The Unknown Beloved(82)

Dani told her aunts Malone was taking her to the picture show after dinner. Lenka looked so tickled and Zuzana so stricken that Malone almost confessed, not sure which reaction alarmed him most. But Dani couldn’t very well tell them the truth, so they left the house at seven thirty, too early for the eight o’clock show at the Olympia, but it worked as an alibi.

“Don’t wait up,” Dani told them, and Malone studiously avoided looking directly at either aunt.

Dani was excited, her cheeks bright and her back so straight it didn’t touch the seat. He did his best to give her an idea of what he thought she could expect, and when they pulled up in front of city hall, he didn’t bring her in through the entrance but circled around the massive edifice to an unmarked side door, where Ness was waiting, having a smoke, just as they’d planned.

He didn’t make introductions—that could happen inside—but Ness glanced at him as she stepped past, a darting look of bafflement, and Malone knew what he was thinking. Dani wasn’t at all what Malone had led him to believe.

They were met by Cowles in a room filled with a long conference table stacked with boxes marked with case numbers, and Malone shrugged off his overcoat and took Dani’s, tossing them over a chair.

“How do we want to do this, Miss Kos?” Ness asked. “The victims are numbered, and we don’t have evidence—not clothing, at least—from all of them. Do you have a preference for the order or way in which we proceed, and do you mind if David and I take notes?”

“Uh, no. Of course not. I’m sure Michael will as well. He has a penchant for lists.” She blushed as if she’d said too much. “But I would actually prefer . . . not to know which victim the item was found with. I don’t want to know anything that might cause me to make . . . assumptions about what I’m seeing. I would really rather not know anything at all.”

It was a good idea. Malone should have thought of it himself.

“The case numbers won’t give that away,” Cowles said. “And I haven’t organized the evidence, as I wasn’t certain about how we would proceed. It’s all just . . . here.” He indicated the boxes. “We’ll be able to cross reference what the items are after you have a look, so that we know which victims we’re dealing with.”

“So . . . just garments?” Ness asked.

“Leather. Burlap. Cloth. Anything fabric,” Malone instructed. “Just let her hold on to it for a minute and give us her impressions. I’ll jot down what she says and put a description and a case number notation along with it. You and David can do the same if you like. But I’ll be taking my notes with me, for my own reference.”

“Let’s proceed then,” David said, the expression on his face an indicator that he didn’t expect much. Malone’s stomach twisted, but he took a seat and accepted the pad of paper and the pencil Eliot offered him. Dani remained standing beside him.

Her cap of red-gold hair, parted at the side and waving to her shoulders, was in deep contrast to the icy blue of her dress and the deep red of her lips. Her hands were clasped behind her back, drawing the eye to the shape of her bust and the pale length of her throat. She didn’t stand that way for effect, he knew. It was her habit, a way to avoid touching what might distract her.

Eliot cleared his throat but took a seat at the head of the table, steering clear of the boxes. David Cowles remained standing as well, across from Dani, and pulled the first box toward him. He picked through it, pushed it aside, and moved on to the next. He placed a pair of plain white underpants on the table—Malone knew immediately which victim they’d been found with—and read the case number off, his voice ringing with discomfort.



Dani didn’t want to embarrass Malone. She knew he’d put himself in a vulnerable position. The two men wouldn’t believe her, and he would bear the brunt of that disbelief. She would simply go back home to her life and her work, but this was his life and work, and yet here he was, sitting beside her, waiting for her to do her voodoo, as he liked to call it.

She reached for the pair of panties, her face hot and her fingers cold. She pressed the fabric between her palms and, like a stone dropped in a pool, allowed her own thoughts to ripple away and the cloth in her hand to pull her under.

“She never wore these,” she said at once.

“Who?” Ness asked.

She thought she knew; she’d read Michael’s lists, though now she wished she hadn’t, but she wasn’t getting the name from the cloth. “I don’t know,” she said truthfully.

“They were found with Florence Polillo, Victim Number Three,” Cowles told Ness.

“David,” Malone grunted.

David looked baffled, and Dani continued, searching the fabric for something more. “She put them in her coat pocket when she left home. She thought she might need them. But they were . . . new. She never wore them.”

“How do you know that?” Cowles interjected. “You aren’t even looking at them.”

“David, if you can’t shut up, we’re going to go. Okay?” Malone snapped.

His eyes widened. Michael hadn’t clarified what she could do, obviously, and the tension in the room was already palpable.

“People—all people—have an essence.” She attempted a brief explanation. “Like a . . . signature scent. The things they touch, especially for a long period of time, absorb that essence. You smoke in a room once . . . it fades. You smoke in a room every day? That scent never leaves.”