Poison

CHAPTER 17

His eyes were swollen and red. Carella knew he'd been crying, but he did not ask him why. They were sitting at Carella's desk, side by side, Willis in a chair he'd pulled over, both men studying the list of names Marilyn had provided. Under any circumstances, this would have been a part of police work they found tedious. But there was about Willis a melancholy listlessness that exaggerated the normal boredom of paper legwork, hovering over the desk like a cloud threatening an imminent storm. Carella was tempted to ask, "What is it, Hal?" tempted to say, "Tell me." Instead he went about the work as if it were merely routine, when he knew with every fiber of his being that it was not.

They looked together at the first page, which listed the men Marilyn had dated since her arrival in the city last year. The list was not extraordinarily long. Some twenty-five names on it, Carella guessed.

"Not many addresses," he said.

"Only the ones she knew," Willis said. His voice was toneless. He did not raise his eyes to Carella's. They stayed lowered to the sheet of paper with the names scrawled in her handwriting. Carella could not even guess at what pictures were behind those eyes.

"Means we'll be hitting the phone books," he said.

"Yeah." Same dead voice.

"Did she tell you anything about these people?"

"Everything she could remember. Some of them she only saw once or twice."

"Anybody jump out at you?"

"Nobody I could see."

"Okay," Carella said, and sighed. "Let's get started."

They took her list down the hall to the Clerical Office and ran off a copy on the Xerox machine, her handwriting duplicated now, the names seeming to multiply although the list was still only as long as it had been. Carella started with the Isola directory, Willis with the one for Calm's Point. They might have been accountants hunched over ledgers. They worked in silence, side by side, Willis's gloom almost sentient, jotting down addresses and telephone numbers wherever they found them, putting a check mark beside any name for which no number was published, intending to get those numbers later from the telephone company. It took them almost an hour to match the list of men's names with a partial list of addresses and telephone numbers from all five city directories. The list of women's names was shorter; it took them only forty minutes to come up with a second partial matching of names with addresses and telephone numbers.

It was almost six o'clock when they tackled the list of professionals.

They had come halfway down it when Carella said, "We did this one, didn't we?"

"What?" Willis said. Preoccupied, going down his own list like an automaton, eyes blank.

"This one."

"Which one?"

"Right here."

Willis looked at the name. "Oh," he said, and nodded. "Her dentist."

"Are you sure? Isn't he on the other…?"

"Used to be, anyway. She…"

"But didn't I see his name on the other list?" Carella said, and turned back to the first page, and began running his finger down it. "Sure," he said, "here it is, Ronald Ellsworth. One of the guys she dated." He looked at the name again. "Ellsworth," he said, and frowned. "Didn't we…?" He frow'ned again. "Wasn't he…?" And suddenly he looked up sharply, and turned to Willis, and said, "Hal…"

"What've you got?" Willis said at once.

"He was McKennon's dentist," Carella said, and immediately shoved back his chair and got to his feet. "Where the hell's that file?" he said, coming around the desk and moving swiftly toward the filing cabinets. "Did she really date him? Or is that a mistake? His name on the other list?"

"No, she dated him for a month or so."

Carella threw open the file drawer, yanked the McKennon folder, came back to the desk, and began leafing through it. "Here," he said. "I talked to Ellsworth after we caught the Hollander case. Here's the report. April second. I talked to him in his apartment, here's the address."

The two men looked at each other.

"Get on the phone to Marilyn," Carella said, "find out when she dated him, when she stopped dating him, and why she stopped. Where's that dental chart Blaney sent over?"

Willis was already dialing Marilyn's number. Carella took a quick look at McKennon's dental chart, and then began dialing the Medical Examiner's Office.

"Marilyn," Willis said into the phone, "it's me. Tell me about this guy Ellsworth."

"Hello, yes," Carella said into his phone. "Paul Blaney, please."

"When was that?" Willis said. "Uh-huh. For how long? Uh-huh. And why'd you stop seeing him?"

"Paul," Carella said, "this is Steve Carella. I've got some questions on the McKennon dental chart."

They did not get to Ellsworth's apartment on Front Street until seven-thirty that night. That was because they had to go all the way downtown first. Ellsworth and his wife were having dinner when they arrived. Mrs. Ellsworth—he introduced her as Claire—was a pleasant-looking woman in her late thirties, Carella guessed, with remarkably beautiful dark brown eyes.

