Sins of the Flesh by Colleen McCullough

Author:Colleen McCullough [Mccullough, Colleen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Mystery, Retail, Suspense, Thriller
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2013-12-01T05:00:00+00:00

SUNDAY, AUGUST 17, 1969

Wondering why Marty Fane had been parked there too long, the crew of a routinely patrolling squad car had found Marty lying beside it in the road at three a.m. This was the true witching hour, when even the cats and cockroaches had done their thing, when Marty’s girls could expect no further customers, and Marty himself was back home in his little Argyle Avenue palace.

Carmine took the case himself with Delia as backup; Abe and his team were moving on the Does. Donny could handle the street stuff, Buzz was on vacation and Delia so frustrated over her Shadow Women that she’d probably think processing parking tickets a boon.

The murder of the long time pimp caused a universal sensation, and if grief were not mentioned nor tears detected in official eyes at the news, nonetheless it provoked shock, concern, a definite and complex sorrow. For Marty Fane had gone on long enough to become an institution of sorts, and his particular world, deprived of his steadying influence, was in for all the troubles that went with a vacant patch, rudderless girls, greed, and violence. Despite his history he’d been relatively young: a mere forty-five. Certainly not old enough to have seen any sharks cruising in the periphery of his patch waiting to close in. Now there would be a turf war fought through the dog days of August.

“He died quite slowly, poor fellow,” said Gus Fennell in the autopsy room. “Interestingly unusual technique, not something taught in a Quantico boot camp or anywhere else I can think of.”

“But silent,” Carmine said. “No voice box.”

“True, but think for a while, Carmine. First, his attacker got Marty around the neck and part-throttled him—he’d have been out cold for a minute or two. Then—this! Initially bloodless because it started the way you’d do an emergency tracheostomy, puncturing the airway below the swallowing reflexes. Had the attacker stopped there, Marty could well have lived, but he didn’t stop there. Instead, he drove his knife deep enough to make contact with the ventral side of the spinal column, and dragged it upward to the under-jaw without severing anything capable of bleeding out fast. No spray, no huge lake. I estimate that Marty regained consciousness about the moment the knife tracheostomized him, so he endured the rest awake. I mean, the notochord—the fetal tube—folds over and closes in the front midline, hence the lack of major blood vessels and nerves there. I ask, did the attacker know that? I must presume so, but anyone with that degree of anatomical sophistication would have other, better ways to kill, including with a knife.”

“Are you implying a torture element, Gus?” Delia asked.

“I don’t honestly know, Delia. The most I can tell you is that the attacker had fantastic control over the knife—the cut was absolutely straight, no matter what structures it bisected.”

“Paul says he wiped his knife clean on Marty’s fake-fur upholstery,” Delia added.

“And wore gloves—no prints anywhere,” Carmine said.

“And that’s it as far as I’m concerned, Captain,” said Gus.

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