Little Deaths(42)

More laughter. Then, as it quieted down, Quinn spoke again.

“Anyway, so the guy this morning? He says, ‘Why are you telling me this?’ I could tell the boss didn’t know what to say. I didn’t either. Then the guy asks, was there anything else? Like telling him he just had a child killer in his office ain’t enough!”

“Jesus H. What’d the boss say then?”

“He said, ‘We thought you should know, sir.’ ”

The blond cop laughed. “I like that. Sir.”

“I know, right? Then the guy said, ‘What do you expect me to do about it?’ Like we told him there was a rat in his fucking garbage. Like this wasn’t nothing to do with him.

“So the boss leaned in real close. Said, ‘Maybe you don’t understand what kind of person she is. Maybe we haven’t made it clear.’

“The guy finished his coffee, stood up, and said, ‘You’ve made yourselves perfectly clear. Thank you for coming in. And now, if you’ll excuse me, gentlemen, I have another meeting.’ ”

“Holy shit.”

Henriksen nodded. “Un-fucking-believable.”

“And that was that. Before we can get another word in, we’re out on the sidewalk like a coupla clowns, just looking at each other. Know what the boss said? He said, ‘That guy thinks he’s done his good deed for the year. Thinks he’s got the moral high ground. But every man has his limit, and I’m going to find his. When I do, Quinn, they’ll both be sorry, him and that whore.’ ”

Pete looked at their hard faces, their narrowed eyes. Watched as they straightened their shoulders against her.


The next day, he got Janine to call Beckman’s firm, to tell them that the paper was writing profiles on executives working for companies in growth areas. She rolled her eyes but Pete smiled at her and promised to take her to lunch.

When she hung up, she read her shorthand back to him. Beckman was in his early forties, had been with the company nine years. He’d left his wife and kids in Delaware when he transferred to New York six months earlier.

Over the next few weeks, Pete went back to Long Island City several times. Beckman took Ruth out to lunch once or twice a week, seemed to like her. They always went to the same restaurant, always ate at twelve-fifteen. One afternoon, Pete came in behind them, asked to be seated around the corner from their table. She couldn’t see him from her seat, but Pete was close enough to hear how she was with Beckman. They talked mostly about work, once about a movie they’d both seen. He seemed to rely on her. To trust her.

Pete watched them leaving together, watched how her hips moved beneath her skirt. How the sun caught her hair and burned it golden as she turned. And how her face changed completely as she gazed up at him. She looked lighter somehow, the lines and shadows smoothed out, and her eyes bright.

Pete had other assignments, but he made sure he was in the restaurant by noon most days, always within earshot of their table but out of sight. He told himself he was following developments in the case, but after a week or so he knew it had become something more. He missed her on the days he couldn’t get out there.

In mid-September, Beckman told Ruth that his contract had been confirmed for two years and he was going to move out of the temporary apartment the company had found for him. He said he needed more space.

A few days later, she told him she had something for him. Pete could hear her fumbling in her bag and, curious, risked walking past them to the restroom. She was handing over a furniture catalog. When he returned to his seat, Beckman was leafing through it.

He said, “I don’t know where to start with this stuff. Helen usually does all of this. Whatever I choose, it won’t look right, and I’ll be left staring at drapes and a sofa that I hate.”

There was a pause, and Pete thought of Beckman’s tired eyes, the way he frowned when he spoke. He never knew what Ruth saw, what passed between them during that pause, but he heard the warmth in her voice when she replied.

“I could help. If you’d like me to.”

Pete thought it was just a way of filling another day. But it went further than that. The following week they went shopping together. Then Paul Beckman took her out for dinner to thank her, and afterward, he invited her up. Pete parked behind the cop car and watched Beckman’s apartment for an hour, trying not to imagine what was going on up there. Unable to tear himself away until the lights went out and it was clear she wasn’t leaving that night.

Sure, he’d heard all the rumors at the station house, all the jokes—and he had the memory of her parted lips, her wide eyes, as she looked at him on the day her son was put in the ground—but this was something else. This was a bereaved mother and a married man. Devlin was right about her. There was something rotten underneath the sweetness.

He didn’t know what the cops did after that, but he drove home and opened one beer and then another, and wrote until his head ached.


MALONE CASE: MOTHER MAINTAINS SILENCE

By Staff Reporter Peter Wonicke

QUEENS, Sept. 20–The strawberry blonde at the center of a Queens double murder case today refused to comment on rumors that she is conducting a relationship with a married man.

Mrs. Malone, who is separated from her husband, reported her two children missing on July 14. Some hours later the body of little Cindy, age 4, was found lying in a weed-strewn lot not far from the apartment where Mrs. Malone has chosen to remain.