On Off by Colleen McCullough Page A

Carmine. “Here’s your copy of their names, ages, positions, how long they’ve worked there, and anything else I thought might be useful. The only one thought to have real surgical expertise is Sonia Liebman in the O.R. The two foreigners aren’t even medically qualified, and Dr. Forbes said he passed out watching a circumcision.”
    He cleared his throat, flipped a page over. “There are any number of people who wander in and out pretty much at will, but their faces are well known — animal care, salesmen, doctors from the medical school. Mitey Brite Scientific Cleaners have the contract to clean the Hug, which they do between midnight and 3 A.M. Mondays to Fridays, but they don’t handle the hazardous waste. Otis Green does that. Apparently you have to be trained, which adds a few bucks to Otis’s pay packet. I doubt that Mitey Brite have anything to do with the crime because Cecil Potter walks back to the Hug at 9 P.M. each evening and locks animal care up better than Fort Knox in case a cleaner pokes around in there. It’s his babies — the monkeys. They hear the slightest noise at night, they raise a helluva rumpus.”
    “Thanks for that, Abe. I hadn’t thought of Mitey Brite.” Carmine looked at Abe with great affection. “Any impressions of the inmates worth reporting?”
    “They make godawful coffee,” said Abe, “and some smart-ass in neurochemistry fills a beaker with these delicious-looking candies — pink, yellow, green. But they’re not candies, they’re polystyrene packing material.”
    “You got caught.”
    “I got caught.”
    “Anything else?”
    “Negative information only. You can rule Allodice the bottle washer out — too dumb. I doubt the bags were put in the fridge while Cecil and Otis were on duty. Later in the day, is my bet.”
    “What about the possible number of dump sites?”
    “I finally found seven different dead animal refrigerators, excluding the Hug’s. Dean Dowling wasn’t amused to have to talk to a cop about something so far underneath his job description, and no one seemed to have a list. No way any of them once I found them would have been as easy as using the Hug’s — all more public, busier. Man, they must get through millions of rats! I hate ’em alive, but I hate ’em dead a lot worse after today. I’m putting my money on the Hug.”
    “So am I, Abe, so am I.”
    Carmine spent the rest of his day at his desk studying the case files until he could recite them off by heart. Each was fairly thick because of the quality of the victims. Clearly the police of each city had put a great deal more work into their investigations than was usual; the average sixteen-year-old girl who disappeared had a reputation (sometimes a rap sheet) that fitted in with disappearance. But not these girls. The pity of it is, thought Carmine, that we don’t liaise with each other enough. If we did, we might have gotten on to this guy earlier. However, no body and there’s no physical evidence of murder. No matter how many bodies there have been — and I won’t know that for a while yet — I know that they wound up in the medical school incinerator. So much safer than, say, burying them in the woods. Connecticut has plenty of forests, but they’re used, they’re not limitless like Washington State forests.
    My gut instinct says that he’s keeping their heads as memorabilia. Or else if he disposes of their heads too, he’s got the girls on film. Super-8 in color, maybe several cameras to catch every angle of their suffering, his own power. I know he’s a memorabilia man. This is his private fantasy, he’ll be compelled to record it. So he’s either filming it or he’s keeping the heads in a freezer or in glass jars of formalin. How many cases have I investigated involving memorabilia? Five. But never a multiple killer. That is so rare! And the others left me evidence. This guy doesn’t. When he looks at his films or his heads, what does he feel? Exultation?