As she describes it, it had not been a conventional household. Coke robbed people and sent Doughnut to school with the money he stole, while Toom kept house. Doughnut learned English and computer skills and thought about Claus.
'How did you find him?'
'I didn't. I just saw him on the street. Big as ever. Just walking along, like a real person. You want to hear something funny? I was terrified.' She brings her right hand to her heart and taps, twice. 'Terrified. He was exactly the same. He looked at me like I wasn't there, and I realized he didn't know who I was. I smiled at him.' She fiddles with the package of cigarettes and then pushes it aside. 'I think that was the hardest thing, that smile, that I ever did. He nodded and walked right past. So I turned around and followed him, and then I knew where he lived. Easy. I could hardly believe it.'
'I think I know some of the rest of it,' Rafferty says. He tells her what he has learned about Noot and Bangkok Domestics and Madame Wing. 'So you got in, and there you were. In that apartment. Just you and Claus.'
She nods. Then she reaches up and smooths her hair.
'How did you stand it?'
Her fingers find the cigarettes again, and she takes one out without looking at it. 'No problem. It was almost fun. I was nice to him. I cooked and cleaned and took care of him like he was a big, fat, ugly, smelly baby. He stank of meat. He had hair on his back, like a monkey. He poured sweet stuff all over himself because he smelled so bad. I told him he was handsome. Why do men always believe they are handsome? I made him love me. He called me his little sugar doughnut.' She spits the English words like hard seeds, as though she expects them to bounce on the table. 'I wanted him to love me. I wanted him to think I loved him. Like Toom loved me, like somebody sometime must have loved all those girls he hurt. It was necessary for him to think I loved him.'
'Because it wasn't enough just to kill him.'
She places the unlit cigarette between her index fingers as though she is measuring it and looks at him over it. 'Would you think it was enough?'
Rafferty does not answer, just regards the small, dark, harmless-looking girl sitting opposite him in her pastel clothes. Looks at the clean, cropped nails; the bright, childish plastic bracelet; the meticulously brushed hair. Looks at the child tied to the bed. Doughnut.
Who could have been Miaow.
She returns his gaze impassively and lets the cigarette fall to the table. 'Well, it wasn't. First he had to trust me. Then he had to love me. Then he had to do something good, just once in his life.'
'He already had,' Rafferty says. 'Clarissa. The niece.'
She moves her head to one side, dodging the words. 'For me. He had to do something for me, so he could feel good about himself. Feel good about being alive.'
'Jesus,' Rafferty says.
'So I borrowed money from him. I told him my family needed it, which was true. I gave him some time to feel what it was like to be good, to be proud of himself. I gave him a week, thanked him every day. Told him he had saved my mama's life by buying medicine for her. He was so proud of himself that he went on a diet. Then I fell in my bathroom. I screamed. He ran in to help me. Feeling like a hero. I'd thought about where to do it while I polished all that furniture. I needed him to be in the bathroom.'
'For cleanup.' He is watching her eyes, trying to see the person behind them. Only when she catches him and glances down does he see a crack in the surface, a vulnerability in the shell.
She does not look back up. 'He lifted me off the floor and sat me on the edge of the tub, and I shot him in the leg. Then I shot him in the other leg.'
'You were close to him.'
'I wanted to be close. I would have liked to have been inside him, so I could know how much it hurt. After he fell down, I shot him again, very low in the stomach.'
'Ouch,' Rafferty says.
'I stood in the tub, waiting to make sure he couldn't move. His eyes were open, looking at me like I was something he'd never seen before. Something he'd never imagined. I suppose I was. A girl hurting him. I suppose it was something new.'
Rafferty thinks for a moment about what he wants to say. 'You can live a long time with a stomach wound.'
'And I let him. I told him all about it. Everything he had done to me.' For a moment she seems puzzled, and she looks back up at him with something like an appeal in her eyes. 'He didn't remember me. He had me confused with another girl. I'd thought about him every day for years, and he didn't remember me. But when I talked about Toom, about us being sisters, then he remembered. You know what he said?'
Rafferty discovers that he doesn't really want to know. He lifts a palm.
'He said, 'Those were good pictures.' So I shot him in the head.'
She slumps back in her seat. 'I was tired,' she says. 'I didn't mean to let him go that fast.'
Rafferty reaches across the table, picks up the cigarette she dropped, and lights it. Feels the good poison course through him, killing him a little but not quite enough. 'Have you ever cried about all this?'
Her chin comes up and her lips thin, and for a second Rafferty thinks he is seeing the face Ulrich must have seen in his last minutes. 'About what happened to you, what happened to Toom. Did you ever take the time to cry over it?'
'Toom cried,' she says flatly. 'One of us had to be the dry one. One of us had to do something about it.'
'Then what do you feel? Now that it's over.'
She stretches across, takes the cigarette from his mouth, and puts it between her lips. 'I feel like I made a mistake.'
It is not the answer he expects. 'You do?'
'I should have waited. I should have let him lose some more weight on his diet. Take it from me. If you're going to shoot somebody and you have to get rid of the body, choose someone thin.'
'I'll keep it in mind.'
'But I couldn't wait. Do you want to know why?'
'I think I do,' Rafferty says. 'He had packed a bag. He was going somewhere, wasn't he? Somewhere where he could get hold of some kids.'
'I'm impressed,' she says, not sounding particularly impressed. She looks down at the cigarette. 'I miss him, in a way,' she says thoughtfully. 'He gave me something to do.'
'Can I have the cigarette back?'
She passes it over to him, shaking her head. 'I didn't know I'd taken it.'
'Anybody left?' he asks. She glances up at him, eyebrows raised. 'Are you at the end of your list, Doughnut, or is somebody left?'
Another shake of the head, without much behind it. 'Finished.'
'What about the lady who brought you to Bangkok?'
'That was only business. If I kill everybody who does business, there won't be anybody left. No. They were different. They needed to die.'
Rafferty sucks deeply on the cigarette, replaying the remark in his head. Then he hands the cigarette back to her. He gets up, feeling light-headed and profoundly doubtful about what he is going to do. 'Okay.'
She looks startled, something he didn't know she had left in her. 'Okay?'
'Okay. That's it. I asked, you told me. The end.'
She studies his face. 'Do you mean that? No police?'
'The way I look at it,' he says, 'this wasn't murder. It was self-defense. It was just a little late.' She sits there, immobile, and her eyes drop again, and some of the rigidity leaves her shoulders.
He goes to the door behind her and turns back, looking at that perfectly controlled hair. 'Doughnut,' he says, and she brings her head around and gazes up at him, looking younger and more open from this perspective. 'You swear you're finished, yes?'
She nods. 'Yes,' she says. She touches her heart with her index finger. 'Promise.' Then she smiles at him. 'If I weren't finished, you'd be carried out of here with the dead flowers.'
