Murder on St. Mark’s place

“I doubt I’d know him again,” she confirmed.

Sarah thought of the storekeeper who had sold Gerda the red shoes. He’d been so busy looking at her ankles, he probably hadn’t even noticed the man who’d paid for the shoes. The only people who could have identified him for sure were dead. And nobody even knew his last name.

Sarah was starting to believe they would never find him.

LISLE’S FUNERAL THE next day was better attended than Gerda’s had been. Her family had more friends, it seemed. They filled the United German Lutheran Church, and many of them were weeping audibly. Sarah wondered if it was out of genuine grief over Lisle’s death or simply to show support for the family.

Lisle’s mother was a tired-looking woman who probably wasn’t nearly as old as she looked. Three young boys sat in the pew between her and the man who must have been Lisle’s stepfather. He looked like the kind of brute who would beat his stepdaughter. Or maybe he’d just wanted to keep her from going bad and used the only method he knew. Sarah couldn’t judge others. Her own shortcomings were too real.

Sitting near the back, she was surprised when Malloy walked in just as the service began. He slipped into the pew beside her, forcing her to move over to make room for him.

“Thought I’d find you here,” he said before the organ music drowned any attempt at conversation.

Sarah wasn’t sure if she was glad to see him or not, but the expression on his face warned her he did not have good news to share. In fact, he looked haggard, as if he hadn’t slept well. He wouldn’t meet her eye, either. Another bad sign.

She studied him as the service progressed. He needed a shave. And a haircut, too. His clothes were rumpled, but then, they always were. Probably, he cultivated his slovenliness so he wouldn’t stand out in the poorer neighborhoods where crimes usually occurred.

She tried to concentrate on the minister’s words of comfort, but Malloy’s presence was too disturbing. He’d come looking for her. What did he know?

Whatever it was, he didn’t seem to be in any hurry to share it. He could’ve pulled her out of the church. She would have willingly gone if he’d had something to tell her. Instead, he seemed intent on studying the crowd. What was he looking for?

Then she realized he was probably looking for someone who might have been Lisle’s killer. Was it possible? Would the killer be brazen enough to attend his victim’s funeral? Then she realized that a man who would beat young women to death within spitting distance of a public street would probably be brazen enough to do just about anything. But brass didn’t count in this instance. He’d have to be a fool to show his face where someone might recognize him or notice that he didn’t belong. Sarah doubted he was a fool, but Malloy was looking around anyway. Just in case.

The service seemed interminable, probably because Sarah was so aware of Malloy and so anxious to speak with him alone. No words of comfort would bring the dead back to life, nor could they make the pain of loss more bearable, as Sarah well knew. She didn’t want comfort, in any case. She wanted vengeance. While the others prayed for Lisle’s soul, Sarah prayed that Malloy had learned something about the killer. While the others sang of a life hereafter, walking the streets of heaven, Sarah’s heart thrummed with a desire to send one particular man to the fires of hell.

Finally, the service ended. The family filed out, following the casket, and Sarah and Malloy waited until the last of the guests had gone. In the quiet of the now empty church, Sarah clutched at his sleeve when he would have followed the others.

“You know something. What is it? Tell me!”

He looked down at his boots, as if seeking wisdom. When his gaze met hers again, his eyes were bleak. “I think I’ve found out who this Will character is.”

“Who?”

He didn’t reply. Instead he reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a cheap cardboard photograph cover. It looked just like the one she’d found among Gerda’s things, the one that held the picture of her on the Shoot-the- Chutes ride. He handed it to her.

She opened the cover, and for a moment she thought it was the same picture. In the dim light of the church, it might well have been. The boat was the same, and it was filled with people, just like the other photograph. But closer inspection revealed that the occupants of the boat were different. She tilted the picture, trying to catch the light. After a moment she found Lisle. She was trying to look frightened but anyone could she was having the time of her life. She was clinging to a man’s arm, and unlike the man in Gerda’s photograph, this fellow was looking up, his face full to the camera.

He was Dirk Schyler.

12

“IT’S DIRK,” SHE SAID STUPIDLY. HER MIND couldn’t quite grasp the significance.

“Yeah, it’s him all right. And he’s with that girl, Lisle.”

She still wasn’t certain what it meant.

“Turn the picture over,” he suggested.

She turned the cover over and found nothing on the back. He took it impatiently from her hands, pulled the photograph from its frame, and handed it back to her. She recognized Lisle’s handwriting from the note she had left with Mrs. Elsworth. The words were scrawled in pencil, but they might as well have been written in blood: Me and Will at Coney Island.

“Dear heaven,” Sarah breathed, and then she couldn’t breathe anymore. She felt as if all the air in the church had suddenly evaporated.

She could see Dirk’s face, laughing and smirking at her efforts to find the man named Will out at Coney Island. She remembered how he’d stood there winking at the photographer when she’d inquired about him. Had the photographer recognized him and just pretended not to?

Then she remembered how he’d kissed her, pressing his mouth against hers so insistently, and how angry he’d been when she’d resisted his advances. Someone made a small, moaning sound, and she vaguely realized it was she.

“Sit down,” Malloy said gruffly, laying one of his beefy hands on her shoulder and forcing her down onto the pew.

Dirk had touched her. Dirk had kissed her. She felt unclean. She scrubbed the back of her hand across her lips in a vain effort to wipe away the memory of him.

Malloy, who missed nothing, said, “Did you kiss him?” His voice held equal measures of disbelief and disgust.

“Not willingly,” she informed him, equally disgusted.

“He tried to force himself on you?” Was that outrage? Malloy hardly seemed capable of such a thing, so Sarah must be imagining it.

“He tried to steal a kiss when we were in the tunnel on one of the rides,” she recalled, feeling sick to her stomach at the memory. “I pushed him away and told him to stop, and he did.”

“He didn’t get angry?” Malloy was sitting beside her now, leaning close, watching her face as if for clues.

Sarah tried to remember every detail. “I couldn’t see his expression because it was dark, but he sounded angry, at least at first. Not for long, though. He said something about my being a lady, and how he didn’t encounter many real ladies. He’d forgotten himself, he said.” She looked into Malloy’s dark eyes, searching for some reassurance. “I made him angry, Malloy. If he was the killer, then he would have killed me, too, wouldn’t he?”

She wanted so desperately to be right. She needed to be right, because if she wasn’t, then a man she’d known all her life was a killer.

But Malloy shook his head. “All the other girls let him have his way. He didn’t even have to force them. That’s when he beat them to death.”

“But we still don’t know for certain that Dirk is the one who killed them,” Sarah reminded him almost