“Yes.”
“Like on television. But I don’t want a lawyer, or really need one.”
“Why is that?”
“I think I know what I did. It’s a relief, actually. It’s been bothering me. I’m glad to know you have finally caught up with me.”
“I didn’t catch up with you. You walked in here and insisted on giving your confession to me. Why?”
“I consider us friends. I thought it would help your career.”
“You think I need help?”
“Frankly, yes.”
Tessa must be laughing. I am so tired of this jerk.
I turn on the voice recorder and the microphone attached to the table. It’s not real; its purpose is to distract the suspect from the people who are watching him behind a two-way mirror. There is also a working recorder in the CCTV camera hidden in the lighting fixture above him.
“This is Detective Nina Karim. The time is five fifteen p.m. I am about to take the statement of Mr. Lawrence McDermott. Mr. McDermott, do you waive the reading of your rights?”
“Yes.”
“Then you can begin.”
I settle back in my chair, not for comfort, but distance. McDermott clears his throat and adjusts his tie.
“Well, where shall I start?”
“Wherever you want.”
“All right, I followed her home.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know her name. A woman. I followed her home from her job. Twice. Then when she was at work, I went back to where she lives and reconnoitered. It’s a fourplex; she has one of the top-floor apartments. There are a lot of kids, and I noticed they never bother to lock the front door, so I got inside easily. Upstairs, I jimmied the lock on her door—it really wasn’t hard to do. I let myself in and watched TV until I heard her car. I hid in her bedroom closet and waited.”
“Where is the apartment?”
“In Astoria.”
“The address?”
“Crane Street. I’m not sure of the number.”
“Yes, you are.”
McDermott reconsiders. He doesn’t want to appear derelict in his confession.
“Twenty-seven.”
“Apartment?”
“2A.”
It’s my address. Fuck.
“Tell me about the woman.”
“Late twenties, attractive, blonde, medium build. Not skinny, not fat, either.”
“You killed her?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“She came into her bedroom. I watched her take off her clothes. When she was naked, I came out of the closet and shot her. Oh, I forgot, I put a pillow in front of the pistol, so it would muffle the sound.”
“And then?”
“You mean what did I do next? I waited to see if anyone heard the shot, then I put her on the bed.”
He waits for my reaction. I give him nothing.
“Would you like to see the gun? I brought it with me, but I had to leave it at the desk.”
“Do you have a permit for this gun?”
“No, it’s a family heirloom.”
I get up.
“I’ll be right back.”
I meet Tessa outside in the hall.
“He just confessed to killing you,” she says.
“I think he’s crazy and he’s planning to kill me, but he thinks he already has. Maybe there’s a psychosis called wrong tense disorder.”
“What do we do with him?”
“He said he left a gun at the desk. He doesn’t have a permit for it,” I say.
“We can arrest him for possession and see if we can get this guy some help.”
“Or toss him out. I can take my chances he is harmless and just a pain in the ass.”
“Up to you. It’s your ass.”
“Keep the gun, toss him out. I don’t have time for this.”
Chapter 40
There is a new odor in my basement room. A trace. Subtle. Sweet. Flowery, honeyed. A perfume, shampoo, or deodorant—can I give it a name? My knowledge of perfume is limited to the generic underarm deodorant I get from CVS and keep in my police locker. I check my possessions; they appear undisturbed. Everything is in order except that someone upstairs has been in my space. It won’t be hard to sniff them out at dinner. I’ll sniff like a dog. Above me, doors shut, feet trod, the clang of the triangle signals dinnertime.
Amanda and I set the table. The delivery boy from Mama Carmela’s in Woodside has left three eighteen-inch pizzas—vegetable, meat, and a cheese pie with spinach. There is an extra-large chopped salad and bread sticks, all the food a gift from an anonymous supporter. “There’re others,” Amanda tells me. “Besides the pizza lady, there’s the one who drops off all her hotel shampoos and soaps, another one who pays the cable bill. Phyllis says they’re people who lived here, left, and got their lives together—it’s how they show their appreciation.”
