Sins of the Flesh. Colleen McCullough

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ the 8 × 10-inch photographs from each of six very thin files, Delia lined them up on her desk in two rows of three, one row above the other, so her eyes could take in all of them at once. Each was a studio portrait, unusual in itself; most file photos of missing persons were blow-ups of smaller, casual shots. Under ordinary circumstances the portrait artist’s name or studio would be indicated somewhere on the back of the paper: a rubber stamp, or an ink signature, or at the very least a pencil mark of some kind, But none of these photos held a clue as to its portrait artist, just an area on the back of each where a pencil mark had been erased, and never in the same spot—two were near the center, one high to the left, a random business. Paul Bachman and his team hadn’t been able to discern a residuum.

1963	TENNANT, Margot. Thirtyish. Brown hair, brown eyes. Average height and shape. 3/23 Persimmon St., Carew.
1964	WOODROW, Donna. Thirtyish. Red hair, green eyes. Average height and shape. 222c Sycamore St., Holloman.
1965	SILBERFEIN, Rebecca. Thirtyish. Fair hair, blue eyes. Average height and shape. 12th fl., Nutmeg Insurance Bldg.
1966	MORRIS, Maria. Thirtyish. Black hair, black eyes. Average height and shape. 6 Craven Lane, Science Hill, Holloman.
1967	BELL-SIMONS, Julia. Thirtyish. Blonde, blue eyes. Average height and shape. 21/18 Dominic Rd., the Valley.
1968	CARBA, Elena. Thirtyish. Peroxide blonde, brown eyes. Average height and shape. 5b Paterson Rd., North Holloman.

      Apart from their average height and shape and the fact that each looked to be about thirty years old, the six missing women had little in common physically. Hair and eyes went from near-black to near-white, with red and brown thrown in—or so the studio portraits indicated. 1965’s Rebecca Silberfein was the fairest; her hair was a streaky natural flaxen blonde and her eyes so pale and washed out they looked whitish. Her nose wasn’t long, but it was broad and beaky. Maria Morris, blackish of hair and eyes, had a very olive skin and a crookedly flat nose. 1964’s Donna Woodrow had really green eyes, the color of spring leaves rather than the more usual muddy combat tinge, and her carroty hair was definitely not out of a dye bottle—no henna highlights. She had, besides, a fine crop of camouflaged freckles. None of them could be called beautiful, but none was unattractive, and none gave off a smell of the streets. The fashion of the times meant hair styles bouffant from back-combing, and heavily lipsticked mouths tended to hide their natural shape, but everyone connected with the case had reason to thank each woman’s impulse to have a fine photograph of herself in color. Only why leave it behind?

      The shape of the skull was similar in all six cases, suggesting Caucasian of Celtic or Teutonic kind. Allowing for the hair, the cranium looked to be very round, the brow broad and high, the chin neither prominent nor receding. About the cheekbones it was harder to tell, due to weight differences and, probably, how many molars were missing. Sighing, Delia pushed the photos together.

      Nothing was known about these six women save their names, an approximate age, faces, and their last known addresses. Notification of missing person status had been extremely slow, depending as it had upon individuals engaged in an occupation wary of creating fusses—landlords.

      Delia sighed again, aware that sheer over-familiarity with the case carried its own, very special, dangers.

      Starting with Mary Tennant in 1963, each case followed an identical course. Tennant had rented the top floor of an old three-family house in Persimmon Street, Carew, very early in January of that year; she signed a one-year lease and paid, in cash, her first month’s rent, her last month’s rent, and a damages deposit of $100. If she had a car it must have been randomly parked on the street, as no one knew it or was aware of its existence. As a tenant she was remarkable in only one respect: she was extremely unobtrusive. No one ever heard her music or her TV or noises of her moving around; she passed people on the stairs in silence, and never seemed to entertain visitors. The details furnished by the rental agency were scant: she had said she was a secretary, gave two written references and a driver’s license in verification, and presented so favorably in an anonymous kind of way that the agency never bothered checking. Most three-family houses saw the landlord living on the premises, but Carew was a student-resident district, so Tennant’s landlord owned fifteen three-family houses, and used his realty business as a rental agency. When July’s rent came due on the first of the month, Miss Tennant didn’t pay it, and ignored the agency’s reminders. This led to the discovery that Miss Tennant had no telephone—amazing! Several personal visits to her home by the clerk delegated to handle the affair never found Miss Tennant there, and thus matters stood when August arrived. She was now well and truly in arrears, and no one could remember seeing her since June.

      The delinquency now attained a certain urgency, for early September saw the new academic year’s influx of students pour into rental agencies looking for furnished accommodations: Miss Tennant had to go, and go fast. In mid-August the realtor went to the Holloman PD and requested that he be accompanied to Miss Tennant’s apartment by a police officer, as enquiries suggested she hadn’t been seen since June, and her rent was overdue.

      Missing Persons leaped to the same conclusion the Realtor had, that Miss Margot Tennant would be found inside her apartment, very dead: but such was not the case. A faint and noisome smell proved to emanate from the refrigerator, where two-month-old fish and meat were in a slow decay. Miss Tennant’s few possessions were removed from the premises and stored until garnishment proceedings saw them auctioned to pay rent and damages, the latter to the refrigerator. Said possessions were meager: a cheap radio, a black-and-white TV, a few clothes and a cigar box of imitation jewelry—no books, magazines, letters or other private papers. Thanks to the refrigerator, they didn’t fetch enough to pay what the missing Mary Tennant owed.

      Each year since had seen the same pattern. Locations were scattered all over Holloman County, but the renting was always at New Year or scant days after, and June the last rent paid by the missing woman before the six-to-eight-week period leading to a report with Missing Persons. The few things in common lent the task of finding the missing women a nightmare quality because the differences only pointed up the similarities.

      Missing Persons had handed the Shadow Women to Detectives and Carmine Delmonico when the third woman vanished from her studio flat on the twelfth floor of the Nutmeg Insurance building; now the total had escalated to six. “Ghost” was the sobriquet of a famous case, therefore couldn’t be applied to the missing women, but Delia had suggested “Shadow” as apt, and the Shadow Women they became.

      Something was going on, but what on earth could it be? The Commissioner, John Silvestri, found the case fascinating and kept tabs on it through his regular breakfast meetings with his detectives; since she was his blood niece, Delia yearned to be able to produce something brand-new to offer him, but thus far the pickings were nonexistent.

      One promising hypothesis had been promulgated by Silvestri’s wife, Gloria, who was the best-dressed woman in Connecticut. She decided that each woman was having cosmetic plastic surgery, and that in her own identity she was too well known not to be hounded and embarrassed if news of the surgery leaked. So she became a Shadow Woman for six months.

      “As you well know, John,” said Gloria, stroking her smooth, unscragged throat, “any woman in that predicament would die sooner than confess, even if the price is a murder hunt.”

      “Yes, dear,” said the Commissioner, dark eyes twinkling.

      “The cops never find any clothes worth wearing, do they?”

      “No, dear.”

      “Then that’s it. They’re all movie stars and socialites.”

      “I appreciate your submitting your theory to me in writing, dear, but why have you signed it Maude Hathaway?”

      “I like the name. Gloria Silvestri sounds like old vaudeville programs and fish on Fridays.”

СКАЧАТЬ