Scott was in the chair next to her. She could just make out the smell of his expensive cigars beneath the cigarettes that the rest of them were chain-smoking. Across from her was Devlin and, next to him, a thin-faced guy she had never seen before. Carey, Caruso—something like that. He had a furtive look, like a rat.
There were four people in the room, but it was just her and Devlin as far as she was concerned.
He leaned forward, his eyes drilling into hers, pressing deeper until she felt him inside her head. She struggled to push back. To keep him out. To keep her thoughts her own.
Without taking his eyes off her, he held out his hand so that the rat-faced man could place a manila folder in it. He laid the folder on the table between them and opened it. Spread out the photographs that were bundled inside like a dealer at a card table. And all without taking his eyes off hers.
“Look at them, Mrs. Malone.”
She couldn’t look away from his face. If she looked away, he would see it as a sign of weakness.
“Look at them, please.”
She heard Scott’s voice, as though from a distance. “I really must object to this. My client . . .”
She blocked him out, kept her eyes on Devlin’s.
“LOOK AT THEM!”
His voice, his fist on the table, made her jump: shock made her pull back, look down.
At first, her mind couldn’t make sense of what her eyes were seeing. There were leaves, shadows, twigs. Then she made out a shoe. And a foot inside it. What she had taken for a slender branch was a leg. What she had thought was a knot in the wood was a bruise.
She reached out and stroked it gently. She’d seen that bruise when it was a raw scrape, still bleeding. She’d bathed it with warm salty water, she’d dabbed iodine on it. She’d held it firm as it wriggled to escape from the stinging. She’d kissed it better.
She kissed her fingertip now, pressed her mouth to the warm pink skin and felt the heat of herself and the blood pulsing beneath, and then she pressed her kiss into that flat cold leg.
She closed her eyes for a brief moment and then looked at the next picture. At an arm that was dark with something that was not shadow. At a fall of hair, white against the grays of the grass it was spread over. At the torn fabric of a pale gray shirt that should have been neither pale nor gray but the bright blue of a summer sky.
Her eyes moved faster, skittering over the pictures to the background rhythm of Devlin’s voice, the noise of it rising as her gaze floated from photograph to photograph, and falling as her eyes fell on another shoe. On a pattern of leaves. On a close-up of something white and soft. On the blurred image of curled fingers.
She reached the end, kept her head bowed, felt Scott’s hand on her arm, heard his gentle voice breaking into Devlin’s harsh one. She could not hear their words. Could not speak.
She pressed her lips together, shook her head to clear it of noise. The voices fell silent and then, in the space that followed, she heard Scott say clearly, “My client needs a break.”
And she shook her head again, because a break would mean standing. It would mean leaving this room for another one much like it. It would mean deciding whether or not she wanted coffee, or needed to visit a cold tiled bathroom under the hard eyes of a female officer.
While staying still would mean she could keep her arms wrapped around herself. Could stay inside herself. Quiet. Safe.
Until Devlin leaned forward and jabbed with his words so that they broke through—and then his voice was pushing, pushing, and there was nowhere to hide.
“What happened to your children was a tragedy, Mrs. Malone. We’re very close to making an arrest. Very close.”
His breath on her skin like a lover.
“We know you didn’t do this without help. No one heard a car at your apartment that night, so whoever he was, we know he parked a distance away. It would have taken two people, or a strong man, to get the children out of your apartment and carry them that distance. We want to get that man, Mrs. Malone. And we need you to help us put him away. We can give you immunity if you help us put him away.”
A pause.
“Or would you rather go to prison for him? Think about it, Mrs. Malone. Think about being locked up for years for a crime that someone else committed.”
She listened to the rise and fall of breath in the room, to the rise and fall of the tape as it clicked around, and she thought about being shut away. About not being able to walk outside. Not being able to dance. To drink. To laugh. About not being able to breathe.
“Don’t you want to help us, Mrs. Malone? If you say nothing, we’ll be forced to conclude that you’re not interested in getting justice for your children.”
She tasted the word and it was bitter. Justice wouldn’t bring Cindy and Frankie back. A conviction for murder couldn’t raise the dead. So what did any of this matter?