“Do you know who pays the rent?”
“Nope.”
I’d like to know the answer. Is the person who pays the rent also the one who arranges the killings?
Sharon, the “new arrival,” comes into the dining room. She’s in her midforties; her left arm is wrapped in a cast covered by a blue sleeve. If a broken arm is her ticket to Artemis, she must have a seriously nasty and abusive partner. Her face shows the strains of a hard life, cheeks lined with parallel creases, vertical lines between her lips and nose. It is a pleasant and friendly face; she radiates kindness and generosity that suggest that no matter how bad her situation is she would still find time to help you. I imagine she is the kind of woman who would watch your kids, drop by for coffee and collect your mail and papers if you went away. You would want her for a neighbor. Her hair is thick reddish brown, and it looks like it hasn’t changed since her high school yearbook photo: bangs droop over her forehead, side flaps drape her temples. Sharon is one of those women who hit a certain age and lose their former frame; their bodies acquire mass and become squared. You could draw a straight line from her shoulders to hips. These women aren’t obese. They aren’t soft or flabby; they project strength, and their faces retain their beauty as their bodies change.
“Everybody say hello to Sharon,” Phyllis says.
We know what to do: we introduce ourselves, first names only, and wait for Sharon to respond. The children eye the pizzas hungrily. Could you make this fast, please?
After our introductions, she says, “I just got here. To tell you the truth, I’m kind of in a daze, so I don’t have really anything to say right now, if you all don’t mind.”
Did she say you all, or the Southern y’all? I’m not sure which one I heard. If it’s the latter, what’s she doing in Queens?
“Let’s eat,” Phyllis says. “Sharon, we just help ourselves.” Sharon smiles weakly at the sight of the opened pizza boxes with their flattened melted cheeses, slices of sausage and vegetables, and shiny drops of olive oil. Sharon holds up her plate. “May I just have a little bit of salad, please?”
I look around the table. We are all thinking the same thing: we want to hear Sharon’s story, her nightmare, how she got here, who beat her, was it a husband present or ex, a boyfriend, a crazy neighbor, a boss—Come on, girl, give it up, share. We want to assess her chances of survival if she leaves and ours if she stays. Will her husband hunt her down and kill her if she leaves Artemis? We are a nosy, gossipy, intrusive group with little respect for boundaries or privacy. We want to know her business. We want her secrets, laid out for our inspection, and then she will get our support, sympathy, and love. Tell us a horror story about that bastard and what he did to you, or a funny one about what an asshole he is that will make us feel better or worse about ourselves.
I’m not sure what I’m playing anymore. I’m a spy, an impostor, in this house of truly abused and fearful women. I don’t have a husband who points a finger in my face with one hand and makes a fist with the other that makes my bladder empty. I’m not afraid to step outside the shelter. I don
’t look for my husband’s car. I can go to a supermarket, a movie, a bank, pick up my child at school if I had one, walk my dog if I had one, call my mother if I had one, be on Facebook, have a Twitter account. What I don’t have is someone who wants to hurt me. It was already done. I have that in common with the other women in this shelter. We are sisters. And the bottom line is I don’t want to betray them.
Sharon stands and pushes her chair back from the table. “Please excuse me. I’m feeling awfully tired.”
As she passes me, her shoulder brushes my cheek and I smell honey.
The new arrival has been in my stuff.
I knock softly and wait, then knock again.
“Minute.” A thin strip of light appears at the bottom of the door. A few moments later, Sharon opens the door. She wears a long-sleeved nightgown.
“Oh, hi,” she says, friendly enough.
“I’m Lucy.”
“Yes. I don’t have the names down yet.”
“You will. Takes some time.” I hand her a baggie with a cheese sandwich and an orange. “You didn’t eat anything. This is in case you get hungry.”
She nods thanks and takes the baggie. I look past her into the room. There is a four-wheeled suitcase on the floor, next to it a faded JanSport backpack; they both carried the possessions of a woman who is fleeing. I can only imagine what she has left behind.
