“Bitch did it. No doubt.” That was a guy with the nose of a drinker and a drooping eyelid that looked like a wink. “You seen how she looks coming in and out of the station—face all made up and hair done. She’s never cried for ’em. Not once.”
The rest nodded sagely, lit cigarettes, sipped coffee from paper cups. Pete thought about that blaze of hair, those wide eyes. Wondered why she hadn’t even pretended to cry, to pull the grieving mother act. Wondered what was going on there, under the surface.
Still thinking, he stuffed his notebook into his pocket and turned away, wiping the sweat basting his forehead, feeling for a breeze. So he was the first one to see the police photographer come out of the trees. The guy’s face was white and he was staggering a little, and then Pete knew.
The photographer leaned against a parked cruiser and bent to get his breath, or to be sick. Pete moved quickly, put a hand on his shoulder, and said, “You look like you could use this.” Gave him a cigarette. The photographer took it with a shaking hand, waited while Pete lit it for him. As he inhaled, a little color flushed his waxy skin.
He was looking at Pete, but his eyes were wide and glazed and Pete realized he was still seeing some of what he’d left behind in the trees.
“I did two tours in Korea. But this . . . this . . .”
Then he lifted his hand to his face for a second and covered his eyes. Pete bowed his head in sympathy but kept watching him.
“That poor fucking kid. Only . . . well, he ain’t a kid anymore. His arms are gone, his neck . . .” He swallowed hard. “Animals pulled him apart. And the heat, the doc said.”
Pete felt the hairs stand up on his neck and arms, and the metallic tang of nausea filled his mouth.
The photographer took another long drag on the cigarette. “He looked like a piece of wood. That’s what I thought when I saw him laying there. Just a black shape on the ground. His face . . . I thought at first he was a fucking log. And the smell. Jesus . . .”
And then the photographer did throw up, and Pete backed away, feeling his throat constrict. He looked at the cops coming out of the clump of trees with the same greenish pallor as the photographer, the same dazed expression, at the men from the coroner’s van conferring in low voices, and at the ambulance men going in, carrying gallon bottles of alcohol—for the maggots, he guessed.
And he wondered how the hell he was going to convey the pity and the horror of this death. And how he was going to make the people of Queens feel his rage and his disgust that a child should become an object of revulsion.
Pete’s piece made the morning edition, though with so many changes he couldn’t recognize his own style. And the Courier, the Star, and The Times were all leading with the same story. But even so, it was something. It was the first time his byline had been on the front page. It was a start.
He spent the next couple of days around 72nd Drive, working on follow-up pieces. He weaved in and out of the teams of uniformed cops in the neighborhood, keeping one eye out for Devlin. The uniforms were working their way door-to-door for the second time, looking for witnesses. What had been horrifying just a few weeks before had already become routine.
“Anything suspicious, sir, doesn’t matter how insignificant it might seem, please call us . . . no, you won’t be wasting our time, ma’am . . . yes sir, terrible business. Thanks, folks . . .”
He watched them show a picture of Frankie and Cindy at each house, watched them wait with patient, tired faces while people stared at those innocent smiles and tutted and unconsciously touched the heads of their own curious children, peeping around legs and doors at these real policemen. Then they handed back the pictures. Shook their heads and took the cards with the precinct address and the public telephone number. They knew nothing. They’d seen nothing. They’d heard nothing.
Pete was emerging from one apartment a few minutes’ walk from 72nd Drive, when he saw two officers knocking at a door across the hallway. The woman who opened it seemed flustered: her plump hands patted her dyed red hair, tugged at her bright pink housecoat, flapped at the air around her face. She gave her name as Mrs. Gobek, and she never met their eyes all the time Pete stood there; shook her head before they even showed her the pictures. No, we never saw anything. Never heard anything. My husband and I live very quietly, we like to get to bed early.
The door closed and the two cops looked at each other and shook their heads. They moved on, and Pete went to sit in his car, lit a cigarette, and read over his notes.
The neighbors were keen to talk about the family. About the parents’ separation.
“Ten years ago, we didn’t get people like the Malones in this neighborhood. Divorces and such. I moved here from the city for some peace and quiet. And now look what happened.”