Levine sighed. “All right,” he said. “We’re doing it. But we need more than just your word, you understand that, don’t you? We need proof of some kind.”
She nodded, serious and formal again.
“What store did you go to that day?” he asked her.
“A supermarket. The big one on Seventh Avenue.”
“Do you know any of the clerks there? Would they recognize you?”
“I don’t think so. It’s a great big supermarket. I don’t think they know any of their customers at all.”
“Did you see anyone at all on your trip to the store or back, who would remember that it was you who went to the store and not your mother, and that it was that particular day?”
She considered, touching one finger to her lips as she concentrated, and finally shook her head. “I don’t think so. I don’t know any of the people in the neighborhood. Most of the people I know are my parents’ friends or kids from school, and they live all over, not just around here.”
The New York complication. In a smaller town, people know their neighbors, have some idea of the comings and goings around them. But in New York, next-door neighbors remain strangers for years. At least that was true in the apartment house sections, though less true in the quieter outlying sections like the neighborhood in which Levine lived.
Levine got to his feet. “We’ll see what we can do,” he said. “This clang you told me about. Do you have any idea what your mother used to make the noise?”
“No, I don’t. I’m sorry. It sounded like a gong or something. I don’t know what it could possibly have been.”
“A tablespoon against the bottom of a pot? Something like that?”
“Oh, no. Much louder than that.”
“And she didn’t have anything in her hands when she came out of the bedroom?”
“No, nothing.”
“Well, we’ll see what we can do,” he repeated. “You can go back to class now.”
“Thank you,” she said. “Thank you for helping me.”
He smiled. “It’s my duty,” he said. “As you pointed out.”
“You’d do it anyway, Mr. Levine,” she said. “You’re a very good man. Like my stepfather.”
Levine touched the palm of his hand to his chest, over his heart. “Yes,” he said. “In more ways than one, maybe. Well, you go back to class. Or, wait. There’s one thing I can do for you.”
She waited as he took a pencil and a small piece of memo paper from Mrs. Pidgeon’s desk, and wrote on it the precinct phone number and his home phone number, marking which each was. “If you think there’s any danger of any kind,” he told her, “any trouble at all, you call me. At the precinct until four o’clock, and then at home after that.”
“Thank you,” she said. She folded the paper and tucked it away in the pocket of her skirt.
At a quarter to four, Levine and Crawley met again in the squadroom. When he’d come back in the morning from his talk with the little girl, Levine had found Crawley just back from having talked with Dr. Sheffield. It was Sheffield’s opinion, Crawley had told him, that Amy was making the whole thing up, that her stepfather’s death had been a severe shock and this was some sort of delayed reaction to it. Certainly he couldn’t see any possibility that Mrs. Walker had actually murdered her husband, nor could he begin to guess at any motive for such an act.
Levine and Crawley had eaten lunch together in Wilton’s, across the street from the station, and then had separated, both to try to find someone who had either seen Amy or her mother on the shopping trip the afternoon Mr. Walker had died. This, aside from the accusation of murder itself, was the only contradiction between their stories. Find proof that one was lying, and they’d have the full answer. So Levine had started at the market and Crawley at the apartment building, and they’d spent the entire afternoon up and down the neighborhood, asking their questions and getting only blank stares for answers.
Crawley was there already when Levine came slowly into the squadroom, worn from an entire afternoon on his feet, climaxed by the climb to the precinct’s second floor. He looked at Crawley and shook his head. Crawley said, “Nothing? Same here. Not a damn thing.”
Levine laboriously removed his overcoat and set it on the coatrack. “No one remembers,” he said. “No one saw, no one knows anyone. It’s a city of strangers we live in, Jack.”
“It’s been two weeks,” said Crawley. “Their building has a doorman, but he can’t remember that far back. He sees the same tenants go in and out every day; and he wouldn’t be able to tell you for sure who went in or out yesterday, much less two weeks ago, he says.”
Levine looked at the wall-clock. “She’s home from school by now,” he said.
“I wonder what they’re saying to each other. If we could listen in, we’d know a hell of a lot more than we do now.”
Levine shook his head. “No. Whether she’s guilty or innocent, they’re both saying the exact same things. The death is two weeks old. If Mrs. Walker did commit murder, she’s used to the idea by now that she’s gotten away with it. She’ll deny everything Amy says, and try to convince the girl she’s wrong. The same things in the same words as she’d use if she were innocent.”
“What if she kills the kid?” Crawley asked him.
“She won’t. If Amy were to disappear, or have an accident, or be killed by an intruder, we’d know the truth at once. She can’t take the chance. With her husband, all she had to do was fool a doctor who was inclined to believe her in the first place. Besides, the death was a strong possibility anyway. This time, she’d be killing a healthy ten year old, and she’d be trying to fool a couple of cops who wouldn’t be inclined to believe her at all.” Levine grinned. “The girl is probably safer now than she was before she ever came to us,” he said. “Who knows what the mother might have been planning up till now?”
“All right, that’s fine so far. But what do we do now?”
“Tomorrow, I want to take a look at the Walker apartment.”
“Why not right now?”
“No. Let’s give her a night to get rattled. Any evidence she hasn’t removed in two weeks she isn’t likely to think of now.” Levine shrugged. “I don’t expect to find anything,” he said. “I want to look at the place because I can’t think of anything else to do. All we have is the unsupported word of a ten-year old child. The body can’t tell us anything, because there wasn’t any murder weapon. Walker died of natural causes. Proving they were induced won’t be the easiest job in the world.”
“If only somebody,” said Crawley angrily, “had seen that kid at the grocery store! That’s the only chink in the wall, Abe, the only damn place we can get a grip.”
“We can try again tomorrow,” said Levine, “but I doubt well get anywhere.” He looked up as the door opened, and Trent and Kasper came in, two of the men on the four to midnight shift. “Tomorrow,” he repeated. “Maybe lightning will strike.”
“Maybe,” said Crawley.
Levine shrugged back into his overcoat and left the office for the day. When he got home, he broke his normal habit and went straight into the house, not staying on the porch to read his paper. He went out to the kitchen and sat there, drinking coffee, while he filled Peg in on what little progress they’d made on the case during the day. She asked questions, and he answered them, offered suggestions and he mulled them over and rejected them, and throughout the evening, every once in a while, one or the other of them would find some other comment to make, but neither of them got anywhere. The girl seemed to be reasonably safe, at least for a while, but that was the best that could be said.