The Interrogation

by Thomas H. Cook

  4:22 A.M., Interrogation Room 3

  Cohen closed the Murder Book. No more questions about Cathy Lake, he told himself. No more questions about Smalls’ past either. With so little time left, none of that mattered.

  The awful truth cut through his mind. Smalls is going to go free. If Pierce found nothing in Seaview, then in little more than ninety minutes, Smalls would be released into the city, to prowl its parks and playgrounds, looking for a child.

  So what was left? Cohen asked himself desperately. What could he do in ninety-eight minutes that he had not been able to do during the last ten hours? Only one possibility occurred to him. He might trick Smalls the way Smalls had tricked him earlier, get him talking mindlessly. About his goddamn feelings. The whole self-loathing act. All that bullshit about thinking of himself as slime. If he could convince Smalls that he was buying any of this, Cohen thought, then maybe, just maybe, he could pry something out. A single guilty morsel that might be enough to slam the cell door on Smalls for a few more days.

  “I’m not going to ask you any more questions about Cathy, Jay,” he said, keeping his speech measured, holding back the anger. “Her murder, or anything about her. So just take Cathy out of your mind. Can you do that, Jay?”

  “I’ll try,” Smalls said meekly.

  “Good, because I want your mind clear to think about what I’m going to say to you.”

  “It’s hard not to think about the little girl. I know you think I hurt her.”

  “Don’t be so sure of that,” Cohen told him, choking back his rage, his fierce need to jerk Smalls from his chair, slam him into the wall.

  “I know you think I hurt her,” Smalls repeated, his tone, to Cohen’s ear, dripping with false innocence. “Everybody does.”

  “Yeah, but I want to talk about you, Jay,” Cohen insisted. “Your future, I mean.”

  Smalls lowered his eyes delicately, let the lids flutter. “I don’t have a future.”

  “Sure, you do,” Cohen said.

  “No, I don’t.” He offered a short sigh. “I never had a future.”

  Cohen leaned in close. “Listen, Jay. There’s a way out for you.” He felt Smalls’ breath on his face and itched to pull away, rush to the bathroom down the hall, scrub the very scent of him from his skin. But instead, he tenderly pushed back an errant strand of Smalls’ long, dark hair. “You can’t give up on yourself, Jay.”

  “I already have.”

  “Listen to me,” Cohen said intently. “You can decide what happens to you.”

  “I know what’s going to happen.” Smalls’ voice fluttered, gossamer thin, in the air between them. “I’ve always known.”

  “What? What’s going to happen to you?”

  “I’ll be arrested again.”

  “For what?”

  “Murder.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Anytime a child is murdered, I’ll be arrested for it.”

  “Why are you so sure of that, Jay?”

  “I’m sure, that’s all.”

  “But why?” Cohen repeated emphatically.

  Smalls gave no response, but Cohen caught something move like a small candle across the otherwise motionless features of his face. “Is it because you’ve been arrested before?”

  Smalls remained silent.

  “Accused before? Is that why you won’t tell us anything about your past?” Cohen’s eyes probed Smalls’ unrevealing features. “Jay, have you been accused of murder before?”

  Smalls said nothing.

  “Of the murder of a little girl?”

  Smalls glanced away.

  “Is that what you thought I’d found out?” Cohen pressed. “That you’d been accused before?”

  Smalls returned his gaze to Cohen and the detective saw the figure of a child who was soon to die. And on that image his strategy died, his frail hope of finding a new way into Smalls, tricking him. There was no way to trick Smalls, he knew now, no way to cut through his mask of sorrow and self-pity and misfortune. Smalls was the better actor, and always would be. How long had he concealed his sickening impulses? How long had he crept through parks and playgrounds, slithered among the children he found there? Arrested perhaps, or at least accused. But free again in minutes, hours, days. Free to return to his sleazy fantasies, seek a living child upon whom to act them out.

  “And after we let you go, you’ll be accused again,” Cohen said grimly. “Cathy wasn’t the first. And she won’t be the last either, will she?”

  Smalls remained silent.

