Sabra was gone by now, slipped away down some street in the invisible cloak of poverty. No one on the sidewalk would be able to point the way she’d gone, for who ever looked at the face of a bag lady?
When Mallory rounded the storage cabinets into the next row, she saw a flickering light leaking out from the crack beneath one of the doors, and she hurried toward it, flying through the suffocating darkness.
She pushed open the door, knowing that no one would be there. The tiny room was lit with candles. Newspapers lined one side of the room with black-and-white pictures of Oren Watt. Color photographs of a child were pinned to the opposite wall. Cracked dishes were neatly stacked in a corner. It was too familiar.
The storage room was small and close. The photo graphs of the child gave Mallory glimpses into a background of more open spaces and graceful living, a happier time in Sabra’s life. All around this cramped space were the signs of obsession. The woman must have collected every newspaper article ever printed about the murders. Mallory understood obsession. It was a basic thing. It was important to find a place to put your hate. She understood, but it would make no difference.
I have to get the press off my back and the feds out of NYPD or I lose my case.
The bedding on the floor was a rotting blanket pulled over a makeshift mattress of old clothes and newspapers. One photograph lay on a tattered pillow. It was Aubry dancing. How beautiful she was. Mallory looked closely at the photograph, then turned it over facedown.
Sabra, it’s a big mistake to get between me and a case.
She turned to see another photograph pinned to the wall, and this one was startling. Sabra smiled for the camera as she was holding Aubry on her lap. The resemblance between mother and child was a strong one. This might be the only likeness of Sabra in existence, the single breach of her fanatic rejection of portraits. It must have meant a great deal to her. It must have been hard to leave it behind. Sabra’s eyes stared into Mallory’s.
You lose, Sabra!
In the shimmer of candlelight, the walls seemed to move. The candles were everywhere. Mallory walked around the tiny room, blowing them out in the familiar manner of an old ritual, until there was only one candle left to illuminate the photograph of mother and child. Aubry was perhaps four years old. Sabra was planting a kiss on her cheek, as Aubry was squirming free to mug for the camera, eyes crossing, laughter spilling out of the photograph.
The kiss.
Sabra would never kiss her child again.
Mallory did understand. I was there before you, I know what you think, what you feel, I remember the kiss.
She sank down on the floor, pulled up her knees, and bowed her head. In memory, she was a child again, sitting in the discarded refrigerator carton that had once been her home for a few days in winter. She remembered lighting a candle and casting her child-size shadow on a plywood wall. She had stolen all her candles from the churches, and she lit one each night without fail, only dimly remembering the candle had some purpose beyond the light.
She remembered pulling the two dishes from her small store of belongings, which might be discarded the next time she had to run. Young Kathy had carefully emptied the food from her pockets onto the plate and poured the contents of a soda can into the cup. The dishes were somehow important, and whenever she lost a set on the run, she would steal another as the first order of business.
After the meal she would wipe her face with a dry square of cloth, in vague semblance of a forgotten bedtime ritual. As a child she had pulled together these simple conventions of home, the makings of sanity. And last, it had been her habit to blow out the candle and pull a blanket of newspapers round her, tucking herself in.
One thing that was lost to her was the kiss before sleep. But so much had been lost. The child had become resigned to this and ceased to cry over it anymore. Over time, the baby hard case had come to take some pride in the dearth of tears, and hard anger had displaced each soft and childlike thing about her.
On the night Helen Markowitz took possession of her, that good woman had gone through all the rituals of the meal, the bath, and then the forgotten customs of the nightclothes, brushing teeth and braiding hair. Last in the order of familiar and forgotten things, Helen had turned out the light and bowed down to kiss the small child in her protection.
After this gentle woman had left the room, the little hard case turned her face to the wall and cried in eerie silence, tears only, but so many-so important was this small act which was committed all over the world between mother and child.
Brilliant sunlight illuminated the stained-glass windows of the cathedral. Arches curved heaven high. The priest and his altar boys were steeped in the ritual of communion, the eating of the flesh of Christ and the drinking of His blood in the form of bread and wine. One young woman listened carefully as the priest spoke to the parishioners kneeling at the railing before the altar. He offered them the flesh and then the blood wine. This woman was at attention in every part of her being, as though committing the service to memory.
The elderly priest faltered in the words when he saw Kathy Mallory standing at the back of the church. Then the words began again, his mouth apparently not requiring his full attention, so accustomed was he to the ritual. Not one parishioner noticed his absence in spirit.
Father Brenner watched her as she walked to an altar where a score of candles were lit beneath the statue of Saint Jude. Ten years had passed since he had seen her, but he knew her at once-that face, that incredible face. God’s grace was writ into the very shape of it. Kathy Mallory even walked in grace-while Sister Ursula still limped when it rained.
So Kathy had come to God’s house. This was a miracle, or at the very least, he could tell an elderly nun her prayers for the born-to-stray lamb had been answered.
He watched the prodigal child steal a handful of candles from the altar of Saint Jude. Then she slipped out the door. Well, some things never changed.
Charles was bewildered. Mallory only slathered mustard on her sandwich and behaved as though she had just told him that the mayonnaise had gone bad. He sat down at the table, still wondering if he had heard her right.
“Sabra is living on the street?”
“That’s right,” she said. “Pass the cheese plate, will you?”
Sabra is homeless and pass the cheese plate. He remembered a time when there had been a predictable and tranquil sameness to his days. Then along came Mallory, and soon the world was a jarring, unnerving place where logic ruled if she could twist it her way-otherwise not. And humanity was a weakness she tolerated in fools like himself.
And now Sabra was homeless, and Mallory was building a triple-decker sandwich.
“You have to find her and right now. Can’t you put out an all-points bulletin or something?”
She reached over to grab the cheese plate herself. “No. Sabra hasn’t broken any laws.”
“Couldn’t you make up some plausible reason for it?”
“That would be against the rules, Charles.” She selected the Swiss cheese.
“But under the circumstances…”
“The end never justifies the means,” she said, throwing his own words back at him, shutting him down with his own rules. “And suppose one of Blakely’s boys turns her up before I do?” She cut her sandwich on the diagonal and paused to admire it. “I’ll never be allowed to talk to her. They’ll lock her up someplace. Is that what you want? You think Sabra wants that?”
“Mallory, she’s obviously not in her right mind.”
“You don’t know that.”
Perhaps he had erred here. It was never a good idea to suggest she had missed the obvious, but he was about to do it again. “She’s living in filth on the street, and her family is worth millions. That’s your idea of sane?”