Little Deaths(72)

She kissed her fingertip now, pressed her mouth to the warm pink skin and felt the heat of herself and the blood pulsing beneath, and then she pressed her kiss into that flat cold leg.

She closed her eyes for a brief moment and then looked at the next picture. At an arm that was dark with something that was not shadow. At a fall of hair, white against the grays of the grass it was spread over. At the torn fabric of a pale gray shirt that should have been neither pale nor gray but the bright blue of a summer sky.

Her eyes moved faster, skittering over the pictures to the background rhythm of Devlin’s voice, the noise of it rising as her gaze floated from photograph to photograph, and falling as her eyes fell on another shoe. On a pattern of leaves. On a close-up of something white and soft. On the blurred image of curled fingers.

She reached the end, kept her head bowed, felt Scott’s hand on her arm, heard his gentle voice breaking into Devlin’s harsh one. She could not hear their words. Could not speak.

She pressed her lips together, shook her head to clear it of noise. The voices fell silent and then, in the space that followed, she heard Scott say clearly, “My client needs a break.”

And she shook her head again, because a break would mean standing. It would mean leaving this room for another one much like it. It would mean deciding whether or not she wanted coffee, or needed to visit a cold tiled bathroom under the hard eyes of a female officer.

While staying still would mean she could keep her arms wrapped around herself. Could stay inside herself. Quiet. Safe.

Until Devlin leaned forward and jabbed with his words so that they broke through—and then his voice was pushing, pushing, and there was nowhere to hide.

“What happened to your children was a tragedy, Mrs. Malone. We’re very close to making an arrest. Very close.”

His breath on her skin like a lover.

“We know you didn’t do this without help. No one heard a car at your apartment that night, so whoever he was, we know he parked a distance away. It would have taken two people, or a strong man, to get the children out of your apartment and carry them that distance. We want to get that man, Mrs. Malone. And we need you to help us put him away. We can give you immunity if you help us put him away.”

A pause.

“Or would you rather go to prison for him? Think about it, Mrs. Malone. Think about being locked up for years for a crime that someone else committed.”

She listened to the rise and fall of breath in the room, to the rise and fall of the tape as it clicked around, and she thought about being shut away. About not being able to walk outside. Not being able to dance. To drink. To laugh. About not being able to breathe.

“Don’t you want to help us, Mrs. Malone? If you say nothing, we’ll be forced to conclude that you’re not interested in getting justice for your children.”

She tasted the word and it was bitter. Justice wouldn’t bring Cindy and Frankie back. A conviction for murder couldn’t raise the dead. So what did any of this matter?

Devlin’s voice broke into her thoughts, as he went on telling the story of this man.

“Maybe you stayed in the other room while he did it. While he silenced them. While he took them outside. Maybe all you’re guilty of is taking another hit from the bottle and turning the radio up. Is that how it was, Mrs. Malone?”

She bowed her head. He knew nothing about guilt.

He knew nothing about leaving your kids home alone or with a teenage sitter while you went out to work eight hours on your feet in a pair of heels that rubbed, serving drinks to assholes who thought they were buying the right to paw you with every round. He knew nothing about leaving your sleeping children while you went to meet a man who would pay you for your company because your daughter needed shoes. He knew nothing about sending your kids to bed on half-empty stomachs, trying to fill them up with water, adding a drop of whisky to make them sleep—because if you let them eat, there’d be nothing for breakfast and your deadbeat husband’s checks kept bouncing.

He knew nothing about coming home from a twelve-hour shift, having held the image of their faces in front of you the whole time, holding onto the sweet smell of their skin as you wiped vomit from your shoes, as you picked cigarette butts out of a half-full glass. And then stepping through the door and hearing the noise of them: the screams and shrieks and the endless demands, for food and for attention, and feeling that just the fact of them—their spilling, their pulling and grabbing and needing—made you want to hand the sitter all the money you had in your purse and beg her to stay. Or if there was no money, or no sitter, just walking out anyway because you were so damn tired, and you just needed a little time alone. A little peace.

This man had no idea about any of this. None of these men did. They got paid men’s wages and they had wives to deal with the noise and the mess, with Jimmy’s problems at school, with little Susie who wouldn’t eat her vegetables, with the baby who just wouldn’t stop crying.

They knew nothing of guilt. They were not mothers.





16


Ruth click-clacked along the sidewalk, heading for her car. She was showered, dressed, made up. She had rubbed lotion into her hands, hooked her earrings into place. She had drunk coffee, walked the dog, tucked a spare sanitary napkin into her handbag.

It was the week before Thanksgiving, a cold shining day. She lifted her head to feel the sun on her skin. She hadn’t heard from the cops in three days. No phone calls, no visits.