Pete could hear complacency in his tone.
“It was such a stupid lie to tell. Didn’t you know we could prove what she ate, when she ate it?”
Pete saw her as she had been that night in Callaghan’s, facing down the two detectives by the bar. Wide-eyed and white-faced, other than two spots of angry color high on her cheekbones.
There was a pause: he imagined her eyes skittering across the desk, frantic, looking for a way out.
And then suddenly she seemed to collect herself. Her voice was firm.
“I fed my children veal on the evening of July thirteenth. Veal and canned beans and milk. And I checked on them at midnight and they were asleep. That’s the last time I saw them and they were alive. They were fine. Just like I said, Detective.”
11
The tape stopped and Pete turned on the lamp. Devlin was right: the lie about the food was a stupid one.
And from everything he’d seen and heard, Ruth Malone was not a stupid woman.
He could almost hear Friedmann’s voice in his head, leading him. And? Where does that take you? She’s not a stupid woman. She wouldn’t tell a stupid lie.
Of all the things to lie about, why had she chosen this? The autopsy report said that Cindy had eaten pasta for her last meal. Devlin had found a box of macaroni in the garbage and a plate of pasta in the fridge. Confronted with this evidence, why was she so insistent that she’d fed them something else?
As with her made-up face and her lack of grief, the lie gave Pete the feeling there was something below the surface that he didn’t understand. Something that Devlin wasn’t aware of.
Just before dawn, Pete drifted into an uneasy doze and woke again at eight. He dressed quickly and tiptoed along the hall to the bathroom he shared with the guy in 5A. Quentin—Pete never knew if it was a first name or a last name—was a retired professor of theology from England. He sounded like James Mason and played crackling recordings of Churchill’s wartime speeches on a tinny gramophone, and sometimes he yelled out in the night. In the mornings Pete had to step around the empty gin bottles lined up by his door.
He washed and shaved, then gathered his notes and photographs together, got in his car and drove for a while, trying to clear his head. His mind kept returning to the same questions: What if she’s telling the truth? And then: What if Devlin’s wrong about her?
He drove toward Ruth’s apartment, pulled onto 72nd Drive, and parked behind a single police cruiser. Although the crowds were gone, there were still a couple of reporters sniffing around. Over two months since the murders and it was still news. She was still news. He leaned back and smoked two cigarettes while he tried to figure out what to do.
And then came what he’d been waiting for, without knowing it.
A cab pulled up and Gina Eissen emerged. She was wearing a wrinkled dress a size too small and dark circles under her eyes. As she reached back inside for her coat and then fumbled in her purse to pay, Pete got out of his car. Gina flinched at the sound of his door slamming, but she didn’t look up. He leaned past her and handed the driver a five-dollar bill.
“That cover it?”
The driver nodded, tapped a finger to his forehead, and pulled away.
When Pete turned to Gina, she was still rummaging in her purse. Came up with a cigarette and a lighter that she clicked uselessly. He gave her a light and finally she looked up and met his eyes. Her skin was dry and her lips chapped.
“What do you want?”
“I need to talk to you.”
She shook her head, backed away. “Uh-uh. I seen the things you wrote. The way you talked about her. I got nothing to say to you.”
“Wait. Listen.”
She kept walking.
“Please. I’m sorry.”
She stopped.
“I’m sorry.”
She turned and stared at him. “What about?”
He took a step toward her. Then a second. She didn’t move.
“I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, and . . .” He didn’t know how to keep going.
She just stood there, weight on one hip, blowing smoke at him.
“Maybe I was wrong.”
“About?”
“About Mrs. Malone. About everything.”
She almost spat her words out. “You got that right. You were wrong. You are wrong. About everything.”
“I need your help to fix it.”
She frowned. “Why should I help you?”
“I guess . . . I’m all you’ve got right now. I’m all Mrs. Malone’s got.”
She raised an eyebrow. “That’s it?”
He nodded toward the nearest building, asked her, “Mind if we sit a while?”