Invisible Boy (12 page)

Paranoia. Get over yourself before you start babbling about Zapruder footage and the grassy knoll.

“Are you all right?” Cate touched my shoulder, gently. “You’re

shaking.”

“I’m just cold,” I said.

“I’ll get my jacket out of the car.”

“I’m okay.”

“I’ll get my jacket,” she said again.

She crossed my field of vision, taking a dozen long strides to reach her car.

“Okay,” I said, though she was out of earshot.

Skwarecki’s dark sedan coasted to a halt just shy of the gate.

Skwarecki crouched down beside the tiny shoe. “You guys did good today.”

Latex gloves back on, she used my same twig to lift the sneaker by its still-tied laces, lowering it gently into the brown
paper bag she’d taken out of her trunk.

“It doesn’t
feel
good,” said Cate. “Just awful and sad.”

Skwarecki closed the top of the bag. “You’ve gotta concentrate on the positive. This little boy can be laid to rest now. His
family can have some peace.”

“I’m trying,” said Cate.

She wandered a little distance away, kicking at stray gravel with the toe of her shoe.

“You think they
all
deserve that?” I asked Skwarecki. “It’s hard to believe Mrs. Underhill had anything to do with this—from how she acted today,
and the way you described her—but, you know, his mother? You think us identifying her son is going to bring
her
any peace?”

She glanced up at me, lips pursed, then tilted her head an inch to the side with an upward twitch of her corresponding shoulder.

No, she didn’t think so. Not for a second.

I nodded and Skwarecki dropped her eyes, extracting a pen from her jacket pocket to jot words and numbers into underscored
blank fields on a tag already stapled to the bag’s brown paper.

“How come you’re not using a ziplock this time?” I asked, remembering the plastic bag into which she’d placed the vertebra.

“Certain kinds of trace evidence, you need paper.”

I glanced toward Cate, making sure she was out of earshot.

“Blood,” I said.

Skwarecki nodded. “Any dried fluids.”

Urine
.
Semen.

“Seal something like that in plastic, you get humidity,” she said. “Contaminates everything.”

“That makes sense.”

Skwarecki stood up. “You got cops in your family or something, Madeline?”

“Or something,” I said.

She cracked a little smile. “It just seems like you know the drill.”

I twitched my shoulders.

“And you’re wishing you didn’t know,” she said.

“Damn straight.”

“Yeah,” she said, shaking her head. “Kind of shit like this-here?”

“Fucked up.”

“Tell me about it. Fucking assholes.”

“No shit.”

“I mean, a little
kid
?”

“
His little
shoe
?” I pointed at the paper bag.

“What the
fuck
, am I right?”

“Shitheads.”

“Yo,” said Skwarecki, “fucking
exactly
.”

And then we shoulder-bumped each other.

I felt much better.

Having bonded, the two of us rested our hands on our hips, standing side by side and looking over toward Cate.

“Skwarecki?” I asked.

“Yo.”

“What’re the chances of actually nailing someone for this?”

“Like I told you before, close to bubkes.”

“Promise me you’ll go for it anyway.”

“That’s what we do.”

“Cool.”

“Fuckin’ ay,” said Skwarecki.

Cate turned around, looking calmer, and started walking back over to us.

“What happens next?” I asked Skwarecki.

“Paperwork. See if little Teddy was in the system.”

“Which system?” asked Cate.

“He was a battered child,” said Skwarecki. “We need to know if anyone reported the abuse.”

“How can we help?” asked Cate.

Skwarecki tucked the evidence bag under her arm. “If we build any kind of a case, Bost’ll need you and Madeline to testify.”

“Detective,” said Cate, “we have to
get
the fucker who did this.”

“Amen,” said Skwarecki.

I
don’t see how I’m going to stop thinking about all this, after today,” said Cate.

She was driving me back to Jamaica Station, the light already fading around us: early dusk, that thin blade-edge of winter.

