Carmine replaced the contents of the evidence box exactly as he had found them and took it down to the desk.
“Larry, put this in security storage right now,” he said as he handed it over. “No one is to go near it.”
Then before Larry could reply, Carmine was out the door. It was time to take another look at 6 Ponsonby Lane.
The questions milled in his head, swarming wasps in search of the nest called answers: how, for instance, had Charles Ponsonby managed to get from the Hug to Travis High and back again while convincing everyone that he had been in conference on the roof? Thirty precious minutes before Desdemona found him and the others there, yet all six on the roof swore that no one was absent long enough to go to the john. How reliable was the attention span of an absentminded researcher? And how had Ponsonby gotten out of his house on the night Faith Khouri was snatched when it had been so closely watched? Did the contents of the 1930 evidence box represent enough hard evidence to wring a search warrant out of Judge Douglas Thwaites? The questions swarmed.
He came down Route 133 from the northeast, which brought him to Deer Lane first. In the Council’s view, the four houses on its far side had not warranted tar seal; Deer Lane’s 500 yards were traprock gravel. At its end it flared into a circular patch that gave sufficient parking for six or seven cars. On all sides the forest came down to the road – secondary growth, of course. Two hundred years ago this would have been cleared and farmed, but as the more fertile soils of Ohio and westward beckoned, farming had ceased to be as profitable for Connecticut Yankees as the assembly line precision industries Eli Whitney had started. So the woods had grown back in profusion – oak, maple, beech, birch, sycamore, a few pines. Dog-woods and mountain laurel to bloom in the spring. Wild apple trees. And the deer had come back too.
His tires crunched audibly over the gravel, which reinforced his opinion that the cars watching Deer Lane at its junction with 133 on the night Faith Khouri vanished would have heard a vehicle as well as seen the white vapor from its tailpipe. And the only cars parked on Deer Lane that night had been police unmarkeds. So while it was possible that Chuck Ponsonby had walked up the slope behind his house minus a flashlight, where would he have gone from there? He hadn’t stored his vehicle any closer than some distance up 133, or if the vehicle belonged to a partner, it hadn’t picked him up any closer than that. A walk that long at zero Fahrenheit? Unlikely. Freezers were warm by comparison. So how did he do it?
Carmine had a precept: if you are forced to take a stroll on a nice day, then do it near a suspect; and if the stroll involves a forest, take along a pair of binoculars to watch the birdies. Binoculars slung around his neck, Carmine walked up the slope among the trees in the direction of the spine that looked down on number 6 Ponsonby Lane. The ground was a foot deep in wet leaves, the snow melted except in the lee of an occasional boulder and in crannies where the warmth hadn’t penetrated. Several deer moved out of his way as he walked, but not in alarm; animals always knew when they were on a reserve. It was, he reflected, a pretty place, peaceful at this time of year. In summer the whining buzz of lawn mowers and shrieks of laughter from cookouts would ruin it. He knew from previous police combing that no one ventured out of the car park, even for illicit sexual encounters; the twenty-acre reserve contained no beer cans, ring pulls, bottles, plastic detritus or used rubbers.
Once on top of the ridge it was surprisingly easy to see the Ponsonby house. The trees of their slope had been drastically thinned to make a woodsy statement: a clump of three-trunked American birches, one beautiful old elm tree looking healthy, ten maples clustered in such a way that their fall leaves would make a stunning display, and nursery specimens of dogwood that would turn the grounds into a pink-and-white dreamland in spring. The thinning must have been done a very long time ago, as the stumps of the removed trees had disappeared from sight.
Lifting his binoculars, he surveyed the house as if it were fifty feet from him. There was Chuck up a ladder with a chisel and a blow-torch, chipping at old paint the proper way. Claire was sprawled in a wooden outdoor chair near the laundry porch, Biddy at her feet; the scant breeze was kissing his face, so the dog hadn’t scented his presence. Then Chuck called out. Claire got to her feet to walk around to the side of the house so unerringly that Carmine was amazed. Yet he knew that Claire was blind.
How did he know that so certainly? Because Carmine left no stone unturned, and Claire’s blindness was a stone in his path. Sometimes he used the services of a women’s prison warder, Carrie Tallboys, who struggled to support a promising son, therefore was available for hire outside working hours. Carrie had a curious talent that involved acting out a role so convincingly that people told her a great deal they ought not have. So Carmine had sent Carrie to see Claire’s ophthalmologist, the eminent Carter Holt. Her story was that she was thinking of donating some money to retinitis pigmentosa, as her dear friend Claire Ponsonby suffered from it before she went completely blind. Ah, well he remembered the day Claire came in with bilateral retinal detachments – so rare, for both eyes to go at once! His first big case, and it had to be one that lay beyond his power to heal. But, protested Carrie, surely nowadays it could be cured? Definitely not, said Dr. Holt. Claire Ponsonby was irretrievably blind for life. He had looked into her eyes and seen the damage for himself. Sad!
Carmine watched blind Claire talk animatedly to Chuck, who came down his ladder, linked his arm through his sister’s, and took her inside through the laundry porch. The dog followed them; then came the faint strains of a Brahms symphony. That was it: the Ponsonbys had had sufficient fresh air. Though – wait, wait! Oh, yes, sure. Chuck emerged, gathered up his tools and took them and the ladder to the garage before returning to the house. He did have an everything-in-its-place side to him, but obsession?
Letting the binoculars fall, Carmine turned to make the trip back to Deer Lane. It was more difficult going downhill through masses of slimy, decaying leaves; not even the deer had yet made paths, though by summer there would be many. Immersed in thoughts of Charles Ponsonby and his contradictions, Carmine started to hurry, on fire now to get back to his office and chew the puzzle over at leisure. Also chew some lunch at Malvolio’s.
The next thing his feet went from under him, he was plunging forward, both hands outstretched to take the impact of his fall. Dead leaves went flying in wet, clotted clumps as he landed on his palms with a dull, hollow boom. He slid onward, scrabbling for a hold, before his momentum gradually slowed down and he could stop. Two ruts marked the progress of his hands, gouged deeply into the humus. Cursing softly, he rolled over and picked himself up, feeling the sting of abraded skin but relieved to discover that he hadn’t done himself worse harm. Stupid, Carmine, stupid! Too busy thinking to watch where you’re going, you dodo.
Only why a hollow sound? Curious because that was the kind of man he was, he crouched down and excavated one of the channels a palm had made; six inches deeper he uncovered a wooden plank. Digging frantically now, he pushed the leaves away until he could see a part of what was there: the surface of what might be an old cellar door.
Oh, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus! Suddenly galvanized, he was scraping the leaves back where they had been, pushing them down, packing them down, forehead dewed with sweat, breath grating. When he was fairly satisfied that he had evened out the evidence of his fall, he squirmed backward on his rump before standing again to survey his work. No, not good enough. If someone were to examine the area closely, they would notice. He took off his jacket and used it to gather more dead leaves from a hundred feet away, brought them back and distributed them, then threw the jacket down and used it like a broad broom to obscure every trace of his intrusion. Finally, gulping and gasping, he was positive that no one would suspect what had happened. Now get the hell out of here, Carmine! That he did on his knees, scattering leaves in his wake; he was almost to the parking lot before he rose. With any luck, deer would browse through in their constant search for winter forage.