Crawley looked at Levine in disgust and frustration, and Levine knew what he was thinking. The simple thing to do would be to go ahead and make the arrest and leave the Brodeks still telling their lie. That would be the simple thing to do, but it would also be the wrong thing to do. If the Brodeks were still maintaining the lie once Crawley and Levine left, they would be stuck with it. They wouldn’t dare admit the truth after that, not even if they could be made to believe it.
They must be wondering already, but could not admit their doubts. If they were left alone now, they would make the search themselves that they had just kept Crawley from making, and they would find the money and the gun. The money and the gun would be somewhere in Danny Brodek’s bedroom. The money stuffed into the toe of a shoe in the closet, maybe. The gun under the mattress or at the bottom of a full wastebasket.
If the Brodeks found the money and the gun, and believed that they didn’t dare change their story, they would get rid of the evidence. The paper money ripped up and flushed down the toilet. The quarters spent, or thrown out the window. The gun dropped down a sewer.
Without the money, without the gun, without breaking Danny Brodek’s alibi, he had a better than even chance of getting away scot-free. In all probability, the grand jury wouldn’t even return an indictment. The unsupported statement of an old woman, who only had a few hectic seconds for identification, against a total lack of evidence and a rock solid alibi by the boy’s parents, and the case was foredoomed.
But Danny Brodek had killed. He had taken life, and he couldn’t get away with it. Nothing else in the world, so far as Levine was concerned, was as heinous, as vicious, as evil, as the untimely taking of life.
Couldn’t the boy himself understand what he’d done? Nathan Kosofsky was dead. He didn’t exist any more. He didn’t breathe, he didn’t see or hear or taste or touch or smell. The pit that yawned so widely in Levine’s fears had been opened for Nathan Kosofsky and he had tumbled in. Never to live, ever again.
If the boy couldn’t understand the enormity of what he’d done, if he was too young, if life to him was still too natural and inevitable a gift, then surely his parents were old enough to understand. Did Mr. Brodek never lie awake in bed and wonder at the frail and transient sound of his own heart pumping the life through his veins? Had Mrs. Brodek not felt the cringing closeness of the fear of death when she was about to give birth to her son? They knew, they had to know, what murder really meant.
He wanted to ask them, or to remind them, but the awful truths swirling in his brain wouldn’t solidify into words and sentences. There is no real way to phrase an emotion.
Crawley, across the room, sighed heavily and said, “Okay. You’ll set your own parents up for the bad one. That’s okay. We’ve got the eye-witness. And there’ll be more; a fingerprint on the cash register, somebody who saw you run out of the store—”
No one had seen Danny Brodek run from the store. Looking at the smug young face, Levine knew there would be no fingerprints on the cash register. It’s just as easy to knuckle the No Sale key to open the cash drawer.
He said, to the boy’s father, “On the way out of the store, Danny was mad and scared and nervous. He pulled the door open, and the bell over it rang. He took out his anger and his nervousness on it, yanking the bell down. We’ll find that somewhere between here and the store, and there may be prints on it. There also may be scratches on his hand, from yanking the bell mechanism off the door frame.”
Quickly, Danny said, “Lots of people got scratches on their hands. I was playing with a cat this afternoon, coming home from school. He gave me a couple scratches. See?” He held out his right hand, with three pink ragged tears across the surface of the palm.
Crawley said, “I’ve played with cats, too, kid. I always got my scratches on the back of my hand.”
The boy shrugged. The statement needed no answer.
Crawley went on, “You played with this cat a long while, huh? Long enough to get three scratches, is that it?”
“That’s it. Prove different.”
“Let’s see the scratches on your left hand.”
The boy allowed tension to show for just an instant, before he said, “I don’t have any on my left hand. Just the right. So what?”
Crawley turned to the father. “Does that sound right to you?”
“Why not?” demanded Brodek defensively. “You play with a cat, maybe you only use one hand. You trying to railroad my son because of some cat scratches?”
This wasn’t the way to do it, and Levine knew it. Little corroborative proofs, they weren’t enough. They could add weight to an already-held conviction, that’s all they could do. They couldn’t change an opposite conviction.
The Brodeks had to be reminded, some way, of the enormity of what their son had done. Levine wished he could open his brain for them like a book, so they could look in and read it there. They must know, they must at their ages have some inkling of the monstrousness of death. But they had to be reminded.
There was one way to do it. Levine knew the way, and shrank from it. It was as necessary as Crawley’s brutality with the old woman in the back of the store. Just as necessary. But more brutal. And he had flinched away from that earlier, lesser brutality, telling himself he could never do such a thing.
He looked over at his partner, hoping Crawley would think of the way, hoping Crawley would take the action from Levine. But Crawley was still parading his little corroborative proofs, before an audience not yet prepared to accept them.
Levine shook his head, and took a deep breath, and stepped forward an additional pace into the room. He said, “May I use your phone?”
They all looked at him, Crawley puzzled, the boy wary, the parents hostile. The father finally shrugged and said, “Why not? On the stand there, by the TV.”
“May I turn the volume down?”
“Turn the damn thing off if you want, who can pay any attention to it?”
“Thank you.”
Levine switched off the television set, then searched in the phone book and found the number of Kosofsky’s Grocery. He dialed, and a male voice answered on the first ring, saying, “Kosofsky’s. Hello?”
“Is this Stanton?”
“No, Wills. Who’s this?”
“Detective Levine. I was down there a little while ago.”
“Oh, sure. What can I do for you, sir?”
“How’s Mrs. Kosofsky now?”
“How is she? I don’t know. I mean, she isn’t hysterical or anything. She’s just sitting there.”
“Is she capable of going for a walk?”
Wills’, “I guess so,” was drowned out by Mr. Brodek’s shouted, “What the hell are you up to?”
Into the phone, Levine said, “Hold on a second.” He cupped his hand over the mouthpiece, and looked at the angry father. “I want you to understand,” he told him, “just what it was your son did tonight. I want to make sure you understand. So I’m going to have Mrs. Kosofsky come up here. For her to look at Danny again. And for you to look at her while she’s looking at him.”
Brodek paled slightly, and an uncertain look came into his eyes. He glanced quickly at his son, then even more quickly back at Levine. “The hell with you,” he said defiantly. “Danny was here all night. Do whatever the hell you want.”
Mrs. Brodek started to speak, but cut it off at the outset, making only a tiny sound in her throat. But it was enough to make the rest swivel their heads and look at her. Her eyes were wide. Strain lines had deepened around her mouth, and one hand trembled at the base of her throat. She stared in mute appeal at Levine, her eyes clearly saying. Don’t make me know.