The Interrogation (29 page)

Blunt pulled over, turned off the engine, and once again considered his options. What would happen to his wife, his
daughter? He’d lose his pension if anybody ever found out that he’d stolen a briefcase of phony money from two lowlife crooks, then murdered the fucking bastards.

But whose fault was that? The bastards’, that’s who. Why couldn’t Dunlap have done the whole thing himself? And the other one. The one with the big mouth. Why didn’t he just keep that big mouth shut?

He hadn’t meant to do it, that was the bottom line. But who’d believe that? Oh, no, they’d say, Blunt had it in mind all along. He intended all along to get the money, then come back and kill them two bastards. They’d say this was the plan from the beginning, and so his wife and daughter didn’t deserve a damn bit of his fucking pension because he was a lowlife just like the scum he killed, and who’d give
their
wives and kids a fucking pension, huh? Nobody, that’s who.

So back to square one. The options.

Each time he revisited them, a few dropped away. Like go to Mexico. Shit! How had that one ever gotten on the list anyway? Throw away the money. Well, sure, but that didn’t do a thing about them two dead bastards. And he’d been seen. Jesus Christ. His fucking car sitting there right in front of the junk shop, with the visor down,
Police Vehicle, Official Business
, while in the meantime he’s inside blowing two bastards away. And the street a bus route on top of it, with every nosy bus driver who passed while he was inside noticing how there was this big old gray Studebaker parked out front of Dunlap’s Collectibles with the goddamn visor down and a cardboard sign,
Police Vehicle.
Christ, he might as well have put a sign in the window that said “Blunt’s inside killing two worthless bastards.”

He shook his head. What’s the point, he asked himself, what’s the point of thinking about it? He was fucked no matter what. So really, for all the thinking, he had no options at all. Except one. Just go to the bridge and heave
the briefcase off it. Then do the rest quick and clean. He reached for his pistol, and for just a moment, as it rested affectionately in his grip, warm and silent, it was as close as he had ever known to the handshake of a friend.

He placed the barrel against the side of his head, felt his hand begin to shake, and decided, no, just a second, just one goddamn second. He had to get rid of the money.

He grabbed the briefcase, got out of the car, and walked to the side of the bridge. Far below, the brackish water moved turgidly, glutted with the vomit and swill of the factories to the north. He leaned over, and with no further thought tossed the briefcase over the side. He watched as it plummeted away from him, falling and falling with a strange silent grace. Not a bad way to go, he thought. Better than the big mess he’d make with that fucking gun. Okay, then, he decided, okay. He tucked the pistol in his belt and with a heavy grunt hauled himself up onto the concrete side rail. For a moment he felt like a statue on a pedestal, a figure of stone, towering and dignified. Then the truth hit him. He was not like that. He was Blunt. And Blunt was nothing. He leaned forward, thrust out one leg, then another, and stepped into the waiting air, falling hard and unexpectedly fast, thinking only, in his last instant, that Stevie Weinberg, the fucking kike, would never have gotten his ass in a fix like this.

6:07
A.M.
, Interrogation Room 3

Cohen burst through the door of the interrogation room. Smalls’ chair was pushed back from the table, but there was no other sign that he’d ever been there. Cohen looked around, half expecting to find him curled in a corner. But the room was empty, and so he dashed
back into the corridor, then down it to the detectives’ bull pen. Empty. Then the lounge, the other two interrogation rooms, the Criminal Files Room. Nothing.

Only the bathroom at the end of the corridor remained. Cohen felt a bony finger rake his spine.
In there
, he decided.
He has to be in there.

He moved toward the door like a man toward the entrance to the dreaded cavern where he knows it waits for him, that part of life that is indifferent to his hopes, sneers at his plans, lies forever beyond his control. At the door, he reached for his pistol, then let it go, and grasped the cold brass knob instead.

The door opened like a door in a nightmare, without being pushed. It glided across the stained tile floor, revealing first a metal can bristling with mops and brooms, then the urinals, the dark green stalls, a line of stained sinks, the last one gurgling softly, steam rising toward the cracked mirror that hung above it, a shard of glass removed, the door still moving in its ghostly trance until it finally came to rest against a bare, blood-spattered hand.

What do we know for sure?

9:45
A.M.
, Bickford’s Restaurant, 1284 De Paul Street

Anna Lake stood on the sidewalk, wearing her white waitress uniform. Her features had grown increasingly taut as Cohen told her the details.

