Cardozo’s heart turned over in his chest. “Ask her what the cut looks like. Ask her does it have a design.”
“What does the cut look like, Babe? Does it have a design?”
She stiffened. “He cuts a circle.”
“What’s in the circle?” Cardozo said.
“What’s in the circle, Babe?”
“There’s a Y, dripping blood.” She doubled over, her arms clamped across her stomach, and made retching sounds.
Brandon touched her forehead. “Babe, go back to sleep.”
A blankness flowed into Babe’s eyes. She slumped back against the Barcalounger.
“Wow,” Brandon said. “What was that all about?”
Cardozo bent over her. He took her hand in his. It was cool, limp. He massaged her knuckles. It was five minutes before her eyes opened slowly. He spoke in a low voice, tinged with sympathy. “Come on. You’ve earned a little fresh air.”
He helped her up and he helped her onto her crutches. He kept a firm guiding hand on her arm.
They walked out to where the daylight was dark gold, barred with gray. The streets were alive, bustling and active with people hurrying home from work. A Spanish vendor was selling authentic Italian ices. A small Chinese girl ran past, pigtails flying. They let the thickly peopled sidewalk carry them along.
Babe lifted her eyes to where the skyline stopped sharp against the sky. “What did I remember?” she said.
“You didn’t.”
With a pained blinking of her eyes she turned to him. “It wasn’t Cordelia?”
“You didn’t remember. Brandon tried to get you back to that night but he couldn’t.”
Cardozo turned off the cassette player.
Ellie Siegel was staring thoughtfully into her can of cherry Coke. “Somebody told her,” she said.
“Who could have told her? Who knew about the cigarette butt in Downs’s left hand? Who knew about the peace sign carved on his chest? We kept that stuff out of the papers.”
“Vince, is there any possibility maybe you mentioned some stuff to her?”
“Why the hell would I mention it to her?”
“Because you’re sorry for her. Maybe you wanted to make her feel important. A lot of cops tell their girlfriends things they shouldn’t, little inside shit about ongoing investigations—”
“She is not a girlfriend. Jesus Christ, enough with the matchmaking.”
“Would you give me back my head, please? I’m just trying to understand how there could be such a mix on that tape. She has insider details and then all that mishegoss about John Wayne and Mickey Mouse. And Nixon. What’s with the thirty-seventh president? Added to which, there’s nothing about apartment six, nothing about Claude Loring. Devens just has isolated bits and she’s filled in the rest with comic book stuff.”
“It bothers me. I heard her saying those things and it locked right in to a feeling I’ve had all along about this Downs killing.”
“The case is solved, Vince.”
“Where did the mask come from? Where did that cigarette butt come from? Who was the woman that bought the mask from Pleasure Trove and took it to Beaux Arts Tower?”
“Wait a minute. Loring confessed. The evidence backs up his confession. The witnesses back up his confession. You’re not going to tell me that crazy tape raises any questions about his guilt. Neither does the mask or the cigarette or the woman no one could identify. They don’t make Loring innocent. No way. The woman may not even connect. The mask is a mass-produced item. The cigarette—no one’s ever been convicted on a cigarette unless the charge was littering or polluting the atmosphere at the Four Seasons. The questions in this case have been answered. That’s why those files in your lap are marked Case Closed.”
Cardozo sat there with his Diet Pepsi on ice, sealed in a state of wondering. “Too many coincidences. Morgenstern defended the Devens murder attempt and the Downs killing. We put Babe Devens under and out comes the Downs killing.”
“Vince, you’re over the line. You’ve got a mishmash, not coincidence. Mickey Mouse is not an accessory in the Downs killing. Richard Nixon has an alibi. You’re not going to get any judge to subpoena Alice in Wonderland.”
Cardozo was silent, frowning.
“But assume she was there,” Siegel said. “Where does it get you? Downs is being tortured and murdered, and in walks Babe Devens, up two flights of dark stairs. Forget she can’t even walk now. Forget apartment six is on the sixth floor. Forget she had nurses watching her around the clock, forget the coma. Forget she sees the murder and doesn’t see the murderer, forget what she does see is half of Disneyland. She’s there while the handyman is taking Jodie Downs apart. Just ask yourself: what is Babe Vanderwalk doing in that place at that time? Who or whose purpose does it serve? Her own? The handyman’s? The victim’s? Where was she before and where did she go afterward? How come no one saw her?”
“So why did she tell that story?”
“Because you and Dr. Kildare had her flying on Medicaid angel dust.”
“How did she get the details?”
“You mean how did she get the wrong details? She made them up. How did she get the right details? Maybe she made them up too and got lucky. Or maybe there is something to ESP, maybe she knew because you knew, because you’ve been fixated on this case for so long that anyone who can read lips would know what you’re thinking.”
Cardozo put down his glass and rested his head on the back of the seat. Through lowered lids he stared at the dead TV screen.
“G’night, Vince.” Siegel came across the livingroom and patted him on the cheek. “The chicken was delicious.”
“The neighbor cooked it.”
“It was still delicious.”
He sprang to his feet and came with her into the hallway. Thoughtfully, she considered the man holding the door for her.
“Vince, I don’t mean to spoil the ending for you, but Loring did it.”
He nodded, eyes blank with fatigue. The latch clicked shut.
For two more hours he sat staring at photos and fives, his mind toying with connections, trying to tease the new piece into place.
“Hey, Dad—aren’t you sleeping anymore?”
His daughter was standing in the doorway, in rumpled night-clothes, and he felt a rush of absurdity and guilt.
He closed the file. He walked slowly, feeling an ache in his back, and he wondered if he was turning into one of those middle-aged deskmen with back problems.
Terri followed him down the hall to the kitchen. He put a pan of milk on the burner. Hot milk, his instant sleeping pill. She got a cup out of the cabinet for him.
Cardozo stood watching his daughter. That movement of the arm she had from her mother, and the way she took charge of the stove with her head a little on one side was her mother’s too.
“How you feeling, Dad?”
So was the question, and the dark-eyed look, with their implied gentle nagging.
“I’m okay.”
She mixed Sweet ’n Low and cinnamon in the cup and handed him the milk. She suspected something. He knew she sensed he wasn’t right.
“Get some sleep,” she said.
But that night he didn’t sleep.
A gob of milky light smeared on the wall. Cardozo adjusted the lens. The image leapt into focus, a tall beautiful woman with black curly hair that came to her shoulders.
Babe sat with her crutches leaning on the wall behind her, hands pushed down in the pockets of her skirt. After a long moment of deliberation she said, “There’s a seven-year gap in my memory and even if I knew these people, they’ve changed and I might not recognize them.”
“Or on the other hand you might.”
Cardozo clicked to the next. A slim blond girl with deep-set eyes. Mystery woman taking mask into BAT.
Babe pulled back, shook her head no.
The next. A middle-aged man with hollow eyes and wisps of black hair over his ears.
“That’s Lew Monserat, the art dealer. He’s lost weight. Is he well?”
“You mean mentally? I wouldn’t swear to it.”
Cardozo made check marks in the log, one for recognition and another for a certain hesitation that might have masked recognition.