‘Was the boy having problems?’ asked Riker.
Mallory leaned down very close to the other woman’s face. ‘How did Junior adjust to his mother’s death?’
‘Natalie died in August,’ said Riker. ‘And we know your husband didn’t send Junior to school in September.’
‘Tell me what you did with that little boy,’ said Mallory.
Jane Homer’s eyes widened with the realization that she was caught in the middle of a police crossfire. ‘His grandparents – ’
‘No!’ Riker scraped the legs of his chair across the floor, edging closer to the bed. ‘No, Jane, I don’t think so.’
Mallory leaned close to the woman’s ear. ‘I know how Erik Homer treated his first wife. He never gave her any money – never let her out of the house. Is that – ’
‘Erik did the shopping. I didn’t need to go out. I didn’t – ’
‘Your first police interview was right after your marriage,’ said Riker. ‘The cops thought you were afraid of your husband.’
‘When did the beatings start?’ Mallory raised her voice. ‘On your honeymoon? Was that the first time he knocked you around?’
‘You have lots of photographs.’ Riker nodded toward the cluster of frames on her bureau. ‘I see you and your husband, but not the little boy. You never lived with Junior, did you?’ He caught the sudden fear in the woman’s eyes. ‘What did you do to Natalie’s son? Is he alive?
Jane Homer shook her head from side to side.
‘Is that a no?’ Mallory asked. ‘The boy’s dead?’
The woman trembled, and her bosom heaved with sobs. Speech was impossible. Her mouth formed the words I don’t know.
Mallory moved closer. ‘How could you not know?’
Riker leaned toward her. ‘Did you think your husband went off on the kid, maybe killed his own son?’
The woman’s head moved from side to side, splitting her halting words between the two detectives, anxious to please them both. ‘The night they found Natalie – Erik got back – very late. I asked him where the boy was. Erik – hit me – hard.’ One hand drifted to her mouth. ‘He broke my tooth – then he – got rid of Junior’s things – toys, clothes. And the pictures – he tore them to pieces.’
Jane Homer stared at the photograph that Riker held, the image of her husband and her smiling self in better days. In a small act of defiance, she grabbed the silver frame from Riker and held it to her breast, covering it with both hands, protecting the happy times. Huge tears rolled down her face, and they could do no more with her – or to her.
Outside the SoHo police station, young actresses were ganging on the sidewalk, posing for the cameras of reporters and tourists.
Uniformed officers grinned with their good luck – they had gone to cop heaven. They worked the crowd, tipping hats to brunettes and sending them on their way, then filling out forms for all the blondes, taking down names and telephone numbers, as women filed past them and through the front door to interviews with Special Crimes detectives.
Mallory’s car pulled to the curb. She left the motor running after Riker opened the passenger door. He had one foot on the pavement. ‘You’re not coming in?’
‘No, I’m going over to Natalie’s apartment building.’ Then she added, with no enthusiasm at all, ‘Come if you like.’
‘Naw, I did a drive-by. Too much renovation. The new owner probably rearranged half the walls.’ He kept her a while longer with one foot on the floor mat of her car, acting as if a sidewalk choked with pretty women was an everyday thing with him. ‘I’m sticking a couple of uniforms on Susan Qualen. You’re gonna miss all the fun when they drag her in.’ After a few seconds of dead silence, Riker realized that she was not even tempted. He stepped out on to the sidewalk, closed the door and waved her off, then disappeared into a blond sea of actresses.
Mallory drove across town and through the East Village, heading for the twenty-year-old crime scene and blaming Jack Coffey for another fatal mistake. He had pulled men off their independent lines of investigation to work on the actress interviews, as if they could find the next victim that way. Another woman was going to die.
She turned the wheel on First Avenue and rolled along the side street toward Avenue A. Once, this area had provided cheap housing for the poorest of the poor. Now, none of the former residents could afford to live here.
Mallory parked her car in front of the building where Natalie Homer had lived and died. Only the architectural bones would match Lars Geldorf s old photograph. Peeling gray paint had been sandblasted to expose the red brick. The windows were modern, and the wrought-iron rails of Juliet balconies had been restored. According to Geldorf s personal notes, the previous owner had died, and all the old tenants had departed before the renovation.
Riker was right. This was a waste of precious time.
And a woman was going to die.
Yet she left her car and walked up the stairs to ring the bell for the landlord’s apartment. The front door was opened by a softly rounded woman with a warm smile for a stranger. The new owner was obviously not a native New Yorker, but a transplant from some smaller, less paranoid town.
‘Mrs White?’ The detective held up her badge and ID.
The woman’s smile collapsed. ‘It’s about Natalie, isn’t it? I wondered when you’d come.’
The civilian police aide for the midtown precinct was a short thin woman with brown hair and a dim view of blondes. Eve Forelli held up her favorite tabloid with the headline: actress stabbed in broad daylight. She glared at the tall, pretty woman seated on the other side of her desk. ‘You look better in person.’
And this, of course, was sarcasm, for the grainy newsprint photograph only showed the back of the actress’s head; the face was pressed to the bosom of another actor, a man holding the unconscious, bleeding victim in his arms while he postured and smiled for the camera.
The blonde’s blue eyes opened wide. ‘How could it be in the paper? It just happened this morning.’
Forelli pointed to the line below the newspaper’s banner. ‘It’s the late edition.’ She could see that the younger woman was not following this. ‘It’s a second edition.’ And it had been free, a promotional gimmick for a failing newspaper. ‘Now I need the correct spelling for your last name. The hospital only used one L. It doesn’t look right.’ She handed the newspaper to the blonde. ‘And this story didn’t even mention your name.’
The startled actress tore her eyes away from the clock on the wall to scan the article. ‘Oh, damn, you’re right.’
‘The spelling, Miss Small?’
‘Just the way it sounds. Call me Stella.’ The woman flashed a smile. ‘Look – is this going to take much longer? I’ve been waiting for over an hour. I’m already late for another appointment in SoHo.’
Eve Forelli only glared at the woman. This – blonde had left the hospital before giving a statement to the police. One of the little princes from Special Crimes Unit downtown had reamed out a desk sergeant and demanded the missing paperwork on the reported stabbing. Her supervisor, in turn, had crawled up Forelli’s own scrawny tail. Further down the food chain, the frazzled police aide had screamed at the hospital staff. And, finally, the errant actress had been identified. And now Forelli prepared to marry an illegible attending physician’s report to the crime victim’s account. ‘So you were stabbed by – ’
‘Oh, Jesus, no!’ said the actress. ‘I don’t want any trouble with the cops. Look, I’m sorry, Officer, but this – ’
‘I’m not a cop.’ Forelli pointed to the name tag pinned to her blouse, clearly identifying her as a civilian aide. ‘You see a badge here? No, you don’t. I just do the damn paperwork.’