“So what Pierce found in Titus,” she said. “It was proof.” “Yes,” Cohen answered. “I mean, there’s no way to prove that Smalls murdered the little girl he’d drawn. But she was murdered. And Cathy … well, for one man to be in the same place where two little girls were murdered, that’s evidence of a kind. Maybe not enough in a trial, but Smalls is dead, so there won’t be a trial.”

He didn’t tell her that the murdered child was Debra Pierce, that regardless of how right Pierce had been about Smalls’ guilt, he had been wrong about Nicolas Costa, that it was Smalls who’d tightened the wire
around Debra’s neck, stripped off the red velvet bracelet with its winking purple glass adornment, left her broken in the matted grass.

“Pierce promised me that Smalls wouldn’t get away,” Anna said.

“And he didn’t,” Cohen told her.

He recalled the details of Yearwood’s account, the way Pierce had found him in the Driftwood Bar, found Cindy Eagar and Avery Garrett, how he’d paused before entering the storage shed, looked out over the fields, and “gone somewhere deep within himself,” as Yearwood said. After that, the single shot, Pierce’s body curled around the canvas bag, the fleeing car Yearwood could not identify, nor the man behind its wheel.

“Well, thank you for coming here,” Anna said. She offered her hand.

Cohen took it. “Jack cared about you.”

She smiled mutely, then went back inside the restaurant, leaving Cohen alone on the street.

The drive to his apartment carried him back along the downtown streets, past Police Headquarters, and toward the west ramp of the bridge, where the Department’s other tragedy had occurred. Well, not really a tragedy, he thought as he swept by the ramp, Blunt’s old Studebaker now hauled onto the back of a police tow truck. Not like Pierce.

Suddenly Pierce’s death fell upon him with annihilating force. He had shouldered the shock of his partner’s murder resolutely until then, played the hardheaded detective, taken the news stoically. But now he felt something die as he recalled the look of Pierce’s body at the hospital, inert beneath the sheet, eyes closed, the terrible stillness of his limbs, so different from the stirring care that had made him such a good cop. So what is death, then, Cohen wondered, but a profound indifference?

He thought of Smalls’ body on the tiled floor, blood pooled beneath his pale white throat. The Invisible Man. Still invisible. Beyond knowing, and now beyond any further probing. Thus had it ended, the interrogation.

He reached his apartment six minutes later. Going up the stairs, he passed Ruth Green’s door and paused, hoping to hear something rustle beyond it, then realizing that she was no doubt already at work, teaching, surrounded by little girls and boys. So once again there’d be no one waiting for him, no one to sit and listen. No one to hear about Pierce’s murder, or Smalls’ suicide, or of the long, desperate night he’d journeyed through.

He turned back toward the stairs, and as he did so, her door opened and she stood before him, dark and beautiful, peering at him strangely, as if instantly comprehending what the night’s ordeal had etched into his face.

“Not at work?” he asked with a quick, sad smile.

“It’s Sunday,” she answered quietly.

“Oh,” Cohen said.

“Are you just coming in?”

“Yes.”

“Long night, then?”

“Long night.”

She studied him, then drew back the door. “Would you like to come in?”

“Yes,” he said, “I
would
like to come in.”
From the night and the cold
, he thought,
and the uncaring void.

9:54
A.M.
, Office of the Chief of Detectives

The Commissioner sat in the leather chair in front of Burke’s desk. “What will be the final report, then?” he asked, tapping his fingers together.

“That we don’t know,” Burke said. “The fact is,
Smalls may have left some drawings in that shed, but we still don’t have any actual evidence that he murdered Cathy Lake.”

The Commissioner scowled. “That won’t do, Tom. We can’t tell the papers or the Mayor that we don’t know if this fellow killed that child. There’ll be lots of questions about all of this.”

“But there won’t be many answers,” Burke told him flatly.

O’Hearn waved his hand. “All right. Let’s drop the matter of this fellow for now. What about Blunt?”

“He’s your man, not mine.”

“His wife’s illness, then?”

“I don’t know.”

“His wife’s illness,” the Commissioner said decisively. “The man was distraught about his wife. That’s the reason we’ll give. And Pierce. He’ll be the hero of the day. We’ll do it up right. The funeral, I mean.” He got to his feet. “I believe we’re done.”

