"May I have your attention, please? Please, may I have your attention, there are a few things I need to say." He was not shouting, but he pitched his gravelly voice with a sharp volume that filled the room and reached into the adjoining doorways, and gradually faces turned in their direction and the battering pandemonium began to die down. Children were hushed, kitchen pans stopped crashing, and the assembled residents of Tyler's Road turned to hear what this necessary evil, this representative of oppression, wanted of them.
"Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Alonzo Hawkin. This is Casey Martinelli. As I'm sure you all know by now, we were sent down from San Francisco to coordinate the investigation into the murders of the three little girls whose bodies have been found in this area. I'd like to thank you all for coming down to Tyler's. I know—I have seen—what an inconvenience it is for some of you to get down here, but it is saving us a great deal of time, and after all, time saved may mean a life saved."
He had their full attention now. A small baby began to whine, and the mother settled it to her breast without taking her eyes off Hawkin.
"We are here to take statements from you in hopes that the pieces of information you give us can be put together and lead us to the killer. I don't need to tell you that the murderer is somehow connected with your Road. You all know that, and I expect that's why a lot of you are here. It is not nice to think that one of your neighbors might be linked to the murder of three children. Might even be that murderer." Eyes dropped, lips smiled nervously, and fear turned a crowded room into a lot of people trying not to edge away from each other.
"We are not here, I will say now, to worry about drugs, housing code violations, or who is sleeping in whose bed, unless of course any of those things are related to the murders. We may ask you about drugs or violations, but it's not what we're after. Any of you are free to choose the police officer you want to take your statement. Because there are so many of you to keep straight we'd like to take your photograph with an instant camera and attach it to your statement. This is only to make things run more smoothly. You will be asked a series of questions, some of which may sound unnecessary or rude or just plain silly. Please answer them. None of us are playing games, and we're every bit as anxious to finish here as you are. From the looks of it," he added with a smile, "perhaps more so."
There was a mild commotion in one corner, and a little voice piped up, "—to have games, Mama? Is that what he said?" Grateful, nervous laughter skittered through the room, and Hawkin's smile broadened.
"That reminds me, you see that little man in the corner over there?" Heads craned, and an enormous man with extremely black skin and an inadequate uniform lifted an identifying hand. More laughter, now uncertain. "That's Sergeant Fischer. Bob Fischer hasn't seen his own kids for two whole days now, and if you want to send your kids to talk to him while you're giving your statements, he'd be absolutely overjoyed. He'll show them all his walkie-talkie and his handcuffs, but, uh, Bob? Try not to lose the keys this time, okay?" Relaxed laughter now, which Hawkin gathered up in his final words.
"One last thing. I know it's a bit late for saying this, but I'd appreciate it if you'd not talk to each other about what you may have seen, or what someone else thinks they saw. Your statement needs to be yours, and yours alone. We'll sift it over, and if we need further information about something, we'll come and find you. There are seven of us here to take your statements, if you would please begin at that end of the room, take one set of forms for each adult. We'd better get started." He held them for a moment with his eyes. "Thank you for your assistance. There's some bastard out there murdering babies. I think you can help us find who it is. Thank you."
"Ever coach a football team, Al?" Kate murmured in his ear as the meeting broke up.
"What do you think I was doing just then?" he replied. "Take a desk. I'll let you know when I'm going to talk with Tyler."
The morning wore on, with the painstaking business of names and numbers, photographs with the instant camera, locations on the map, questions: Where do you work? Have you ever been arrested? Where were you on the Wednesday after Thanksgiving, on the twenty-fourth of January, yesterday afternoon? Did you see anyone yesterday afternoon? Did anyone see you yesterday afternoon? Did you see or hear a car on the Road yesterday evening? Do you smoke anything, use matches, go into bars, own a car, drive a car, have any other pieces of information that might possibly be related? On, and on, and on.
Answers were recorded, reactions to certain questions were noted, voices dropped, and tempers flared. Hawkin moved in and out of the rooms, chatting, encouraging, defusing hot spots, disappearing to walk through the mud to speak with the newsmen. Gallons of coffee and herbal tea were drunk, children were laid down for naps, a hugely pregnant woman began to look pale and was sent off to an upstairs room. At one point a plate of vegetarian spaghetti and hot bread appeared in front of Kate, and she and her interviewee slurped at each other and got sauce on the forms.
At one o'clock Kate found herself in one of the more difficult interviews of the day. Not that Flower Underwood wasn't cooperative—she was, and friendly and intelligent besides. It was her child who created the problems.
The child was a boy, or at least Kate assumed it was a boy, for the woman didn't correct her when she asked how old he was. He was an utterly irrepressible two-year-old who took her pens apart, ate one of the forms, emptied her purse three times (wallet and keys went into her pocket after she pried them from his inquisitive fingers), and climbed up onto his mother's lap to nurse five times, the last time squirting Kate with milk from the unoccupied breast. Deliberately. Into this stepped Hawkin, who put his hand on her shoulder as she was writing.
"Pardon me, Casey, but when you're finished you might like to join Tyler and me upstairs. All the way to the top of the stairs, third door on your left."
Kate nodded her agreement and looked up to catch the tail end of an extremely odd expression on the woman's face.
"What is it?"
"Nothing, really." She was stifling amusement.
"Something about upstairs? Was that it?"
Flower Underwood's lips twitched, and finally she burst out laughing, which caused her son to pull back and stare at her, milky mouth agape.
"Well, you know," she said helpfully, "the downstairs of this place is pretty public. Everyone on the Road uses it like a living room."
"And upstairs—the top floor—is not public, you mean? Quite private, in fact?" The woman's eyes were sparkling, those of her son drooping as she caressed his back. "By private invitation only, that sort of thing, yes?"
"That sort of thing," she agreed.
"Have you been up there, to the top of the stairs?"
"Not in quite a while, though I don't imagine it's changed much. Or Tyler either, for that matter." It seemed a good memory, thought Kate, judging from the face across from her.
"Would you say that many of the women on the Road have 'been upstairs'?"
"A fair number. Probably most of the single women at one time or another, maybe, oh, a third of the attached ones."
"I would have thought that would cause a lot of trouble."
"Not here. In suburbia, perhaps, but not here. And Tyler's very careful not to get too close if there's another man involved who would object. He's a good man, very caring, very generous."
"With money?"
"With everything." Again the amused, fond smile crossed her face.
"He only invites women upstairs?"
"Oh, no, men too. Not to bed, of course." She giggled at the absurdity of the thought, and Kate was struck dumb by this outcrop of conventionality. "He takes guys up there to play chess, I know, or just to have a drink or a smoke if something's happening down here and he wants some quiet."