Public Secrets (10 page)

If she stayed in bed, she’d be safe. But Darren was calling for her.

She had to be brave, brave enough to run to the door. When she did, the snakes disappeared. Beneath her feet the floor felt alive, moving, pulsing. She looked back over her shoulder. It was just her room, with toys and dolls tidily on the shelves, with Mickey Mouse smiling cheerfully. As she watched the smile turned into a leer.

She raced into the hall, into the dark.

There was music. The shadows seemed to dance to it. There were sounds. Breathing, heavy, wet breathing, snarls and the movement of something dry and slithering on the wood. As she ran toward the sounds of Darren’s cries, she felt the hot breath on her arms, the quick nasty nips at her ankles.

It was locked. She pulled and pounded on the door as her brother’s screams rose higher, only to be drowned out by the music. Under her small fists, the door dissolved. She saw the man, but there was no face. She saw only the glint of his eyes, the gleam of his teeth.

He started toward her, and she was more afraid of him than of the snakes and monsters, the teeth and the claws. Blind with fear, she ran, with Darren’s screams rising behind her.

Then she was falling, falling into a dark pit. She heard a sound, like a twig snapping, and tried to scream out at the agony. But she could only fall silently, endlessly, helplessly, with the music and her brother’s cries echoing in her head.

When she awoke, it was bright. There were no dolls on the shelves. No shelves at all, just blank walls. At first she wondered if she was in a hotel. She tried to remember, but as she did, the aching began—the hot, dull aching that seemed to throb everywhere at once. Moaning against it, she turned her head.

Her father was sleeping in a chair. His head was back, turned a bit to the side. Beneath the stubble of his beard his face was pale. In his lap, his hands were clenched into fists.

“Da.”

Already on the edge of sleep, he woke quickly. He saw her lying against the white hospital sheets, her eyes wide and a little afraid. The tears welled up again, clogging his throat, burning his eyes. He fought them with what little strength he had left.

“Emma.” He went to her, sitting on the edge of the bed and pressing his exhausted face against her throat.

She started to put her arm around him, but it was weighed down with the white plaster cast. That had the fear bubbling quick again. She could hear in her mind the sound of that dry snap, the screaming pain that had followed.

It hadn’t been a dream—and if it had been real, then the rest …

“Where’s Darren?”

She would ask that first, Brian thought as he squeezed his eyes tightly shut. How could he tell her? How could he tell her
what he had yet to understand or believe himself? She was only a child. His only child.

“Emma.” He kissed her cheek, her temple, her forehead, as if somehow that would ease the pain, for both of them. He took her hand. “Do you remember when I told you a story about angels, about how they live in heaven?”

“They fly and play music and never hurt each other.”

Oh, he was clever, Brian thought bitterly, so clever to have woven such a pretty tale. “Yes, that’s right. Sometimes special people become angels.” He reached far back for his Catholic faith and found it weighed heavily on his shoulders. “Sometimes God loves these people so much he wants them with him up in heaven. That’s where Darren is now. He’s an angel in heaven.”

“No.” For the first time since she had crawled out from beneath the dirty sink over three years before, she pushed away from her father. “I don’t want him to be an angel.”

“Neither do I.”

“Tell God to send him back,” she said furiously. “Right now.”

“I can’t.” The tears were coming again; he couldn’t stop them. “He’s gone, Emma.”

“Then I’ll go to heaven too, and take care of him.”

“No.” Fear clutched in his gut, drying his tears. His fingers dug into her shoulders, putting bruises on her for the first time. “You can’t. I need you, Emma. I can’t get Darren back, but I won’t lose you.”

“I hate God,” she said, dry-eyed and fierce.

So do I, Brian thought as he gathered her close. So do I.

T
HERE HAD BEEN
over a hundred people in and out of the McAvoy house on the night of the murder. Lou’s pad was overflowing with names, notes, and impressions. But he was no closer to an answer. Both the window and the door of the boy’s room had been found open, though the nanny was adamant that she had closed the window after putting the boy to bed. She also insisted the window had been locked. But there had been no signs of a forced entry.

There had been footprints beneath the window. Size 11, Lou mused. But there had been no impressions in the ground a ladder would have made, and no traces of rope on the windowsill.

The nanny was little help. She’d awakened when a hand had clamped over her mouth. She’d been blindfolded, bound, and gagged. In the two interviews Lou had had with her, she’d changed her estimate of the time she’d been bound from thirty minutes to two hours. She was low on his lists of suspects, but he was waiting for the background check he’d ordered.

It was Beverly McAvoy that Lou had to see now. He’d postponed the questioning as long as possible. Longer, after he’d scanned the police photos of little Darren McAvoy.

“Keep this as brief as possible.” The doctor stood with Lou outside the door. “She’s been given a mild sedative, but her mind is clear. Maybe too clear.”

“I don’t want to make this any harder on her than it already is.” What could, he wondered as the image of the young boy fixed itself in his mind. “I need to question the girl as well. Is she up to it?”

“She’s conscious. I don’t know if she’ll talk to you. She hasn’t spoken more than two words to anyone but her father.”

With a nod, Lou stepped into the room. The woman was sitting up in bed. Though her eyes were open, they didn’t focus on him. She looked very small and hardly old enough to have had a child, and to have lost one. She wore a pale blue bed jacket, and the hands lying on the white sheets were absolutely still.

