This, then, was grief. It came to her as heaviness. It came as a stone in her throat, preventing her from swallowing; as a pressure behind her eyes, forcing out tears; as a weight in her stomach. It meant that she could not breathe. That she could not have a single moment of not remembering.
It was with her every moment and it fed on her pain and it would not be satisfied. Sometimes she sat up at night with it, cradling it, placating it, but it would not be soothed. It was black and hungry and huge like a screaming mouth and it became bigger and deeper the more she focused on it until it filled up her mind and there was no room at the edges for thoughts or for words, for food or faces or whether she was thirsty or tired or needed to take a shower: only this vast, expanding blackness.
And inside it: the loneliness, the loss. She had no means of orienting herself. The only thing she knew was that this would never end.
Everything came to her through the gray haze of grief. She saw her hands reaching for a lipstick, or a pencil, and they were alien and clumsy because she could not see them clearly for grief. She swallowed coffee and the nibbled corners of things and they were bitter through the grief-taste that lay thick on her tongue. Voices were muffled, finding their way down through the weight of her grief, and her throat was choked with it. She had learned simply to shake her head when the voices paused or rose into questions. No, she did not want to eat. She did not want to lie down. She did not want to pray. To be touched. All she could do was hold Cindy’s stuffed rabbit in her curled claw hands, her pain wrapped by her curled rocking body. There were no words that could console her. This was her suffering, and her bones and her breath had become grief.
And into this place of grief came Devlin. With his steady voice, which carried no emotion. With his steady gaze, sharp and observant as a bird’s. Always watching.
August 10. Twenty-seven days since the children were taken.
Pete was working on other assignments, but the Malone case was always there, like a nagging headache, always at the back of his mind. He read over the bulletins every morning, spoke to the guys on the crime desk, hung around the station house after work. A couple of times he’d buttonholed Quinn at the diner. It all amounted to the same thing: there was no new evidence.
He was heading out of the office, thinking about a bar and a baseball game on the tube and a couple of cold beers, when a figure appeared in front of him.
“Con.”
“I want to talk to you, you little shit. You took my story. The dead kids—that should have been mine.”
“You weren’t here.”
“I was away one more week!”
“It was Friedmann’s decision.”
Con took a couple of steps forward, his fists clenched by his sides. “Sure. Sure it was. And you didn’t want it, right? You didn’t push it?”
“What do you want me to say? Look, Con, it’s too late now. I got the story. That’s it. Something else will come up soon, and you’ll get that.”
“Fuck you.”
“You would’ve done the exact same thing.”
That brought Con up short.
“Yeah. Yeah, I would. And you know why? Because I’m good at my job. Because I got experience, and contacts, and I know how to write a fucking story. You? You’re just a college kid who’s way out of his league. You’re a dumb nobody. Fuck you.”
Pete watched him walk away and felt the words burrowing under his skin. And so instead of heading out to a bar, he went home and thought about the case. He needed something to justify Friedmann’s decision to give him the story: a new angle or a new hook. Just as he was falling asleep, an idea came to him.
He was at the office by seven-thirty the next morning, typing up articles, making calls, checking facts. Waiting. And just before noon, Horowitz came in, his face tired, his jacket slung over his shoulder. Pete hadn’t seen him in weeks: he’d been in court following the progress of the fraud trial. Pete stood and cut him off before he reached his desk.
“Busy?”
Horowitz shrugged.
“Want to get lunch?”
“Sure.”
They headed out. Halfway across the parking lot, Pete turned to face him.
“You know I’ve been working on this case about the murdered kids? Frankie and Cindy Malone?”
Horowitz pulled out his smokes.
“I heard, yeah. Read a couple of your pieces.”
Pete let himself be sidetracked.
“You did? What did you think?”
“Not bad. Your style could use a little polish. You repeat yourself. But not bad at all.”
Pete tried to stop the grin spreading across his face. Focused on the question he wanted to ask.
“The guy leading the investigation—Devlin—you know him, right?”
“Yeah, a little.”
Pete stayed quiet, and then Horowitz asked: “How did you know?”
“When I bumped into you in the files, the first day of the case, I dropped a photo of him. It could’ve been anyone. But you made him for a cop.”
Horowitz nodded. Shrugged.
“Yeah, I know him. So what? I’ve been a crime reporter for thirty years. He’s a cop. New York ain’t that big.”
“Can you get me a meet?”
Horowitz raised an eyebrow and Pete spoke quickly. “I just want to meet him. Get a feel for the guy.”