A spark of surprise, or perhaps it was something else- recognition of a mistake? pure fear?- shot through Salarco's eyes. He licked his lips. The youthful face suddenly aged.
"It's all right," Hardy said. "You've never testified that they were. You've said what you've said, and people assumed. Now I'm asking you. Were they gunshots?" He was sure for a moment that he'd spooked him by springing an unseen trap. And he couldn't afford to lose Salarco's cooperation. If that happened, Andrew would be tried as an adult and probably convicted. Hardy, himself, might never know the truth of what happened downstairs that night.
He had been subliminally aware of the television in the next room- in English- throughout the entire course of his questions so far with Juan. And now, needing to somehow redirect the energy and keep these witnesses talking, he had to take a chance. "Mrs. Salarco?"
Her shoulders tightened; then she sighed and she turned around. "Sí?"
"Wouldn't you say that's about right? The way your husband described the noises? Did any of them sound like gunshots to you?"
She didn't even have to think about it. "No. I never thought about that before, but there was no sound of any shots. Just the other sounds." She turned to her husband. "Cariño? Sí? Es verdad?"
He nodded and seemed to take some strength from her. Taking a breath, he came back to Hardy. "When I sit back and listen, I cannot say any of the noises sounded like shots."
The relief almost made Hardy dizzy. Not only had he gotten the critical admission, but they'd both put it on tape. Now, instead of being the prosecution's star witnesses, the Salarcos' testimony would work if not to exonerate Andrew, then at least in his favor.
Anna came over, picked up the baby and stood holding it, leaning against her husband.
"Your English is very good, Mrs. Salarco," Hardy said.
She wasn't happy or, at the moment, proud of it. "Three years," she said. "Juan and I- me?- we try at home."
"And pick up a little here and there on TV?"
She flashed a glare into the living room, went and placed the baby gently back into her playpen.
Hardy let them get used to the change in the dynamic. He took a sip of his beer, then spoke to both of them. "As I said before, I'm not with the INS. I will do nothing to involve you with them, no matter what you say or do. If they come to me with any questions about you at all, I won't answer them. The only person I'm interested in is Andrew. I'm starting to believe he may not be a killer."
"But I…" Juan stammered. "It was him. I saw him with these eyes."
"Yes, you did," Hardy said. "In fact, you saw him twice. Once when you went downstairs the first time to complain, the second time when he came back after you'd called nine one one. Isn't that right?"
"Yes. But there was also the other time."
Hardy clucked, folded his arms, sat back a moment. He picked up his beer as a prop. He didn't want to risk alienating Salarco for good, but he had another point to drive home, perhaps more critical than the first. And to get to it, he had to expose something much worse than Salarco's gunshot misperception, or lack of precision.
"That other time is what I wanted to talk about," he began. "The time after the door slammed downstairs, when you and Anna jumped up from the couch and looked out the window and saw somebody turn around on the walkway out by the street."
"It wasn't 'somebody,' " Juan said. He pushed back a little from the table, straightened himself in his chair, his back stiff now, and crossed one leg over the other. He'd picked up on Hardy's direction, and didn't like it. "It was the boy. Andrew. I saw him."
Afraid of losing him, Hardy twirled his bottle, took a beat. "I'm not saying you didn't, Juan. If you saw him, you saw him, and that's the end of it."
Salarco nodded, an abrupt bounce of the head. Suddenly impaciente with all this, and equally afraid of where it might go. When he picked up his bottle and drank, Hardy seized the opportunity. "It's just that when we talked the other night… I've got a copy of the tape right here if you'd like to hear it… but I also wrote down exactly what you said." He took the folded sheet of yellow paper from his shirt pocket, opened it, and spread it out in front of them. "Here. Listen: 'Anna goes to this window, here, and I am behind her, and there is the boy running away. He stops under the light there, and turns, and Anna starts to put the window up to… to scream at him I think, but then Carla starts again with crying.' " That's what you said, Juan. Isn't that how you remember it?"
Salarco put his bottle down and stared out through the curtains.
Hardy pressed him. "The reason it's so important, Juan… the reason that this particular identification is so important…," he brought Anna into it with his eyes, "is that there's little doubt that the person that both of you saw out the window was the person who had killed Mr. Mooney and the girl. Very little doubt."
Salarco pouted, his visage frankly dark now. "It was Andrew," he said.
"I'm not arguing with you. It may have been Andrew. Certainly it looked like Andrew, with the same cowled sweatshirt he was wearing that night. But listen to what you said in your own words. You said Anna went to the window, and you were behind her."
"Sí."
"So you weren't at the window exactly, were you? Could you have been maybe a couple of feet behind it?"
No answer.
"Then the boy runs down the walkway," Hardy kept up his pace, measured yet urgent. "He stops for a second under the light, and turns. This is the moment that you see him. He's under the light, he turns, the cowl over his head…"
Hardy looked to Anna, who stood transfixed.
"This is when Anna goes to put the window up, to yell at him. She's angry, you're angry, and just at this second, your baby starts crying again. You're behind your wife, who is standing at the window, trying to pry it open, and suddenly your baby screams, and you turn, cursing and swearing, and go back to her."
"Yes," Salarco said softly. "Yes. That's how it was."
"Well, then," Hardy said. "If you were behind your wife, a few feet back from the window, and she was standing in front of it, trying to get it open, and the boy with the cowl sweatshirt over his head was thirty feet away, in only the dim light from one of the street lamps, please tell me how you could possibly have seen his face?"
Salarco stared at a spot in the middle of the table, not meeting Hardy's eyes. Finally, he looked up. "I'm sorry, señor, but it was Andrew," he said.
26
Monday afternoon, Lanier told Glitsky that this would be a good time to come down and talk to the troops. With the rash of killings lately, Lanier felt overwhelmed. It was bad enough when it was the usual gangbanger mayhem and carnage, but when regular citizens got killed, it felt to him like another matter entirely. And regular citizens were taking an especially serious hit over these past two or three weeks, first with Elizabeth Cary, then Boscacci, and now this Executioner and his two victims last Friday.
Hanging up with Glitsky, Lanier stood, stretched and walked out into the inspectors' area. The desks of his twelve people were placed back to back, in team pairs, and over the years a line of metal filing cabinets had slowly grown like a vine out from one of the walls so that it now nearly bisected the space, isolating the inspectors area from the lieutenant's office. Even so, over the past half hour, Lanier had been aware of inspectors drifting back in for their paperwork, or simply to get the decks clear for tomorrow.
Now, he got himself a cup of coffee in the main room. He hadn't yet taken his first sip when Glitsky showed up. In another minute, eight homicide cops stood or sat casually around the partnered desks of Dan Cuneo and Glen Taylor.