The Interrogation (11 page)

“Where did he go after he left the alley?”

“Back to the park. That’s where he lives, I bet. Anyway, he crossed the street and stood over there by the gate. Sort of leaning against it.”

“He didn’t go into the park?”

“Don’t know. I went back inside.”

“Was the little girl still in the lobby?”

“Yeah, she was.” Getz nodded. “Standing right at the door, just like before.”

“Was anyone else in the lobby?”

“No.”

“And that was the last time you saw the girl?”

“Yeah, it was. I went through the lobby again about ten minutes later. It was raining like hell by then. Anyway, on the way out I didn’t see the kid, so I figured her mother picked her up.”

“Did you see anybody else in the lobby?”

“Just Mr. Stitt. He was—” He stopped.

“What?” Pierce asked.

“He was … straightening stuff up. Chairs and stuff. It looked like things had been tossed around a little.” Getz glanced about furtively. “Look, we got all kinds in this building, you know. I wouldn’t want to get nobody in trouble.”

“What
kind
is Mr. Stitt?” Pierce pressed.

“He’s … well … he’s … He plays the horses, that sort of thing.”

“A bookie?”

“Yeah, okay, but, look, I can’t … I mean, I can’t go telling stuff on people in the building. I’d lose my job, I started doing that.”

Cohen presented a reassuring smile. “We’re homicide detectives, Mr. Getz. We’re looking for a guy who killed a little girl, nothing else. And if this Mr. Stitt was in the lobby when you say he was, he might have seen something.”

“Okay, but don’t say it came from me,” Getz said, lowering his voice. “That Mr. Stitt was in the lobby, I mean. What he does. None of that came from me,
okay?” He glanced about. “Apartment 14-F. That’s where Stitt lives. Burt Stitt.”

“Thanks,” Cohen told him.

Seconds later Pierce and Cohen stood at the door of Apartment 14-F.

Pierce knocked once, then called, “Police! Open up.”

The door swung open instantly. A tall, gaunt man stood before them, black hair swept back and greased down, a narrow mustache across his lip. His cheeks were sunken, like his eyes, and there was a slick snaillike quality to his skin, the sense that wherever he went, a slithery trail followed behind.

“Burt Stitt?” Cohen asked.

“Yeah.”

Pierce and Cohen presented their shields.

“Homicide,” Pierce told Stitt. “We’re looking into the murder of a girl in the park yesterday.”

“What’s that got to do with me?”

“May we come in?” Cohen asked.

Stitt shrugged. “Sure, okay,” he said indifferently. “But I don’t know nothing about a little girl.”

Pierce gave the room a quick perusal, taking in the things that told him most about Burt Stitt, the racing form on the sofa, the cheap detective novel on the floor, a torn ticket stub from a nearby strip joint. But more than these, Pierce noticed the things that weren’t in Stitt’s apartment. There were no family photos, no dining table, no chair that didn’t face the radio. The absence of such things told Pierce that Stitt ate alone, with the plate in his lap, had no memories that meant anything to him, no wife or children he hadn’t lost touch with long ago.

“We understand that you were down in the lobby yesterday evening,” Cohen said. “Around seven.”

Stitt nodded. “That sounds about right.”

“Did you happen to see a girl in the lobby at around that time?”

“Eight years old,” Pierce added. “Long, dark hair.”

Stitt considered this. “Yeah, I remember a kid in the lobby.”

“What else do you remember?” Pierce asked.

“I don’t remember nothing else. Just some kid. That’s all. Like you said, a little girl. Hair down to her waist. Dark.”

“Did you notice anyone else in the lobby?”

“No.”

Pierce leveled his gaze on Stitt. “Do you remember straightening up the place?”

Stitt smiled. “Yeah, sure. I was straightening up a couple of chairs. But that didn’t have nothing to do with that kid I seen. I mean, she was just standing in the lobby when I came in. Looked like she was waiting around for somebody. Anyway, she didn’t have nothing to do with them chairs being all thrown around.”

“What did happen in the lobby, Mr. Stitt?” Cohen asked.

“A tussle, that’s all,” Stitt answered. “I had a tussle with this freak who followed me into the building. Bum. Most of them, they leave you alone. They ask for a handout, and if you say no, they take no for an answer. But not this guy. He went nuts. Tossed a chair right at my face. Screaming his head off.”