"We were just about to have coffee," she said. "Won't you join us?"

"Thanks, no," Carella said, "there are just a few questions we'd like to ask your husband."

"Well, sit down anyway," she said.

"Privately," Carella said, watching Ellsworth's face. Not a flicker there. Mrs. Ellsworth seemed puzzled for a moment. She looked at her husband, looked back at Carella, and then said, "Well, I'll leave you then." She looked at her husband yet another time, and then went into a room Carella guessed was the bedroom. A moment later, he heard a television set going.

"So," Ellsworth said, "are you making any progress?"

He was wearing blue jeans and a loose-fitting sweater, the sleeves shoved up on his forearms. The sweater matched his blue eyes. Those eyes were smiling behind his dark-rimmed glasses. There was a smile on the mouth below his sandy brown mustache. He could have been announcing to a patient that he'd found no cavities.

"Dr. Ellsworth," Carella said, opening his notebook, "when I was here on the second of April, I asked you some questions…"

"Yes?" Ellsworth said.

"I asked you if Mr. McKennon had ever mentioned any of the following names to you: Marilyn Hollis, Nelson Riley, Charles Endicott and Basil Hollander. You told me he had not."

"That's right," Ellsworth said.

"That is what you told me, isn't it?"

"If that's what you have in your notes…"

"Yes, that's what I have in my notes," Carella said, and snapped the book shut. "Dr. Ellsworth, was Marilyn Hollis ever a patient of yours?"

"Marilyn… what was the last name again?"

"Hollis. H-O-L-L-I-S."

"No, I don't believe so."

"Wasn't she a patient of yours from December of last year through the early part of February this year?"

"Not to my recollection."

"Wasn't she, in fact, the person who recommended you to Jerome McKennon?"

"I don't believe Mr. McKennon came to me on anyone's recommendation," Ellsworth said.

Toughing it out, Carella thought. We've got him cold, and he's toughing it out.

"Dr. Ellsworth," Willis said, "isn't it true that in December of last year, while Marilyn Hollis was still your patient, you asked her out…"

"No, that's not true," Ellsworth said sharply and glanced toward the bedroom door.

"… and saw her a total of six times before she…"

"I didn't see her at all! What is this?" Ellsworth asked indignantly.

They always said the same thing, Carella thought. The indignant What is this?

"Dr. Ellsworth," Willis said, "we have very good reason to believe that you were seeing Marilyn Hollis socially, that in fact you were intimate with Miss Hollis, and that she ended her relationship with you in February when she learned…"

"I think I've heard just about enough of this," Ellsworth said.

Carella had also heard that one before.

"Dr. Ellsworth," he said, "I have here a search warrant granted earlier this evening by a supreme court magistrate, empowering us to search your person and the premises here as well as the premises at 257 Carrington Street, where your dental office is. Would you care to look at this warrant, Dr. Ellsworth?"

"Search? A search warrant? For what?"

"Specifically for a Colt Super .38 automatic pistol. Do you own such a gun?"

"It's in the top drawer of his dresser," Mrs. Ellsworth said.

The detectives turned at once. She was standing in the open door to the bedroom.

"You bastard," she said.

And Ellsworth broke for the front door.

Willis's gun came out of its holster.

"Freeze!" he shouted.

Ellsworth kept running.

"Stop or I'll shoot!" Willis shouted. The gun was trembling in his hand. The muzzle was leveled on the center of Ellsworth's back.

"Don't force me!" he shouted.

Ellsworth stopped dead.

He turned.

He looked past the detectives to where his wife was still standing in the bedroom door, a sitcom laugh track blaring from the television set behind her.

"I'm sorry," he said to her.

Which line, too, Carella had heard a hundred times before.

The Q & A took place in Lieutenant Byrnes's office at nine forty-five that night. Present were Detective/Lieutenant Peter R. Byrnes, Detective/Second Grade Stephen L. Carella, Detective/Third Grade Harold O. Willis, an assistant district attorney named Martin J. Liebowitz, and the man they had charged with three counts of murder and one count of attempted murder, Dr. Ronald B. Ellsworth.

Because Willis had spoken to Marilyn Hollis about her relationship with Ellsworth, he handled the early part of the questioning. Because Carella had spoken to Paul Blaney about McKennon's dental chart, he picked up where Willis left off.

Q: Can you tell us when Marilyn Hollis first came to your office?