“Come in,” she says.
Inside, I see relics of Haneen’s life that Phyllis has left undisturbed: her magazines, Forbes, Vanity Fair, and Vogue; family photos; a framed picture of Haneen and her boyfriend, Teddy, at the Grand Canyon; and taped to the wall, two Knicks ticket stubs. A contemporary New York life snuffed out. Subscription canceled.
“This was Haneen’s room,” I say.
“Phyllis told me. Such a sad story.”
“Everyone here has one.”
Sharon allows herself a smile, enough for me to notice the empty spaces where her bottom teeth used to be. Sharon raises her hand to her mouth. “He knocked them out, and I never got around to replacing them. No point. He would just do it again.”
“Where are you from?”
“We’re army. Sorry, my husband is. Stationed at Fort Dix. Nineteen years in, a lifer about to retire. If I report him for assault, they’ll discharge him, and he’ll lose his pension and benefits. They’re always looking for excuses to kick enlisted men out and save money. I guess I didn’t want to be one. But I knew if I stayed, if I called the MPs, filed charges, he wouldn’t make it.”
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“Well, now you know.”
“Almost. What were you doing in my room?”
I meant to take her by surprise to gauge her reaction. Expecting a denial, a lie, I instead get a sigh, a big exhale, and tears.
“I’m sorry. You aren’t the only one. I’ve been in everyone’s room.”
“Why?”
“You know how in an airplane they tell you to take note of the exits? Wherever I am, I want to know the way out. I want to know the best way. If my husband is at the front door with a gun, is it the window in this room, or is it another, or do I want to know the best place to hide? I liked your bathroom in the basement.”
Reasonable.
Chapter 41
A week later at the station house, Lieutenant Hagen summons Claude Ito, Linda Fuentes, and me to her office. We will be the lead detectives conducting the sting operation against Phyllis. Hagen tells Ito and Fuentes that I have been undercover in the shelter and have provided her with enough information to suspect at least three murders may have originated there.
Linda sneaks a text to me: No shit, girl. I forgive u. I’ll ask her later if she’s forgiving me for my insults or for manipulating her into the beating that got me into Artemis.
Linda and two teams of plainclothes detectives from the vice squad will follow Phyllis when she leaves the shelter. Ito’s cops will protect Bobby, my abusive, dangerous “husband.” My job is to stay in the shelter, keep everybody on the outside informed of Phyllis’s movements, try to monitor her calls, and convince her my situation is getting more desperate. I tell everyone about the exit route through Myra’s house and not to bother watching Artemis’s front door.
Claude has a question. “Do we have any idea of what we’re looking at in terms of this woman being armed?”
Lieutenant Hagen looks at me. “Nina?”
“I don’t think so. She’s the facilitator. My feeling is she has people on the outside doing what needs to be done.”
I correct myself. “What she thinks needs to be done.”
Anyone notice? I scan the detectives for tells. Ito? Did he blink? Fuentes. No, I’m okay. Everyone is focused on Lieutenant Hagen.
“Nina,” Lieutenant Hagen says, “any way to make this happen faster?”
“I can ask Bobby to show up at the shelter, make a scene outside, wave a gun, then drive away before anyone calls the police.”
“Nice. Tell him to make it convincing.”
“He’ll need a blue Camaro, if Phyllis remembers what I told her.”
“We’ll find one for him. What year?”
“I didn’t say.”
“Okay.”
We are investigating the murders of Ronald, Derrick, and Joey. They were on track to kill or maim their spouses. Then, for the first time, I hear another voice. It is my father, and he is telling me to do my job.