“Where was the little girl during all this?” Cohen asked.

Stitt thought a moment. “She was there when it started, but then, I guess she left. Maybe she got scared.”

“Okay, the guy you had the fight with? What did he look like?”

“A bum, like I said.”

“You can do better than that.”

“Not by much. I was too busy getting rid of the bastard to pay much attention to him. He was white. I can tell you that much. Twenty-five, thirty, somewhere in there. Shorter than me by maybe four, five inches. Skinny as hell.”

“Do you remember what he was wearing?”

“What they all wear, baggy pants, some old ragged jacket smelled like piss. Bum clothes.”

“Where did he go?”

“He just left the building. Turned right, I think. Yeah. To the right.”

“What did you do after the argument?” Cohen asked.

“Nothing. I mean, straightened the place up, like you said. Then I went upstairs.”

“Did you ever see this guy again?”

“No,” Stitt answered promptly. “Never seen him before neither. Just a bum, like I said. A panhandler.”

“There was a bum hanging around in the alley at about this time. The super chased him off. Could this have been the same guy?”

Stitt shook his head. “Nah. I know the guy you mean. I’ve seen him in the alley a few times. The bum who came at me was bigger than him.”

“Okay, well, if you do see the guy who attacked you again, let us know,” Cohen said.

“Yeah, sure,” Stitt said.

Pierce gave the room a final glance, found the look of it uncomfortably like his own place, then followed Cohen out the door.

On the street, they stood, facing the park, the iron gate that led into its emerald depths.

“Cathy got scared,” Pierce said. “Two guys yelling, one of them throwing things. Any kid would try to get
away from something like that.” He continued to stare at the gate. “But why did she go into the park, Norm? She could have just stood by the gate, watched for her mother. Why did she go into the park?”

“Maybe he went after her,” Cohen answered, knowing it was sheer supposition. “The guy who threw the chair at Stitt. Maybe he came across the street and she saw him and she ran away from him into the park.”

“But what about the other guy, the one Getz chased out of the alley?” Pierce turned back toward the alley that bordered Clairmont Towers. “If he were still at the gate, he would have seen Cathy cross the street at seven. He might even have seen if the other guy was after her, followed her into the park.”

They walked to the alley in the hope that the man Getz had chased away might have returned, but they found only the deserted overhang and clumps of sodden newspapers that had been gathered into what resembled a bed.

Cohen peered beneath the overhang. In the murky light he saw a crayon drawing of a young girl, her body draped in white, long dark hair falling to her waist.

“Look at this, Jack,” he said.

Pierce settled down upon his haunches.

“It’s the same picture we found in the tunnel,” Cohen said. “That bum we questioned last night.”

“Questioned and let go,” Pierce said. “Smalls.”

They reached the tunnel six minutes later, but Smalls was not there. And so they waited, sitting on a wooden bench, the duck pond and Dubarry Playground distantly visible through the surrounding trees. An hour passed, then another. It was approaching noon before they saw him.

“Look,” Cohen said, pressing his elbow into Pierce’s side.

They got to their feet and watched as the man continued toward them. He was dressed in the same rags he’d been wearing the night before, and as he walked he peered left and right into the underbrush as if expecting someone to leap out of them, seize him by the throat. He was only a few feet away when he saw Pierce and Cohen rise from the bench. He stepped back fearfully, then stopped and waited as they came toward him.

“Albert Smalls?” Pierce asked.

The man nodded.

Pierce flashed his badge. “Mind coming with us?”

“No.”

They led him back up the path to Clairmont Towers, then into the building and back to the apartment of Herman Getz.

“Is this the man you saw coming out of the alley yesterday afternoon?” Pierce asked Getz.

“Yeah, that’s him,” Getz said without hesitation.

Pierce took Smalls’ wrists, brought them behind him, and cuffed them together. “Did you kill Cathy Lake?” he asked Smalls. “The dead girl we found in the park yesterday?”

“Was that her name?”

“Yes, that was her name,” Pierce said impatiently.

“No. I didn’t kill her.”

Pierce grasped Smalls’ arm and guided him forward. “Okay, come on. I want to show you something.”

