Lani was the only one she allowed near. The earnest CASA came each day and eventually told Amaryllis of an idea she and her husband had — they wanted her to come live with them. Amaryllis was startled and suspicious, but it would have been impossible to misinterpret Mrs. Mott’s resolve. The child pretended not to heed and let three days pass before inquiring when such a move might occur. The CASA said it depended on her behavior, for that was the gauge used by the court in such actions. She told Amaryllis that the court’s decision would be handled with particular care, as in this case living in their home would be the first step in a formal adoption. She and Gilles had already begun classes with the goal of accreditation.
“You would adopt me?” she asked.
“Absolutely. No hesitation.”
“What happens if you don’t want to do it anymore?”
“We don’t change our minds like that.”
“What if I do something bad or you move away?”
“You’d move with us. Once we make a decision, that’s it, OK? We don’t turn our backs on it — we don’t turn our backs on you. If you do something ‘bad,’ we’ll just deal.”
“What if you die?”
“I’m not expecting to.”
“Neither was my mother.”
“I know that, honey.” She put her hand on Amaryllis’s, and the girl let it stay. “What happened to your mother is very sad, and very … unusual. Things do happen in this world — people get sick, people go nuts, people die. People get killed. But I think I have a relatively long life ahead of me. At least I like to think that,” she laughed. “I’d like you to think that. This would be an adoption, OK? That’s permanent. That’s how the courts look at it, and that’s how we look at it. It’s forever. I want you to look at it like that, too — for better or for worse, in sickness and in health.”
“What about the babies?”
“If you’re with us, in a stable home, the chances are good—definitely better than where we’re at now — that we could establish regular visits.”
“Would you adopt them?”
“I don’t even know if that’s in the realm of the possible; I’m not sure what their status is. Your brother and sister may be happy where they are.”
“They’re not!”
“You don’t know that.”
“They’re not happy!”
“One thing at a time, OK, Amaryllis? Let’s worry about you right now — then we’ll see about them.” The girl relaxed, seeming to go with the logic of it. “For me, for us, we’d like to have you in our home because we love you. And we would hope you love us, or learn to. So I want you to think about it.”
“How can you love me?”
“What do you mean?”
“You don’t know me.”
“Of course I know you.”
“Only for a little. You didn’t raise me. You can’t suddenly love me.”
“I can — and I do. You see, Amaryllis, I believe a person can decide … can make the decision to love. And then love follows.”
Over time — a short time, for children and the human heart always astonish by the speed with which they heal — Amaryllis lowered her guard. She asked Lani where she lived and where she would be going to school. She asked if she could have a bicycle and a computer. She asked if she would be able to have friends sleep over and even mentioned, albeit briefly, a certain group of children who had taken care of her during her travels (and travails) … but discreetly said no more.
When she felt the girl was ready, Lani eased “Topsy” into their conversation (she knew that was how he was known to her). She questioned her about the same things William’s lawyers did when they visited the child at Mac — but from a different place.
Amaryllis repeated that Topsy had never, in her knowledge, come to the motel where she lived with her mom and the babies. How then, asked Lani, did his ascot make its appearance there? (The silken tie was the one thing left that, forgiving the phrase, stuck in the CASA’s craw; naturally, she withheld referring to the place from which it made its grisly “coming-out.”)
She related how one day under the bridge, after Topsy had provided food for herself and the babies, the wind had brought a chill; the sun was setting and he worried she had no sweater. He gave her the ascot to wrap about her neck. Amaryllis loved its shininess and golden teardrops and kept it to wrap around her Box of Saints. She never gave it back. In a separate matter, she said there had been visitors to the St. George suite — but ones she had never mentioned and was unsure she ever would. They were unspeakable.
Lani conveyed all this to the detective, who put her in touch with the defense — it was the CASA’s feeling that she could get the girl to testify to as much in court. The attorneys were concerned it still wasn’t enough to clear him; the testimony of a combative child, diagnosed as “labile and hypervigilant” and “with flight of ideas,” currently being weaned from Effexor, Neurontin, Ativan and Cogentin, was not the most convincing.
At this juncture, as it is wont to, a deus ex machina explained all.
Samson Dowling was awakened by an early-morning call from Jerry Whittle, a coroner’s assistant whom he had known for years. Whittle was a funny, meticulous eccentric who, at the age of forty-nine, still lived with his mother in San Marino. He visited the detective regularly after he got shot, and made Samson laugh and forget his pain awhile. When he was discharged, the odd couple went to ball games and barbershops together, and had the occasional steak and martini at Musso & Frank’s. Whittle aspired to writing but could never settle on a niche: he liked the idea of creating a mystery series based on a coroner’s assistant, a kind of bush-league Kay Scarpetta, but also had a mind to tackle a book of ruminative essays in the Death to Dust or How We Die mode, or maybe even a precious memoir along the lines of the one by that well-known fellow who called himself a “mortician poet.”
Whittle had been the first from the coroner’s office to arrive at the scene of the Kornfeld homicide. He took tissue samples and scrapings — it was he who had discovered the ascot in the throat, drawing an excited parallel to the pupae similarly found in The Silence of the Lambs—and snapped photos of the deceased, which he added to his collection (he’d flirted with publishing a volume of Weegee-type photographs, getting someone like DeLillo or Ellroy to write the text).
“I’m telling you, Sam, I’m looking at both sets of photographs. Now. As we speak.”
“What are you saying?”
“The knots, Sam, the knots are the same.”
“The knots in the ascot?” He was still foggy.
“No, Sam! There were no knots in the ascot — Jesus, what kind of detective are you? The knots in the sheet the woman was strangled with. They’re manropes—”
“Manropes?”
“Manropes. They’re one and the same.”
“The same as what?” asked Samson testily. He’d been dreaming so pleasantly only minutes before.
“The same as the knots in the tie of the guy who killed himself.”