Charles turned to Riker. „When were you going to tell me that?“
„Never. No reason to. If Bitty hadn’t made you a condition of the test, Mallory would’ve asked you to come. The key word here is neutral. You’re Switzerland, Charles.“
„The hell I am.“
„Next question,“ said Mallory, „another easy one. Have you been reading tarot cards for a long time?“
„Yes. Wait.“ Nedda Winter erased her answer, wiping the air with both hands. „I mean… no. That was so long ago. I was a child the last time I saw that deck.“
„A child? Was this before the massacre?“
Nedda looked up in dumb surprise. Her mouth opened to speak, but she had no words.
„Did you get your tarot deck before the Winter House Massacre? Yes, or no“ Mallory drummed her nails on the table. „What’s the problem, Miss Winter? Too many murders? I’m talking about one massacre, your father, your stepmother, five small children, the nanny and the housekeeper – nine people. Did you get that tarot deck before they – “
„No!“ Nedda lowered her voice to a whisper. „No.“
Mallory switched off the machine. „All right. You didn’t hold out on that one, but now I’ve got another problem.“ She waited a beat, then asked, „Why did you come home again?“
The woman looked down at her hands, her head slowly moving from side to side.
The machine was switched on again. „Are you telling me it wasn’t your idea?“ She glanced at the readings, though she had no need of them since she already knew the answer. „That’s it, isn’t it? Someone else brought you home. Was it Lionel Winter?“ Mallory made a note below a spiking line. „No, not him. Was it Cleo Winter-Smyth? No. I’m getting odd responses here, Nedda. Your brother and sister – they didn’t welcome you back, did they?“ The spikes on the scrolling paper were climbing. „Not a very warm reception?“
Nedda shook her head. No, it was not.
And now Mallory leaned far forward. „Was it your niece? Did Bitty Smyth bring you home?“ The detective’s head dropped closer to the machine as she made the next notation. „Yes, it was Bitty.“ Mallory looked up. „And where did she find you?“
„In a hospice. No, wait. I’m sorry. The nursing home – I think. I wasn’t very clearheaded then. I was moved into a nursing home after a diagnosis of end-stage cancer. The hospice was the last place. I was taken there to die.“
„But you weren’t dying, and you knew it – even if your doctors didn’t.
Nobody comes back from the end stage. So, before the nursing home, you were in a hospital?“
Nedda nodded her head.
„But not a regular hospital, not a place where they would’ve cut you open to look for a malignancy. No expensive tests. Maybe a state asylum with a clinic? Nothing else fits, Nedda. A real hospital would’ve gone looking for that cancer. Did you want to die? Was that it? An asylum is junkie heaven – all those drugs. Did you steal medication from other patients? Is that why you had yellow skin and odd results in your blood work?“
Nedda nodded.
„How did Bitty Smyth know where to find you?“
Nedda looked up, genuinely curious, as if she had never considered this problem before. „A private investigator, I think.“
„No,“ said Mallory. „That doesn’t work for me. It’s a country of three hundred million people, six million square miles.“ The detective unfolded a dust jacket from one of the pulp books written about the murders at Winter House. It was illustrated with the Red Winter painting. „Do you see any resemblance between you and this little girl? No, even old family photographs wouldn’t have helped to find you. Don’t you wonder what Bitty’s hiding? Why would your niece zero in on the state of Maine? She was working with insider information, knowledge she could only get from her family. You know what this means? Your sister and your brother always knew where you were.“
Nedda moved her head from side to side.
„And they let you rot,“ said Mallory. „Do they hate you that much? They never wanted you back. Why? Do they believe that you slaughtered their family – parents, sisters, brothers? Do they want you dead?“
The old woman’s head tilted at an odd angle and her eyes were suddenly vacant, as if the detective had just turned her off with the same switch used to shut down the machine.
„Tell you what,“ said Mallory, rising from the table, „you think about it for a while.“ She ripped her long tract of paper free of the polygraph. „I have to review my readings. Maybe you’ll feel better when I get back.“
Riker was quick to disillusion Charles of the idea that Mallory was showing the woman any kindness. „Welcome to hell.“
„You have to stop this. She’s poisoning that poor woman against her whole family.“
„Can’t. It’s a big mistake to get between Mallory and a case. And we’re so close, Charles.“
„Close to what?“
„The only good result from a polygraph exam is a confession.“
„Confession to a mass murder? I’ll never believe that.“
Mallory stood in the doorway. „Maybe the killer was breaking in an apprentice. Does that make it a little easier to believe?“
„A twelve-year-old girl?“ Charles shook his head. „I don’t think so.“
„New York has a criminal class of children,“ said Riker. „Adults use them for robberies ‘cause the kids are too young to do time. They make the perfect little perps, and sometimes they carry lethal weapons.“
„And sometimes they kill people,“ said Mallory. „Now take that dead man on Nedda’s rug the other night.“ The detective was watching the glass window on the other room. „She killed that man in the dark. No hesitation marks. She just did him without even thinking about it. I say she’s had some practice.“
„She was protecting herself and Bitty.“
„And then,“ said Riker, „there’s history – the one you won’t find in Pinwitty’s book. There were three generations of hitmen with the same signature as the Winter House Massacre – so they had apprentices.“
„And,“ said Mallory, „the apprentices killed the masters. The ice-pick murders stopped when Nedda was a little girl, when she killed Humboldt.“
Charles’s attention was riveted to Nedda, and she was looking his way by chance. Was she searching the mirror side, seeking him in the looking glass, wanting an ally, needing a friend? „You can’t go on with this. I know what you’re doing. You’re cutting this woman’s legs out from under her. After you strip her of family support, the only one she’ll be able to turn to is you.“
„She’s safer with me than her relatives,“ said Mallory. „The one crime nobody expects me to care about is the death of Willy Roy Boyd. He was a piece of scum, but he was my piece of scum, and that’s the case I’m working here. Somebody hired him to kill a woman that night – probably Nedda. She’s key to everything. So I torture her a little and she lives… or I can let her go and watch her die. Pick one.“
„Find another way,“ said Charles. „This has to stop right now. You can see how fragile she is.“ And badly wounded. Indeed, Nedda had just been flayed to the bone of psyche.
Mallory returned to the interview room, but not to end the interrogation. She started up the machine again, and Nedda lifted her head, slowly, sadly, to face her interrogator.
„Let’s get back to the man you stabbed the other night.“ Mallory turned the machine on again. „Do you think your relatives hired that man to kill you?“
„No, of course not.“
„You don’t think they’re capable of murder?“
Nedda shook her head.
„Somebody hired him to kill you. Think about it, Nedda. Your brother and sister are always out of town when something happens. How many people knew you were back? And what happened to your baby sister? We can’t find any school records for Sally Winter. You think she lived long enough to go to school?“ Mallory looked down at the machine. „You’re heart is racing, Nedda.“