“Need some help?”
Lucy’s got the keys and raises herself upright. The woman who addressed her smiles in an open, friendly way and steps aside, propping the door open with her foot. Lucy’s never seen her before. She’s holding a thick black binder under her arm. Pantsuit and cream shirt, and on her chest a badge hanging on a cord.
Lucy thinks, Just keep going. But there’s another cop inside the lobby, a big guy leaning against the wall, turning a pen between his fingers.
“Terrifically cold out there, isn’t it,” the woman carries on behind her. “Never seen such cold, it feels like.”
“It’s pretty bad,” Lucy agrees.
The other cop steps into her path, blocking her. He’s foreign-looking, with thick dark curls, bushy eyebrows, sad-dog brown eyes. “Would you be Lucy Hennessey? Apartment 3W?”
He sounds impatient. She nods.
“Ah, good. We’ve been waiting a while.”
“I went shopping,” Lucy stutters. “What’s going on?”
The woman comes around from behind. She offers her friendly smile. Her tidy, short gray hair and crisp attire make Lucy feel frazzled. “Lucy, I’m Detective Miller, and this is Detective Bedrosian. We’re with the homicide department.” She lifts her shield so Lucy can see.
“We need to talk with you,” Bedrosian says. “Shall we go upstairs?”
“Why?”
“We’re investigating the death of that little boy they found last week,” Miller tells her, smiling her smile. “Have you heard about it? They’re calling him the Christmas Boy? It’s all over the news.”
“The Christmas Boy?” Lucy echoes dumbly. Her arms go weak holding the grocery bags. She clutches them tighter. She tries to look confused, polite. “Yes, of course I have. But what do I have to do with it?”
“We’re just following up on some tips,” Bedrosian says. “We’re talking to a lot of people. Just routine, Ms. Hennessey.”
“It shouldn’t take long,” Miller smiles.
“Can’t we just talk here?”
They exchange a glance. “We’d like to sit down,” Miller offers, as if she’s admitting something a little embarrassing. “Is there a reason you don’t want us to come in?”
Beneath the question, the faintest edge. Lucy says, “No, of course not. It’s just a mess, I guess.”
Bedrosian steps forward. “Here, please, let me help with those.”
Before Lucy can answer, he reaches out and seizes the grocery bags. His hands brush hers, causing her to flinch, but he doesn’t apologize. He heads towards the stairs. He has a noticeable limp, dipping with every step. There’s nothing left to do but follow him down the narrow, hot corridor that’s filled with the smell of fried onions and cumin from the Syrians in 1A. They can’t just come in to her place, Lucy thinks frantically. She has the right to tell them they can’t, she’s pretty sure she does. But if she protests, then they’ll read into it. They already have.
Her heart’s beating too fast. She has no lie prepared, nothing. She tries to compose her face, her shoulders. What tips would lead to her? Who could have possibly seen anything? Her mind skates through choppy images of the hotel rooms, the grimy windows, herself stepping out at the end with the suitcase. The arrival was always hidden. It makes no sense—
Margot.
It can’t be. She would never.
They cram into the narrow stairwell, Lucy behind Bedrosian, Miller following.
But she must have. Margot would probably like nothing more than to bring down a serv like Julian.
Like me, she realizes in a cold wave.
She focuses on Bedrosian’s back. He’s broad, with a thick neck, gray in the curls. He gives off a tangy aftershave smell. Say nothing, she thinks. Just play dumb.
Miller speaks from behind her. “This is a funny old building, isn’t it? Kind of like a warren.”
Lucy nods.
“You’d never know how many apartments they’ve tucked away in here.”
Bedrosian snorts over his shoulder. “Well, we do now. We went all around looking for you.”
“What a mix of people, too,” Miller observes in her soft melodious voice. “Are you friends with any of them?”
Lucy shakes her head.
“That young couple in 2E, the Davies, they seem very sweet. She’s about to have a baby. How long have you lived here?”
She tries to remember. Her mind is a wasteland of rising anxiety. “Since—I don’t know, about ten years.”
“And no friends in the building?” Miller protests, astonished.
“I mean I know them,” Lucy adjusts. “They’re just not really friends.”
“Well, that’s the city for you.”
But Lucy hears in her reply the faintest judgment, some hidden understanding. They step into the third-floor corridor. There’s a click, and Mrs. Kim’s door opens an inch, stopped by the chain.
“Ah,” she says. “You found her. Good.”
The door shuts on Miller’s thanks.
Lucy’s apartment is several yards farther down the hall. She pictures the two detectives ringing the bell and waiting, ringing again, while she traveled the aisles at Market Basket, shuffling through coupons. She grapples with her key. “The lock always jams,” she apologizes. She feels their eyes on her back, finally gets the door open and steps in. Bedrosian says, “Where do you want these, here?” and sets the bags on the counter dividing the kitchenette and living room. They stand around, turning this way and that, their eyes taking everything in with fast, steady concentration, like there are little computers in their brains registering the details of her life—the cheap couch in the bay window with its old quilt throw, the stained coffee table, the full ashtray and whiskey bottle on the kitchen table. She feels ashamed, and angry she feels that way.