A: In December sometime. Last year in December.

Q: Miss Hollis says it was on December fourth, a Wednesday according to her appointment calendar.

A: I don't recall the exact date. If that's what her appointment calendar…

Q: Yes, that's the date in her calendar. Did you continue to see her regularly as a patient after that date?

A: I did. She needed extensive treatment. Her teeth were in very bad condition, I don't know why she'd let them go so long without adequate dental care.

Q: According to Miss Hollis, shortly before Christmas, you asked her out. Is that correct?

A: It is.

Q: And continued seeing her on a more or less regular basis…

A: I saw her six times.

Q: A total of six times during December, January and February—when she ended the relationship.

A: Yes. Six times.

Q: Were you at any time intimate with Miss Hollis?

A: I was.

Q: Can you tell us now why Miss Hollis ended the relationship? Excuse me, I'd like to ask first if she terminated your professional services at the same time.

A: She did.

Q: And this was early in February, was it not?

A: It was.

Q: Why did she stop seeing you, Dr. Ellsworth?

A: I made a mistake.

Q: Sir?

A: She was always talking about total honesty, I made the mistake of being honest with her.

Q: In what way?

A: I told her I was married.

Q: What was her reaction to this?

A: She told me she never wanted to see me again. She said she didn't date married men.

Q: What was your reaction to that?

A: Well, what do you think it was? I was furious.

Q: But your anger had no effect on her, isn't that right? She did, in fact, stop seeing you.

A: She did.

Q: Now, Dr. Ellsworth, when did Mr. McKennon start coming to you as a patient?

A: Late in January.

Q: And he came on Miss Hollis's recommendation, did he?

A: Yes. She told him I was a good dentist. That was before we broke up, of course. Then I wasn't such a good dentist anymore. Then she stopped coming to me.

Q: He said she had recommended you as a good dentist?

A: He said a friend of his had recommended me. I'm not sure whether he told me at the time that the friend was Marilyn. I may have learned that later.

Q: He did not mention her name on his first visit?

A: He may have, I don't remember. I guess he did. But at the time, I didn't know what his relationship with Marilyn actually was. He only said a friend. I didn't know they were sleeping together.

Q: When did you discover that?

A: In February sometime.

Q: How did that come about?

A: I had seen him several times by then. I did an extraction, as I recall, and several fillings. I also recommended that a root canal be done on the lower right first molar. We'd become quite friendly—within the context of a professional relationship, of course. I believe it was during one of those visits that he mentioned Marilyn.

Q: Said he was intimate with her?

A: Well, you know the way men talk.

Q: What did he say, exactly, Dr. Ellsworth?

A: He said he was fucking this terrific woman, said he'd never had a woman like her in his life.

Q: He was referring to Marilyn Hollis, of course.

A: Yes. Well, I didn't know that at first. It wasn't until later that he told me her…

Q: Later during that same visit?

A: Yes. He was rinsing, I believe. He said Well, you remember the girl who sent me here, don't you? She's the one I'm fucking.

Q: And what was your reaction to that?

A: Anger.

Q: Why?

A: Because she'd thrown me overboard—a professional man—and she'd taken up with this idiot who worked for a buglar-alarm company!

Q: Did you mention to him that you'd been dating Miss Hollis?

A: Of course not! I'm a married man!

Q: Then he didn't know that you'd also shared a personal relationship with her?

A: He did not know.

Q: This anger you experienced…

A: Rage!

Q: Was it transmitted to Mr. McKennon? Was he aware…?

A: No, no, of course not. He never once suspected.

Q: Suspected what, Dr. Ellsworth?

A: Why, that I was going to kill him.

Q: Did you, in fact, kill him?

A: I did.

Q: Did you also kill Basil Hollander?

A: I did.

Q: Why?

A: For the same reason. An accountant, for Christ's sake! Because, you see, after McKennon was out of the way, I began to wonder if there were any others. So I began following her. And, of course, there were others, plenty of others, oh, a fine little slut she is, I can tell you!

Q: Did you kill Mr. Hollander with a knife?

A: A scalpel. From my office.

Q: Did you also kill Nelson Riley?

A: I did. He was another one, you see. She was seeing four men altogether. I was going to kill Endicott next, the lawyer. But then…

Q: Yes.

A: This is nothing personal.

Q: What is it, Dr. Ellsworth?

