Lady in the Lake(81)

She sat up in bed. “That’s a huge story.”

Ferdie grabbed her arm as if she might bolt for the door. “No, Maddie. No. You can’t write about this. They’ll know it was me.”

“You gave me the tip about Ludlow.”

“That was different.”

“How?”

His gaze slid away from hers. “A dozen people could have told you about that. And no one knows about us.”

Maddie thought about Diller’s staring at her malevolently in the city editor’s office.

“If no one knew about us then, then no one knows about us now. That hasn’t changed. This is sensational stuff. The mother covering up her son’s crime.”

“She’s not trying to cover up for anybody. She’s trying to save her own neck. And the son’s going along with it, so far.”

“Could I say that police have identified the long-elusive accomplice?” She was already writing the story in her head.

“No, Maddie.” His voice was sharp, almost a shout. “This information has been held very close. They’ll know it was me. You cannot write about this.”

“But—Tessie Fine was my murder. I found her.”

He got up, began to dress. He usually waited until she was asleep to go.

“I don’t know what it is about you and dead people, Maddie, but it’s getting out of hand. Can’t you find another way to get ahead?”

“Can’t you? You’re the one who wants to be a homicide detective, after all.”

“Do you even see how much this means to me? I joined the department almost ten years ago. There’s no place for me to go, not really. Or there wasn’t until Pomerleau started a month ago. It’s going to change, Maddie. It’s been dirty, a place where Negroes can’t advance. I know you know what it feels like to have a dream. I’d never do anything to get between you and yours. You cannot take this information out of this room.”

“It’s in my head now. It’s not like I can forget it. It goes where I go.”

“You know what I mean. You can’t tell anyone. Look, if I find out there’s a break, if they’re on the verge of arresting her, something like that—I’ll tell you. Until then, you cannot write about this.”

She said carefully, “I won’t write anything about the police developments.”

“Don’t be cute, Maddie.”

“I’m not,” she said. “I promise you—I won’t write anything that could be linked to you.”

Not even eighteen hours later, she knocked on another mother’s door.





November 1966





November 1966



What were you thinking? Maddie was asked frequently in the weeks that followed her visit to the home of Angela Corwin on the afternoon of November 1. Is that question ever really asked in an open-minded, non-accusatory way? Is one ever asked, What were you thinking? as a prelude to a compliment? Maddie thought not. Still, she told the truth, more or less:

“I thought Mrs. Corwin might talk to me, mother to mother, in a way she had not talked to police detectives.”

It was true. True enough. She had rationalized that if she could get Mrs. Corwin to confess to her, or at least make a little slip, then she had not violated Ferdie’s confidence. She wasn’t really sure that Ferdie would see it that way, but she believed she could persuade him this was so, eventually. The son had spoken to her. Why not the mother? Maddie had found the body of Tessie Fine. She had gotten the killer to tell her a detail he had omitted in the police interview, the very detail that had led to the hunt for his accomplice. People kept stealing her story—stories. This one would be hers.

And, at first, it seemed to be going so well. Mrs. Corwin was a tiny woman with lovely manners. “Oh, yes, I remember your name,” she said. She invited Maddie in, asked her if she wanted tea or coffee. She brought out a plate of cookies, bakery cookies. “From Bauhof’s in Woodlawn,” she said. “They make Silber’s look like trash.” Maddie helped herself to one, a pink-and-white refrigerator cookie. It was outstanding. If she lived closer to Woodlawn and still entertained, she would have served them to guests and pretended they were homemade.

“I love my son,” Mrs. Corwin said, “but you know he’s quite mad. Insane. But they won’t let him enter an insanity plea. They don’t want the information to get out.”

“The information?”

“About the experiments at Fort Detrick.”

“Ah, yes, Bob Bauer wrote about that. Operation Whitecoat.” She didn’t point out that this meant that information had gotten out, that the world now knew—and didn’t care—about the germ experiments.

“He was a conscientious objector. We’re Seventh-Day Adventists.” She sipped her tea. “We don’t mind Jews, though.”

Maddie could not tell if that assurance was meant for her, Tessie Fine, or both of them.

“So there’s no doubt in your mind that your son did kill her.”

“I wouldn’t want to gossip about Stephen with a stranger.”

“In his letters to me, he didn’t admit guilt. I hear now he’s trying to plead to manslaughter and they won’t have it because he hid the body.”