City Dark(37)

“Do you remember when they stopped seeing each other?” Mimi asked.

“It was early October, last year,” Linda said, confirming everything Zochi had suspected. They talked all the time. Like friends. “We didn’t approve. Joe was much older, but he seemed like a nice man. She always went for men who were older.”

“I see,” Mimi said. She also seemed to sense that mother and daughter were tight. “Mrs. Rossi, did your daughter talk to you about the relationship?”

“She did, yes. Like I said, we didn’t approve. He was very good to her, but . . .” She trailed off.

“It’s okay to tell us,” Mimi said. “I hope you understand why we need to know.”

“Joe drank,” Linda said, as if throwing a phrase aside she no longer wanted to think about. “She tried to help him with it, but it didn’t get better. She ended the relationship last fall because of it. She said Joe took it very well, though. I can’t imagine he would hurt her. I mean . . .”

“We don’t know anything for sure,” Mimi said and gave a nod to Zochi, as if to hand things off to her.

“That’s right,” Zochi said. “We’re looking at everything. Did you ever meet Joe in person?”

“Once,” Linda said. “He came to the house for a Labor Day block party. He was nice.”

“Respectful,” Sal said to no one in particular, as if he had reflected on it for some time.

“Yes,” Linda said. “It was awkward, though, and he knew it. He’s closer in age to us than he is to—” she lurched forward and gripped her stomach. For a moment Zochi thought Linda might throw up, but that didn’t happen. She just doubled over and sobbed.

“It’s okay,” Mimi said, just above a whisper. Sal put a hand over his eyes and heaved quietly. “It’s okay.”

Linda seemed to pull herself together and sat up straight.

“I’m sorry,” she said. Sal swiped his face with a big hand, as if wiping the tears back into his head.

“Please don’t be,” Mimi said. “We’re so sorry to be asking these questions. We just want to find the person who did this to your daughter.”

“This other case,” Sal said, “Joe’s mother? We don’t know anything about her, but has it been in the news, like our Hallelujah’s case?”

“Not prominently, no,” Mimi said, and Zochi could tell she was stepping carefully. No one in KCDA or the NYPD wanted the press to connect the two cases yet, but it was inevitable. There had been some small takes already from crime-beat writers in the local papers about an old woman, probably homeless, found on the beach at Coney Island.

“But . . . an old woman?” Sal asked. “I mean, the city isn’t like it used to be. That kind of thing doesn’t happen much, does it?”

“Well, no,” Mimi said, “but—”

“Was she at home?”

“She wasn’t,” Mimi said, looking to Zochi like she was unsure of what to say. “We don’t know where she lived. She was estranged from Joe. I’m not sure if you knew that. They had not seen each other in many years.”

“We didn’t know much about him,” Sal said with a shrug. He looked over at Linda for confirmation.

“No, not much,” she said. “Halle talked to me about Joe but not about his family. Really what she told me was that he didn’t have a family. He had an uncle he was close to, but he died a long time ago.”

“That’s our understanding also,” Mimi said. “He has a brother, a few years older. We’re talking to him too. Again, we don’t know if the cases are connected, but we’ll do everything we can to find out,”

“Thank you,” Linda said. Her brow knitted, like something had just occurred to her. “There was a message left, right? Something written on the wall above her bed?”

“There was,” Zochi said. Another thing clear to her was that Linda, not Sal, led this couple in everything they did. “There was her name and then some letters. The spelling of the name, though—”

“You mean ‘Holly,’” Linda said. “Like the Christmas plant.”

“Yes. H-O-L-L-Y. I’ve been referring to her that way.”

“Everyone called her Holly,” Linda said. “She didn’t like her real name. People had trouble spelling it, even saying it, sometimes. Hallelujah.”

“I know that feeling,” Zochi said.

“Well, we shortened it to Halle, like H-A-L-L-Y, but she goes by Holly. Her friends call her that. Well . . . called.” She swallowed audibly and stared as if into the barrel of a gun.

“Do you know if Joe called her Holly?” Zochi asked. Her detective haunches were up. She didn’t want to seem like she was interrogating Linda, but this seemed important.

Linda seemed to mull it over. “You know, he didn’t. He liked calling her by her real name. I remember Halle telling me once, he thought it was special. Hallelujah. We thought so too.”

“It’s a lovely name,” Mimi said. “Different.”

“It was in my family,” Sal said. “She had a hard time with it, I guess.”

“For almost everyone, it was Holly,” Linda said, as if to close off any reminiscing or discussion about the naming of Hallelujah or what it could possibly mean now. “For Joe, though, it was Halle. There was a difference in how he pronounced it.”