The Prodigal Son (38 page)

He stopped, smiling, then resumed too quickly for the TV people to get bored. “Tonight Chubb University and the Chubb University Press are killing the fatted calf not in honor of a prodigal son, but of a different kind of prodigy, Dr. James Keith Hunter. His extraordinary book,
A Helical God
, examines the very core of our human genetic master plan, ponders the reasons for our being, our membership in that vast family, the
gens humana
—”

The single loud bark of a gun silenced him, transfixed him.

Millie had moved farther away from her husband, as if loath to have a share in his supreme moment by being in its vicinity, and Carmine’s eyes, for one, had been turned to M.M. as he made his preparatory introduction; Chauce Millstone was to make the main address.

Amazed, stupefied, Carmine’s gaze switched to Millie and Jim, saw her beyond him and completely alone, a revolver in her hands, steadying it like a professional.

Jim Hunter stood, slack-mouthed, his left arm hanging as if lifeless, blood dripping swiftly from its fingertips to the white marble floor to form a pool. A wet, faintly smoking patch in
the upper arm of his coat showed where the bullet had gone in. His eyes, huge, pupils dilated, were riveted on Millie.

“That was for my baby!” Millie cried into a deathly silence. “The rest, Jim, are for the years, the life, and the betrayal!”

Carmine had gone from his chair knowing he had no hope of reaching Millie before she finished what she had begun. Scorning the steps, he dropped seven feet to the next tier.

The repeated roar of the gun was ear-splitting, bouncing in multiple echoes off smoothly planed, polished surfaces; five shots in quick succession, each projectile straight into Jim Hunter’s chest. The pool suddenly immense, he stood for a second before his knees buckled and he fell, face downward, into his own blood.

Carmine walked forward, his right hand wrapped in his handkerchief, and took the revolver from Millie’s nerveless fingers, then slipped it in his pocket; out of the corner of his eye he could see Patrick at a wall phone.

“Millicent Hunter, I arrest you for the murder of James Hunter,” he said. “You have the right to an attorney at law and may request one. In the meantime, if you say anything, it may be taken down and used against you in a court of law.”

“I’m finished, it’s all over,” Millie said in an ordinary voice. “He was a traitor, now he’s dead. What happens to me doesn’t matter.”

The crowd hadn’t panicked. In a way, Carmine supposed, taking place one tier up as it had, it possessed all the trappings
of a stage drama that shattered its audience far beyond fleeing in all directions. To establish order wasn’t difficult; people were co-operative, even Channel 6.

“Why is it,” Delia demanded wrathfully, “that every time we have a public murder, it’s recorded on television?”

Carmine didn’t bother to answer; instead he went off to join M.M., sitting on a chair and looking ghastly.

“This is an accursed year,” he said to Carmine.

“How, Mr. President?”

“Two major functions, at each of which the academic star was murdered.”

“That’s a pretty narrow definition of accursed. Unfortunate is a better word. After all, the two murders are related.”

“I want Angela, and I want to go home.”

“Angela’s waiting, but before you go, did you have any kind of warning sign from Millie? You were near her just before.”

“Not the flicker of an eyelash,” said M.M. gloomily. “In fact, I was hardly aware of her presence. You know me, Carmine. I concentrate all of myself where I need to. In fact, I wasn’t even conscious of my star, Jim. The first shot came like an overhead clap of thunder. I froze, didn’t know what it was until I saw the blood running off Jim’s hand onto the floor.” He shuddered. “It looked black. I remember wondering if such a black man did actually have black blood.”

“Go home, sir,” Carmine said, beckoning Angela. “Try to get some sleep. We’ll resume tomorrow.”

“And tomorrow, and tomorrow …”

The guests were filing out, Channel 6 busy. In the aftermath of such a very public murder it wasn’t necessary to do more than take down names and addresses.

Back at County Services he held a short meeting with his team. Just Delia, Buzz and Donny. He hadn’t called out Abe and his men because uniforms were adequate help in this situation.

“Is Millie in the women’s cell?” he asked.

“Yes,” said Delia, whose puffy billows had deflated.

“Suicide watch, absolutely intensive.”

“Already instituted, Captain. A woman cop is in the room with her. She didn’t need an all-over shower — no bloodstains — and there is a toilet and wash basin in the cell.”

