likely, considering what the coroner said.”
“Malloy, I’m getting very annoyed with you,” Sarah said, frowning because today was the first time he’d bothered to mention that the coroner had told him a lot more about Anna’s death than he’d bothered to share with her. “What else did the coroner say?”
Malloy obviously felt no guilt over his omissions. “He said she walked for a distance that night after she was stabbed.”
“A
“Maybe a few blocks,” he said with a shrug. “She must’ve been trying to get back home after she was attacked.”
“If only she’d made it,” Sarah sighed. “Maybe she could have at least told someone who stabbed her.”
“If she even knew,” he pointed out. “If a stranger killed her, then that still means Prescott’s attack didn’t have anything to do with Anna’s murder, and my chances of catching the real killer aren’t very good. And don’t forget, I still have Mrs. Giddings locked up. No matter what you think, she claims she killed Anna.”
“She couldn’t have,” Sarah pointed out. “Even if she’d followed her son to Anna’s house, she wouldn’t have stood around on the street waiting for hours in case Anna came out so she could follow and murder her. Why would she expect Anna to come out at all? And she especially wouldn’t have stayed there on the street until after dark, for the same reasons it’s so strange that Anna went out herself. That’s just impossible to believe.”
Malloy didn’t look happy, and Sarah couldn’t blame him. He’d thought he’d solved the case, and now she was proving he hadn’t. “Impossible or not, Mrs. Giddings still confessed. And you also haven’t convinced me that the same person who killed Anna also stabbed Prescott.”
“That’s probably because I’m not sure myself anymore. If Anna was killed by a stranger who was trying to rob her or attack her, then there’s no reason for there to have been a connection.”
“Even if Mrs. Giddings killed Anna, she didn’t have any reason to kill Prescott either. In fact, who among the people who knew Anna did? Were her friends at the theater angry about him snooping around?”
“Not at all,” Sarah said. “Theater people probably love publicity. Catherine said Mrs. Walcott was angry, though.”
“Rightly so. She didn’t want bad publicity for herself or her boarding house. But murder is a pretty drastic solution to that problem. You might as well say the Ellsworths stabbed him because he was writing all those stories about Nelson.”
Sarah rubbed her temple where a headache was forming. “I’m afraid I’m too tired to figure any of this out right now.”
“Then get some sleep. I’ve got to go back to work myself before somebody notices I’m spending all my time on someone else’s case.”
He got up and carried her dishes to the sink.
“For heaven’s sake, don’t wash them,” she cried in mock horror. “I don’t think my heart could take the shock!”
“Don’t worry,” he assured her with one of his rare grins. “I had no intention of it.” The grin transformed him, banishing the pain and the years that had hardened him and giving her a glimpse of the boy he once had been. For an instant, she even saw a trace of Brian in him.
Something inside of her warmed and began to melt, a part of her that had been frozen for a very long time. She rose, responding to an instinctive need to be closer to him. Closer to his warmth.
“Thank you for taking such good care of me,” she said and impulsively gave him her hand.
His fingers closed over hers, strong and sure, and his grin faded. For along moment, their gazes locked and held, and Sarah saw something in his dark eyes she’d never seen before. A longing. A need. An emptiness she instantly understood because it matched her own. An emptiness he could fill if only…
Suddenly, the place where his hand touched hers began to burn, as if his flesh were searing her, and she snatched her hand back in alarm. And when she looked into his eyes again, she saw only the Malloy she knew, the one who allowed nothing and no one past his barriers. Had she only imagined that moment?
She covered her embarrassment with a forced laugh. “I’ll be sure to tell Mrs. Ellsworth you were as good as your word about feeding me.”
“She probably won’t believe you,” he said gruffly, turning toward the back door. He was leaving, and Sarah didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed.
“What are you going to do about Mrs. Giddings?” she asked for something to say.
He gave her one of his looks over his shoulder as he reached for his hat. “You’re like a dog with a bone, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” she said, glad they were back to their normal bantering again. Perhaps she really had only imagined that awkward moment. She
“In that case, I’ll just tell you the truth. I’m not going to do anything with Mrs. Giddings.”
“You can’t mean that!”
“She confessed to a murder,” he reminded her, “and now that she’s locked up, they aren’t going to let her go even if I tell them I don’t think she did it after all, which I’m not going to do, because I still think she probably did. Now get some rest. When you wake up, you’ll probably realize I’m right, and you’ll have to apologize for disagreeing with me.”
“Ha!” she replied, making him grin again, but this one was merely cocksure and not the least bit vulnerable or boyish.
“Good day, Mrs. Brandt,” he said and then he was gone, setting his hat on his head as he strode quickly out of her backyard.
She closed the door behind him and locked it, suddenly feeling the extent of her exhaustion. No wonder she was having romantic notions about Malloy. She was probably delirious with fatigue.
A few minutes later, she had stripped off most of her clothes, washed, and collapsed onto her bed. The next thing she knew, she was face to face with a vicious dog that was growling and barking, and no matter how loudly she shouted or how many times she clapped her hands, he wouldn’t run away. He just kept pawing at the cellar door, trying to get inside. Sarah knew he shouldn’t get in, but she didn’t know how to stop him. She needed a bone. If she just had a bone to throw to him, he’d go away. But she couldn’t find one, not anywhere. And then it didn’t matter because the cellar door was opening. Someone was pushing it up from the inside, and the dog was howling and barking and prancing all around, but Sarah was afraid. She didn’t want whoever was down there to come out. She wanted to push the door shut again, but she couldn’t move. She couldn’t move one muscle. All she could do was watch helplessly as the door fell open and Anna Blake stepped out.
She was dead, of course. Sarah could see the blood-stains on her dress, and her face was white, her eyes blank and staring. She was dead and coming out of the cellar, and the dog was going to get her. Sarah opened her mouth to cry out a warning, and the sound of her own voice woke her with a start.
She looked around, surprised to find herself in her own bed, in her own bedroom, gasping for breath and drenched in cold sweat, but completely alone. No dog. No dead Anna Blake. From the angle of the sunlight creeping in around the window shades, she guessed it was afternoon. Except for the aftereffects of her nightmare, she did feel much better. So much better, in fact, that she was positive the murder of Anna Blake had not yet been solved, no matter what Malloy thought.
The only problem was that she had to convince Malloy of it, too, because if she didn’t, an innocent woman was going to be electrocuted and a killer would go free.
The City Jail had earned its nickname of “The Tombs” by being the purest example of Neo-Egyptian architecture in the country. Its massive granite structure took up an entire block on Leonard Street between Franklin and Centre, and it housed both male and female adult prisoners, as well as boys who had run afoul of the law. Sarah had certainly never expected to find herself in such a place, but then, since meeting Frank Malloy, she’d done many unusual things.
Inside, the building was immaculate, far different from the interrogation rooms she’d seen at Police Headquarters. In spite of its spotless appearance, however, the place was redolent of the stench of the sewer, having been built on the marshy ground of the old Collection Pond. Its dampness permeated the entire building.
