“He shook my hand and he introduced me to the blonde next to him. Donna. Or Dana, I don’t really remember. It was the other girl, Donna’s friend. She was the one I was interested in.
“She was something else. Really, something else. Meyer and the blonde were draped all over each other, she was shrieking and giggling and he was feeling her up under the table. But Rusty was . . . she was different. Quiet. We just talked, that night. Talked and drank Meyer’s champagne, and danced.”
He emptied his glass again.
“Rusty . . . She even danced different from most women—she let her hands lead, then her shoulders and her hips. She was like white ribbons in the dark.”
He fell silent again, and Pete couldn’t think of how to break it. Finally Salcito sighed and said, “That was it, that first night. I was . . . I don’t know, it was like I was bewitched.”
He laughed. “Jesus Christ, listen to me. Course I wanted to fuck her, but somehow . . . I just wanted to watch her move. Watch her laugh. Took me four days to work up the nerve to call her. I remember thinking she might not even remember me.
“But she did. She sounded like she was happy I called. I took her to dinner—someplace nice. Fancy.”
He poured and drank. His eyes and his imagination were somewhere else.
“We flirted. She would lean forward, touch me on the arm when she was talking. I remember . . . I could smell her perfume. She was wearing stockings and I could hear the silk rustling whenever she moved. This tiny soft noise. It was driving me crazy. And she knew it.”
Pete imagined the scent of her skin. That subtle whisper whenever she crossed her legs. The arch of her tiny foot.
“We went back to her place for a drink, and I was . . . well, I was respectful. I took it slow. I’ve been with married girls before and I guess I thought . . . even though she flirted, I thought she might be a little shy. When it came down to it.”
He shook his head. “But she wasn’t like that at all. She was incredible, the way she responded. The way she moved, the words she used. She was like an animal. And the difference between the way she was in public, all neat and controlled, and the way she was in bed . . . she was like a different woman. Incredible.”
The bottle was two-thirds empty.
“But there were things that bothered me.”
Pete waited.
“The way she would only fuck in the dark. Even when we’d been together a while. She never wanted me to see her. Soon as we’d finished, she’d slide away and she’d be in the bathroom before I could turn on the light. She’d come out fully dressed, makeup perfect, and pour us another drink.
“And when we went out for dinner or to a bar, we’d walk down the street afterward and I’d take her hand but she’d never let me kiss her outside of her apartment. She’d dance with me, tease me, touch me—but she’d never kiss me in public. I never understood that.”
He poured and drank. There were tears in his eyes.
“There were so many things about her that I never understood.”
Pete leaned forward.
“What about the kids?”
Salcito looked up.
“You think she did it? You think she killed ’em?” Pete held his breath, waiting for the answer.
Salcito shook his head. “I don’t know. She hardly mentioned them. They weren’t . . . I saw them a few times—went to pick her up and they’d be there. Read ’em a story once while I waited for her to finish getting ready. She yelled at ’em for spilling something, for not hurrying along to bed. But it was just normal mom stuff.”
He shook his head again. “Shit, I don’t know. Like I said, there were things about her that I never understood.”
“You called her that night, right? The night the kids went missing. You called her at, what, around midnight, and then again at two a.m.? That right?”
Salcito half-laughed, shook his head again. “Jesus, I was drunk that night. I thought Ruth wanted to finish things with me and I got drunker than I ever been before.”
“But you did call her? You told the cops you called her, that you spoke to her the first time, that there was no reply when you called the second time.”
He shook his head again. “I could have talked to the pope and St. Francis that night an’ I wouldn’t have remembered. Who the fuck knows what I did?”
Pete leaned back in his chair. So Ruth could have been home that night after all. They couldn’t prove she wasn’t there.
And Johnny Salcito had no alibi either. He couldn’t prove what he was doing at two a.m. any more than she could.
Pete waited a moment and then he asked, “Did you tell Devlin about all this? How you met her, how long you’d known her?”
Salcito looked at him through bloodshot eyes. Then he laughed.
“Did I tell Devlin? That’s funny.”
He poured another drink. Took a gulp.
“The day the kids went missing—that same fucking day—I went to him. Told him I knew her. That I really knew her.”