"It's bad enough," Mallory said.
Gail turned from the body, started for the door, looked back at Mallory. "I'm going to talk to the daughter. You coming?"
Mallory shook his head. "No. The two of us will scare her, I think. You go ahead. I think she'd probably rather talk to a woman anyway.''
~ * ~
Andrew Spurling, Detective Third Grade
Andrew Spurling, thirty-two, was tall, well-built, average-looking, which is to say that his face could have been an amalgamation of male faces at a football game or wrestling match. He had no hobbies, although he was very attentive of his gun, a Smith and Wesson .38.
His record at the Buffalo Police Department was unremarkable. He'd been a little over a year with the force, and in that time had not distinguished himself in any way, good or bad. He was a run-of-the-mill cop who did his job and tried to stay out of the way. That had not always been his attitude; as a child in Syracuse, New York, he was known as the toughest kid on the block. That toughness did not transfer in any meaningful way to his work at the Buffalo Police Department. He was usually assigned the job of picking up people who'd written bad checks in amounts of under $100. Such checks constituted a class A misdemeanor, not a felony, which usually put the bad-check artist in the easy-to-handle category. Detective Spurling was not astoundingly happy with this kind of work, but he was willing to do it because it was work, after all. .
Occasionally, he fantasized about being twelve years old, growing up in Syracuse, New York, when he was top dog and people did what he told them to do.
Chapter Seven
Laurie Drake was sitting on the edge of her bed with her arms and ankles crossed and her head lowered. , She was wearing blue jeans, and a white pleated blouse with puffed short sleeves which, Gail thought, made her look appreciably older than her twelve years.
Gail stopped just inside the doorway. "Hello," she said gently. Laurie looked up at once, as if surprised, sighed heavily, lowered her head again. She said nothing. Gail went over, stood for a few moments next to her, then sat beside her on the bed. "Your name's Laurie, isn't it?"
"Yes," Laurie whispered.
"My name's Gail Newman, Laurie. I'm with the Buffalo Police Department. Do you think you're up to answering a few questions?"
Laurie looked confusedly at Gail. Gail went on. "If you'd rather wait, that's okay." She paused. "Would you rather wait?"
Laurie shook her head a little. "No," she whispered. She asked, "Is my mother dead?"
Gail wasn't much taken aback by the question. In one form or another, of course, it was a pretty common question among a victim's close relatives. "Yes," she answered. "Your mother's dead. I'm very sorry."
Laurie continued looking confusedly at her for a few seconds. Then she nodded as if in acceptance and said, "Yes, I thought so." A pause. "I mean, she looked dead." She lowered her head again. Gail heard her begin to sniffle, as if on the verge of tears. She patted Laurie's elbow. "I'm sorry, this isn't a good time." She stood. "We'll talk later-"
Laurie looked quickly up at her. "Someone ate her, didn't they, Miss Newman?"
Gail wasn't certain she saw a grin flit across Laurie's mouth. If she had seen a grin, she thought, it, too, would not be the first time. She shook her head vehemently. "No. No one . . . did that to your mother!"
Laurie said, "She said that that was okay. She said that's how you got life back."
"I don't understand, Laurie. Who said that?"
Laurie cocked her pretty head. "And that's what it looked like, Miss Newman. It looked like someone ate her." She pointed at the exposed part of her neck. "Right here. Didn't you see that?"
Gail said nothing for a moment. She thought this was going to be awfully tough. "Yes, I saw that," she said, and sat on the bed again. Laurie turned her head to look at Gail intensely as Gail went on. "And I think what we're dealing with here, Laurie, is some kind of dog. A large dog."
Laurie nodded. "You mean like a guard dog or something?"
"Yes. Like a guard dog."
Laurie shook her head. "But we don't have one of those, Miss Newman. All we have is a cat. It's not even a big cat."
"Yes, I know." Gail had seen the cat resting on a kitchen counter; it was a small white longhaired cat with a red collar. "What we're talking about is someone else's-"
"My dad hated her."
Gail was confused. "Your dad hated your mother?"
Laurie grinned broadly, as if very amused. "No. Not my mother. The cat. He tried to kill it once. He threw it out the second floor window."
"Oh," Gail said noncommittally. Then, "Where is your father?"
Laurie's grin vanished. "He's dead," she said matter-of-factly. "Just like my mom."
Gail found herself getting nervous. She wasn't sure why. Odd reactions among a victim's relatives were commonplace, and Laurie's reactions were actually no odder than others she'd encountered. She remembered, especially, the elderly man whose wife stuck her head into an oven and asphyxiated herself a year earlier. When she and Mallory got to the man's house, in answer to a call from the man's grandson, they found that the man had put foiled-wrapped potatoes around the woman's head, and a nice meat loaf on the shelf just beneath. "Well," the man explained heartily, "as soon as my wife gets her head out of the oven we can all eat." That had been pretty damned odd, she thought. So, if this young girl seemed to be seesawing back and forth between tears and so-what about her mother's murder, then it was only because the human mind is a very complex and fragile thing.
Gail said, "When did you find your mother, Laurie?"
"When I got home from school," Laurie answered, still matter-of-factly.
"And that was when?"
"About three-thirty."
Gail got her notebook from her purse, wrote "3:30" in it. She asked, "And did you notice anything odd then? When you came home."
"You mean in the house?"
"Not particularly."
"What you mean is, did I notice any strange cars on the street."
Gail nodded. "Yes. Or people."
"Or dogs?" She grinned again.
Gail hesitated, then said, "Did you?"
"No."
"Nothing at all? Try to think back, Laurie; see yourself coming home again, down the street. What's the first thing you see when you get off the bus?"
"Timmy Wheelock."
"Timmy Wheelock? Is he your . . . boy-friend?"
"No, but he wants to be. He waits for me on the corner every day after school. And he follows me home." She looked suddenly excited. "Do you think he's dangerous, Miss Newman? Do you think he's going to try and hurt me?"
Gail chose not to answer that question. She said instead, "Does he follow you all the way home, Laurie?"
"No," she answered, sounding suddenly weary of the conversation.
"How far does he follow you?"
"Halfway. He's got a paper route."
"Oh, and he's got to get home to take care of it?"
"No. He's got to finish it."
"You mean, he doesn't ride the bus with you?"
"No. His father picks him up at three. That's when school gets out."
Gail nodded. "Do you know Timmy's address, Laurie?" Her idea was that Timmy, if he did indeed follow Laurie every day from the bus stop, could think of something that Laurie hadn't.
Laurie shrugged. "For all I know, he lives in a hole in the ground. The big creep, the asshole!"
Gail said, embarrassed, "I see," and decided to get off the subject of Timmy; how many Wheelocks could there be in Orchard Park, after all? He'd be easy enough to find if it became necessary. "After Timmy went home-" she began, and Laurie interrupted.