'Those are my second ones this season,' Beale said, never looking up from his task. 'Someone stole the first tub. I expect someone will steal this one as well, although God knows why. I can't imagine you can get more than a dollar selling flowers.' Beale dipped his brush back into the aluminum pail and attacked another spot, rubbing at it fiercely and methodically, determined to eradicate it.
'Can we go inside? I need to talk to you.'
'Then talk to me while I work. I got started late today. I'm behind.'
'This isn't a conversation we can have out on the street.'
She wished he looked more surprised, that he would resist a little more, or pepper her with insistent questions. Instead, he dropped the brush back into the soapy water and stood, knees creaking.
'I'm on the third floor,' he said, unlocking the outside door, then another inside the vestibule, a wooden one polished to a high sheen and smelling of lemon furniture oil. 'I used to rent out the first two floors, but I don't anymore. I'd rather have my privacy than the money.'
Beale's apartment looked like the kind of place where the occupant spent a lot of time sitting in the dark. Clean, which Tess had expected, but also quite bare. She thought old people always had a surplus of stuff, the way her grandmother did. Beale's apartment, with its empty white walls and clean taupe carpeting, felt like a gallery waiting for an exhibit to be installed. She followed him through the living room, which had only one chair, a computer, and a television set, into the kitchen. Here, at least, there were two chairs, vinyl padded ones that matched the yellow-topped formica table.
'You want a cold drink?' Beale asked. She had asked Tull the same question not even a half-hour ago. Perhaps it was instinctive, this offering of beverages to forestall unpleasantness.
'No, thank you,' She paused, and still couldn't find a place to begin. 'Your place is pretty spare. I like it, though.'
'People broke in while I was in prison, stole what they could and broke the rest. Once I got the walls painted and the new carpet done, it seemed easier to keep it simple.' He looked at her sternly. 'You didn't come here to talk about my interior decorating. What do you want?'
'Why didn't Destiny matter?' It wasn't where she had meant to start, but it would have to do.
'Destiny?'
'Destiny Teeter, the girl twin. You said she didn't matter, that it was okay if I couldn't find her. Was it really because she was just a girl? Or was it because you knew she was dead? Knew she was dead because you had killed her.'
'The girl's dead?' He sounded more confused than surprised. He rubbed his temples, as if his head suddenly hurt.
'She's the one whose body was found in the park a few weeks back, before you hired me. Her brother, Treasure, was killed in an arson fire yesterday. Someone hit him over the head, then set a fire, hoping to make it look like an accident. When the cops ID'ed him through the dental records, they had the inspiration of trying to match Destiny's records to the dead girl.'
She had hoped her torrent of words might provoke a similar stream from Beale. He merely looked thoughtful. 'Well, that's a shame. But the others are still alive, right? Didn't you go out to the skinny boy's school yesterday? How's he doing? Besides, the fat one still might show up. Those boys don't stay away forever when they run. They always come home. They don't have the imagination to start over somewhere else.'
His coldness, his obtuseness, infuriated her even as it gave her new hope. If he had killed the twins, wouldn't he be stammering excuses or alibis by now?
'Mr. Beale, I don't think you understand the significance of what I've just told you. Destiny and Treasure Teeter were murdered, and the police are going to be here with a warrant for you real soon.'
'Me. They always blame me. Doesn't anyone else in this city ever do anything? It doesn't make much sense, paying money to find children just so I can kill them.'
'The police believe you killed Destiny in a rage-that you didn't plan it, but when it happened, it felt good, cathartic. So you decided to kill the others, too, to punish them for testifying against you. But you didn't know how to find them, did you? That's where I came in. I would find them, thinking I was doing a good deed, and then you'd kill them.'
If Tull was right, Beale's plan had been ingenious and multilayered. After his chance meeting with Destiny, he had sought Tess out to locate the others. He had insisted on not meeting the children face-to-face, so he could then have plausible deniability when the bodies started turning up. According to Tull's theory, Beale had broken into her office and stolen his own file, in order to find out what she had learned while still declaring his ignorance. But the file he would have printed out early Saturday morning had only the information about the Teeter twins. She hadn't had a chance yet to summarize Jackie's findings about Sal and his scholarship to the Penfield School. Lives often hinged on such coincidences. So Treasure Teeter was dead and Sal Hawkings was alive. He would have been harder to get to, anyway. Beale would have needed to think long and hard about finding a credible death for Sal.
'The police are going to arrest you today,' Tess said. 'They'll be here any minute with a warrant. But I wanted to talk to you first, see what you had to say for yourself.'
Beale walked over to a wall calendar hanging by his kitchen door, the kind given out at hardware stores. This month's picture was a covered bridge, the reminder beneath it was to buy gardening supplies. Each day in June so far was X'ed, except for yesterday. He took a black pen and carefully crossed off that square as well.
'Forgot to mark my calendar. Like I said, I got a late start this morning. I've been out of prison for sixty-seven days now. Do you know how many days I was in prison?'
Tess was pretty good at doing math in her head, the byproduct of having to know her checking account balance almost to the penny over the last few years. 'Five times 365, for a total of-1,500 plus 300 plus 25, 1,825.'
'You forgot the leap year, so 1,826. I figure I have to live to be seventy-two to get all those days back. And I never really get them back, do I? You never get anything back in this life, once it's taken from you. My wife Annie, the babies who died inside her. We tried five times to have children, but she just couldn't carry a baby. She was all messed up inside. Nowadays, you're like that, the doctors can do things, as long as you got money. Isn't that a fact?'
'Yes, I guess it is.' Tess hadn't known how this conversation was going to go, but she surely hadn't envisioned discussing modern obstetrics.
He sighed. 'Children, children, children. Truth is, I was disappointed only for Annie's sake. The way I see it, children are one of the shakiest investments you'll ever make. You spend all this money on 'em, spend all this time and there's no way knowing how they're going to turn out. Now that boy Treasure, he was a cute little boy once. Mouthy, in with bad company, but a real good-looking boy. The girl was pretty, too, or would have been if she had worn nice clothes. All those children, always dressed so shabby. I'm sorry they're dead, but I didn't kill them.'
'But you never intended to help them, did you? This was never about helping these children at all.'
'I believe I'll have some iced tea. You sure you don't want some?' When Tess shook her head, Beale took a jar of presweetened, instant powder from the top of the refrigerator and stirred it into a tall, amber glass filled with tap water. He took a long time stirring, as if making instant iced tea required a great deal of precision.
'You ever listened to a child tell you the plot of a picture show?' The teaspoon was still hitting the sides of his glass, tap, tap, tap. 'You know how they get all mixed up, forget the important parts, double back to the beginning? And no two children will tell the story quite the same way. It likes to drive you crazy, listening to them.'
Tess waited. It seemed to her that Luther Beale wasn't a much better storyteller himself.
'Now the children who saw Donnie Moore die all saw the exact same thing. They all told the jury the same story, almost word for word. Me, standing there with my gun out, looking like the devil. The girl saw it, although she was around the corner and heading up the alley before Donnie went down. Her brother was right behind her, but he saw me, too. The fat one saw it, although his back was to me. Yet they all told the same story, almost word for word. Now isn't that something?'
'Their testimony had probably been rehearsed to some degree,' Tess said. 'They were children, after all, the prosecution had to prepare them for taking the witness stand. You'd expect a certain similarity.'
'Which would be fine, except for one thing. I
