“It’s rather late, isn’t it?” Van Houten said.
“Well, I got here rather late,” Meyer said, and smiled.
“Come, Daddy, I’ll make us all some tea in the kitchen,” Adele said. “Will you be long, Detective Meyer?”
“I don’t know. It may take a while.”
“Shall I bring you some tea?”
“Thank you, that would be nice.”
She rose from the couch and then guided her husband’s hand to her arm. Walking slowly beside him, she led him past her father and out of the room. Van Houten looked at Meyer once again, nodded briefly, and followed them out. Meyer closed the door behind them and immediately walked to the standing floor lamp.
The woman was sixty years old, and she looked like anybody’s grandmother, except that she had just murdered her husband and three children. They had explained her rights to her, and she had told them she had nothing to hide and would answer any questions they chose to ask. She sat in a straight-backed squadroom chair, wearing a black cloth coat over bloodstained pajamas and robe, her handcuffed hands in her lap, her hands unmoving on her black leather pocketbook. O’Brien and Kling looked at the police stenographer, who glanced up at the wall clock, noted the time of the interrogation’s start as 3:55 A.M., and then signaled that he was ready whenever they were.
“What is your name?” O’Brien asked.
“Isabel Martin.”
“How old are you, Mrs. Martin?”
“Sixty.”
“Where do you live?”
“On Ainsley Avenue.”
“Where on Ainsley?”
“657 Ainsley.”
“With whom do you live there?”
“With my husband Roger, and my son Peter, and my daughters Annie and Abigail.”
“Would you like to tell us what happened tonight, Mrs. Martin?” Kling asked.
“I killed them all,” she said. She had white hair, a fine aquiline nose, brown eyes behind rimless spectacles. She stared straight ahead of her as she spoke, looking neither to her right nor to her left, ignoring her questioners completely, seemingly alone with the memory of what she had done not a half hour before.
“Can you give us some of the details, Mrs. Martin?”
“I killed him first, the son of a bitch.”
“Who do you mean, Mrs. Martin?”
“My husband.”
“When was this?”
“When he came home.”
“What time was that, do you remember?”
“A little while ago.”
“It’s almost four o’clock now,” Kling said. “Would you say this was at, what, three-thirty or thereabouts?”
“I didn’t look at the clock,” she said. “I heard his key in the latch, and I went in the kitchen, and there he was.”
“Yes?”
“There’s a meat cleaver I keep on the sink. I hit him with it.”
“Why did you do that, Mrs. Martin?”
“Because I wanted to.”
“Were you arguing with him, is that it?”
“No. He was locking the door, and I just went over to the sink and picked up the cleaver, and then I hit him with it.”
“Where did you hit him, Mrs. Martin?”
“On his head and on his neck and I think on his shoulder.”
“You hit him three times with the cleaver?”
“I hit him a lot of times, I don’t know how many times.”
“Were you aware that you were hitting him?”
“Yes, I was aware.”
“You knew you were striking him with a cleaver.”
“Yes, I knew.”
“Did you intend to kill him with the cleaver?”
“I intended to kill him with the cleaver.”
“And afterwards, did you know you had killed him?”
“I knew he was dead, yes, the son of a bitch.”
“What did you do then?”
“My oldest child came into the kitchen. Peter. My son. He yelled at me, he wanted to know what I’d done, he kept yelling at me. I hit him, too, to get him to shut up. I hit him only once, across the throat.”
“Did you know what you were doing at the time?”
“I knew what I was doing. He was another one, that Peter. Little bastard.”
“What happened next, Mrs. Martin?”
“I went in the back bedroom where the two girls sleep, and I hit Annie with the cleaver first, and then I hit Abigail.”
“Where did you hit them, Mrs. Martin?”
“On the face. Their faces.”
“How many times?”
“I think I hit Annie twice, and Abigail only once.”
“Why did you do that, Mrs. Martin?”
“Who would take care of them after I was gone?” Mrs. Martin asked of no one.
“Is there anything else you want to tell us?” Kling asked.
“There’s nothing more to tell. I done the right thing.”
The detectives walked away from the desk. They were both pale. “Man,” O’Brien whispered.
“Yeah,” Kling said. “We’d better call the night DA right away, get him to take a full confession from her.”
“Killed four of them without batting an eyelash,” O’Brien said, and shook his head, and went back to where the stenographer was typing up Mrs. Martin’s statement.
The telephone was ringing. Kling walked to the nearest desk and lifted the receiver. “Eighty-seventh Squad, Detective Kling,” he said.
“This is Donner.”
“Yeah, Fats.”
“I think I got a lead on one of those heaps.”
“Shoot.”
“This would be the one heisted on Fourteenth Street. According to the dope I’ve got, it happened yesterday morning. Does that check out?”
“I’ll have to look at the bulletin again. Go ahead, Fats.”
“It’s already been ditched,” Donner said. “If you’re looking for it, try outside the electric company on the River Road.”
“Thanks, I’ll make a note of that. Who stole it, Fats?”
“This is strictly entre nous,” Donner said “I don’t want no tie-in with it never. The guy who done it is a mean little bastard, rip out his mother’s heart for a dime. He hates niggers, killed two of them in a street rumble four years ago, and managed to beat the rap. I think maybe some officer was on the take, huh, Kling?”
“You can’t square homicide in this city, and you know it, Fats.”
“Yeah? I’m surprised. You can square damn near anything else for a couple of bills.”
“What’s his name?”
“Danny Ryder. 3541 Grover Avenue, near the park. You won’t find him there now, though.”
“Where will I find him now?”
“Ten minutes ago, he was in an all-night bar on Mason, place called Felicia’s. You going in after him?”
“I am.”
“Take your gun,” Donner said.
There were seven people in Felicia’s when Kling got there at 4:45. He cased the bar through the plateglass window fronting the place, unbuttoned the third button of his overcoat, reached in to clutch the butt of his revolver, worked it out of the holster once and then back again, and went in through the front door.
There was the immediate smell of stale cigarette smoke and beer and sweat and cheap perfume. A Puerto Rican girl was in whispered consultation with a sailor in one of the leatherette booths. Another sailor was hunched over the jukebox, thoughtfully considering his next selection, his face tinted orange and red and green from the colored tubing. A tired, fat, fifty-year-old blonde sat at the far end of the bar, watching the sailor as though the next button he pushed might destroy the entire world. The bartender was polishing glasses. He looked up when Kling walked in and immediately smelled the law.