  “Have you already picked her out, Jay?” Cohen taunted, knowing Smalls would give no answer. “The next little girl you plan to kill? Do you already know her name?”

  4:24 A.M., Phoenix and Cordelia

  “Laurie, her name’s Laurie.” Eddie was not sure why he was talking about his daughter, save that Siddell Carting Truck 12 was edging toward his own neighborhood. “If you look all the way down Phoenix, you can almost see my apartment. That’s where Laurie is. Sick, like I said. A fever.” He fished in his pants pocket and pulled out his father’s battered railroad watch. “We’re a little ahead of schedule. What do you say I wheel to the left and drop in on her? Check in, that’s all.”

  “Fuck no,” Siddell said.

  “Come on, Terry. Two minutes.”

  Siddell looked at Eddie stonily. “No way. I want to get this fucking night over with.”

  And so Eddie guided Siddell Carting Truck 12 past Phoenix and on down Cordelia, cursing himself and Terry Siddell and vowing that no matter what, he would spend some time with Laurie when she recovered, maybe a whole day in the park, just Laurie and himself, and maybe Charlie, who’d tickle her and make her laugh in an easy, lighthearted way Eddie never could. More than anything, that was what he wanted, to see Laurie’s head tilt back in laughter the way she always did when Charlie was around. Eddie had no gift for that, he realized, no gift for anything but work. He could lift and haul, but what else could he do? Nothing. Nothing at all. He couldn’t even afford a birthday gift for Laurie, who was sick and had a fever and could use a nice present. He felt a searing shame wash over him, ashamed of losing his wife, ashamed of the filthy clothes he wore, but more than anything shamed by the pathetic lie he’d told Mrs. Wilson about having a “real nice” present for Laurie. There was no present, and certainly nothing “real nice.” What did that mean anyway? How could he ever get his daughter anything truly nice? No, her present would be like everything else he’d ever bought her. It would be cheap, used, something with the shine already worn off it, a threadbare rag from the Salvation Army. “Real nice.” He felt a terrible sting of humiliation. Poor provider, he thought, now concentrating on the other children Laurie encountered in the park, well-dressed, playing with nice new toys, while she was dressed in hand-me-downs.

  4:32 A.M., Dunlap’s Collectibles

  Dunlap had to blink to convince himself that the figure before him was real. “What are you doing here, Burt? What’s going on?”

  “Let me in,” Stitt said icily.

  Dunlap drew back the door and Stitt quickly stepped into the darkened interior of the shop.

  “What’s going on?” Dunlap repeated.

  “What’s going on?” Stitt said edgily. “I just got a visit from a cop. And not just any goddamn cop. Fucking Thomas Burke. The Chief himself.”

  “Burke came to your place?”

  “That’s what I said, didn’t I?”

  “Why?”

  “Asking about who it was I had that fight with. The one I told you about. Had a picture of the hophead, wanted to know if this was the guy. I said, yeah, that’s him. Fucking hophead, grabbing stuff, spilling shit, throwing chairs. How did I know the bastard was Burke’s kid?”

  “It was Burke’s kid grabbed your stuff?” Dunlap asked worriedly. “Oh, Jesus.”

  “Shit,” Stitt said. “If I’d known that hophead was Burke’s kid, I’d have given him a few bucks and been done with him. Written it off, you know. Business expense
. Now I got the old man himself snooping around, asking questions.”

  “Jesus,” Dunlap murmured almost to himself. “Things is getting all fucked around here.”

  “So, bottom line, I got to get out of town,” Stitt persisted. “Fast. So where is it?”

  “Where’s what?”

  Stitt stared lethally at Dunlap. “Don’t fuck with me, Harry.”

  “Why would I do that, Burt?”

  “To save your ass, that’s why,” Stitt snapped. “This is a lot more serious than you think, Harry. You fuck around with this, and you could end up …”

  Dunlap shrank away, a line of fear scraping like a claw down his spine. “Take it easy, Burt,” he said. He nodded toward the rear of the store. “Come on back, I’ll pour you a drink.”

  “I’m not going nowhere.”