“The cop is not to leave for one second unless a replacement is already in the cell,” Carmine said, iron in his voice. “I want no stupid mistakes, is that understood? Do the uniformed personnel understand?”

“Yes,” said Delia.

“Did she have any tetrodotoxin on her or in her bag?”

“No.”

“Did you do a cavity search?”

“Yes, thoroughly. She had nothing concealed.”

Carmine sighed, rubbed his hand around his face. “Then we leave questioning her until tomorrow at nine. Does she need a doctor, by any chance? Did anyone think to offer one?”

“She declined a doctor, even after the body search.”

“Goodnight, guys, and thank you.”

Never having seen Carmine in this mood, Buzz and Donny left quickly. Delia lingered, wishing she knew of some magic formula could banish his — what? No use speculating, and he was in not of a mind to say.

Desdemona had gotten home an hour earlier, and changed into an athlete’s sweat suit because she vowed it was the most comfortable clothing she knew.

“Thank God you’re home,” she said to Carmine when he came in. “The sitter’s complaining at the lateness, but I wasn’t about to leave the kids here to run her home.”

“Hang in there, I won’t be long.”

In actual fact it wasn’t very late; when Carmine returned at ten o’clock he found that Desdemona had made sandwiches and a pot of tea; most of the launch nibbles had gone back to the caterers uneaten.

“I have never been so shocked in all my life,” Desdemona said, pushing another curried egg salad sandwich at Carmine.

“Nor I,” said Carmine. “Not four years of a world war and all the horrors soldiers can perpetrate could prepare me for that. Millie’s my blood. What exactly did Jim do to make her snap? Because that’s what this evening was — Millie so taut on the end of her tether that she snapped it.”

“You know, Carmine, as well as I do. It was Davina’s baby combined with the loss of her own. Go to bed, you’re whacked.”

“But
did
Jim father Alexis?” Carmine asked, ignorning her instructions. “Davina doesn’t behave as if he did, and I gather
she’s been telling all and sundry about the black blood in her family for years — certainly well before the advent of Jim Hunter. It sounds to me as if she was preparing for the chance of a black baby in advance, which argues that her story of black blood is true. On the other hand, the black antecedents may be there, and she had an affair with Jim as well. This is a woman who plans.”

“And we will never know the truth,” said Desdemona, “since the Savovich family history is behind the Iron Curtain.”

Carmine tidied the kitchen. “One day,” he said, drying his hands on a towel, “there will be a foolproof test for a child’s paternity. Something irrefutable. It’s just a pity we don’t have it now.”

“No, a mercy,” Desdemona countered. “If Alexis isn’t Jim’s, think how Millie would feel. Best she doesn’t know. The milk, in the form of Jim’s blood, is already spilled, and the luck of it is that he’s a multiple murderer.”

“Implying that it’s a lesser form of murder to kill a man or woman who is by nature a killer.”

“Well, isn’t it? Millie snapped, Carmine! She killed while of unsound mind.”

THURSDAY, APRIL 3, 1969

T
he atmosphere in Detectives was peculiar: awkward and strained as well as satisfied. A multiple murderer of remarkable kind had been cut short, would never kill again, but his killer was family of some degree to at least half of the Holloman PD, and universally loved.

Nessie O’Donnell had been asked to bring her daughter fresh apparel, indicating to the experienced Nessie that the police would oppose bail, and that Doug Thwaites would probably go along. Patrick was laid flat with a rare migraine and those of Millie’s sisters still at home were, in Nessie’s words, “basket cases”. In the end, Patrick’s mother, Maria, and Carmine’s mother, Emilia, helped her cull Millie’s wardrobe for items containing no laces, sashes, belts, scarves, ribbons or sharp-edged ornamentation. This told her that the police feared suicide, as indeed she did herself. The worst of it was that she wasn’t allowed to see her daughter, just informed that she was fine.

Millie was brought across the courtyard and upstairs to the most salubrious of the interview rooms at nine, showered, clad in jeans, slip-on shoes and a sweat shirt, her face bare of make-up and her hair pulled back into a bun. A look that suited her, in no need of artifice.

Carmine chose Delia to go into the room with him, leaving it up to the other detectives whether they wanted to observe or not. Everyone did, from Abe to Buzz and Tony.

“I’m in the soup,” Millie said when she entered, smiling.

