“You aren’t in any condition to hear about it,” he said. “I just wanted you to know so you didn’t have to find out from some stranger.”
She drew in a deep breath. “Thank you for that. I was on my way to Faircloths. I wanted to talk to Lisle”-she had to stop and swallow after saying the girl’s name-“about something I discovered at Coney Island yesterday.”
“You found out something?” he asked, sounding insulted. “Were you planning to tell me about it?”
“Yes, of course, just as soon as I’d talked to Lisle and the others.”
He pulled up her desk chair and sat down facing her. “Tell me now.”
Sarah drew another breath. She was feeling more like herself, but the pain was beginning. She could see Lisle, the fragile-looking girl with the will of iron. Sarah remembered how frightened she had been about meeting George and taking him out of the dance hall so Malloy could question him. She’d been too frightened to go home that night, so she’d stayed at Sarah’s instead. Sleeping in Sarah’s bed, she’d looked like an innocent child, with her hand curled against her cheek and her corn-yellow hair spread out on the pillow.
Sarah thought of her death, how terrified she must have been. The pain and the fear and the knowledge that she knew who the killer was but would never be able to tell anyone. How many others would have to die before they could stop him?
She swiped impatiently at the tears that sprang to her eyes. She didn’t have time for that now. “Do you have any idea who did it?”
“Well, I did question our friend George, even though I was pretty sure he didn’t do it. He didn’t. He was with a group of fellows playing cards all night. They were pretty drunk, but they all said George never left the room for more than a few minutes. He was pretty broken up about the girl, too. I guess he cared for her a little.”
Sarah wasn’t surprised George was innocent. “I found the place where Gerda got the red shoes. In Coney Island, at a shop in the Elephant Hoteclass="underline" The shopkeeper remembered that the man who bought them for her was named Will.”
“And?”
“And what?”
“Is that all?” he asked impatiently.
“Yes, that’s all! It proves that Gerda knew this Will fellow, too. We know it wasn’t George, so this Will must be the killer.”
“Well, unless this shopkeeper gave you Will’s address, I don’t think we’re any closer to finding him now than we were before,” Malloy pointed out.
Oh, dear, she just wasn’t thinking clearly. “There’s more. I also realized I’d never asked Gerda’s friends if they knew anyone named Will. I just asked the names of the men they did know. I was going to ask them today-” Her voice broke, and she had to cover her mouth to hold back a sob.
“There wasn’t much chance that they did know him,” Malloy pointed out.
Sarah drew a shaky breath. “That’s what I thought, too, at first. But then Dirk said-”
“Dirk?” he asked incredulously.
Oh, dear, she hadn’t meant to tell him that part. “Yes, I asked Dirk Schyler to go with me when I went back to Coney Island. He knows the area,” she added defensively when he made a face. “At any rate, I realized that there was really no reason for Gerda not to have told her friends. the name of the man who’d been so generous to her and bought her the shoes unless one of them already knew him and considered him her beau or something. Dirk pointed out that the girls are very possessive of the men who are generous, so if she’d stolen him away from one of her friends, she might not want her to know.”
“It’s possible,” he said sourly. “Or maybe she didn’t want anybody stealing him from her, and that’s why she didn’t tell them who he was.”
“There’s one way to find out, although I don’t suppose this would be a good time to question Hetty and Bertha. They’ll be pretty upset.”
“I don’t know. They didn’t seem very upset when Gerda died. Maybe they’ll think it’s one less woman to compete for the men.”
“What a horrid thing to say! Don’t you have any feelings at all?” she demanded, suddenly furious.
“Ah, that’s more like it,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “For a minute there, I was afraid you were going to go vaporish on me.”
Now she really was mad. He’d made her angry on purpose so she wouldn’t cry. Just like a man, afraid of a few tears. Well, she’d make him pay for getting her ire up.
“All right, now tell me what happened. How did Lisle…?” Angry as she was, she still couldn’t say the words.
He winced a bit, but he said, “She was beaten, like the others. In an alley not too far from where she lived. Near where they found the Reinhard girl, too. Why do these girls go into alleys with strange men in the first place?”
“Because they can’t go to hotel rooms,” Sarah informed him without thinking.
“What?”
Oh, dear, now she would have to explain. How on earth could she do that without embarrassing them both? She drew a deep breath and plunged ahead. “Prostitutes usually have a room or else men take them to a hotel, but these girls can’t do that. They have families who expect them to come home at some point for the night. If they want to be alone with a man, their choices are few. Alleys are dark and private and perfectly suitable for a quick… uh… rendezvous.”
Malloy was horrified. “Are you talking about…?”
Sarah nodded reluctantly. “Whatever favors the girls grant are granted in alleys. Standing up. Which only makes sense, considering how filthy the alleys are.”
Malloy took a minute to digest what she was telling him. She hadn’t been able to imagine discussing this with him, but for some reason she didn’t feel the embarrassment she’d expected to feel. Malloy’s attitude probably had something to do with it. Most men would have snickered or made fun, but he was as appalled as she.
“Mother of God,” he murmured, and rubbed his face with both hands.
“Had Lisle been… interfered with?” An awkward euphemism for rape.
“Not violently. She probably consented to that part, the same way the others did. It’s after that the killer gets angry and starts beating them. That’s the part that doesn’t make any sense. I can understand him getting angry if the girl refuses him, but these girls didn’t. It’s like he’s angry with them because they allowed him to use them.”
“Maybe he is,” Sarah said. “His mind has got to be twisted to kill the girls the way he does.”
He gave her no argument.
“So what do we do now?” she asked after a moment.
“You don’t do anything,” he said. “I’m going to see this girl’s family and find out what I can about where she was last night.”
“Her family won’t know anything.”
“And I’ll question Hetty and Bertha, too.”
“They won’t tell you anything,” Sarah warned him. “Why don’t you let me talk to them?”
“Because you’re not a police officer,” he reminded her.
“What difference does that make? They’ll tell me things they’d never tell you. If you expect to find out anything at all, you’ll have to let me talk to them sooner or later.”
She was right, and it killed him to admit it. After a painful inner struggle, he surrendered. “Do you even know where they live?”
“No, but I can find them.” She knew just whom to ask. It would give her the perfect excuse to go there, too.
MALLOY HATED THIS part of his job. Questioning the grieving family of a murder victim was never easy. When the victim was a young woman, it was horrible. He could hear the weeping from down on the street. Of course, with the windows open because of the heat, you could hear everything going on in the flats above.
The girl’s family lived on the third floor. Frank was sweating by the time he reached it. The door to their flat stood open, and neighbors had gathered in the kitchen to comfort the girl’s mother, who was inconsolable.