The Interrogation (6 page)

“That I was in trouble.”

“Why did you think that? You hadn’t been arrested yet.”

“I knew I was in trouble by the way the man was talking,” Smalls said. His eye shifted to Cohen. “By the way he said my name.”

8:54
P.M.
, September 1, City Park, Duck Pond

“Smalls,” Chief Burke said. “Albert Jay Smalls.”

“That’s right.” Blunt chomped down on a thick cigar. “Only name we found. Written in some of them old books he’s got.”

“Has he acknowledged that this is his name?” Burke asked Blunt.

“Nope. We found crayons too. Other junk. Nothing to ID the guy though.”

Burke glanced toward Smalls, noted that his head was slumped forward. He looked like a captured prisoner, helpless and defeated.

“Anything else, Chief?” Blunt asked.

“Just one thing. Find Pierce and Cohen. Tell them I want to see them.”

“Okay,” Blunt said.

Burke watched as Blunt lumbered away, a huge figure in his rumpled green raincoat, one of Dolan’s men, kept on by Francis after he became Commissioner. Given Blunt’s rank incompetence, Burke could think of no reason other than pity over the fact that Blunt’s wife, Millie, had been bedridden for years, his daughter Suzy retarded, and that if he were fired from the department, it would be nearly impossible for him to find other employment. Even so, Blunt gave off such a sense of animal stupidity that it was hard to imagine a pity strong enough to keep him on the job.

Pierce and Cohen arrived six minutes later.

Burke glanced at the notes he’d taken from his earlier conversation with the medical examiner. “At this point, it doesn’t appear that the child was sexually assaulted. She was strangled. That much is obvious. We also found a length of wire on the path that leads down toward the playground. The girl’s body is just down that bank there. Off the trail. Behind a hedge.” Floodlights had been strung all around, and in their hard white glare he could make out a small patch of pale flesh. “With that rainstorm a lot of important evidence could have been washed away.” Burke looked up into the wet trees, then down the sodden path that led to where the child’s body lay. “At this time we can’t be sure who she is. But just after seven this evening we received a call from a woman who lives on the other side of the park. She brought her daughter to a birthday party that was supposed to be over at seven. The daughter was supposed to wait for her in the lobby of the building, but when she got there, her daughter was nowhere to be
seen. The woman went to the apartment where the birthday party was held. The parents there told her that her daughter left the apartment at around six forty-five and had not come back. The mother went back downstairs and talked to the super. The super told her that he’d seen a little girl standing in the lobby at around six-forty Then he left the lobby and returned to his own apartment. When he came back to the lobby at around seven, the little girl was gone. The mother says her daughter was wearing a red dress. So is the dead girl.”

“Any other way to identify her?” Pierce asked.

“The girl in the park has a bandage on her right hand.”

“The mother put that in her description?” Cohen asked.

“No,” Burke answered. “So this little girl may not be hers.” Again he glanced at his notes. “The mother’s name is Anna Lake. She lives at 545 Obermeyer. She said she sometimes brings her daughter, Cathy, to the playground, so when Cathy wasn’t waiting at the building, she looked for her there. After that Mrs. Lake circled the block, then went home and called us.” He closed the notebook and tucked it into his jacket pocket. “So far we have no suspects.” Burke nodded toward the bearded man in the distance. “Unless you count him.”

Do you think it’s real?

7:42
P.M.
, September 12, Interrogation Room 3

“How long have you lived in that pipe, Smalls?” Pierce asked. “Weeks? Months?”

“A long time.”

“And before that?”

“Just places. All around.”

“So, you’ve moved around a lot?”

“Yes.”

“Why is that? Is it because you’re on the run?”

Smalls lowered his head, as if offering it to the hangman.

“If you’re not on the run, then why won’t you tell us about other places you’ve lived?”

“Maybe it’s because he’s embarrassed, Jack,” Cohen said. “Is that it, Jay? Are you embarrassed about being
arrested? Don’t want the people back home to know about it?”

Smalls gave no answer, but his head lifted slightly so that Cohen suspected he might actually have hit upon something.

“Your dad, maybe?” Cohen asked.