“It’s pretty cold in here,” Bedrosian observes, squinting at the thermostat. “Fifty-five? Wow.”
“When the radiators come on it overheats,” Lucy says.
“I hear you,” Miller says sympathetically. “My place is the same. How long did you say you’ve lived here?”
Lucy knows what she’s getting at. “I don’t really need stuff,” she explains. “Just the basics.”
“What do you do for work?” Bedrosian asks.
“I’m a temp.”
“Administrative?”
“Yes.”
“Tough job, huh. Couple days on, couple days off,” he wags his hand.
“I like the flexibility.” It’s her rote response, delivered as she watches Miller lower herself into a crouch to examine the jumble of newspapers on the floor. There is a week’s worth, multiple publications. Mostly folded open to stories about the boy. Bedrosian wanders across the room to the shelf that holds some books, the album Eva gave her, and framed photos. He picks up the one of Eva and Sean, years ago on Nantasket Beach. “Who are they?”
“My mother and cousin.”
He frowns at the image. “You look nothing like her.”
“I was adopted.”
“I see.” He sets it back down, adjusting it with his forefinger till it’s back in place.
“You seem quite interested in this story,” Miller observes.
She’s holding up a newspaper, the front page from that first day, the one with the face.
Bedrosian joins his partner. He roots through the newspapers to pull another one out. “What an abomination,” he says, shaking his head. “Never seen something quite like this. I can see why you’d be so—taken with it.”
The oddness of the word taken hangs in the air.
“I still don’t understand why you’re here,” Lucy says after a moment.
“Well, Ms. Hennessey, we get many tips with a crime like this, and some of them, we take more seriously.” Bedrosian hikes his pants, sits down. He squares the newspaper on the coffee table in front of him. Miller takes the other chair and opens her folder, leafing through pages of tightly written notes. She looks up with her friendly smile, gestures Lucy to
sit on the couch. Lucy crosses the floor, makes her way to the couch and sits. She places her hands on her knees, then withdraws them to her lap.
“So, Ms. Hennessey,” Bedrosian begins, “may we call you Lucy?”
She nods.
“Good. So, Lucy, we got a call in saying the boy was seen with you the night of the nineteenth, the week before Christmas.”
Margot, for sure. Her heart bangs. “I don’t know why someone would say that,” she says.
They remain quiet, watching her.
A sliver of clarity in Lucy’s brain: she’s fucking this up. Completely. There was a time when she had some wherewithal around cops. That time is gone. It’s a muscle that hasn’t been used in a while.
Miller frowns at her notebook as if considering a list. “Lucy, did you go out that night?”
“What night?”
“December 19.”
“How am I supposed to remember?”
Miller jots a note. Sound of the pen scratching paper.
“It was a Wednesday,” Bedrosian says, eyes fixed on her, unmoving. “Middle of the week, before Christmas. Maybe you went shopping after work?”
“I don’t think so. No.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
“So you do remember?”
There is a long silence during which she can no longer withstand their steady gaze. Her neck trembles and she lowers her head.
Bedrosian says, “Lucy, it doesn’t seem like you remember one way or another.”
“I said I was in.”
“But you might have been out.”
“Yes. I mean, no.”
They sit back. Bedrosian maintains his steady stare. Miller consults her notes, still wearing her placid, kind expression. She taps her pen on the paper. She looks up. “Why don’t we move on from this question of were you here, were you not here. All right?”
Lucy says nothing.
“Maybe you’re just uncomfortable talking to us? We understand. Believe me, it happens all the time. But if you have nothing to hide, then you don’t have to worry.”
“Look, you seem like a decent young woman,” Bedrosian offers. “We can see why you’d be so affected by this.” He holds up the newspaper, tapping the photograph. “But then again, there’s so much here. All piled up like this.”
He looks to Miller. She shakes her head at Lucy as if to say, Sorry, it’s true.
“So your interest becomes a little striking. Understandable, of course. But striking.” He pauses. “Look at that face. Little angel of a kid. Nobody knows who he is. But he belongs to somebody out there, Lucy. Somebody loved him. Somebody held him as a baby.”
No, Lucy thinks. Nobody ever did that.
“Is there something you want to say?” Bedrosian asks.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Is that so?”
“I didn’t see him.”
“Didn’t see him where?”
“I didn’t see him anywhere.”
“You didn’t see this boy, on that night?”
“No. I didn’t.”
“And what about a man, Lucy? Did you see a man, maybe?”
“A man?” Lucy stutters.
“The caller said you and a man know what happened to the boy. Who’s the man, then?”
Lucy feels faint. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Do you know Enrique Maron? He’s the manager at the junkyard. The one who’s gone missing. You’ve never met him?”
It’s a relief to answer something with total honesty. “No, never.”
There is a pause. Miller’s pen scratches, scratches. She looks up. She asks, “Your neighbor, Mrs. Kim, you know her?”
“Yes.”
“She says you were pretty upset last week. When the news broke.”
“What?”
“She says you yelled at her. You were holding the paper—” She gestures, and Bedrosian holds up the boy’s face again. Lucy stares at it blindly. “And you were visibly shaken and upset. Maybe you knew this boy?”