“Don’t you wish you could
do
something about it, right now?” she continued.

“Of course,” I said, “because I have absolutely no patience.”

“And that poor Mrs. Underhill. Do you think she knew?”

“That Teddy was being abused? She had to.”

“But Madeline, she obviously cared a great deal about him. I can’t believe she would have stood by if she knew he was being
hurt.”

“How do you ignore broken bones?” I asked. “We’re not talking bruises here.”

“Why would she bring cookies to the cop station all the time if she knew—without ever bringing up the abuse?”

“Could she miss spotting multiple fractures in a three-year-old? I can’t even imagine how his mother tried to explain them
away. I mean, what—she just kept saying, ‘Teddy jumped off the roof again, guess he didn’t learn his lesson the first three
or four times,’ and Mrs. Underhill went, ‘That’s nice, dear, maybe you should buy him a crash helmet’? I don’t buy it. That
lady is
not
stupid.”

“It’s not about stupidity,” said Cate. “Sometimes people can’t allow themselves to know. They’re overwhelmed by everything
else at stake.”

“I don’t buy
that
, either.”

“Maybe she didn’t see him often enough to realize he was being beaten. Or she didn’t want to risk losing any contact at all
with him.”

“Then she’s a coward.”

“That’s harsh,” said Cate.

“Harsher than how Teddy died?”

“No, of course not, but we still can’t know who killed him. Maybe his mother’s boyfriend was telling the truth.”

“Someone beat Teddy so hard they broke his bones—on at least one occasion before his death, because the fractures had time
to heal—but a stranger killed him?”

She was quiet, digesting that.

“Cate, how far is it to LaGuardia from here?”

“Nine miles, give or take.”

“So they’re living in a welfare hotel that far away, but we found Teddy’s body ten blocks from his great-grandmother’s apartment?”

“Now you think she did it?”

“No,” I said. “But you’d have to be pretty damn local to know Prospect even existed. The sign is tiny—Mrs. Underhill wasn’t
sure she’d found it today, even when she was standing right at the gate.”

Or so she said.

Cate sighed. “Good point.”

“I hate this,” I said. “All of it.”

“But we’re both coming back tomorrow, aren’t we?”

“Of course.”

She pulled up to the curb to let me out. “Call me from work. I’ll pick you up at the station.”

I leaned back in through the passenger window before she’d put the car back in gear. “Anybody halfway normal would consider
us total freaks, you know?”

Cate smiled at me, a little sadly. “This is one of those weeks when ‘normal’ seems like a delusion of grandeur.”

I came up out of the subway station in Union Square and hooked a right at the Gandhi statue.

I couldn’t see all the way to the Hudson, but it still seemed as though the clear, warm western light spilling toward me had
bounced sparkling across the river on its way.

I turned up the volume on my Walkman, the mournful second movement of Beethoven’s Seventh in Teddy’s honor.

I zoned out for the next few blocks, trying to think of nothing but the music until I’d turned into our building’s courtyard—no
damaged children, no evil grown-ups.

I hit the tape’s Stop button and pushed the headphones down around my neck once I’d crossed the threshold into our apartment,
calling out, “Hi, honey, I’m home!” to whomever might be kicking back in the living room’s brazen apricot glare.

This was greeted by a lackluster chorus soon revealed as Sue, Pagan, and Astrid herself—all sprawled on the sofa.

Sue and Pague were in post-work shorts-and-flip-flops mufti, but Astrid was still wearing her quilted black jacket, with sunglasses
on top of her head.

“What do you, sleep in that thing?” I asked her.

Astrid looked up at me with those limpid eyes, the circles beneath them stained coffee-dark with fatigue.

She shivered inside the coat, drawing it closer around her too-

slender frame. The problem wasn’t what she slept in, but whether she’d slept at all.

“Maddie,” she said, “do you think I should go to Rome?”

