Programmed for Peril

vulnerable!
    She would have to tell Dino and Jerry what had happened. And even Nicholas, if she could reach him. Wondering what else she could do, she remembered Eileen in California. There the police suspected Carson of being the Doctor and Daughter Destroyer. The unanswered question was why. Trish picked up the phone.
    She caught Eileen at work. She brought her up to date on what Carson was doing to her, the failure of the police to find him. She couldn’t hide her rising desperation. “I need all the information I can get, Eileen,” Trish said. “What did your boyfriend find out about Carson? Why do the police think he killed the doctors?”
    Eileen took several minutes to praise her man. Carl had learned how to work with the police, had been promoted at the newspaper, and was doing work for the local television station, too. His career was on the rise. When Trish thought she would burst from impatience Eileen lowered her voice. “They finally told him—confidential, of course. You know?”
    “Sure. Tell me!”
    “The reason Carson’s name came up was... Can you guess, Trish?”
    “Eileen! Just tell me! Okay?”
    “Both the throat doctor and the cosmetic surgeon had treated him.”
    “For what?”
    “He had nodes on his vocal chords. The first doctor removed them.”
    “The second?”
    “They don’t know. Carson stole the medical records out of her office and from the hospital, too.”
    “He must have had surgery. She was a surgeon, right?”
    “Yeah. Don’t ask me about the third. She was a gynecologist.”
    “Why do the police include her, then?”
    “Carl told me. All three women were smothered to death the same way. And the same... parts were snipped off.”
    A chill ran like ice water down Trish’s body. Her sense of dread lasted through the rest of the phone call and nestled like a rodent in her chest. She walked to the front porch, where the sun angled in to bathe the swing. Her first thought: Carson had changed his face.
    But she had seen him! Twice. Once standing on a comer grinning at her in her crushed car, once peering in through a PC-Pros’ window. He looked no different. But his voice was différent! She had heard it on the phone and through radios doctored to serve his ends. That was a discovery. She sensed she was missing something but couldn’t grasp it. Maybe it would come to her.
    But what good would it do?
    That elusive crumb of knowledge seemed pathetic before the flood of Carson’s power. Like a compass needle relentlessly pointing back to north, she was reminded afresh of her inability to defend herself from him.
    She spent the rest of the morning and early afternoon in crisscrossing thoughts that left her vexed and anxious. She knew as the day dragged on that her spirits would sink. The end of her relationship with Foster would weigh more heavily as she tired. After Melody was asleep she knew she’d bawl again.
    Was this the worst day of her life?
    In midaftemoon she got a surprise. Jerry Morris and Lieutenant Sarkman arrived on her doorstep. She offered iced tea. Both declined, stony-faced. They were very much there on official business. She wondered what had brought Sarkman, he of the terrier nose and prima donna posture, to her house. With him there she didn’t wish to tell Jerry that Foster had broken their engagement. She would tell him later. It certainly bore on the case. She’d simply have to hang on, no matter the state of her emotions.
    “We finally got some kind of break in this deal,” Jerry said.
    “Even if it cost some poor slob his life.” Sarkman’s eyes were bright. Trish remembered murder was his favorite subject. Now she recalled they had talked to Foster at great length. “Your boy Carson stuck a wire in a guy’s eye all the way back to the middle of his skull. With Foster Palmer looking on.”
    “Oh, God!” Foster hadn’t told her that. Carson, Carson, mad Carson!
    “Kind of curious, that way of offing somebody,” Sarkman said. “So we got in touch with west coast people to see if maybe he used his wire out there.”
    “Had he?” Why was her voice shaking?
    “Twice. Once the night the last doctor was smothered. There was a dead muscleman beside her in the dining room. Then a couple weeks later up north in Oregon another guy was killed the same way.”
    Jerry leaned forward. He said softly, “The second dead man made masks for a living. Extraordinary ones. Made of all kinds of modem materials. People with serious facial damage