A: Well, she started seeing you. So I… it was going to take some planning to get to Endicott, the way it had with Riley. Getting into that loft was no picnic, believe me. So I needed time to get to Endicott. And you were handy. You were living with her, weren't you? I assumed you were. Which made it simple to track you. I've had that gun for a long time, by the way, I even have a Carry permit for it. I told them I sometimes transport gold, for fillings, you know, which was stretching the truth a bit, but they gave me the Carry permit.

Q: You tried to kill me—I identify myself for the tape, Detective Harold O. Willis, Detective/Third Grade, Eighty-seventh Squad—with this gun, is that correct? I show you a Colt Super .38 automatic pistol with the serial number 3478-842-106.

A: That's correct, that's my gun.

Q: How did you kill Nelson Riley?

A: I put nicotine in a bottle of scotch I found on a shelf in his loft.

Q: How did you kill Jerome McKennon?

A: Nicotine. I would have used nicotine on Hollander, too, but there was no way I could get to him. So I just went in there with the scalpel.

Q: How'd you get into the apartment?

A: I just walked in.

Q: He let you into the apartment?

A: No, no. I tried the knob, and the door was open! I couldn't believe it! This city? A man leaves his door unlocked? So I walked in, and he was sitting in the living room, reading, and I stabbed him.

Q: If the door had been locked, what would you have done?

A: Knocked. And stabbed him when he opened it.

Q: Because you were angry with him as well, is that correct?

A: Oh, all of them.

Q: Because Miss Hollis had stopped seeing you…

A: Yes.

Q: And was continuing to see them.

A: I loved her.

Q: Steve?

Q: Dr. Ellsworth, I show you this dental chart prepared by Dr. Paul Blaney of the Medical Examiner's Office. It is a chart of the condition of Jerome McKennon's teeth at the time of autopsy. By looking at this chart, can you tell me whether it appears to be an accurate representation?

A: Well, yes, I would say so. There's the extraction I performed, the number sixteen tooth, and there are the several fillings I did, yes, that's his mouth. The other work had already been done before he came to me.

Q: And the root canal?

A: Yes, on the number thirty tooth. The lower right first molar.

Q: You performed that root canal, did you not?

A:I did.

Q: Removed the nerve, I believe you told me, when Mr. McKennon visited you in February…

A: If that's when it was, yes.

Q: And obtunded the root canal, sealed it…

A: Yes.

Q: And on March eighth, you fitted it with a temporary cap…

A: Yes. A temporary plastic cap.

Q: And when he came back a week later, you took an impression of the tooth for a permanent cap, and—as you also told me—cemented the temporary cap back on.

A: Yes.

Q: Dr. Blaney of the Medical Examiner's Office suggested that you may have done something else during that visit. Did you?

A: Yes.

Q: What did you do, Dr. Ellsworth?

A: I hollowed out the middle of the tooth, down to the floor of the pulp chamber.

Q: Did you do anything else?

A: Yes. I inserted a number five gelatin capsule into the tooth. That's the biggest tooth in the mouth, you know, that molar, and the number five is the smallest capsule there is, only ten millimeters long and four millimeters wide. But even then I had to shave the capsule down a bit—where the two ends slip into each other—to get it inside the tooth.

Q: What did you do then?

A: I cemented the temporary cap back on.

Q: With the capsule inside the tooth?

A: Yes.

Q: And covered by the temporary cap.

A: Yes.

Q: What was in that capsule, Dr. Ellsworth?

A: A fatal dose of nicotine.

Q: Dr. Blaney at the Medical Examiner's Office indicated on the chart—here's the mark, Dr. Ellsworth, this small circle on the number thirty tooth—that there was a cavity in the temporary cap. He had a theory as to how that cavity got there, but I'd like to hear your explanation of it.

A: Well, you see, I had thinned out the underside of the chewing surface. Of the temporary cap. Before I cemented it back into place. And I told Jerry—Mr. McKennon—that he could chew and brush normally until the next visit…

Q: Which would have been on March twenty-ninth, two weeks after the March fifteenth visit.

A: Yes.

Q: What did you expect to happen, Dr. Ellsworth?

A: I expected the normal grinding motion of the upper and lower molars would erode the temporary cap.

Q: And then what?

A: Then the gelatin capsule would dissolve and the poison would be released.

Q: Killing Mr. McKennon within minutes.

A: The number five capsule holds from sixty-five to a hundred and thirty milligrams, depending on the chemical. I didn't need quite that much.