9:59
P.M.
, September 12, Interrogation Room 3

“And we led you back down to the tunnel, Jay,” Cohen reminded him. “And I showed you that picture you’d drawn on the wall. The picture of a little girl. And I told
you that we’d found the same picture in the alley by Clairmont Towers. You told us, Pierce and me, that you’d drawn both of those pictures. The one in the tunnel and the one in the alley. You admitted that right away.”

“I drew them,” Smalls admitted again. He peered at his hands as if he wished to be rid of them.

“And so we didn’t let you go, Jay,” Cohen told him. “Not like we did that first night when the woman saw you. Do you know why we didn’t let you go? Because we found those two drawings in two different places. Places that made it clear to us that you’d been near Cathy at the time of her disappearance, and that you’d also been near the place where we found her. Still with me here?”

Smalls continued to stare down at his hands. “Yes.”

“We arrested you,” Cohen continued. “And since then we’ve been coming to talk to you, asking you questions. And during the time you’ve been with us, Detective Pierce and I have shown you a few things, right? Like the wire we found on the path between Cathy’s body and the playground. And we’ve had other people come in and take a look at you. In a lineup, I mean. And one of those people identified you right away as the man she’d seen near Cathy’s body.”

“I scared her,” Smalls said quietly.

“Yes, you did.” Cohen wondered if it might actually be working, if coaxing out small, seemingly inconsequential admissions might finally lure Smalls into a trap he couldn’t weasel his way out of.
Careful
, he thought. “You remember telling me that when Cathy came to the bench a couple of days before her murder, that maybe she was real scared of this guy who hangs around the playground?”

“Yes.”

“How about the time in the rain? Two days before the murder. When you saw Cathy in the rain. Could she have been scared of somebody then too?”

“I don’t know.”

“Look, Jay, at some point Cathy leaves the building where she’d been at a party. She walks across the street and she stands at the gate at the entrance to the park. You saw her there. You told us that.”

“Yes, I saw her.”

Slow
, Cohen thought,
very slow.
“Okay, and if Cathy saw you, she probably recognized you too, right? Maybe she nodded hello, something like that, smiled. Gave you some sign that she had seen you before. Did Cathy do that, Jay?”

“No.”

“But why not? I mean, if she’d seen you before, wouldn’t she naturally have given you some indication of that when she ran into you that day?”

“She didn’t see me that day.”

“Of course she did, Jay. You were standing right there, right by the gate. She had to have seen you.”

“No. She didn’t.”

“Look, Jay.” Cohen took a notepad from the windowsill near the table, turned to a blank page, drew a gate, then a building, and finally a line from one to the other. “You were here.” He put an X by the gate. “Cathy was here.” Now an X by the building. “She came this way.” He drew the point of the pencil down the straight line from the building to the gate. “See what I mean, Jay? Cathy came directly toward you. She had to have seen you.”

“No, she didn’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because she was looking behind her.”

“Behind her? You mean over her shoulder?”

Smalls’ eyes narrowed, like someone struggling to bring a blurry image into focus. “Yes.”

Cohen saw the scene, Smalls leaning against the park gate, Cathy emerging from the building into cold sheets of rain, glancing over her shoulder as she made her way toward the park, glancing back toward … what?

“Why would she have been glancing back toward Clairmont Towers, Jay?” he asked.

Again Smalls appeared suddenly to grasp a detail that had previously escaped him. “It’s terrible the way they look,” he said, his voice very low.

“The way who looks?”

“Kids. When they’re afraid.”

“Are you talking about Cathy?”

“She looked afraid. When she was coming across the street.” He considered something a moment, then said, “In prison, they kill them, don’t they?”

“Kill who?”

“The ones who … hurt children.”

Cohen felt a chill. “Sometimes,” he answered softly.

Smalls nodded resolutely. “Good,” he said. “They deserve it. And the ones who let them get away. They deserve it too.”

“The ones who let them get away?” Cohen repeated. Was this Smalls’ way of taunting him, mocking the fact that after ten days of interrogation neither he nor Pierce had made any progress? “They never get away with it, Jay,” he told him, though he knew that he believed no such thing.

“Yes, they do,” Smalls replied firmly.