  Dunlap offered a tense snicker. “What do you think, Burt, I got cops waiting for you back there?”

  “Where’s my money?”

  “It’s safe, believe me,” Dunlap assured him. “I got everything taken care of.”

  “It better be,” Stitt warned. “You got no idea what lengths I’ll go to.”

  “You don’t have to be thinking that way, Burt.”

  “One more time. Where’s my fucking dough?”

  Dunlap forced a smile. “It’s safe. In Titus.”

  “Titus?” Stitt cried. “What the fuck’s it doing in Titus?”

  “I took it there. So it would be safe. But it’ll be here in just a few minutes. My dumb-ass cousin’s bringing it in.”

  “It was never supposed to leave here, Harry. That was the deal.”

  “I know, Burt,” Dunlap soothed. “But things come up, you know?” He eased backward, urging Stitt toward the rear of the shop. “It’s on its way though, believe me. We can have a drink till my cousin gets here.”

  The two men headed toward the back of the building, Dunlap trying to decide if he should gently touch Stitt’s back, do something to calm him down. But by the time he’d made the decision that maybe that would not be a good idea, they’d passed through the back curtain.

  “So,” Dunlap said, “how you doing, Burt?”

  Stitt glared at Dunlap. “You got till six,” he said.

  4:38 A.M., Route 6

  To break the long silence that had fallen between them, Pierce said, “Something has to be in that shed.”

  “What if nothing is?” Yearwood asked.

  “Then I’ll go back to the city.”

  “And do what?”

  “The only thing I can do,” Pierce said, though the very thought of it sent an ache through his soul. “Wait until he kills again.”

  “Are you so certain he will?”

  “They always do. Costa would have done it again.” Costa was in his face, blubbering about Bedford Street. Pierce saw his arm lift, his finger point through the billowing fog and beyond it, to where the pier stretched out into the river, a path slick with spray and shrouded in fog. He heard his voice, its icy malice. That way’s Bedford.

  “If he’d lived,” he added now in a tone that Costa’s death had done not one thing to warm.

  4:47 A.M., Dunlap’s Collectibles

  Stitt’s eyes shot toward the front of the shop. “What the hell is that?”

  Dunlap gave his arm a reassuring pat. “Relax, Burt. It’s my cousin, who else could it be?” He offered his broadest smile. “Relax, will you? Everything’s fine, believe me.”

  He marched to the front door of the shop and opened it. “So, I guess you didn’t—” He stopped and stared straight into the eyes of Thomas Burke.

  “Hey, Chief, what are you—”

  “When was the last time you saw my son?”

  Dunlap paused, speechless, then said, “I don’t know for sure.”

  “Did you see him a week ago last Tuesday?”

  Dunlap thought a moment. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I seen him that day. Had that big rain, right? Yeah, I seen him last Wednesday. Scottie come after dark. I let him in and he went back to his … spot, I guess you’d call it.”

  “What did he look like?”

  “Wet,” Dunlap answered. “Muddy.”

  “Did he have anything to sell you?”

  “No.”

  “His room,” Burke said. “Have you cleaned it out yet?”

  Dunlap thought fast, fear digging like a spur in his mind. “Well, yeah, I did. I cleaned it out right after I heard he was in the hospital. Not that there was much to throw out. You know. Just some old clothes. I tossed it all.” He scratched his jaw and cocked his head. “You looking for something in particular, Chief?”

  “No,” Burke said quietly, then turned and moved back among the shadows of Cordelia Street, a shriveled figure, or so it seemed to Dunlap, hollowed out somehow.

  “So, where’s your cousin?” Stitt demanded as Dunlap pushed back through the curtain.

  “It wasn’t Ralph,” Dunlap told him. “I just got the same visitor you did.”

  “Burke?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What’d he want?”

  “He wanted to know if I’d seen his kid a week ago Tuesday.”

  “Why would you have seen his fucking kid?”

  “’Cause he beds down here once in a while.”

  “Here?”

