She saw, looking into this brutal room, two men and a lot of old furniture.
It was inevitably to Levine that the little girl spoke: “May I come in?” Her voice was as faint as her tapping on the door had been. She was poised to flee at the first loud noise.
Levine automatically lowered his own voice when he answered. “Of course. Come on in. Sit over here.” He motioned at the straight-backed wooden chair beside his desk.
The girl crossed the threshold, carefully closed the door again behind her, and came on silent feet across the room, glancing sidelong at Crawley, then establishing herself on the edge of the chair, her toes touching the floor, still ready for flight at any second. She studied Levine. “I want to talk to a detective,” she said. “Are you a detective?”
Levine nodded. “Yes, I am.”
“My name,” she told him solemnly, “is Amy Thornbridge Walker. I live at 717 Prospect Park West, apartment 4-A. I want to report a murder, a quite recent murder.”
“A murder?”
“My mother,” she said, just as solemnly, “murdered my stepfather.”
Levine glanced over at Crawley, who screwed his face up in an expression meant to say, “She’s a nut. Hear her out, and then she’ll go home. What else can you do?”
There was nothing else he could do. He looked at Amy Thornbridge Walker again. “Tell me about it,” he said. “When did it happen?”
“Two weeks ago Thursday,” she said. “November 27th. At two-thirty P.M.”
Her earnest calm called for belief. But children with wild stories were not unknown to the precinct. Children came in with reports of dead bodies in alleys, flying saucers on rooftops, counterfeiters in basement apartments, kidnappers in black trucks— And once out of a thousand times what the child reported was read and not the product of a young imagination on a spree. More to save the little girl’s feelings than for any other reason, therefore, Levine drew to him a pencil and a sheet of paper and took down what she told him. He said, “What’s your mother’s name?”
“Gloria Thornbridge Walker,” she said. “And my stepfather was Albert Walker. He was an attorney.”
To the side, Crawley was smiling faintly at the girl’s conscious formality. Levine solemnly wrote down the names, and said, “Was your father’s name Thornbridge, is that it?”
“Yes. Jason Thornbridge. He died when I was very small. I think my mother killed him, too, but I’m not absolutely sure.”
“I see. But you are absolutely sure that your mother killed Albert Walker.”
“My stepfather. Yes. My first father was supposed to have drowned by accident in Lake Champlain, which I consider very unlikely, as he was an excellent swimmer.”
Levine reached into his shirt pocket, found no cigarettes there, and suddenly realized what he was doing. Irritation washed over him, but he carefully kept it from showing in his face or voice as he said, “How long have you thought that your mother killed your rea... your first father?”
“I’d never thought about it at all,” she said, “until she murdered my stepfather. Naturally, I then started thinking about it.”
Crawley coughed, and lit a fresh cigarette, keeping his hands up in front of his mouth. Levine said, “Did he die of drowning, too?”
“No. My stepfather wasn’t athletic at all. In fact, he was nearly an invalid for the last six months of his life.”
“Then how did your mother kill him?”
“She made a loud noise at him,” she said calmly.
Levine’s pencil stopped its motion. He looked at her searchingly, but found no trace of humor in her eyes or mouth. If she had come up here as a joke — on a bet, say from her schoolmates — then she was a fine little actress, for no sign of the joke was on her face at all.
Though how could he really tell? Levine, a childless man with a barren wife, had found it difficult over the years to communicate with the very young. A part of it, of course, was an envy he couldn’t help, in the knowledge that these children could run and play with no frightening shortness of breath or tightness of chest, that they could sleep at night in their beds with no thought for the dull thudding of their hearts, that they would be alive and knowing for years and decades, for decades, after he himself had ceased to exist.
Before he could formulate an answer to what she’d said, the little girl jounced off the chair with the graceful gracelessness of the young and said, “I can’t stay any longer. I stopped here on my way home from school. If my mother found out that I knew, and that I had told the police, she might try to murder me, too.” She turned all at once and studied Crawley severely. “I am not a silly little girl,” she told him. “And I am not telling a lie or making a joke. My mother murdered my stepfather, and I came in here and reported it. That’s what I’m supposed to do. You aren’t supposed to believe me right away, but you are supposed to investigate and find out whether or not I’ve told you the truth. And I have told you the truth.” She turned suddenly back to Levine, an angry little girl — no, not angry, definite — a definite little girl filled with stern firmality and a child’s sense of Tightness and duty. “My stepfather,” she said, “was a very good man. My mother is a bad woman. You find out what she did, and punish her.” She nodded briefly, as though to punctuate what she’d said, and marched to the door, reaching it as Rizzo and McFarlane came in. They looked down at her in surprise, and she stepped past them and out to the hall, closing the door after her.
Rizzo looked at Levine and jerked his thumb at the door. “What was that?”
It was Crawley who answered. “She came in to report a murder,” he said. “Her Mommy killed her Daddy by making a great big noise at him.”
Rizzo frowned. “Come again?”
“I’ll check it out,” said Levine. Not believing the girl’s story, he still felt the impact of her demand on him that he do his duty. All it would take was a few phone calls. While Crawley recounted the episode at great length to Rizzo, and McFarlane took up his favorite squadroom position, seated at his desk with the chair canted back and his feet atop the desk, Levine picked up his phone and dialed the New York Times. He identified himself and said what he wanted, was connected to the right department, and after a few minutes the November 28th obituary notice on Albert Walker was read to him. Cause of death: a heart attack. Mortician: Junius Merriman. An even briefer call to Merriman gave him the name of Albert Walker’s doctor, Henry Sheffield. Levine thanked Merriman, assured him there was no problem, and got out the Brooklyn yellow pages to find Sheffield’s number. He dialed, spoke to a nurse, and finally got Sheffield.
“I can’t understand,” Sheffield told him, “why the police would be interested in the case. It was heart failure, pure and simple. What seems to be the problem?”
“There’s no problem,” Levine told him. “Just checking it out. Was this a sudden attack? Had he had any heart trouble before?”
“Yes, he’d suffered a coronary attack about seven months ago. The second attack was more severe, and he hadn’t really recovered as yet from the first. There certainly wasn’t anything else to it, if that’s what you’re getting at.”