‘What was that?’ Riker turned off the volume, and now he could more clearly hear a knock on the door in the reception area. ‘That’s gotta be her.’
He answered the door and greeted Detective Janos with a smile. Natalie Homer’s sister needed no introduction. Riker’s face was grim when he turned to the woman in handcuffs, only inclining his head a bare inch to say, ‘Miss Qualen.’
Stella shrank into a small space behind a carton, playing the mouse, shaking and listening to the footsteps coming closer, stopping now. A nearby box was being moved. Eyes shut tight, her thoughts went out to the Abandoned Stellas. How sorry she was to let them down, yet she knew they would cope well with her dying, for that was their strength of purpose. They were younger than she was now when they had committed themselves to their own slow deaths at the roadside diner.
But wait. This was New York City – different rules: no cowards allowed.
An inspired Stella sat in the dark and prepared herself for something finer than slaughter by box cutter. Adjusting her chin to a determined angle, she created the role of a lifetime, imagining her own heart engorging and growing into the part, pounding harder, louder – stronger.
Can you hear it, you son of a bitch?
The box was moved aside. A hand reached out for her, and the greatest thing that ever came out of Ohio jumped to her feet. She raked his chest with five long fingernails that left red streaks on his T-shirt. He stopped, as if his batteries had suddenly run down, stunned that an object would fight back. And then she clawed his face.
Stella had drawn first blood, and now she ran for the light at the end of the box corridor, screaming, ‘I’m gonna live, you bastard!'
Janos leaned against the door to the back office, making it clear to the prisoner that she was not going anywhere. Mallory and Riker closed in on Susan Qualen. The woman backed into a computer station and slipped. Her handcuffs bound her wrists behind her, and she could not break the fall. She awkwardly managed a squat, then rose to a stand and revolved slowly, looking from face to face. ‘Why am I under arrest?’ She jangled the chain of her manacles. ‘I haven’t done anything.’
‘You got that part right,’ said Riker. ‘You wouldn’t help us. You ran away.’
The words were spoken in a monotone, but the woman behaved as if he had screamed at her. She bowed her head and stared at the floor. As a reward for this attitude of contrition, Janos removed the handcuffs, then stepped back.
Mallory kicked a chair toward the suspect. It fell over, and Riker commanded, ‘Pick it up!’
Susan Qualen did as she was told.
‘Sit down!’ said Janos.
‘That day you came around – ’ Qualen’s voice faltered and cracked. ‘I couldn’t help you. I didn’t – ’
‘You have to sign this.’ Riker held a small card that listed her rights under the constitution. ‘We’ll get you a lawyer if you want one. Do you understand your rights?’
‘I don’t need a damn lawyer. I didn’t do – ’
‘Then sign it!’ Riker was not play-acting. He was angry when he grabbed a clipboard from the desk, then attached the card and a pen. She accepted the board, fingers slowly closing around its edges, and quickly signed her name. Mallory tore the clipboard from the woman’s hands and threw it across the room. Qualen jumped as it skittered across the floor for the last few feet before hitting the wall.
‘And now,’ said Riker, ‘tell us that twisted freak didn’t look up his Aunt Susan the minute he got to town.’
‘It’s your fault!’ Qualen faced each of them in turn. ‘You lie to people. You don’t – ’
‘All those details in the papers,’ said Mallory. ‘You knew there was a link between the last hanging and – ’
‘And my sister? The police only told me Natalie was murdered. I read about her hanging in the newspapers – the fake suicide, a damn cover-up!’ Susan Qualen’s voice was in the high, wavering pitch of hysteria. ‘Nobody wanted to solve Natalie’s murder.’
‘Your nephew gave you all the details,’ said Mallory. ‘That’s how you knew. When you saw the story in the papers, it was Natalie’s murder all over again.’
‘Stop it! Junior didn’t tell me anything!' She was in tears. ‘That little boy could barely speak. He was almost catatonic’
‘So you sent him away. You conspired to hide the only witness who could’ve helped the police find your sister’s killer.’
‘Oh, that’s rich.’ Susan Qualen was not frightened anymore. She was angry. ‘Who do you call when a damn cop kills your sister – the cops?’ She wore a grim smile and took some satisfaction in their stunned faces.
Running toward the light at the end of the corridor, Stella turned a corner of boxes and saw a small office walled in glass. The door was ajar, and she pushed it wide open. At the point of slamming it behind her, she regained her sanity, then closed the door quietly and turned a knob to lock it. The desk offered the only cover in a room made of glass, and she crouched behind it, taking the telephone with her. She dialed 911, but the call would not go through. And now she listened to an automated recording that instructed her to dial another digit for an outside line.
He was coming.
She could hear him walking at a mechanical clip. Stella held her breath as the man tried the knob, and then she heard metal on metal – a key in the lock.
Oh, you stupid fool. He’s a damn janitor. He has all the keys.
Stella closed her eyes and covered her ears, blocking it out, wishing it away, this thing at the door. The lock came undone. The door opened, and that insect smell was in the room with her. She opened her eyes. Very slowly, deep in shock, she lifted her face. He was standing beside the desk, looking down at her, yet not really seeing her. And he said nothing; one did not converse with objects. She saw the sign behind him, the shield of the alarm company pasted to the glass wall encircled by metallic tape. If she could break the glass, that would trigger the burglar alarm and bring a watchman.
Susan Qualen was all but spitting the next words at them. ‘If I’d given him up, how long would that little boy have stayed alive? The only witness to a cop killing his mother. I lived in that neighborhood for years. Drug dealers bought the police for a song. And you guys always cover for your own.’ She put up one hand, sensing Riker’s intention to interrupt. ‘Don’t start with me. I did the right thing, and you know it!’
‘He ran away from the foster parents,’ said Mallory, ‘a pair of chiseling – ’
‘And he went back to my cousins. They took him to Nebraska. When he grew up, he had a lot of questions about his mother. They told him everything they knew. Then he came back.’
‘Back home,’ said Mallory. ‘To you.’
‘He only spent a few hours with me. That was a long time ago.’
‘You didn’t want to see him again.’ Riker folded his arms. ‘He scared you, didn’t he?’
‘No! He wasn’t some whacked psycho. He was as normal as I am.’
Janos pulled out his notebook. ‘Where’s your nephew now?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘What does he call himself these days?’
‘Junior, I guess. That’s what he always called himself ‘I want a straight answer.’ Janos moved closer. ‘Did you hear the question? What name is he – ’