“I don’t have a dad.”

“Your mother, then,” Cohen said. “You don’t want your mother to know about you being arrested, right?”

Smalls offered no response.

“That’s natural, Jay,” Cohen said easily. “A guy never wants to embarrass his mother. You know what I remember most about my mother? Going to the movies. Every Sunday she took me to the movies.”

Smalls smiled tentatively. “My mother took me to the Ferris wheel.”

Cohen glanced at Pierce, then back to Smalls. “When did she do that?”

“Every day.”

Pierce shook his head, and drew Cohen back to the rear of the room. “You’re not getting anywhere with this, Norm.”

Cohen walked to the door, opened it, and ushered Pierce outside. “Listen, Jack—”

“We have ten hours left,” Pierce interrupted. He yanked a handkerchief from his pocket and swabbed his neck. “We don’t have time to chat about his fucking mother.” He returned the handkerchief to his pocket. “We’re in a box here. A tight fucking box.”

“Yeah, we are, but maybe we’re doing better than you think.”

“How you figure that?”

“Because Smalls may actually have given us a little something to work with.”

Pierce stared at Cohen.

“The Ferris wheel,” Cohen explained. “Smalls says he rode a Ferris wheel every day.”

“So?”

“So it had to be permanent, right, this Ferris wheel? Not just coming and going with a carnival or something, but always there.”

“Yeah, so what?”

“I’m thinking maybe Smalls comes from Seaview.”

“Why Seaview? There are Ferris wheels all over the damn country.”

“Yeah, but Smalls doesn’t have an accent from some other part of the country. He sounds like a guy from around here. And the fact is, the only place around here that has a permanent Ferris wheel is Seaview. Or at least it used to have one. Remember that amusement park they had there?”

“That’s a real long shot, Norm.”

“Sure it is, but what do we have to lose?”

“We have ten hours left,” Pierce reminded him. “You really think chasing a fucking Ferris wheel is a good use of that time?”

“If we can find out who Smalls is, maybe we can find an outstanding warrant. We could hold him on that warrant. Buy time.”

“That’s the problem. Time. We don’t have time to go chasing around Seaview.”

“Not we. You. I can keep at him here.”

“You want me to drive to Seaview alone? Ask people if they remember some kid on a Ferris wheel in a park that closed ten, twelve years ago?”

“Yes.”

“It’s because you think I’m blowing the interrogation, isn’t it? It’s because you want to get me out of here. That’s what all this Seaview shit is about.”

“Look, Jack, I don’t think we’re both needed here at
the moment, that’s all I’m saying. We both know the case inside out. Two of us in the same room? What’s the point?”

Pierce considered the matter, then shook his head. “Not yet, Norm. I want to go at him one more time. If I don’t get anywhere, then I’ll go to Seaview.”

Cohen knew there was no point in arguing the matter. He turned back toward the interrogation room, then stopped. “You’re not coming with me?”

“I think I should cool off a little,” Pierce said. “But listen, go at him hard. No more of this Good Cop bullshit. We don’t have time for that. So hit him hard. I’ll come in and give him more of the same. Like a one-two punch. Maybe we can shake him up that way.”

Cohen nodded, then stepped inside the room. He sat in the chair opposite Smalls. For three minutes he let Smalls stew in the silence while he mapped his strategy, decided on just how friendly to be, then just how hard, the way to build the interrogation to a knife point. When he’d plotted the route, tested it in his mind, he leaned forward abruptly.

“Let’s talk about the pipe, Jay. You know what I’m talking about, don’t you? What they found in the pipe?”

8:55
P.M.
, September 1, City Park, Drainage Pipe 4

“Holy shit! Look at this.”

In the tube of light the pipe had now become, Zarella slogged through the brightly illuminated debris to where Sanford stood, halfway through the length of the tunnel.

“What’d you find, Pete?” he asked as he reached his partner.

Sanford pointed down into the muck. “Look at that.”

Zarella felt his stomach heave. “Oh, Jesus …”

“Do you think it’s real?” Sanford asked.

Zarella looked closer. “I guess it could be.”