It turned out she’d already been there for over an hour, asking that question over and over of Pagan and Sue while they gritted
their teeth, waiting for my return. Astrid overwhelmed me inside ten minutes, and I’d excused myself to the kitchen for a
fortifying beer.

Pagan ducked in behind me seconds later, while I was still rattling through drawers in search of a bottle opener.

“Nutty Buddy’s gotten kind of, um,
nuttier
,” she said.

“I’m worried about her,” I said, popping the cap off my Rolling Rock.

“What’s the deal with Rome?”

“I think it has to do with the guy she didn’t marry.”

“You should ask her. Or maybe just stick her in a cab for the airport. She’s exhausting.”

“You think it’s too much coke?” I asked.

“Too much something.”

“It’s not like she’s got a runny nose or anything.”

“Maybe she’s shooting it,” said Pagan.

“You think she’d seem this tired?”

“Heroin, then? Who the hell knows.”

“What do I do?” I said. “She’s my friend, and I don’t know how to fucking
help
.”

“I’m not sure you can.”

“That’s so fucked up. Just… wrong.”

“Maybe you should call her husband.”

“I don’t know him at all. And the whole thing’s so weird because now he’s Dean’s boss.”

“How ’bout her mother?”

I’d only met the woman once, and she hadn’t struck me as the kind of person with much of a shoulder to cry on—if she were
even in the country, which she seldom was. At most she might begrudge her daughter another sable coat.

I looked at Pagan. “It’s like I’m watching somebody who really matters drifting out to sea, and I’m standing here on the beach
doing nothing.”

“You have to talk to her.”

“What do I even
say
?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” said Pagan. “Maybe that part doesn’t matter.”

The pair of us walked back down the dark hallway.

“So, Astrid,” I said, “what’s with the sudden desire to switch continents?”

“Do you think Christoph loves me?” she asked.

“A man charters a plane to Southampton two weeks ago so he can marry you,” I said. “I think that’s evidence of high regard,
don’t you?”

“I can’t tell if he
really
loves me, Madeline,” she said.

“Astrid, how could he
help
but love you?”

She pulled down her sunglasses to cover her eyes, slumping back into her dark velvet cocoon.

“Astrid,” I said, “you’re the most beautiful woman in every room you’ve ever walked into, and you’re great fun, and you’re
very, very smart. If the man doesn’t love you, he’s an idiot.”

“So you think he doesn’t?”

“I didn’t say that,” I said. “In fact I think he seems absolutely smitten with you, from what I saw at dinner.”

“What does Dean say?”

“I’m sure he’d say the same thing. It just seems so obvious, you know? Your husband loves you.”

Sue rolled her eyes and edged out of the room.

“Should I go to Rome?” Astrid asked again.

“What’s in Rome, Antonini?” I asked.

“He hasn’t called.”

“Which is not exactly surprising considering you married someone else the minute he was out of town.”

“I could fly there this weekend,” she said.

“What would you tell Christoph?” I asked.

“I don’t know if I’d tell him anything.”

I couldn’t discern whether this was buyer’s remorse or merely a bid for general reassurance. The fact that my husband now
worked for hers made the whole thing even more fucked up to navigate.

“Astrid, what do you want me to tell you? I don’t know what you want.”

“I want to know whether you think I should go to Rome,” she said.

Pagan stood up.

“I have a song for you,” she said, patting Astrid on the shoulder.

She walked over to the stereo and cued up a CD. Seconds later the B-52s were singing “Roam If You Want To” at very high volume.

Astrid smiled but didn’t look very reassured.

“Look,” I said, “it’s getting dark out. Why don’t I get you a taxi home? I bet Christoph’s home by now, and you can call me
in the morning at work, okay?”

“Okay,” she said, pulling her hood up and getting creakily to her feet.

I walked her downstairs and was relieved to find a cab pulling up to the curb right outside.

I bundled Astrid into the backseat and told her everything would be okay, hoping I was telling the truth.