“I don’t come in here at all. I stopped in to get out of the rain.”
He glanced outside and saw that a light summer drizzle had begun. People on the sidewalk were looking up at the sky in wary surprise, some of them opening umbrellas. Then he took a closer look at the girl-woman. She was older than he’d imagined, in her twenties. It was the renegade ringlets that threw him, and her clothes. She was dressed young, in tight jeans, a sleeveless Mets shirt, and dirty white jogging shoes. She had an angular, delicate look, emphasized by her swept back blond hair and the way she wore her makeup, heavily applied, with eyeliner that made her blue eyes even bluer. Both her ears were pierced in three places, and each piercing held a tiny fake diamond stud.
“Seen enough?” she asked.
He laughed. “Not by a long shot.” He turned away from his video game so she’d know she had his full attention. They always liked that. “You go to NYU?”
“How’d you guess?”
“Your shirt.”
She looked down at what she was wearing and gave him a quizzical look.
“NYU girls are Mets fans,” he said.
“All of us?”
“Without exception.”
“I actually like the Yankees.”
“Okay. With one exception.”
She gave him a different kind of smile this time. Kind of slow and lazy. It made her look even older. He liked that. “Let’s get out of here,” she said. “It’s too fucking noisy.”
“Just what I was thinking.”
She widened her smile. “Yeah. I know what you were thinking.”
“I got a call from the high school,” Laura told Roger when he phoned from the office at Broadwing Mutual, where he sold all kinds of insurance over the phone and managed outstanding policies. Laura wasn’t sure exactly what his job entailed, but he earned enough to support the family in reasonably good style-if they watched their pennies. “Davy’s skipped his afternoon classes again.”
“A habit.”
“The school’s concerned.”
“He’s a senior. He’ll go away to college next year.”
“If he graduates.”
“He’ll graduate, the tuition we pay the place.”
“He’s got to attend some classes.”
“And he does attend some. Davy will always do at least enough to get by. That’s the kind of kid he is. You worry too much, Laura.”
“So he’s out someplace having fun. He’s a young man now. You want me to talk to him?”
“No.” She knew her husband was bluffing. He wouldn’t talk to their son even if she insisted. She’d known for years the kind of relationship Roger and Davy shared. The late night trips down the hall when Roger assumed she was asleep. The faint squeal of the hinge on Davy’s bedroom door and-
“Laura?”
“I don’t see any reason to talk to him,” she said. “It probably wouldn’t help, anyway.”
“Davy’ll be all right. I can just about guarantee it.”
“Okay, I’ll accept that guarantee.”
“That’s my girl.”
“Will you be home for supper?”
“No, I’ve gotta work late. Be about 9 o’clock, I’m afraid.”
“Okay, I’ll see you then.”
“Don’t worry, Laura. Promise?”
“Sure,” she said, and hung up the phone.
She hadn’t mentioned the stained shirt to Roger. What would be the point?
They sat in the pocket park that was squeezed between two buildings on East 51st Street. The more they talked to each other, the more she thought they had a lot in common. Enough, anyway.
He was young, all right; Holly could see that even in the dim light from cars passing in the nearby street. But there was something about him, a deep sort of confidence despite his age, as if he’d been around. Maybe more than she had.
“Mind if I ask how old you are?”
He gave her a slow smile that got to her. “Sure, I mind. You afraid I’m jailbait?”
“No. Women don’t think that way. Besides, you’ve got old eyes.”
“You trust me to be old enough and I’ll trust you.”
“To do what?”
“To be gentle with me.”
Holly laughed. “Listen, I’ve got nothing but booze at my place.”
“We don’t even need that.”
She grinned. “C’mon, David. I might not even have that, but you can help me look.”
“I’m good at finding things,” he said, standing up from the bench. “Like, I found you.”
Less than an hour later he slid the long blade of one of her kitchen knives in at the base of her sternum, then up at a sharp angle to the heart. He’d worked out that method from books and basic medical research on the Internet. When he withdrew the blade, it made a muffled scraping sound on her rib cage. It was a sound he liked and made a point to remember.
Holly died quickly on the kitchen floor, not even aware of falling. The last two years, her friends, her lovers, her neat but small apartment near the college, all of it slipped away from her so, so fast, somewhere in the darkness beneath her pain.
The last thing she saw as the light faded was David, nude, standing near the sink, removing objects from the drawer where she kept the knives.
“Another girl’s been murdered and carved up down in the Village,” Roger said, reading the folded
“I don’t think I want to hear about this at breakfast,” Laura said. She was sitting across from Roger, pouring milk over a bowl of cracked wheat cereal with raisins in it.
“The guy must be a frustrated surgeon. Or a butcher.”
Laura stood up and stalked to the window, standing with her back very straight and staring out over the fire escape.
“Take it easy,” Roger said. “I didn’t mean to spook you.”
Without turning around, she said, “Two weeks ago, the morning after another girl was killed the same way, I found what might be blood on Davy’s shirt.”
“So?”
“I found blood on his shirt this morning, too. Do you want me to show you?”
Roger picked up his cup, then paused, as if he’d changed his mind about coffee this morning. He placed the cup perfectly in its saucer. “No. I don’t see the necessity.”
“We could ask Davy if there’s a necessity.”
“Simple as that?”
“Yes.” But she knew it really wasn’t that simple. She was terrified of how Davy might reply. Even more terrified of what might follow. The media, the police and judges and juries, the system. Once the system, this city, had you by the throat, it shook and shook until there was nothing left of you. It might do that to Davy. To his family. Wasn’t it always the family’s fault? Over and over you heard that, how the killer was himself a victim.
