Little Deaths(46)

“No, I don’t.” Verging on insolent.

The click of a lighter. The drawing of breath.

“And what about the plate of leftover macaroni in your refrigerator? Did a neighbor put that there too?”

“What? What the hell is all this? I just told you, I don’t remember what else I fed them that week. Maybe there was pasta left over from the day before or from the weekend. I. Don’t. Remember. Why does all this matter? Why aren’t you out there looking for the person who killed my kids? There’s some crazy guy out there killing children and you’re asking me questions about goddamn macaroni!”

“Because right now, Mrs. Malone, I’m talking to you.” A pause. “You said . . .” More rustling: Devlin, flicking through his notes, although Pete had a feeling that Devlin remembered exactly what she had said.

“. . . uh-huh, here we are . . . you said in your initial statement that you stopped at Walsh’s Deli on your way home on the thirteenth because—and I’m quoting here—‘There was nothing in the apartment for dinner.’ Why would you do that, Mrs. Malone, if there was a plate of macaroni in the refrigerator?”

She was silent.

“Why, Mrs. Malone?”

“I don’t know, okay? I don’t know what you want me to say. I must have forgotten the macaroni was there.”

Devlin took a soft breath, almost imperceptible. There was a gentle click—perhaps he was laying down his pen before speaking.

Pete could almost see him, hunched over the table, leaning toward her. Getting closer. Circling and smelling her fear.

When he spoke, his voice was low and measured.

“You bought veal, a can of string beans, milk, the day your children disappeared. At Walsh’s Deli on Main Street. And you fed those items to your children that evening for their last meal.”

“I told you, I—”

“So what would you say, Mrs. Malone, if I told you that the autopsy on your daughter found undigested pasta in her stomach?”

And as Devlin pounced, Pete could hear him relishing the panic and confusion that was surely painting her face.

“What? I don’t understand. I—”

“Undigested pasta, which you fed both your children on the evening they were killed. Very shortly before they were killed. The autopsy shows that your daughter was dead less than two hours after she ate. This story about feeding them veal, about checking on them at midnight—none of it’s true, is it, Mrs. Malone?”

Pete could hear complacency in his tone.

“It was such a stupid lie to tell. Didn’t you know we could prove what she ate, when she ate it?”

Pete saw her as she had been that night in Callaghan’s, facing down the two detectives by the bar. Wide-eyed and white-faced, other than two spots of angry color high on her cheekbones.

There was a pause: he imagined her eyes skittering across the desk, frantic, looking for a way out.

And then suddenly she seemed to collect herself. Her voice was firm.

“I fed my children veal on the evening of July thirteenth. Veal and canned beans and milk. And I checked on them at midnight and they were asleep. That’s the last time I saw them and they were alive. They were fine. Just like I said, Detective.”





11


The tape stopped and Pete turned on the lamp. Devlin was right: the lie about the food was a stupid one.

And from everything he’d seen and heard, Ruth Malone was not a stupid woman.

He could almost hear Friedmann’s voice in his head, leading him. And? Where does that take you? She’s not a stupid woman. She wouldn’t tell a stupid lie.

Of all the things to lie about, why had she chosen this? The autopsy report said that Cindy had eaten pasta for her last meal. Devlin had found a box of macaroni in the garbage and a plate of pasta in the fridge. Confronted with this evidence, why was she so insistent that she’d fed them something else?

As with her made-up face and her lack of grief, the lie gave Pete the feeling there was something below the surface that he didn’t understand. Something that Devlin wasn’t aware of.

Just before dawn, Pete drifted into an uneasy doze and woke again at eight. He dressed quickly and tiptoed along the hall to the bathroom he shared with the guy in 5A. Quentin—Pete never knew if it was a first name or a last name—was a retired professor of theology from England. He sounded like James Mason and played crackling recordings of Churchill’s wartime speeches on a tinny gramophone, and sometimes he yelled out in the night. In the mornings Pete had to step around the empty gin bottles lined up by his door.

He washed and shaved, then gathered his notes and photographs together, got in his car and drove for a while, trying to clear his head. His mind kept returning to the same questions: What if she’s telling the truth? And then: What if Devlin’s wrong about her?

He drove toward Ruth’s apartment, pulled onto 72nd Drive, and parked behind a single police cruiser. Although the crowds were gone, there were still a couple of reporters sniffing around. Over two months since the murders and it was still news. She was still news. He leaned back and smoked two cigarettes while he tried to figure out what to do.

And then came what he’d been waiting for, without knowing it.

A cab pulled up and Gina Eissen emerged. She was wearing a wrinkled dress a size too small and dark circles under her eyes. As she reached back inside for her coat and then fumbled in her purse to pay, Pete got out of his car. Gina flinched at the sound of his door slamming, but she didn’t look up. He leaned past her and handed the driver a five-dollar bill.