I'll Let You Go (59 page)

“You would adopt me?” she asked.

“Absolutely. No hesitation.”

“What happens if you don't want to do it anymore?”

“We don't change our minds like that.”

“What if I do something bad or you move away?”

“You'd move
with
us. Once we make a decision, that's it, OK? We don't turn our backs on it—we don't turn our backs on
you
. If you do something ‘bad,' we'll just deal.”

“What if you die?”

“I'm not expecting to.”

“Neither was my mother.”

“I know that, honey.” She put her hand on Amaryllis's, and the girl let it stay. “What happened to your mother is very sad, and very … unusual. Things
do
happen in this world—people get sick, people go nuts, people die. People get killed. But I think I have a relatively long life ahead of me. At least I
like
to think that,” she laughed. “I'd like
you
to think that. This would be an adoption, OK? That's permanent. That's how the courts look at it, and that's how
we
look at it. It's forever. I want
you
to look at it like that, too—for better or for worse, in sickness and in health.”

“What about the babies?”

“If you're with us, in a stable home, the chances are good—
definitely
better than where we're at now—that we could establish regular visits.”

“Would you adopt them?”

“I don't even know if that's in the realm of the possible; I'm not sure what their status is. Your brother and sister may be happy where they are.”

“They're not!”

“You don't know that.”

“They're
not
happy!”

“One thing at a time, OK, Amaryllis? Let's worry about
you
right
now—then we'll see about them.” The girl relaxed, seeming to go with the logic of it. “For me, for
us
, we'd like to have you in our home because we love you. And we would hope you love us, or learn to. So I want you to think about it.”

“How can you love me?”

“What do you mean?”

“You don't know me.”

“Of course I know you.”

“Only for a
little
. You didn't
raise
me. You can't suddenly love me.”

“I can—and I do. You see, Amaryllis, I believe a person can
decide
 … can make the
decision
to love. And then love follows.”

Over time—a short time, for children and the human heart always astonish by the speed with which they heal—Amaryllis lowered her guard. She asked Lani where she lived and where she would be going to school. She asked if she could have a bicycle and a computer. She asked if she would be able to have friends sleep over and even mentioned, albeit briefly, a certain group of children who had taken care of her during her travels (and travails) … but discreetly said no more.

When she felt the girl was ready, Lani eased “Topsy” into their conversation (she knew that was how he was known to her). She questioned her about the same things William's lawyers did when they visited the child at Mac—but from a different place.

Amaryllis repeated that Topsy had never, in her knowledge, come to the motel where she lived with her mom and the babies. How then, asked Lani, did his ascot make its appearance there? (The silken tie was the one thing left that, forgiving the phrase, stuck in the CASA's craw; naturally, she withheld referring to the place from which it made its grisly “coming-out.”)

She related how one day under the bridge, after Topsy had provided food for herself and the babies, the wind had brought a chill; the sun was setting and he worried she had no sweater. He gave her the ascot to wrap about her neck. Amaryllis loved its shininess and golden teardrops and kept it to wrap around her Box of Saints. She never gave it back. In a separate matter, she said there
had
been visitors to the St. George suite—but ones she had never mentioned and was unsure she ever would. They were unspeakable.

Lani conveyed all this to the detective, who put her in touch with the defense—it was the CASA's feeling that she could get the girl to testify to
as much in court. The attorneys were concerned it still wasn't enough to clear him; the testimony of a combative child, diagnosed as “labile and hypervigilant” and “with flight of ideas,” currently being weaned from Effexor, Neurontin, Ativan and Cogentin, was not the most convincing.

At this juncture, as it is wont to, a deus ex machina explained all.

Samson Dowling was awakened by an early-morning call from Jerry Whittle, a coroner's assistant whom he had known for years. Whittle was a funny, meticulous eccentric who, at the age of forty-nine, still lived with his mother in San Marino. He visited the detective regularly after he got shot, and made Samson laugh and forget his pain awhile. When he was discharged, the odd couple went to ball games and barbershops together, and had the occasional steak and martini at Musso & Frank's. Whittle aspired to writing but could never settle on a niche: he liked the idea of creating a mystery series based on a coroner's assistant, a kind of bush-league Kay Scarpetta, but also had a mind to tackle a book of ruminative essays in the
Death to Dust
or
How We Die
mode, or maybe even a precious memoir along the lines of the one by that well-known fellow who called himself a “mortician poet.”

Whittle had been the first from the coroner's office to arrive at the scene of the Kornfeld homicide. He took tissue samples and scrapings—it was he who had discovered the ascot in the throat, drawing an excited parallel to the pupae similarly found in
The Silence of the Lambs
—and snapped photos of the deceased, which he added to his collection (he'd flirted with publishing a volume of Weegee-type photographs, getting someone like DeLillo or Ellroy to write the text).

“I'm telling you, Sam, I'm looking at both sets of photographs. Now. As we speak.”

“What are you saying?”

“The
knots
, Sam, the knots are the same.”

“The knots in the ascot?” He was still foggy.

“No, Sam! There
were
no knots in the ascot—Jesus, what kind of detective
are
you? The knots in the sheet the woman was strangled with. They're
manropes
—”

“Manropes?”

“Manropes. They're one and the same.”

“The same as
what
?” asked Samson testily. He'd been dreaming so pleasantly only minutes before.

“The same as the knots in the tie of the guy who killed himself.”

“
Which
guy, Jerry? Who are you talking about?”

“The
suicide
, on Carroll Avenue—George Fitzsimmons!”

