“What would you do, Michael?”
“Tell, I guess. Tell Mum, at least. If she’s climbing into bed every night with her husband’s murderer…”
“She’ll never believe it.”
“No. She won’t.”
Amy smiled.
Oh, she was close!
“Look, Michael, I’m going to go write up that DeSalvo story, if you’re still willing. It’s not too late. I’ll get it in for tomorrow. We’ll talk about this later?”
“Sure.”
She got up to leave. “You know, I meant what I said. You really are the good one.”
He said nothing. Just looked at her.
“See you later, Michael.”
The next morning’s Observer blared “Tec in Strangle Probe Voices Doubt.” Arthur Nast’s grainy mug shot appeared on page one, right next to DeSalvo’s. The story carried the familiar joint byline of Amy Ryan and Claire Downey. It was sourced to “a highly placed official speaking on condition of anonymity.”
It was the last story Amy Ryan ever wrote.
26
There was a particular sort of hallucination Michael often experienced in a migraine aura. The effect was like a mosaic-as if the scene before him had been painted on a pane of glass, and the glass was then cracked. Seams and disjunctions threaded the image. The tiles shivered and slid across one another, misalignments were created and repaired. It was the world as Picasso painted it: fractured, tessellated, the solid surface of reality revealed as it really was, fissile and impossibly complex.
This was how Michael saw the scene of Amy Ryan’s murder. His mind smashed the image.
Her red hair tousled, eyes closed, head slumped on a naked shoulder.
Arms spread, tied at either side of the headboard.
Two or three tan stockings braided into a single springy cord, wrapped around her neck so tightly that it was pinched into a distinct hourglass shape. Beneath her Adam’s apple the stockings were tied off in a big drooping bow-the Strangler’s signature.
Face mottled with bruises and blood.
A clear mucous fluid, probably semen, trailed from her mouth onto her bare chest.
Pale naked stomach, muscled, the taut skin creased where her body bent.
Auburn pubic hair, a broom handle rammed in her vagina, a delta of blood on the sheet between her bare legs.
Red-stained panties on the floor by the bed.
A small dining table overturned, papers spilled onto the floor.
A photo in a silver frame of Amy and Ricky kissing.
Michael stood in the doorway of the bedroom, dazed, frozen. Cops, a forensics technician, and a photographer bustled around him. Occasionally they moved him a step or two in this or that direction so he would not be in the way. “Oh my God,” Michael whispered, “ohmyGodohmyGodohmyGod…” He covered his brow with one hand as if he were shielding his eyes from the sun.
“Somebody get this guy out of here,” a testy voice said.
“Come on, Mikey, we got to go.”
Michael felt the weight of Joe’s arm on his back.
“Come on, little brother. Don’t let ’em see you like this.”
“I did this, Joe.”
“The fuck are you talking about?”
“I told her about DeSalvo. She came to my office, we talked. I didn’t think…”
“You didn’t do nothin’, Mikey, you hear me?”
“No, Joe, it’s my fault.”
“No, you listen. Whoever did this, we’ll find him. When the time comes, we’ll take care of it. We’ll do what we’ve got to do when the time comes. But right now you’ve got to get a grip, Mikey, you’ve got to maintain- maintain. There’s things we got to do right now.”
“Jesus, Joe.”
“You think you’re the only one Amy ever got a tip from? She was doing her job, you were doing yours. That’s all.”
Michael stared at the body. Crucified, pornographic, obscene.
“Don’t look, Mikey. Come on, we got to get out of here.”
But Michael could not move. He slouched against Joe. It occurred to him that he had never been this close physically to his brother, except when they had fought, one of Joe’s headlocks.
“Come on, stand up. We’ve got to find Ricky. We’re gonna walk out of here now. Don’t look at her, Mikey. Look the other way. Come on, you ready?” Joe laid a hand on his shoulder. He said, as much to himself as to Michael, “We’ve got to find Ricky.”
They careened across Cambridge in Joe’s Olds Eighty-Eight. Michael was aware, remotely, that they were going too fast, that it was dangerous, but Joe’s driving was part of the dream-of hurtling ahead barely under control, and at the same time of being at a still point in the center of all that motion, like John Glenn in his space capsule. And if Joe slipped, if the car crashed into a tree or an oncoming truck? Wouldn’t matter, Michael thought. His head bobbled with the movement of the car. Back there, in front of Amy’s tortured body, Michael had felt something trembling in that room, about to shiver through. An idea, a presence. A sense of understanding. But he could not quite pull in the signal. He could not understand it. And now whatever epiphany might have come was gone. Now the whole thing had no significance at all. It was stupid, pointless savagery, nothing more. He thought: Go ahead, Joe, drive us into a tree. I’m curious.
Ricky took the news like a punch. For a moment he questioned it. Maybe his brothers were playing some dumb, deeply unfunny joke. Or a mistake. They must have made some mistake. But after that he did not protest or wail or collapse. His body stiffened, then swayed on rubbery legs, like a heavyweight who has been socked on the chin and is momentarily unconscious on his feet.
Ricky retreated toward the back of his apartment, down a narrow hallway that connected the living room with the bedroom in back. He wore a pair of old khakis and a yellowed undershirt that hung off his shoulders. His hand trailed along the wall. All that loose-limbed athleticism, the dancer’s litheness that had always marked Ricky’s movements, was gone. Ricky disappeared into the back bedroom.
Joe called down the hall, “You alright, pal?”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“We should all head over to Ma’s.”
Michael said, “Come on, grab your things, Ricky. You can stay with me a few days.”
“Nah. No, thanks, Mike. I think I’ll just…” Ricky wandered back into the living room. “You were in her place, Michael? You saw her?”
“Yeah.”
Ricky searched the floor as if he’d dropped something.
“Jesus, I’m so sorry, Rick,” Michael said, embarrassed to fall back on a cliche.
Ricky nodded. He went back down the hallway, and when he reemerged he was buttoning the last few buttons of an oxford shirt. “I gotta go,” he mumbled in a distracted, unapologetic way. He grabbed a jacket from the couch and brushed past them toward the door.
Joe tried to grab his arm. “Hey-”
“Let me alone, Joe. I’ll be back in a little while.”
“We’ll go with you,” Joe said. “We’ll all go.”
“Nah. I’d rather just go myself.”