Q: Forty milligrams of nicotine is the fatal dose, isn't that right?

A: Yes.

Q: How did you come by nicotine in toxic strength, Dr. Ellsworth? Did you distill it from tobacco?

A: No. I used an insecticide called Spot Forty. I bought it over the counter in the next state. It has a nicotine content of forty percent.

Q: How did you get nicotine in toxic strength from…

A: I'm a dentist. I had access to laboratory equipment.

Q: In your office?

A: No, at a research lab. I told them I was conducting an experiment on the effectiveness of fluoride in removing nicotine stains from teeth. They even allowed me to use chromatographic instruments.

Q: As I understand it then, you took a can of this insecticide called Spot Forty into the lab…

A: No. It was several cans. And I emptied them first into glass containers.

Q: And kept titrating the solution until you had the purity of nicotine you were looking for.

A: Yes.

Q: How long did it take you to do this?

A: Not long. My college grades in chemistry were very high, straight A's, as I recall. I decided to kill Jerry the day he told me about him and Marilyn. I was ready to kill him by the eighth of March when I did the root canal. I had the poison ready by then.

Q: Hal?

A: Nothing else.

Q: Mr. Liebowitz?

A: Nothing.

Q: Is there anything you'd like to add to what you've said, Dr. Ellsworth? Anything you'd like to change?

A: Nothing. Except…

Q: Yes?

A: You see, I figured she'd come back to me. If the others were gone, I figured there was a chance of getting her back.

Q: I see.

A: Yes. That was it, you see.

Q: Anything else, Dr. Ellsworth?

A: No. Well…

Q: Yes?

A: No, nothing.

Q: Then thank you, Dr. Ellsworth.

A: Just… would you play the tape back for me, please?

They went out of the precinct and into the fenced lot behind it, where they had parked their cars. The night was balmy; spring was truly here.

"I was wrong," Carella said.

"We were both wrong," Willis said. "We were zeroing in on too narrow a range. We should have been looking wider."

"That's not what I meant, Hal." He said it again. "I was wrong."

"Okay," Willis said.

Carella extended his hand. "Good night, huh?" he said.

Willis took the hand. "Good night, Steve."

They got into their cars, and drove out of the parking lot, and then off in opposite directions, Carella to his house in Riverhead, Willis to the house on Harborside Lane.

It was a little before midnight when he got there. She was sitting in the living room, a brandy snifter on the end-table near her chair. She was wearing a white caftan. He did not know if it was the one she'd worn so many years ago, when she was known as the Golden Arab in a prison called the Fortress. She wore no makeup. Her eyes looked puffy and swollen. He went to the bar unit and poured himself a cognac.

He told her about Ellsworth, told her they had a signed confession.

The clock on the mantel chimed midnight.

Twelve soft chimes into the silence of the room.

He went to where she was sitting.

"You've been crying," he said.

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because I know I've lost you."

"Marilyn…"

"Oh, shit, here it comes."

"Marilyn, I'm a short, little ugly guy…"

"You're beautiful."

"And you're tall and gorgeous…"

"Sure, with my eyes all red and my nose dripping."

"I've been to bed with maybe six girls in my entire life…"

"The rest of the women in the world are missing something."

"And you've known ten thousand men…"

"You're the only man I've ever really known."

"Marilyn, you're a hooker…"

"Was."

"And a thief…"

"True."

"And a murderer."

"Yes, I killed the son of a bitch who was destroying me."

"Marilyn…"

"And I enjoyed it! The way you enjoyed killing that kid with the .357 Magnum in his fist. Only I had a better reason."

"Marilyn…"

"What are you going to tell me? You're a cop? Okay, you're a cop. So turn me in."

"Do they know you killed him?"

"Who? The Argentine cops? Why would they even give a damn about a dead pimp? But, yes, I'm the only one who split from the stable, yes, and the safe was open, and a lot of bread was gone, so yes, they probably figured I was the perpetrator, is that the word you use?"

"Is there a warrant out for your arrest?"

"I don't know," she said.

Silence.

"So what are you going to do?" she said. "Phone Argentina? Ask them if there's a warrant out on Mary Ann Hollis, a person I don't even know anymore? What, Hal? For Christ's sake, I love you, I want to live with you forever, I love you, Jesus, I love you, what are you going to do?"

"I don't know," he said.

END