Looking very subdued in navy blue, Delia set the recorder going and identified the session, its participants.

“Bearing in mind that a hundred-fifty people witnessed you empty a Smith & Wesson .38 six-shot revolver into Dr. James Hunter yesterday, April second, at eighteen-oh-one hours, and that your actions were recorded on three competing television cameras, Dr. Hunter, you are indeed in the soup,” Carmine said easily. “Do you want an attorney here for this interview, or will you waive your right to an attorney?”

“I waive my right,” she said, equally easy.

“Where did you obtain the revolver?”

“I’ve had it ever since Jim and I went to Chicago.”

“Have you a license?”

“No. It never leaves me, I keep it in my handbag.”

“Do you also have a .22 caliber hand gun?”

“No. The .22 is Jim’s.”

“It was never located on any search.”

“He didn’t keep it at home or in the lab, but I don’t know where he did keep it.”

“Why did you shoot your husband?”

“It’s a long story, except that every camel’s back has a last straw, Captain.”

“Now’s the time to tell the story, Millie.”

But she went off at a tangent. “Must I have a cop in my cell all the time? I can’t even use the toilet in privacy.”

“It’s called a suicide watch.”

She laughed. “Do you honestly believe that I’d kill myself over a worm like Jim Hunter?”

“For eighteen years you’ve given the world the impression that you love Dr. James Hunter deeply. Now you call him a worm, now you murder him? Why? What did he do? What changed?”

“He fathered a child on that Yugoslavian Medusa.”

“Mrs. Davina Tunbull speaks of Negroid blood in her family, and insists her husband is the child’s father. Apart from green eyes — which are not uncommon in persons of mixed race — the baby does not resemble Dr. James Hunter,” Delia said, taking over.

Millie laughed again; it held an element of hysteria, but she was working very hard to appear logical and composed. “Jim fathered that baby, not Max Tunbull,” she maintained. “He betrayed me with a woman who has snakes for hair. I’ve always seen the snakes,” she said in iron tones. “Davina is Lilith the serpent.”

“Let’s set the baby aside for the moment,” said Carmine. “You said your reason for murder was a long story. Tell it.”

“I don’t know where to start.”

“How about with John Hall? What happened in California when you and Jim palled up with him?” Carmine asked, his voice and manner interested but not even slightly aggressive.

“John!” Millie exclaimed, smiling. “He was such a doll, so nice to me. To Jim too, more than me. Jim let his guard down, especially after John bullied him into having his operation. I had never realized how much Jim hated the gorilla look until he lost it after the surgery. He’d spend an hour just looking in the mirror, touching his face, stroking his nose, using a second mirror to look at his profile.” She shrugged, took on a happy mien. “John’s generosity liberated the real Jim — is that what I want to say? The thing is, neither John nor I loved Jim for his face, old or new — we loved the person inside.”

“Surely Jim knew that?” Delia asked.

“Yes, of course he did. He and I had already been together for nine years, I shared his secrets before the operation as much as I did after it, and John started sharing his secrets too.”

“What secrets, Millie?” Carmine asked.

“Oh, lots of things,” she said vaguely.

“You have to be more specific, dear,” said Delia.

Her face twisted, she hunched her shoulders and seemed to shrink inches. “I don’t really know,” she said.

“I think you do, Millie. Start with one secret, even if it’s only a suspicion,” Carmine said, trying not to push.

“There was a student supervisor at Columbia who made Jim’s life a misery, I remember,” Millie said uneasily. “He died from a terrible mugging the day after he marked a paper of Jim’s right down — Jim was furious, and rightly so.”

“Jim mugged him? Carmine asked.

“I thought so because he came in that evening covered in blood that wasn’t his, showered, then took his clothes somewhere — I never saw them again. He wasn’t a suspect, there weren’t any.”

“Any other muggings?”

“A couple while we were at Columbia, but I never saw Jim covered in blood, or missed any more clothes. I just — wondered.”

“Did the muggings benefit him? Were they fatal too?”

“Yes, and yes.”

“How did John Hall change things? Did Jim confide in him?” Carmine asked.

“No, I did,” said Millie, eyes wide. “While John and I sat waiting for the surgery to be over, then sat by his bed — Jim took two days to come out of it. As soon as Jim was feeling well enough, John told him that he knew about the muggings.”