“I didn’t. I already told you.”
Bedrosian leans forward, elbows on his knees. “Do you get upset often? You seem upset.”
“I’m not upset.”
“Mrs. Kim says you threatened to kill her.”
“That’s ridiculous. I mean, she just annoys me.”
“So you just said that because you were upset.”
Words jumble inside Lucy’s mouth. They watch her struggle. She feels sweat sliding down her sides. “She’s always harassing me.”
Miller smiles. “All right, then. Well, maybe we should continue this interview at the station. What do you say, Vic?”
“Seems like a good idea.”
“But why? Do I have to go with you?”
Again, the shared look. Miller says, “Lucy, if you choose not to come with us, then we might have to interpret that a certain way. You see?”
“And we’ll get a warrant and then you’ll have to come with us anyway. So you might as well do it now.”
Don’t get in a twist, Julian’s words come back. It’ll blow over.
The words scream hysterically inside her, utterly senseless.
Lucy looks from one to the other. Her gaze travels past them to the window, the blinding winter sunlight. If Theo finds out she was hauled in—
Miller leans forward. “Is something wrong?”
Lucy gazes at the woman’s clean, open face, full of smile wrinkles. She thinks, You have no fucking idea.
FOR AGES SHE’S BEEN in the room with the green peeling walls and the metal table and chairs, their questions coming at her relentlessly. She tells them over and over that she knows nothing. That’s what she decided and she sticks with it because there’s no alternative. Her mind is so bleak, so bare, it’s like the surface of the gray metal table, a dull gleaming uncreative expanse from which she can draw nothing at all, nothing to help her out of this mess. Julian said not to get in a twist. Julian said it would blow over. But the boy was seen on the night of the nineteenth during the snowstorm, with a man and Lucy Hennessey. Of this, the witness was certain, and repeated the information in two separate anonymous calls. The witness said: Lucy Hennessey knows what happened to that boy.
It could be a different Lucy Hennessey, she offered up in a flash of genius, but the caller described her: blue eyes, hair so blonde it looks white.
You know, people pay to get that color, Detective Miller complimented.
They haven’t mentioned Bernie or the hotel, which is not surprising. It’s bad enough what Margot’s done, let alone bringing cops down on an overseer. Lucy has tried to suggest it must be someone getting back at her for something. But she couldn’t offer up any enemies who might do such a thing to her.
No friends, no enemies, Detective Bedrosian mused.
The detectives keep insisting they know that Lucy wants to cooperate. That she’ll break in the end, admit her part, and tell them who that man is. Because they don’t think she did it, the killing. No, they don’t. They can see it’s not in her. All she needs to do is spill everything out. She’ll feel better, they promise. They know how tormented she is. She seems extremely tormented.
“That’s because you’re tormenting me,” she says.
Her small joke gets no smiles.
Before her lie three large black and white photographs of the arrival’s corpse. These aren’t computer generated, they’re real. Lucy keeps her eyes averted from his hollow little face. She doesn’t need to see it. It’s glued to the insides of her eyes.
She’s acutely conscious of herself. Physically. Arms wrapped tight and hair hanging limply over her eyes: it’s how she used to look in front of the shrinks. This is her forte: shutting down, waiting things out. Just watch. Loopy Lucy is what they called her at school, when it first came out she’d hurt herself. The pain from that time is a sliver inside that’s opening her up with hurt. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts.
T
here’s no getting away: that is the terror that keeps swamping her. She is so completely fucked, and she’s going to be locked up in jail. Because they have a witness, as they keep reminding her. The witness saw the boy and a man and Lucy Hennessey.
But that’s all they really have. Margot didn’t identify herself, and it looks like she hasn’t called back. Lucy clings to this: all they have other than the anonymous tips is a pile of newspapers.
Which means they’ll let her go home, eventually, and then when Theo finds out—
“I don’t know anything,” she says exhaustedly, again.
“Who are you scared of?” Bedrosian repeats.
She feels herself shrinking under the weight of his gaze. No more sad-dog demeanor now. He’s zeroed in on his prey, he means business, his jaw’s set hard. She’s come to know every inch of him, they’ve been sitting here so long. He’s got hair on the backs of his hands and sticking out of his shirt collar. Thick, square-tipped fingers, no wedding ring. She wonders if he’s ever killed anyone.
“Lucy, I know you’re scared. I’ve been in this business a long time.”
She shakes her head.
“We can protect you, if you help us.”
“I can’t help you.”
“I think you can.”
His examination of her is relentless. She feels bored into, peeled apart.
“What?” she demands. “What do you want from me? I don’t know anything.”
He gives a minute shake of the head. He gets up and leaves, shutting the door softly.
THEY COME AND GO. Each time with a new angle. Cajoling, insisting, asking the same questions.
Now they’ve dug up her past. Suspensions. Juvenile delinquency. Her stints at McLean.
“You’re a real piece of work, you know that,” Bedrosian comments. He runs the words together: piece-a-work.
She says, “I think I want to go home, now.”
“Well, we aren’t quite finished here,” Miller says.
Skinner Luce Page 10