Burke nodded firmly. “Yes, I believe we are,” he said quietly.

O’Hearn walked to the door, opened it. Then he turned back to Burke. “I haven’t asked you about Scottie.”

“He died.”

“Dear God, Tommy, I had no idea,” the Commissioner said. He started to say more, but Burke raised his hand to stop him, and so the Commissioner only nodded, then eased himself out the door.

For a time, Burke remained behind his desk, thinking of Scottie, the dreadful possibility that Smalls had gotten it right, had actually seen a man in the rain, digging in the earth. But he could not be sure of that, and besides, even if the man Smalls had seen there were Scottie, it didn’t mean that Scottie had strangled Cathy
Lake. There was no evidence to suggest that. After all, it wasn’t as if he’d been found with Cathy’s locket in his clothes.

Burke rose and turned toward the window, peering down at the city’s busy streets, standing as he had hours before, his arms behind his back. At the corner of Trevor and Madison, he watched the Commissioner’s car come to a stop and imagined his old friend in its plush backseat, working to compose what he would tell Blunt’s wife about her husband’s death. Lies, he hoped, lots of lies. For in the end, faced with life’s cold truths, what else warmed our self-deceiving hearts?

10:07
A.M.
, 7305 Phoenix Avenue

Eddie Lambrusco started to rise, then felt his daughter’s small, pale fist curl tightly around his little finger. “Papa.”

“I’m here, princess.” He forced a smile. “I’ve been right here for hours.”

“You should have waked me up.”

“No, no,” Eddie said. “I love to watch you sleep.”

He thought of the child who’d died in the park nearly two weeks before, the picture he’d seen in the paper. Just eight years old. How lucky he was that Laurie was still with him. That she was getting better, that she would recover, that she was alive, alive to hold his finger in her small hand. What other warning did we need, what other guide and caution than how easy, how very, very easy it is to lose the one thing you love? “I can stay home with you all day today,” he said.

Laurie smiled softly.

Eddie leaned forward and kissed her cheek. “So, get
a little more rest, then maybe this afternoon I’ll take you to the park.”

12:17
P.M.
, 1272 Hilton Street, Apartment 5-B

Rest, Cohen told himself. Close your eyes and rest.

But his eyes remained open. And he could not rest.

For the past hour he’d tossed on the bed, unable to sleep, or even calm the inner turmoil that boiled within him. He’d spent an hour with Ruth Green, but for all her kindness, the way she’d listened to him attentively, he felt no less burdened than when he’d first entered her apartment. Could he really have believed that a few minutes with Ruth Green would change things?

He closed his eyes, tried to relax, but felt only a steady tightening of the spring. During the interrogation he’d felt the walls of the room close in upon him. But now the interrogation was over. Murder solved. Case closed. Then why were the walls still moving in? Why did it seem even harder now to draw a breath?

He rose, paced, opened the refrigerator, closed it. He parted the curtains, gazed out the window, drew them together again without looking out. He saw Pierce beneath the sheet, Cathy on the wet ground, Smalls floating lifelessly in his own blood, and the whole unfathomable wash of life, its random ebb and flow, the chaotic currents that swept over us, drew us down, tossed us here, deposited us there; all of it seemed nothing more than a vast disorder.

He sat down, leaned forward, sank his face into his hands, and thought again of the long night’s effort. Smalls’ interrogation was over, but he couldn’t let go of it, didn’t want to let it go, and he wondered suddenly if this were the one thing he could offer the world, not
marriage, family, enduring love, all the noble vestments of a stable life, but this seething conviction that there had to be an answer.

The passion of his discontent lifted him to his feet, propelled him down the stairs and out into the bustling street, bits of the night’s interrogation swirling in his head. He recalled silences and evasions. Words and images circled in his mind, rocking him this way and that, at times certain that Smalls had murdered Cathy Lake, at times doubtful and wondering if it might have been someone else, the man in the rain, the man in the park, some man Smalls had never seen, someone who was still there, under the trees, lurking. A thousand suspects swept through his mind, the mug shots of humanity, a dark gallery from which no one face emerged, so that with each passing second Cohen felt his helplessness deepen, felt destitute and beggarly, his hand open and pleading for some intervention, a cosmic play of chance that would drop into his hand just one small morsel of the truth.