Sanford bent forward and plucked the single blue eyeball from the sodden leaves.

“Jesus,” Zarella moaned.

Sanford gave the eye a gentle squeeze. “Glass,” he said. “Like maybe from a doll or something.”

They found the rest of the doll seven minutes later at the bottom of a soggy cardboard box heaped with other toys, rubber balls, marbles, an unstrung badminton racket, a rusted cap pistol, a jump rope with one light blue plastic handle.

Sanford shined his flashlight up the length of the pipe, then beyond it. “If that little girl came up that path there, this freak could have seen her from right here.”

Zarella turned to see Pierce and Cohen moving toward them.

Cohen surveyed the sides of the drainage tunnel. “Any idea how long this guy was living here?” he asked.

“We didn’t question the suspect, sir,” Zarella replied.

Cohen stepped closer. The wall was covered with the usual graffiti, but as his flashlight scanned it, something different emerged from the gloom. A small drawing, eight inches by eleven, no more, done with crayon, but remarkably detailed. It showed a girl draped in white, with long dark hair that tumbled nearly to her waist. Her bare arms were outstretched and imploring, as if pleading to be rescued from the tangle of green that surrounded her. Her flesh was pale, her eyes sunken. It was like some vital spark was drained from her.

“Christ,” Pierce muttered.

“You think Smalls drew this?” Cohen asked him.

Pierce studied the drawing, his eyes on the terror in the child’s face. “If he did, he’s one sick bastard,” he said.

8:07
P.M.
, September 12, Interrogation Room 3

“Remember the drawing, Jay?” Cohen said. “The one in the drainage pipe. Of the little girl?”

“Yes.”

“She looked like Cathy, remember? Same age. Long dark hair. Did Cathy … pose for that drawing, Jay?”

“No.”

“But it was Cathy, wasn’t it?”

“No.”

“Okay, fine, but tell me this. Why did you draw this little girl in that long white robe? I was just wondering how you got the idea to dress her that way. Were you ever around people who were dressed like that?”

“No.”

“Never lived in any sort of institution?”

“No.”

“All right, but I have to go back to the drawing, Jay. Because the thing is, my partner thinks the little girl in the robe is Cathy. He thinks you had your eye on Cathy. He thinks you’d had your eye on her for quite some time. She played in Dubarry Playground, after all. Not far from the tunnel.”

Smalls leaned forward and lowered his face into his open hands.

“Is my partner right, Jay?”

Smalls straightened himself again. “I’d seen her before, that’s all.”

“Tell about the times you’d seen her.”

“I already have.”

“Let’s go over them again.”

“Where do you want me to start?”

“When you saw her.”

“The first time?”

“Yes.”

“I saw her in the playground, that’s all. With other kids. She comes there on Sunday afternoons. With her mother. I’ve seen her there several times.”

“Always with her mother?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, but one time you saw her when she wasn’t in the playground, right? You know the time I mean, don’t you? The one you told us about.”

“Yes.”

“Tell me about that incident.”

“She left the playground.”

“And went where?”

“They have some benches. Outside the fence.”

“And you were sitting on one of those benches?”

“Yes.”

“When was this?”

“A few days before it happened. Before someone … hurt her.”

“And she saw you, right?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, where were you when Cathy saw you?”

“Sitting there. On one of the benches.”

“Just minding your own business.”

“I wasn’t hurting anybody. I was just …”

“Watching the children in the playground.”

“I wasn’t hurting anybody,” Smalls repeated emphatically.

“Okay, let’s get back to Cathy. This time she left the playground and sat down near you. She was near you, right?”

“Yes.”

“How far away would you say?”

“She was on the bench across from me.”

“Did you talk to her?”

“No.”

“What did she do after she saw you?”

“She didn’t do anything.”

“She just kept sitting there?”

“Yes.”

“For how long?”

“Just a few minutes.”

“Then what?”

“She went back into the playground.”

“So, why do you think she left Dubarry Playground in the first place, Jay?”

“Maybe there was a man. Like I said before. A man in the playground.”

“Some guy who scared her.”

“Yes.”

“Because this guy was creepy, or something like that.”

“Yes.”