Little Deaths(24)

She walked, forgetting where she was going, why she had come out. One foot in front of the other, ignoring other feet, voices, flashes of light, car horns.

And all the while, the rhythm of her feet trod out the rhythm of endless stories, endless possibilities, each one a vivid picture of what might have happened to Frankie.

She looked up, realized she was outside the store and remembered that she needed coffee. She took a wire basket, went inside, recoiled from the strip lighting.

Her feet took her along the aisles and she put things in her basket: a blue box, a can with a green label, a white carton.

She kept walking, kept picking things up and putting them in the basket, because this was what people did.

She kept going. She trod away the pictures of Frankie’s tearstained face, his terrified voice. And she waited for each new one to rise to the surface.

She reached the checkout and saw the girl’s mouth form words that she couldn’t hear, and she nodded and reached for a bag. Then she saw what she had put in the basket. Animal crackers. Chocolate milk. Cindy’s favorite cereal.

And her hand stopped and her breath stopped and all sound stopped.

She was dimly aware of someone’s arm around her, and a chair and the too-loud tick of a clock. Of voices and a phone ringing in the distance, and then of Frank arriving: the familiar smell of him, the hot seat of his car, the quiet of the apartment. He brought her a glass of water and she stared at it and then at him.

“I wanted coffee,” she said. “I’m out of coffee.”


Finally, Cindy was given back to them. And then it was nine in the morning on another sweltering July day and they were in the chapel of St. Theresa’s. Small, intimate, and ninety-three degrees inside. Ruth stood near the coffin: protective, eyes downcast under the veil, Frank so close she could feel the heat coming off him, hear each ragged breath he took before raising his face to a new mourner. He thanked them so that she didn’t have to, so that she could keep her head bent, could stay still and perfect. Black dress, white skin, red lips.

Only Gina, slipping in late, found a weak spot and let a little daylight into Ruth’s thoughts.

She felt a hand on her arm and a squeeze, a rough friendliness that interrupted the polite press of the others. She stared at the hand, with its bitten cuticles and cheap rings, and she couldn’t look up because she knew that the understanding in Gina’s face would break her. She felt tears threaten and began to panic and, in her confusion, she turned away from Gina toward the coffin, and was shocked again at how small it was. At how white and smooth and perfect it was, at how pretty the silver handles looked. If Cindy’s dollhouse had come with funeral home accessories, this coffin would have been the centerpiece.

A sound escaped Ruth’s throat then, and she swallowed down the sob, the lump that was lodged there. That seemed to satisfy Gina, and she gave a final squeeze and moved on. Ruth kept her head down and watched her feet walk away: thick tan ankles with a gold chain that Mick had given her; dark blue heels scuffed at the back; that familiar heavy wiggling walk.

After the mass, the slow steady drive to the cemetery. Limousines like a caravan of ants bearing a tiny load. Ruth sat in the first car, between Frank and her mother, feeling the dampness of her stockings and the sweat pricking her upper lip.

The grave was still raw—a small hole lined with something bright and green, as though it was going to be a display of oranges in a grocery store. A mound of earth and two men leaning on spades a distance away, standing in the cool shade of a tree, waiting to throw dirt on top of her daughter. She stared down into the hole while Father O’Brien spoke.

As they turned to go, she saw that a space had been left beside the grave and she realized that, if they found him, Frankie would lie beside Cindy. Her daughter had been alone in death for almost two weeks. But if they found him, Frankie would be with her and he could look after her, as he had always done.





7


There were two articles on Pete’s desk when he got in the next morning, neither of them related to the Malone case. The copy editor’s blue pencil meandered from line to line like snail tracks. He poured himself a cup of coffee, stirred in three packets of sugar and started typing, but his thoughts kept drifting to Devlin; to Quinn, talking about Mrs. Malone. To Ruth Malone herself.

It had been sixteen days since the kids had been taken and the girl found dead, and there was no real news—about who’d killed her, about her missing brother. The police had released a statement saying that Cindy had been strangled, but giving no other details. All the papers could print was a rehash of names, ages, dates; where she’d been found; a description of Frankie and what he’d been wearing the night they disappeared; speculation about what had happened.

Fluff, Friedmann called it. They were just keeping the kids in the public eye. They were all waiting for the next thing.

And that morning the next thing happened.

The phone rang. Pete looked up automatically and saw that Janine was watching him as she answered. She turned away slightly, cupped her hand around the receiver. He started to pay attention.

Then she put the caller on hold, ignored his hissed “Hey, what’s . . .” and trotted over to Friedmann’s office. It must be something big: she didn’t even want to risk being overheard putting this one through. Her tight skirt meant she could only take small steps, but she was scurrying fast enough that Pete pushed his proofs aside and turned to a blank page in his notebook.