swiped at his eyes with his sleeve, in a not-quite-successful attempt to conceal their dampness.
“Hey, it’s okay.” Caroline squatted down so her eyes were level with her son’s. Suddenly he looked far younger than his ten years, and the pain in his eyes tore at her heart. “I know it’s not easy,” she said, resisting an urge to wrap her arms around him. “But we’ll get through this. I promise we will.”
Ryan’s jaw trembled, but then he bit his lip and drew slightly away from her. “I’m okay,” he muttered.
But it was so obvious that he wasn’t okay that for a moment — just a moment — Caroline considered letting him go on to the playground by himself. After all, it was one of the ball fields down at the south end of the park that they were going to, not the ones farther up.
The exact opposite direction from the way Brad had gone that night.
But then she scanned the park, already filling up with people brought out by the perfect spring morning. Was it possible the man who’d killed Brad was here? They’d never caught him, never even had a clue. And the detective in charge of the case — a big, bluff, sad-eyed Sergeant named Frank Oberholzer up at the 20th Precinct on West 82nd — had explained that they probably wouldn’t catch the killer. “The thing is, it doesn’t look like your husband was a specific target. He was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. So we don’t have much to go on unless we get a bunch more just like it. Same M.O., same area, same time of day. Then we got a pattern, and we got something to look for. But if it was just some junkie looking for quick cash, there won’t be a pattern — he’ll hit someone else, but it won’t necessarily be a jogger, or even in the park. Hell, he might already be sitting out on Rikers for something else, but unless he talks, there’s no way we’re going to find out what he did.”
“And he could just as easily still be in the park, looking for someone else,” Caroline had countered. Oberholzer at least had had the decency to tell her the truth.
“He could be. But if he is, and if he does the same thing again, then we’ve got a shot at him. With your husband, there were no witnesses. Next time he might not be so lucky, or his victim might not die.”
Which meant that he might be right here, right now.
Watching her?
Could he know who she was?
Of course not! She was being ridiculous. The man hadn’t even known Brad — hadn’t known his name, or anything about him. But that wasn’t true — he’d taken Brad’s wallet, so he’d known a lot about him if he’d taken the time to go through the wallet instead of just grabbing the money and credit cards. Brad’s driver’s license had been in the wallet, so he’d had their address. And pictures. There’d been pictures of her, and of the kids. At least the pictures of the kids were old ones: Ryan hadn’t been more than four, and Laurie six or seven. But Laurie, at least, would still be recognizable, and so would Caroline herself.
Once again she scanned the people moving through the park, and felt an almost irresistible urge to grab the kids’ hands and take them back to the safety of the apartment.
Paranoid!
She was getting paranoid like Brad, and it had to stop before she turned into one of those terrified women who never let their children out of their sight for fear that something would happen to them. Caroline knew the fear was irrational; she’d read the statistics herself and knew that children were just as safe on the streets now as they’d ever been. Despite the hysteria of the media, there weren’t monsters lurking everywhere, waiting to victimize every child that came down the sidewalk. Those things happened, certainly, but they weren’t nearly as commonplace as Caroline had once believed. But on the other hand, she wasn’t ready to let Ryan go off by himself in the park. Not yet. In fact, she wasn’t ready to go into the park herself quite yet. At least not here. “Let’s just go down a few blocks, okay?” she said.
She saw Laurie and Ryan lean forward just enough to glance at each other, and was almost certain they were rolling their eyes, disgusted that she was treating them like four-year-olds. Forcing herself to relax her grip on their hands, she crossed 77th and started south.
Then, at the corner of 70th, it was Ryan who suddenly stopped, his hand tightening on hers. Caroline looked down at him questioningly.
“Can we cross the street?” he asked.
She glanced ahead, searching for whatever had made him stop. Had he seen something? Or some
Or had someone been looking at him?
Her heart skipped a beat, but as she scanned the smattering of people on the sidewalk ahead — there weren’t more than half a dozen of them — nothing looked amiss at all. Just a few people going about their business. Then she heard Laurie giggle. “Is there something going on that I don’t know about?”
Laurie’s eyes twinkled. “He thinks witches and vampires live in the building across the street,” she said.
“I do not!” Ryan flared, but his face turned beet red, belying his words.
Caroline glanced up at the building across the street, and suddenly understood.
The Rockwell.
It was a big old pile of a building, combining enough different styles of architecture that most people referred to it as “The Grand Old Bastard of Central Park West.” One of the oldest buildings in the area, it was also showing its age, for the stone blocks from which it had been constructed had never been cleaned — at least not in Caroline’s memory — and the entire facade of the building was blackened with the accumulated grime of decades, if not centuries. As she gazed up at it, she was suddenly reminded of a house two blocks down the street in the town in New Hampshire where she’d grown up. It had been big — though nowhere near as big as the Rockwell, given that it had been designed for a single family — but it had been constructed out of the same kind of stone that covered the Rockwell, and that had been just as badly stained. The family that had built it had dwindled down to one old lady who lived alone in the huge stone mansion, and the grounds had gone the way of the house itself, so the whole property was an overgrown tangle of weeds dominated by the forbidding-looking house. It had been an article of faith among Caroline and her friends that the old woman was a witch, and that any child who wandered too close to the house would never be seen again.
Apparently the legend of the witch in the old house on the corner had transplanted itself to the city, and as she gazed at the old apartment house, she could certainly see how the legend could have gotten attached to the building. She could almost hear herself and her friends whispering the tales to the younger kids in the neighborhood. “Now I wonder who could have told Ryan that?” she asked, her eyes fixing on Laurie.
Now it was Laurie who blushed. “They’re only stories,” Laurie said, looking at her brother with undisguised contempt. “It’s not like anyone believes them.”
“They are not!” Ryan flared. “Jeff Wheeler says—”
“Jeff Wheeler’s a jerk,” Laurie offered.
“He is not! He’s—”
“How about we just go to the park?” Caroline interrupted before the spat could escalate any further. Mercifully, there was enough of a break in traffic to let them dart across to the park side of the street, and she headed toward the foot-path a block further down that led to the Tavern on the Green. “As soon as we get in, you can go on ahead, okay? Just don’t get too far ahead — your old mother still worries about you.”
“I’m not a baby,” Ryan replied, but even as he spoke, Caroline saw his eyes flick nervously toward the building across the street.
“I know you’re not,” Caroline replied as they came to the mouth of the path. “I know you’re growing up, and I know you can take care of yourself. But I still worry about you, and I want to be able to keep an eye on you. So just don’t get too far ahead of us. And when we get to the field, Laurie and I’ll sit on a bench by ourselves, and try to pretend we don’t even know you. How’s that?” Ryan seemed to think it over, and apparently decided it was the best deal he was going to get. Nodding, he started away, but Caroline called after him. “Hey! If you hit a home run, is it okay if we cheer?”
Ryan turned and waved, finally grinning, then moved ahead, scurrying along the path toward the baseball diamonds. For a moment Caroline was afraid she was going to lose sight of him, but then he glanced back once again, apparently decided he’d put enough distance between himself and his mother, and slowed his pace enough so she’d be able to keep up without having to look like she was chasing him.
But even as Ryan slowed his pace, Caroline speeded up her own, unwilling to lose sight of her son even for a few seconds.