  “In the back,” Dunlap said. “Anyway, I told him yeah, I seen the kid. And what’s more, he looked like shit. All wet and muddy. Like he’d been left out in the rain.” He sniggered with mock delight. “Then the fucking guy wants to know what I did with the kid’s shit. Threw it out, I told him. I mean, what else could I do, invite him back here to take a look for himself?” Another laugh burst from his mouth. “Let him find you here? Jesus, can you imagine that, Burt?”

  Stitt’s brow knit in concentration. “Week ago Tuesday,” he said grimly. “That’s the day that kid was iced in the park.”

  “So what?” Dunlap said with a dismissive wave of his hand.

  “I knew it. That fucking cop figures that hophead son of his had something to do with it. The murder.”

  “Scottie? Why would the Chief think that?”

  “’Cause the bastard was around when it happened,” Stitt replied. “When we had that fight in the lobby. That kid saw the whole goddamn thing.”

  “Jesus,” Dunlap yelped.

  “Burke probably figures that son of his iced that fucking kid.”

  Dunlap dropped onto the sofa, wrung his hands. “You figure Scottie would do something like that?”

  “He was a fucking hophead!” Stitt shrieked.

  “Yeah, but I don’t know, Burt. Scottie didn’t seem like no—”

  “What the fuck do you know how he seemed? You should have seen him that day. Grabbing my briefcase. Out of his mind, the fucking bastard.”

  “You didn’t tell me nothing about him grabbing the case.”

  “Who cares what I told you or didn’t tell. The main thing, you better get rid of any crap he left behind, because the old man is poking around into that killing.”

  “What would he be looking for, Burt?”

  “What they all look for. Some guy to pin it on. That fucking cop knows his son snuffed that kid, and now he’s looking to pin it on somebody else. It’s how they think, the fucking cops.”

  Dunlap’s eyes widened in blank terror. “Somebody to pin it on? You mean, like … me?”

  “Any fucking body. But if I were you, I’d dump whatever shit you got of that kid’s. And I mean pronto.”

  Dunlap snapped to his feet. “Yeah, okay, Burt.” He rushed into a cramped adjoining room, scooped up the smelly mound of clothes Scottie Burke had left there, hauled it outside, and dumped it beside the curb.

  “Them fucking clothes was filthy,” he said when he returned inside. He slapped his hands together. “That kid lived like a fucking rat, you know?”

  Stitt snatched a magazine from a pile beside the sofa. “They all live like rats, fucking hopheads.”

  Dunlap sank down on the sofa beside
him, still wiping his hands. “But, Burt, you really think Scottie killed that little girl?”

  Stitt idly flipped a page. “He was out of his fucking mind that night, that’s for sure.”

  “Jesus,” Dunlap breathed. He thought a moment, then added, “But, murdering a little girl, Burt. Was he that nuts?”

  Stitt shrugged. “All I know is, a guy gets desperate enough, he’ll do anything.” He dropped the magazine on the floor, placed his hand on Dunlap’s thigh, and squeezed cruelly. “Remember that, Harry,” he said coldly. “In case you got any ideas about fucking with my money.”

  Why?

  4:52 A.M., Titus, AJS Storage, Unit 27

  The gate was open, just as Dunlap had said it would be, but this gave Blunt no confidence that anything else would go according to plan. And so for four minutes he sat behind the wheel, staring at the open gate, not plotting his next move but thinking about the money, what he would do with it. He’d buy Millie some trinket, he decided, cheer her up a little. Suzy too. Something shiny. But what he really wanted was a new car, sporty, that made a guy look swell when he drove it, the kind of car that took pounds off your body and years off the calendar and caused a good-looking girl to glance your way when you cruised by. A peculiar happiness drifted over him at the thought of being behind the wheel of a sleek number, and he realized that it was all pretty simple, what a man wanted, just not to look like a fucking loser. He didn’t care if the girl never strolled over to the car, got in, never went with him to some hotel. It would be enough that she’d glanced his way and didn’t instantly make him for a nobody. Okay, a shiny new car, then, he decided, worth the risk. And so he hit the ignition, pressed down on the accelerator, passed through the open gate of AJS Storage, then followed a snaking gravel road that petered into a dead end before a line of wooden sheds.