It was Rolland Mann.
‘What do you want?’
‘I’m still concerned about your safety,’ he said, ‘and your . . . involvement. Did the detectives ask you about Ernie Nadler’s death? Do you think they know?’
‘Know what?’
‘Don’t you remember?’ he asked in his talking-to-idiots voice. ‘When that little boy was strung up and left to die in the woods, you waited three days before you told me where to find him.’
THIRTY-SIX
Tonight, I listen from the hallway while my parents sit at the kitchen table with Detective Mann. He tells them I made the whole thing up, and the autopsy proves it – kids didn’t murder the wino. He says I only ratted out my classmates to get even with them for bullying me at school.
My father nods. He’s seen the evidence of bullies – the marks they left on my body. He believes the detective. Mom cries. She believes him, too.
I have lost everything.
—Ernest Nadler
Elderly Mrs Buford bent down to fetch her morning Times, eager to read the next episode of the Ramble murders. The saga of the Hunger Artist had become her new soap opera.
The door across the hall opened, and she braced herself. The neighbor woman’s husband had done morning paper duty for the past few days. Such a creepy fellow, he had interfered with the digestion of her breakfast. But now – oh, thank God – she saw Annie standing on the threshold.
What a relief. Rolland Mann had apparently not done away with his wife after all.
Well, now they could resume their old morning ritual, cordial exchanges of hellos and comments on the weather. Or maybe not. Mrs Buford noticed the suitcase. ‘Going somewhere?’
Escaping, perhaps?
Annie nodded.
‘Have a lovely time.’ The old woman closed the door only to open it a minute later at the sound of weeping. Annie Mann had traveled only a few steps from her own door before she crumpled to the floor beside her luggage. She sat huddled against the wall.
Mrs Buford belted her robe and bustled across the hallway with the shush of fuzzy pink slippers. Bending creaky knees, she knelt down beside her fallen neighbor and took the woman’s hands in hers, rubbing the cold, clammy flesh till it warmed, till Annie’s breathing was less of a struggle, and the sweat of her brow ceased to roll into her eyes. The younger woman fumbled with the catch on her purse and spilled a dozen pharmacy bottles across the carpet.
‘I’ll get you some water so you can take a pill.’ Mrs Buford had no sooner entered her own apartment than she heard the ping that announced the arrival of the elevator. When she looked out the door, it was a great surprise to see two uniformed policemen in the hall – a greater surprise for Annie Mann, who slumped over in a dead faint. And perhaps that was for the best. Poor woman. She never could have left the building fully conscious. One officer picked up Annie’s wallet from the spilled contents of her purse. He nodded to the second man, who carried her limp body to the elevator, leaving the suitcase behind. A young blonde knelt on the carpet, scooping the pill bottles back into the fallen purse. How odd.
Well, in any case, Annie had made her escape.
Of course, Mrs Buford had imagined this scene a hundred times, but she had always envisioned the husband in police custody – not the wife. She was about to close her door when a voice called out, ‘Wait!’ She poked her head into the hall once more and saw the long-legged blonde coming toward her – closer, closer. Oh, my, what strange green eyes.
The young woman showed her a gold badge and a police identification card that made her a detective. A detective! How exciting. As the blonde restored the badge to a back pocket of her jeans, her blazer fell open on one side, and now a very large gun was on display in a shoulder holster.
Oh, this was simply marvelous. Mrs Buford was fairly giddy when she said, ‘Tell me it’s murder.’
‘Yes. Yes, it is.’
The old woman rose up on her toes, all atingle with anticipation, and when the young woman asked, ‘Wanna play?’ Mrs Buford replied, ‘Could I?’
Coco perched on a desk near the stairwell door and lectured Detective Gonzales on the terrible importance of toilet-seat locks. ‘The rats can get in that way. They swim up through the water in the toilet bowl. But if the seats are locked down, they just swim round and round till they drown.’
The lieutenant stood with Mallory and Riker on the squad-room side of the window, watching the action in the next room through the blinds. Via an open intercom, the three of them eavesdropped on a conversation between the people inside the not-so-private office, where the two civilians were on a first-name basis now, Annie and Charles.
The lady was not what Jack Coffey had expected, not the pretty trophy wife of a political up-and-comer. She looked so ordinary – if he discounted the fact that she was terrified.
Annie Mann held tight to the arms of her chair, so afraid that she might lift off into space. Despite the fear, she smiled when Charles Butler did. This new expression transformed her. No longer plain, she was all warmth and charm personified. Magnetic. It was almost a magic act. But the illusion was short-lived, and she shifted back into panic mode, eyes darting everywhere, on the lookout for danger in the corners of the room. And now she panted like a dog.
Charles perused the pharmacy stash from the woman’s purse, then selected a bottle and handed her a single pill. She popped it in her mouth and chomped it like a candy. When she was calm, he left her alone to join the covert observers on the other side of the office window.
Mallory looked through the blinds, staring at the woman as she spoke to the psychologist. ‘Is she crazy?’
‘No,’ said Charles. ‘Not at all.’
‘So she’s faking,’ said Riker.
‘Oh, no. I agree with Mrs Buford’s diagnosis. Annie’s genuinely phobic. She tells me she’s always been prone to panic attacks in social situations.’
The lieutenant and his detectives feigned interest in this, as if they had not been privy to every word. And now, with the mistaken idea that they were actually interested, Charles continued. ‘Well, that’s how agoraphobia begins. In the early stages, Annie was quite functional. Hospitals were her primary safety zones – areas of competence and confidence for a nurse.’
‘She hasn’t worked for fifteen years,’ said Jack Coffey, in a game attempt to speed this along.
‘And during that time,’ said the man with no short answers, ‘the rest of her safety zones also dwindled. She’s afraid of having panic attacks in public areas. Over the years, she’s avoided a growing list of such places. And finally, she had nowhere to go. Then there’s the additional reinforcement of long-term confinement. She hasn’t left her apartment since they moved in.’
‘We saw you give her that pill.’ Mallory said this as if accusing him of drug trafficking.
‘A very mild sedative,’ said Charles. ‘She was badly frightened – about a minute away from meltdown. I assume you want her coherent?’
‘Legally coherent,’ said Coffey. ‘Is that woman stoned?’
‘No, I’d say she’s more clearheaded now.’
‘That’s all we need to know.’ The lieutenant signaled Detective Janos, who entered the office and led Annie Mann outside to the squad room and down the hall to a place for less genteel conversation.
‘Rats have agoraphobia, too,’ said a small voice closer to the floor.
Four people looked down to see that Coco had ditched her babysitting detective, and she was not smiling anymore.