feeling tonight, so I watched Tinkerman closely, but I can’t remember anyone’s acting suspiciously. Bede and his bathroom runs! He had the right of it.”

Suddenly Patrick looked his full fifty-eight years. “Oh, cuz, I give up!” he cried. “I’m going home to Nessie and a sleeping pill. Otherwise I won’t be worth a hill of beans in the morning. I am to recuse myself completely?”

“Yes, Patsy,” Carmine said gently.

“Keep me in the loop?”

“I can’t. Think what ammunition we’d be handing to a defense attorney. You have to stay right out and right away.”

Desdemona had despaired of a back massage and gone to bed, from which Carmine hauled her out and subjected her to fifteen minutes of pain from sheer guilt.

“Feel any better?” he asked at the end of it.

“Not at the moment, you sadist,” she said grumpily, then relented. “But I will tomorrow, dear love, and that’s the most important thing. If caterers have extra cushions for the shorties, why don’t they have a couple of chairs with the legs sawn off for the giants like me and Manny Mayhew?”

“Because people are allowed to be five-foot-nothing, but not way over six feet,” said Carmine, smiling. He pushed a stray wisp of hair behind her ear, then leaned forward and kissed her. “Come on, my divine giantess, I’ll get you into bed with the pillows packed how you like them.”

“Is it Millie’s poison?” she asked, settling with a sigh of bliss; only Carmine knew how to get the pillows right.

“I’m afraid so.”

“It isn’t fair, Carmine. After all the years of struggle, she and Jim have to go through this?”

“Looks that way, but it’s early days. Close your eyes.”

He wasn’t long out of bed himself, thankful that Patrick had folded and his sergeants had gone home at Delia’s command—how exactly had she assumed command?

SUNDAY, JANUARY 5, 1969

They met in Carmine’s office at ten in the morning; no need yet to annoy wives with early Sunday starts, and the singles liked a sleep-in quite as much as the marrieds.

Abe, Carmine reflected as he gazed at his oldest and loyalest colleague, was settling into his lieutenant’s authority as quietly as he did everything, but there was a new smoothness and placidity in his face, caused by an extraordinary piece of good fortune. The German chemicals giant Fahlendorf Farben had awarded his two sons full scholarships to the colleges of their choice when they reached college age, to be ongoing as far as doctoral programs. For the father of two very bright boys, a huge relief; saving college fees kept parents poor. The grant had arisen out of Abe’s own police work; forbidden to accept a posted reward, Abe had declined it. So Fahlendorf Farben had given scholarships to his boys, signed, sealed, the money already invested.

Abe always worked with Liam Connor and Tony Cerutti, his personal team.

Liam was in his middle thirties and had been Larry Pisano’s man, but much preferred working for Abe now Larry was gone. Married and the father of one girl, he kept his private life well apart from his police career, which indicated, Carmine thought, a proud man in a moderate domestic situation, neither heaven nor hell. He was barely regulation height but kept himself fit, and had a pleasant face: grey-blue eyes, a lot of sandy hair, good bones. His reputation in the Holloman PD was of a man who did nothing to excess—probably why he and Abe clicked. Rational men.

Tony Cerutti was of that East Holloman Italian American family that bred many cops, his degree of blood relationship sufficiently removed from the Commissioner and Carmine, both half Cerutti. Thirty years old and a bachelor, he was dark, handsome and charming in a slightly street-rat way; Abe always sent him after women suspects of a certain class. He was still learning to damp down the wilder side of his enthusiasm, but he was a good man, and absolutely attached to Abe, who awed him.

Carmine spoke first, outlining the disappearance of Dr. Millie Hunter’s tetrodotoxin.

“Because Paul acted so fast, both victims still had traces in their systems,” he said. “Each had a puncture wound in the left side of the back of the neck, into muscle and fat, not near bone. The injection would have been absorbed at an intramuscular rate. The dose was almost microscopic—about one half of one milligram. That makes it a hundred times more potent than cyanide. There’s no antidote and no treatment. Worst is that the victim is fully conscious until death.”

“Holy shit!” Donny exclaimed, face white. “That’s awful!”

“Very cold-blooded,” Carmine said. “Though it’s out of sequence, I’d like to continue for a moment about the poison. There must be at least five hundred milligrams left—a lot of death, though this doesn’t feel like a killer at the start of a spree, so the leftovers are more likely to go into storage. It seems that neither victim felt any pain on injection, yet we also know the killer didn’t use an ordinary hypodermic and syringe. So what’s the method of delivery, and how long before the first symptoms appeared?”