“George didn’t do this,” Sarah told them. “Mr. Malloy questioned him first thing. He was with a group of his friends all night. He’s not the killer.”
Hetty snorted derisively. “So you say. How do we know his friends ain’t in on it, too! Maybe there’s a bunch of them that goes around killing girls!”
“If there was, we’d have found them out by now. They’d be bragging and fighting among themselves. It’s impossible to keep a secret like that when more than one person knows it.”
Hetty didn’t want to be wrong. She wanted this to be Sarah’s fault so she could put the blame somewhere. She couldn’t think of a valid argument, so she simply glared at Sarah.
“Could I buy you girls something to drink?” Sarah suggested. “You look like you could use something.”
“You just want to ask us more questions,” Hetty said bitterly.
“I want to find out who killed your friends,” Sarah agreed. “Maybe you know something that will help.”
Bertha was crying again. “I want to find out who it is,” she told Hetty, scrubbing at her cheeks with her sleeve. “I’m going to help her.” She pushed herself unsteadily to her feet.
“I don’t know nothing, and neither do you!” Hetty insisted, her chin jutting rebelliously even though her lower lip quivered suspiciously.
“Then you won’t be able to help. But my offer is still good. There’s a beer garden just around the comer, isn’t there?”
Grudgingly, Hetty rose from the stoop and followed as Sarah and Bertha started down the street. In a few minutes the girls each had a stein of beer-which Sarah felt they needed for medicinal purposes-and Sarah had a lemonade.
They sat in silence for a few minutes. Sarah was loath to intrude upon their grief, but finally she said, “Can you tell me what happened last night?”
“Nothing happened,” Hetty said, her anger still fierce.
“She means nothing bad,” Bertha explained. “We went to Harmony Hall, just like we usually do. There was a dance, but we none of us met anybody we liked, so we left together. We walked home, and Lisle went off by herself, just like she always does, when we got to her street. That’s the last we know.”
“Then she wasn’t with any particular fellow? Nobody she would have willingly gone with?”
“We ain’t done that since Gerda died,” Hetty informed her haughtily. “We ain’t stupid!”
“Then someone must have followed her or seen her alone and accosted her.”
“She would’ve screamed,” Bertha insisted. “There’s lots of people out on the streets and sleeping on the roofs and porches. Somebody would’ve heard if she screamed.”
“Maybe she couldn’t scream,” Sarah suggested, thinking out loud. “Maybe he grabbed her too quickly.”
“Or maybe it was somebody she knew,” Hetty said with surprising insight. “Maybe she wasn’t even afraid at first.”
Sarah hadn’t thought of that. “Somebody she wasn’t afraid of, so she went with him willingly.”
“Maybe,” Hetty said. not quite convinced. The idea didn’t appeal to Sarah, either. Since the girls didn’t know who the killer was, how could any man have been considered safe?
Sarah tried a different tack. “Did either of you ever hear Lisle speak of a man named Will?”
The girls exchanged a glance. “Was he the one who…?” Bertha began.
Hetty nodded. “Lisle met him a while back. In the spring, I think. He took her to Coney Island and bought her a pair of ear bobs. He seemed like the perfect beau, and then…”
“He hit her,” Bertha said baldly.
“What do you mean?”
“They was…” Bertha caught herself, glancing at Hetty, whose frown held a warning.
“I know you don’t want to speak badly of your friend, but we can’t let that stand in the way of finding out who killed her,” Sarah reminded them.
“Lisle didn’t never want anybody to know, especially you,” Bertha told her.
Sarah was touched. Lisle had wanted her good opinion. “I thought Lisle was a fine, brave girl,” she said, her voice unsteady as she tried to hold back her tears. “Nothing you tell me now will change my mind. And no one else will ever know.”
Hetty still wasn’t convinced, but Bertha needed to unburden herself. “A lot of the girls do it, Mrs. Brandt. It’s the only way we can get pretty things.”
“I understand,” she assured them. “I like pretty things, too.”
“Lisle liked this fellow, and he treated her real good,” Hetty said, her tone daring Sarah to contradict her. “She never would’ve done it otherwise.”
“Of course not,” Sarah agreed.
“She went with him one night,” Bertha said. “Not to a room or anything. Just someplace private. She let him, you know, and after he was done, he slapped her. Called her a whore.”
“He had no call to do that! He knew she weren’t no whore,” Hetty said.
“She was scared, but she’s been beat by her stepfather, so she wasn’t going to take it from him,” Bertha said.
“He must’ve been surprised. Maybe he thought ’cause she’s so little, she wouldn’t put up a fight,” Hetty said.
“But she did,” Bertha reported. “Kicked him and bit him, and she got away before he could hit her again.”
“She was mad,” Hetty remembered. “Couldn’t hardly tell us about it without spitting and hissing. Wanted to scratch his eyes out, only he never came around again.”
Sarah was trying to put it all together, but the puzzle pieces didn’t quite fit yet. “Did Gerda know about this?”
“Sure she did,” Bertha confirmed. “Lisle told all of us right after it happened.”
“Do you think Gerda might’ve gone with him, even knowing he’d hit Lisle?”
The two girls exchanged another glance. Plainly, they weren’t sure about this.
“It’s not that Gerda was so brave,” Hetty began, feeling her way.
“She just didn’t worry about things,” Bertha clarified. “Maybe he hit Lisle, but she’d figure he’d never hit her. She always thought she was smarter than the rest of us and could get men to do things we couldn’t.”
“Sometimes she was right, too,” Hetty said, “and that only made her worse. She went with anybody who’d treat her. We tried to tell her that was stupid and maybe even dangerous, but she wouldn’t listen.”
Now it was beginning to make a sort of sense. “So if Gerda had met this Will and realized he was the same one Lisle had warned her about, then you think it’s possible she’d have gone with him anyway if he wanted to treat her?”
“Sure. She didn’t care.” Hetty still sounded angry.
“But she probably wouldn’t want the rest of you to know that she was seeing him,” Sarah guessed.
“Not unless she wanted us to give her what for,” Hetty said.
That explained how the killer had been able to get to Gerda, but not how he’d gotten to Lisle, who would have been more wary.
“I suspect Lisle wouldn’t have been likely to go with this Will willingly if he came up on her in the dark,” Sarah guessed.
“Not even in the daylight,” Hetty confirmed. “Not after the other girls got themselves killed.”
Sarah was thinking, trying to picture how it must have been. He’d been looking for Lisle. Maybe he’d been following her, waiting to catch her alone. Or maybe he saw her by chance and remembered that she’d escaped him once. He’d somehow dragged her into an alley without her managing to scream and attract attention. Then he’d beaten the life out of her, taking revenge for her earlier escape. One strategically placed blow to her stomach would have robbed her of breath and effectively silenced her. By the time she recovered from that, he could have beaten her senseless. Sarah only hoped oblivion had come quickly. She couldn’t stand the thought that Lisle had suffered for long.
“Did either of you ever see this man?” Sarah asked. “Do you know what he looks like?”
They considered, trying to remember.
“I saw him that first night,” Bertha said, “when he came to ask Lisle to dance. But I wasn’t paying much attention. He was just another fellow in the crowd. I didn’t know…” She shrugged helplessly.
“And you don’t remember much about him?” Sarah asked, her hopes dying.