Chapter 42
This morning I am giving math lessons to Ben, Frankie, and Tiffany. When Sofia left the shelter, she handed over her materials with descriptions of each child’s math level. I’ve got three different ages and levels. Tiffany is precocious for a seven-year-old; she can solve algebraic second-degree equations. Frankie is just behind her but struggles with mixture problems, while Ben is doing long division. Sofia downloaded math games to the computer that keep them occupied; Tiffany and Frankie sit at their makeshift desks, doing exercises in their workbooks. I confine the class time to thirty minutes. The children are under enormous stress. They rarely leave the shelter, though occasionally we take them out to the zoo, a museum, or just to a McDonald’s—anything that resembles a “normal” life. If the weather is good like it is today, we go outside. Phyllis and some of the mothers come out of the house, and we all play a crazy game of backyard soccer. We have our own rules and equipment. We use a volleyball instead of a soccer ball, and the tin garbage can lying on its side is the goal. Frankie has the ball. He’s an expert dribbler; he easily sidesteps me and whacks the ball into the can for a goal. The ball bounces around, making hollow bongs that are suddenly echoed by a furious banging on the front door. Phyllis shoos the kids back into the house, grabs a footstool. She climbs on it for a view over the wall to the front of the shelter.
“Stop banging on my door,” she yells.
“Let me in, you stupid cunt.”
The voice is male, drunk, and it belongs to Bobby.
“I want to see my wife. Her name is Lucy Booth. Tell her to come out or I’m coming in. I know she’s in there,” he says.
“Go away before I call the police,” Phyllis says.
“Call ’em. I don’t give a shit. Lucy!”
Phyllis steps down from the footstool to the sounds of Bobby banging his fists on the door.
“Take the kids inside. He’s got a gun.”
“I’ll call 911.”
“No, not yet. Get the kids in the house and stay with them. I’ll deal with this fool.”
On my way to the house, I see Phyllis climb back on the footstool. Her voice is calm and even.
“Listen very carefully. I don’t know who you are, but there is no Lucy here. You leave right now, or I am going to call the police and my security company. I will tell them you are armed, and when they arrive they will blow your fucking brains out and then ask me who you are. You understand?”
“Fuck you, lady,” Bobby says.
“Okay, mister, we’re done.”
In the house, I count heads.
&nb
sp; “Where’s Frankie?”
“His usual. Upstairs bathroom,” Tiffany says.
A moment later, Phyllis enters. “He went away. Everybody okay?”
The children nod.
Phyllis says, “Frankie upstairs? Good.”
She sits down on the couch and draws Ben and Tiffany into an embrace.
“It’s okay. The man went away. I scared the hell out of him. He’s gone.” Phyllis waits for nods from each of them. “What do you say to watching television now, and I’ll get McDonald’s for lunch?”
The children know they are being offered a distraction, a palliative to take their minds off the incident; they nod in response. Today, there will be little joy in funny cartoons and Happy Meals. But they will take whatever they can get. These children live in a house where their mothers tell them they are safe from violent and angry men. And now, just a few minutes ago, one of them showed up with a gun and created more nightmares, and they will consider their lives and their mothers less secure. Phyllis senses it.
“Kids, the man who came today? He won’t come back.”
“What if he does?” Tiffany says.
“I’ll call the police. Have him arrested.”
“The police don’t do shit,” Ben says.
“Then we’ll sic Bobo on him. Right, Bobo?”
Bobo thumps her tail on the couch. She makes the kids smile.
Phyllis says offhandedly, as if nothing strange has happened, as if this man with a gun was like a mistaken UPS driver, “Tiffany, will you write down what everybody wants?”
“Can we get Cokes, too?”
In keeping with normal, Phyllis says, “Nope. No Coke.”
And to me, “Lucy, can I see you in the kitchen?”
As I go, Tiffany asks, “Was that your husband?”
“Yes.”
“Does he want to kill you?”
“He says he does.”
“Then he might, right?”
“No, he won’t.”
In the kitchen, Phyllis hands me a coffee.
“Son of a bitch.”
Her face is crunched in a determined rage. The kindness, the gentleness, and the warmth that marked Phyllis’s behavior to the children is gone. Her mouth is tight, her eyes narrowed, and for a moment I am afraid of her. It’s rage. It’s familiar. It’s like mine. She is going to get this cowardly bastard who showed up at her house and threatened her women and children. She is going to kill him. She is me.
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