“It won’t be long now before we have enough to charge her.”
“You’ll be the first to know when we do, Wonicke.”
“We’re bringing her in again tomorrow. She’s gonna crack sometime. They always do.”
More than once, someone mentioned Devlin’s obsession with the case. With Ruth. Pete learned that Devlin had photos of her pinned on the wall over his desk: dozens of them.
“He’s like my kid sister with her pictures of the Beatles.” This was a skinny Irish cop called O’Shea. “Maybe he just wants to screw her.”
They all laughed, and then one of the others, an older guy, shook his head. “Naw. She ain’t his type. He wants her put away for this. I heard he got called in to see the chief about the overtime bill. And that he said he’d work late for no pay.”
He looked at the others, shrugged. “That’s what I heard, anyway. You seen him: he’s like a dog worrying at a bone. He ain’t gonna give up until she’s behind bars.”
Every place she went, Ruth was at the center of the room. At first he thought it was because of who she was, because of what had happened to her. Then he realized it was because of who she’d always been. It was how she looked. How she carried herself. In those bars, next to the suburban moms and the tired divorcees heading for forty, she glowed. There was something about her that made it impossible to look away.
When she danced, she moved and stretched and rippled in a way that showed off her body, keeping her eyes on the men in the crowd, making sure their eyes stayed on her.
Friedmann kept telling him: add just enough color to make the story memorable. Ruth had enough color for neon and stained glass and Christmas. Pete didn’t need to make her up, all he had to do was follow her and take a picture with his pen and pad and his memory, and there she was: Kodak-bright on the page.
When she had danced enough to sweat out the alcohol, and the flashing lights were showing her strained face and dead eyes, she pushed her way to the bar or waved to a passing waitress and ordered another round of drinks, and another. It was as if she couldn’t bear to be sober, even for a moment.
And as it grew late, she chose one guy and fixed all her attention on him so that she didn’t have to go home alone.
Same thing the next night. She was never alone.
The hostess at Callaghan’s told Pete she’d known Ruth for years, since it was still the Four Seasons, since Kennedy was alive. She was short, heavy, with platinum curls and disappointed lines running from each corner of her mouth. Her eyes flickered from the door to the bar to the register.
“Oh sure, I liked her. She was a good worker. And she had something about her. She could sit down with anyone, a bunch of suits, anyone. And within five minutes, she’d have them laughing, ordering cocktails. She was bright. A real live wire.”
She shook her head. “When I first heard about this, I didn’t believe she had anything to do with it. I mean, I could never really see her as a mother, the way she was, the way she looked.”
She shrugged. “Still.”
She stubbed out her cigarette and lit another. And then, “But afterward. Well, she was back here four days after they buried the boy. So drunk she couldn’t stand straight and flirting with every guy in sight. And no tears. Nothing.”
She blew out a long plume of smoke, her lips a sticky pink O. “I changed my mind about her after that. The next day I called her, two, three times, to ask when she was coming back to work. I figured—she can go out and enjoy herself, she can come into work. Right? She never called back.”
She shrugged. “So the boss told me to send her a check for two weeks’ pay, tell her she was being laid off. And now look at her.”
She nodded toward Ruth, moving slowly on the dance floor, arms raised, eyes closed. “I mean, what kind of mother behaves like that?”
Ruth’s car was in the shop for a week, which made trailing her harder. He got into the habit of parking on the corner around seven each morning, before his shift began, waiting for her to come out. If she turned onto Main Street, she was grocery shopping. If she kept going toward the expressway, it meant she was catching a bus.
One morning she came out dressed in a neat blue suit, low heels. Not shopping, then.
It was August 20. Five weeks since the kids were reported missing.
The bus came and she took a seat in the middle, by the window. Pete sat two rows back, on the other side of the aisle.
She didn’t seem to notice him. Didn’t seem to notice anyone. She just held her handbag on her lap, a cigarette between her listless fingers, her head turned toward the smeared glass.
Pete could smell stale sweat, hair lacquer, the damp pantyhose of the woman next to him who had slipped off her shoes.
The bus ground to a sighing halt and the door opened.