„Well, Charles, you don’t. You know why? These people don’t drop in from another planet. They don’t start out as psychos. They’re us.“ He could see that Charles was resisting this idea. „I can tell you how it’s done, how they’re made. You take a youngster out in the woods. The boy’s first kill is all set up for him. The victim is kneeling on the ground, hands tied behind his back. All the kid has to do is put the gun to the back of this man’s skull and squeeze the trigger. But the victim is begging for his life and crying. There’re maybe two, three other men watching the kid. They’re all junkyard dogs, but they wear silk suits. They drive nice cars. And the boy looks up to them. He can’t back down, can he? Naw, too humiliating. Plus, he’s scared shitless. He’s either one of them or he’s a liability. Hell of a choice he’s got. So he does it. It’s a small thing, they tell him. Just squeeze the trigger, kid, they say. And that’s what the kid does. He blows a human being away and gets sick all over his shoes. He’s crossed a line, and he can’t get back. The next time is easier. Soon it’s just his job. He wasn’t born to do this. I guess that’s why the mob would call him a made man. He’ll spend most of his life in prison, but the boy doesn’t know that yet. You can make a hitman out of almost anybody, but it’s better if you get ‘em young.“
Riker nodded toward the window. Beyond the glass, a twelve-year-old boy stood on the sidewalk talking to a girl, his flawless face growing pinker by the second. He was falling in love for the first time, his whole shining life ahead of him. „That kid would do.“
Charles turned his face to the window and the youngster on the sidewalk, so innocent, the raw makings of evil. „What about Mallory – when she was younger?“
„Naw. She wasn’t the best scratch material.“ Did that sound reassuring? Would Charles buy a lie? „When she was ten years old, she was a fullblown person.“ He smiled at this memory of a wildly talented street thief with the chilling eyes of a small stone killer. „And she hasn’t changed all that much.“
Charles seemed genuinely relieved. What a gift for denial. Poor bastard, he was always seeking evidence of a beating heart and a bit of a soul, never appreciating the true marvel of Mallory – that she functioned so well without them.
Chapter 10
LIEUTENANT COFFEY WAS IN THE DARK, AND HE WAS IN AWE. On the other side of the one-way glass, Nedda Winter was seated at the long table, passively watching a police aide, who laid out the polygraph equipment, the rubber tubes, the clips and their wires.
„So that’s Red Winter.“ Jack Coffey’s words were as soft as whispers in church. „When the lady came in, she told the desk sergeant that your polygraph exam was never finished.“
The lady?
Nedda Winter’s supporters were legion now.
„This was her idea, not mine.“ Mallory sat down beside the lieutenant.
„But no pressure, right?“ He kept his eyes on the woman in the next room. „I know her niece attempted suicide tonight. You didn’t make any threats against Bitty Smyth, did you?“
Even Bitty had champions.
When the police aide had departed from the interview room, Nedda Winter reached out for the transducer and attached this cardio device to her thumb. Next the woman bound herself with the rubber tubes that would record her breathing, and last she attached the clips to her fingers. Dragging her wires with her, she moved her chair back to the wall. After removing both her shoes, she sat there, very still, staring at the one-way mirror, the window for the two police sitting side by side – watching.
„All the years I’ve been on this job,“ said Jack Coffey, „I’ve never seen anybody do that before.“ He turned his eyes to Mallory. Unspoken was the question What did you do to that woman? He could never voice his suspicions. Contrary to policy, Mallory had failed to tape the previous polygraph examination. Now he was assuming the worst of her and only grateful that there was no proof.
Mallory’s hands curled into fists under cover of darkness.
Rising from his chair, the lieutenant said, „Lock up this room before you go in there. I don’t want anyone to see this.“ And he would not watch either, no stomach for it.
„Wait,“ said Mallory. „You think I’m a monster, right? So why dorityou take over?“ Her tone was pure acid. „Go on. Fix the old lady a nice cup of tea. Be her new best friend. See if she tells you anything useful – anything at all.“
Jack Coffey’s hand rested on the doorknob. He would not turn around, and he could not leave.
„But first,“ said Mallory, „you can take my badge.“ She rose from her chair and stepped closer to the window on the interview room, then leaned her forehead against the glass. „I’m so tired of everybody lining up behind Nedda Winter. What’s the point of me showing up for work anymore?“ Mallory reached into her back pocket and pulled out the leather folder that held her gold shield. „The old woman’s holding out on me, and that’ll get her killed. But what the hell. If she dies, she dies, right? And nobody cares who massacred her family. And Sally Winter – more old history. Who cares if that little girl’s body was stuffed in a hole like a dead dog? Not me – not you.“
Jack Coffey turned around to face his detective. „I know you’ll never let go of that badge, Mallory. You’re better at this than your old man when he was in his prime.“ He quit the room, closing the door softly, just to let her know, that, though she had cut him at the knees, there were no hard feelings.
And now that she had beaten Coffey, she glanced at the window on the interrogation room. One down and one to go.
She looked over her handiwork, this barefoot woman wired to a machine, every muscle tensing, bracing. They stared at one another. Nedda was blind to Mallory, but well aware that she was being watched from the other side of the mirror. The woman was waiting so patiently for the game to begin. She raised her head, as if to ask the young detective – When?
Kathy Mallory left the observation room, locking the door behind her, not out of deference to Jack Coffey’s wishes, but for the sake of privacy alone. She entered the brightly lit interview room, and Nedda Winter looked up with no reproach for what was about to happen to her.
Mallory knelt down on bended knee and lifted Nedda’s right foot in her hand, noting its fragile, paper-thin skin and the raised blue veins that came with age and a hard life. She gently slipped one shoe back on the woman’s foot and carefully tied the laces, not too loose, not too tight. When she had done the second shoe, she raised her face to Nedda’s. „The night you killed Willy Roy Boyd – you didn’t find that ice pick on the bar – in the dark. You had it under your pillow, didn’t you?“
Nedda nodded between wariness and surprise.
Mallory removed the metal clips and unfastened the tubes that bound the woman’s breast. „You never feel safe anymore, do you?“
„No. Not for a long time.“
„Not since you left the last hospital.“ Mallory walked back to the table and pulled out an ordinary wooden chair that had no wires. „Sit here.“ Fumbling with her list of rules for a life, she added the word „Please.“ When Nedda had joined her at the table, the detective said, „Suppose we just talk.“
And Nedda did.
She began with the morning of the massacre, counting up the dead. „All those bodies. When I got to the top of the house and saw the nanny on the floor, I couldn’t go into that nursery. I didn’t want to see Sally’s body. I couldn’t find Cleo and Lionel, but I’d only searched the rooms upstairs.“