Little Deaths(22)

Pete shook his head. “And in this heat.”

He ordered more coffee. Two slices of pecan pie with ice cream.

“All those interviews get you anywhere?”

“Well, I can’t . . .”

“Oh, no. I didn’t mean specifics. I just meant . . . you know, generally. Is it going well?”

Quinn shook his head. “Just the usual. A few suspicious wives, couple of stories about the creepy guy in the next building. There’s always a lot of that kinda thing. But still, everything’s got to be checked, cross-checked, eliminated.”

“How are the parents holding up? Got to be real tough for them.”

“The father’s in pieces. It’s hard to see a man like that.”

“What’s he like?”

“He’s a nice guy. Just . . . normal, you know? Ain’t too bright. He wants to believe they just climbed out of the window and ran off. That the girl was . . . that it was an accident. I don’t think he gets it. Maybe it’s the shock. Or he’s a little slow.”

Pete thought about the photograph he’d taken of the stroller beneath the kids’ window. Even if someone else had pushed the large baby carriage across the grass with the box on top, two small children couldn’t have opened the window and taken the screen off.

Their desserts arrived and they chewed in silence for a few moments. Then Quinn said, “Yeah, the father’s a nice guy. But the mother, well, she’s something else.”

“She was there? That night?”

“Yeah. Says she checked on the kids at midnight, went to sleep at three-thirty, four. Found they were missing in the morning. And there ain’t no one to contradict that since she separated from the father.”

“How long they been separated?”

“Almost a year and a half. Since last spring. And believe me, she’s making the best of it. Makeup, clothes, all that. She don’t look how a woman should look when her kids go missing. She works nights. Two little kids and she’s a waitress in some goddamn bar.”

He shook his head, scooped up another spoonful of ice cream and rolled it around his mouth.

“And the apartment was a mess—a ton of empty liquor bottles in the trash. There was brandy on her breath at eleven in the morning. Turns out she’s got a record as well. We’ve had guys from the station at that address a few times. Noise, drinking, all that.”

Pete exhaled slowly. “Jeez. That’s not right.”

“That ain’t all. She had a suitcase in her bedroom full of letters. From men. Not just her husband—lots of men. And they weren’t talking about the weather, if you get my drift.”

Quinn stared ahead for a moment, drumming his fingers on the table.

“My boss”—he nodded toward the door—“he took her to see her daughter’s body yesterday. Wanted to get a straight-up reaction from her, he said. And there was nothing. Nothing till she saw the goddamn reporters. And even then—no tears. She fainted for the cameras but she never cried, not when she saw the girl, and not afterward.”

He took a gulp of coffee.

“The sergeant wants us to keep an eye on the mother. Dig down some. He thinks there’s something there, and if we keep digging, we’ll find it.”

Pete looked at him, at his narrowed eyes, his set jaw, at his hand on the table. His fist clenching, unclenching.

Quinn finally left to go back to the station house and the statements. Pete stayed where he was, stirring his coffee, thinking about Mrs. Malone. About the letters Quinn had mentioned, the liquor bottles in the garbage. It seemed pretty clear she was worth investigating. His first big story, and maybe it would be over before it had begun.

Then he shook his head, gathered up his notebook and headed for the door. Even if it fell out that this was an open-and-shut domestic—no big mystery, no front-page headlines—he still had a job to do. He could still follow Friedmann’s guidelines, could still learn something here. And maybe he could start to carve out a name for himself as a half-decent reporter.

With that in mind he followed Quinn back to the station house. There was a different guy on the front desk to the one who’d given him the name of the coffee shop. This one had mean eyes and a twist to his lip that made it look like a permanent sneer and when Pete asked to see Devlin, he just raised an eyebrow and said, “Who wants him?”

“My name’s Wonicke. It’s about the Malone case.”

The guy yawned and scratched his armpit, then reached for the phone. “You got some information?”

“Uh . . . yeah. Yeah, I do.”

The hand paused and the guy looked him up and down.

“Why don’t you tell me and I’ll make sure it reaches him.”

Unable to think of a lie fast enough, Pete flushed.

“It’s . . . I just need to speak to him.”

The hand drew back from the phone and the guy pulled a pile of paperwork toward him.

“Well, Sergeant Devlin is pretty busy right now, what with the case and all. He can’t just see everyone who drops by. You change your mind, Mr. Wonicke, or you . . . remember what you wanted to pass onto him, you come back and let me know.”

He turned his attention to the papers in front of him. Pete gave up, went outside. He lit a cigarette and looked at his watch. His deadline was coming up: he’d have to work with what he had. Devlin could wait.