Beside her Brian sat in a chair, his unshaven face an unhealthy shade of gray. His eyes looked old, red and puffy from tears and lack of sleep, clouded with grief. When he looked up, Lou saw something else in them. Fury.

“I’m sorry to disturb you.”

“The doctor told us you’d be coming.” Brian didn’t rise or gesture to a chair. He simply continued to stare. “Do you know who did this?”

“Not yet. I’d like to talk with your wife.”

“Bev.” Brian laid a hand over hers, but there was no response. “This is the policeman who’s trying to find … to find out what happened. I’m sorry,” he said, looking back at Lou. “I don’t remember your name.”

“Kesselring. Lieutenant Kesselring.”

“The lieutenant needs to ask you some questions.” She made no move. She barely breathed. “Bev, please.”

Perhaps it was the despair in his voice that reached down
deep to where she had tried to hide herself. Her hand moved restlessly in his. For a moment she closed her eyes, held them closed, wishing with all her heart that she was dead. Then she opened them again and looked straight at Lou.

“What do you want to know?”

“Everything you can tell me about that night.”

“My son was dead,” she said flatly. “What else matters?”

“Something you tell me could help me find who killed your son, Mrs. McAvoy.”

“Will that bring Darren back to me?”

“No.”

“I don’t feel anything anymore.” She stared at him with huge, tired eyes. “I don’t feel my legs or my arms or my head. When I try to feel it hurts. So it’s best not to try, isn’t it?”

“Maybe, for a while.” He drew up a chair beside the bed. “But if you could tell me what you remember from that night?”

She let her head fall back and stared up at the ceiling. Her monotone description of the party was similar to her husband’s, and to those of the others Lou had interviewed. Familiar faces, strange faces, people coming in, going out. Someone on the kitchen phone ordering pizza.

That was a new one, and Lou noted it down.

Talking with Brian, then hearing Emma scream—finding her at the foot of the steps.

“People crowded around,” she murmured. “Someone, I don’t know who, called an ambulance. We didn’t move her—we were afraid to move her. We heard the sirens coming. I wanted to go to the hospital with her, her and Brian, but I needed to check on Darren first, and to wake Alice and let her know what had happened.

“I stopped to get Emma’s robe. I don’t know why really, I just thought she might need it. I started down the hall. I was annoyed because the lights were out. We always leave the hall light on for Emma. She’s afraid of the dark. Not Darren,” she said with a half-smile. “He’s never been afraid of a thing. We only keep a night-light in his room because it’s easier for us if he wakes in the night. He often does still. He likes company.” She brought a hand to her face as her voice began to shake. “He doesn’t like to be alone.”

“I know this is hard, Mrs. McAvoy.” But she had been the
first on the scene, had found, and had moved the body. “I need to know what you found when you went into his room.”

“I found my baby.” She shook off Brian’s hand. She couldn’t bear to be touched. “He was lying on the floor, by the crib. I thought, I thought, Oh God, he’s climbed up and fallen out. He was lying so still on the little blue rug. I couldn’t see his face. I picked him up. But he wouldn’t wake up. I shook him, and I screamed, but he wouldn’t wake up.”

“Did you see anyone upstairs, Mrs. McAvoy?”

“No. There was no one upstairs. Just the baby, my baby. They took him away, and they won’t let me have him. Brian, for God’s sake, why won’t you let me have him?”

“Mrs. McAvoy.” Lou rose. “I’m going to do everything I can to find out who did this. I promise you that.”

“What difference does it make?” She began to cry, huge, silent tears. “What possible difference does it make?”

It made a difference, Lou thought as he stepped into the corridor again. It had to.

E
MMA STUDIED LOU
with a straightforward intensity that made him feel awkward. It was the first time he could remember a child making him want to check his shirt for stains.

“I’ve seen policemen on the telly,” she said when he introduced himself. “They shoot people.”

“Sometimes.” He groped for something to say. “Do you like television?”

“Yes. We like
Sesame Street
the best, Darren and I.”

“Who do you like best, Big Bird or Kermit?”

She smiled a little. “I like Oscar because he’s so rude.”

Because of the smile, he took a chance and lowered the bed guard. Emma didn’t object when he sat on the edge of the bed. “I haven’t seen
Sesame Street
in a little while. Does Oscar still live in a garbage can?”

“Yes. And he yells at everyone.”

“I guess yelling can make you feel better sometimes. Do you know why I’m here, Emma?” She said nothing, but gathered an old black stuffed dog to her chest. “I need to talk to you about Darren.”

“Da says he’s an angel now, in heaven.”

“I’m sure he is.”

“It’s not fair that he went away. He didn’t even say goodbye.”

“He couldn’t.”

She knew that because she knew, deep in her heart, what you had to do to become an angel. “Da said that God wanted him, but I think it was a mistake and God should send him back.”

Lou brushed a hand over her hair, moved as much by her stubborn logic as he had been by the mother’s grief. “It was a mistake, Emma, a terrible one, but God can’t send him back.”

Her lip poked out, but it was more defiance than a pout. “God can do anything He wants.”

Lou stepped uneasily onto shaky ground. “Not always. Sometimes men do things and God doesn’t fix it. We have to. I think you might be able to help me find out how this mistake happened. Will you tell me about that night, the night you fell down the steps?”

She shifted her eyes to Charlie and plucked at his fur. “I broke my arm.”

“I know. I’m sorry. I have a little boy. He’s older than you, almost eleven. He broke his arm trying to roller-skate on the roof”