I
n fact, Mr. Whittle was correct; the knots
were
unique.
^†
A macabre death-scene photo of the former DCFS worker, on the floor of his Victorian parlor, was shown to the frog-like Korean manager of the St. George, who quickly affirmed the deceased had indeed visited Geri Kornfeld more than once and during said visits tied a maimed dog to the sidewalk's rusted-out newspaper rack. The attorneys of Marcus Weiner (for that is how the defendant was now addressed) obtained an order from the court to draw DNA samples from the body of Fitzsimmons, which had not yet been (and never would be) claimed.

A few expository things happened “offstage” that will never be known by the players in our drama but should be passed on for the sake of thoroughness—it is hoped that for even the less curious reader the by-product may give a parenthetical frisson. The man who had once thought of himself entirely as William Morris (and still did, to a much smaller degree) was a naïf incapable of imagining the horrors that might befall a child, while the once honorable Geo. Fitzsimmons, late, great and faded pride of the Department of Children and Family Services, was capable indeed. His eyes had seen too much. When he first met Amaryllis at the 4th Street Bridge encampment, he saw things in
hers
that had mercifully eluded the gentleman who hailed from Merton Abbey on the River Wandle. He saw she was on her way to being half dead, and that he might rescue her as he had his own four-legged beauty. So he befriended her mother and gave Geri money to sleep with him; and did not begrudge himself enjoyment of that act. Now, because he suspected but had no proof, and because Geo. Fitzsimmons (ever professional) must be certain, he eventually solicited the woman to let him have the daughter to himself for an hour to do what he liked. He named an amount, and after token protestation, she took the money—a
princessly sum of ten one-dollar bills. He asked if she'd ever made such arrangements before, and she was reluctant to say, but was forthcoming after Fitz withheld the pipe. There
was
a lady, she said with playacted hesitation, to convey that while she wasn't at all happy about what she had been forced to do to survive (to put food and crack on the table), that while she wasn't happy, at least it was a
woman
—no offense to Mr. Fitzsimmons, because she could tell he would not hurt her girl. He was not a pervert, she said—then asked, Was he? She would be in the room with them anyway, she said, now flaunting her motherly instincts. That, she said, was “non-negotiable.” But the thing she was telling him before (her daughter with the woman) was the only time. And her daughter was stoned, she said she made sure of that, so as not to know what was happening or even remember if she did.
What a humanitarian
. He withheld the pipe some more—and when she told of the others who had had the girl, some for what Fitz determined was less than a lungful, he choked the life from her with a bedsheet of cinches he'd learned from his father, so that in
this
instance it can never be said that any sins were passed on. Then he surprised himself by sodomizing the body—and that was the moment he married Death. For he suddenly knew in the same way that Jane Scull had when she lay with Please-Help.-Bless that his life was done and that he was three-quarters gone; the demise of his dog made it whole.

L
ouis Trotter found her strolling the far side of the Saint-Cloud property near the cutting shed. When she saw him, Trinnie smiled warmly—she was losing a mother, but he was losing a friend and lover of half a century. She kissed him, and his face, an odd mask of worry and resignation, looked mildly electrified. She thought he had come to speak of Bluey, soon to be transferred to the Motion Picture and Television Hospital; shrieking by night and by day, she had entered the phase caregivers euphemistically call “fecal play.” It was nearly too much for the hired hands, and simply too much for Winter and the household to bear.

“She'll be much better once she's settled, Father, you'll see. And I'll be there all the time, looking after the garden. It's my garden,” she said, smiling some more. “Remember?”

“That I do! That I do. Katrina—I don't know how to say this.” She
saw how troubled he was, and her concerns about Bluey were quickly supplanted by the irrational terror that something had happened to her son. As she opened her mouth in a gasp of inquiry, he said, “We found Marcus. He was arrested …”

“Arrested—” she could not catch her breath “—for—”

“For a crime he did not commit. He's been cleared.”

“Where—
where
—”

“I don't think you should see him just now—”

“Where!”

He grabbed her shoulders with a force that took even him by surprise. “Katrina—I am telling you this because I do not wish to repeat my mistake of so many years ago.”

She went pure white, and her hair was already dank with sweat; he had a vision of her as one of Edward's Kabuki puppets.

“Oh, Father …”

She shivered in his arms like a stranded person airlifted from a great height.

He stroked her and softly spoke. “He will not leave this time. He is not … wild. He is—he is not
Marcus
—but—well, I'm not sure who he is. And I'm not sure
he
knows, either. Harry and Ruth have seen him; it was because of Ruth we were able to track him down.”

“Did he … did he mention me?” It was all she could think to ask.

“Katrina—I'm not sure how … 
intact
he is.”

“Have you seen him?”

He shook his head adamantly. “Only Samson. Marcus didn't remember him. Or didn't let on.”

“Is he still in jail?”

“He's been released. I've put him somewhere under guard, for his own sake. The doctors are tending him now; he has lived his life on the streets and bears the scars. Though he seems quite pleased and grateful to be free.”

She licked the sweet salt of tears from her lips and grew strangely calm. “Father,” she uttered. “I wish it were all a dream … I'm like Tull now! Suddenly, I don't know anymore. I know how I was when I came to see you that day at work—so
crazed
. But
now
—now I'm not sure I even want him to
be
here—”

He took her shoulders again, but this time it was his gaze alone that held her. “You mustn't say it, Katrina—mustn't even think it. You will
face this man, I'll help you. Listen to me! Long ago I told you my grandson would come into a piece of intelligence and that it would be your duty to be candid. That, you were: with a dignity that absolutely floored me—took me marvelously by surprise. You will face this man with the courage you've shown since you faced Toulouse. You will face your husband, Katrina! And settle the books once and for all.”

At that moment—and if here we
do
lapse into genre, it is hoped we can be forgiven—she fainted dead away.