she spank Julian?”
“I think she has better ammunition in her arsenal than that, dear love. Try to move farther away from your own childhood and see Julian for what he is, not for what you were. He’s only half you. His other half is tough Italian-American.”
She climbed to her feet, a long way. “Dinner,” she said.
No matter what her mood, and even when the meal was, as tonight, a simple one of steak, French fries and salad, Desdemona was a superb cook. She sprinkled the outside of the meat with a special salt before broiling it, and her French fries were out of this world—crunchy on the outside, feathery inside.
“Now,” she said after they were finished, “tell me how things went today, Carmine. I heard Delia on Luke Corby earlier.”
“It’s too soon to know much about the Dodo—that’s what we decided to call him, though he prefers the Latin—Didus ineptus. Any idea why he’d think like that?”
“Yes. He’s a poseur.”
“Who got it wrong. The term was a Linnaeus classification, out of date now.”
“I don’t think that bothers him. That particular phrase clicks with some idea in his mind. But the Dodo isn’t what’s worrying you,” she said, sipping her tea. She had persuaded Carmine to switch from coffee to tea after dinner, and he was sleeping better. “Tell me, love.”
“Morty Jones is drinking, and Corey won’t see it.”
“Ohh! Drinking is a firing offense, isn’t it?”
“On duty, yes. Instant dismissal, the works—it’s in our contracts. John Silvestri is an iron man about liquor, and the Holloman PD is famous—lushes need not apply.”
“But Morty! He’s a weak man, I know, yet …” Desdemona’s plain face grew plainer save for her pale blue eyes, which Carmine fancied were the same color as pack ice, ethereal and slightly eerie; they grew moist. “I suppose it’s his wife?”
“When isn’t it? I caught him coming in to work Monday, and we had a talk. Seems their relationship came to a head last Saturday night when Morty found Ava sneaking to the spare room at three a.m. When he told her he’d had enough, she told him that his kids weren’t his, and he decked her. On the floor, blood everywhere from a broken nose. Ava packed her bags and left him to the tender mercies of his mother—” Carmine threw his hands up and clutched fruitlessly at the air. “It seems he spent all of Sunday in the Shamrock Bar, so you can imagine what he looked like—and smelled like!— Monday morning.”
“Oh, Carmine, that’s terrible! According to Netty Marciano the boy—Bobby?—was fathered by Danny Morski, and Gidget belongs to the non-famous Holloman cop Harpo Marx. I must say the likenesses are speaking, but Morty never knew, did he?”
“Didn’t want to, I guess. He’s in denial, that’s why he’s drinking. Corey’s playing ostrich, head in the sand. Morty’s mom agreed to look after the kids for the time being, but told him to find a housekeeper.”
“Oh, dear!” Desdemona’s English accent wasn’t as posh as Delia’s, but it showed strongly on exclamations. And at least, thought Carmine, watching her, Morty Jones’s troubles were giving her something other than Julian to think about. “What can you do, Carmine?”
“Keep talking to Morty and hope Ava comes home again. No other cop would put up with her out of a bed.”
“Corey’s bothering you in other ways, isn’t he?”
“Clever chicken! Corey’s jealous of Abe. He implied that I’m biased in favor of Abe. It was hard to take.”
Why don’t they leave him alone? Desdemona asked herself, all traces of depression burned to ashes in the furnace of her rage at Corey, Ava, Morty—anyone who didn’t see her husband for the great and good man he was. I must get better, I must! The last thing Carmine needs is an emotionally crippled wife. But what her heart was telling her lay beyond her ability and capacity at this moment; Desdemona sat, huddled in her chair, without the strength to offer him any kind of comfort. All her little spurt of anger had done was to stimulate the ever-lurking tears. When she tried to blink them away, they overflowed, and again it was Carmine who had to summon up the energy to offer comfort.
By noon of the next day, Thursday, September 26, Delia Carstairs, in charge of gathering information about the Dodo’s possible rapes, had accumulated a total of six young women she deemed highly likely to have been victims prior to Maggie Drummond. Done in the form of a dialogue between Delia and the host of the program, the radio broadcasts had proven astonishingly effective; Delia suspected that all six young women had yearned for somewhere feminine to go, and that, as was usually the way, it hadn’t occurred to any of them that a medical school as prestigious as Chubb’s would have a rape clinic rather than merely an emergency room. Delia used her accent to present as a very classy woman who really would, as she assured her listeners, see and talk to victims in privacy and without a male presence.
A delighted Helen was severely cautioned.
“Have you ever been raped?” Delia asked her.
“No, not even close.”
“Then strictly speaking you’re as ignorant as any man. All you have in facing these devastated women is your sex, which I require be used as a reassurance. Never appear indifferent.”
“Are you implying that men dismiss rape as a fabrication?”
“A minority of men only. A few men have been falsely accused of rape—you’ll never convert them. Some have been brought up to regard all women as liars and cheats. There is always an element of ignorance. Samson and Delilah is a good illustration—women are seen as stripping men of their power, their authority.”
“Why tell me stuff I already know?”
Delia drew a patient breath. “I’m telling you this because it’s a rare man who empathises with a rape victim, but Captain Delmonico is one such rare man. The Dodo case will be worked, and not just because the rapist is escalating.”
“Why?” Helen demanded, eyes glistening.
“Don’t take your mind there, Helen!” Delia snapped. “Don’t go romantically endowing the Captain with a raped girlfriend, or anything even remotely so personal. No such person exists. What I am trying to get through your unversed head, Madam Trainee, is that you’re extremely lucky to be working here.”
“Yes, Delia,” said Helen meekly. “What do I do?”
“If a victim chooses to come here, you sit in the interview room with her and me. If the victim prefers to be seen at her home, you accompany me to her home. You are purely a witness. You say not one word unless I indicate you may. You don’t ask curious questions either, even if you believe your question will solve the case. You write it down, hand the paper to me, and I will decide. Our best advantage is that we’re women, so don’t blow it. Understood?”
“Should I take notes?”
“Unobtrusively, yes. None of them will consent to a tape recorder, unfortunately.”
There were seven rape victims: Shirley Constable on March 3; Mercedes Mendez on
