Mallory stared at the cover illustration of the book in the woman’s hand. It was a reproduction of the Red Winter painting. A store receipt stood for a bookmark. This woman had only recently worked it all out.
„I guess,“ said Susan McReedy, „I can put one thing and another together pretty well. First that New York author calls me a few years back. And then Mr. Butler – the same questions.“ The librarian held up the book when she said, „I’m sure you guessed – our Jane didn’t look anything like this on the night of the accident – or anytime after that. Her face was broken, nose, cheekbones, her jaw – and that child’s legs. Oh, Lord. They rebuilt her with steel pins and sewing needles.“
Susan McReedy paused, but not to any dramatic effect. She was having difficulty going on with her story, and she had not yet come to the most important part. Riker was leaning forward to interrupt one more time. Mallory glared at him to warn him off.
„So one day, all of us were going up to Bangor to see my grandma. But Jane wanted to stay behind. Well, my uncle closed the restaurant that weekend, and he guessed the girl wanted to spend her free time reading. Always had her nose in a book, that one – a habit she picked up in the hospital, I guess.“
„Two days later, we came home and found her in that little apartment over the restaurant. She was sitting on her bedroom floor beside a dead body – a man with an ice pick in his chest. Flies everywhere, but our Jane didn’t seem to notice them – or him, either. She ‘d gone all the way crazy. Just rocking back and forth. I don’t think she could hear us when we spoke to her.“
It was all too clear that Miss McReedy was seeing that tableau again, fresh as yesterday’s blood and blowflies.
„And your dad,“ said Riker, „how did he read that crime scene?“
„It was obvious. The man she’d killed – he’d broken into her place. No doubt about it. He broke down the bedroom door to get at her. It was off its damn hinge. She must’ve been so frightened.“
„And,“ said Mallory, „she just happened to keep an ice pick in her bedroom.“
„Yes, and that was the saddest part. That nearly killed my father. And that’s how he put the whole thing together.“ She fell silent for a moment.
„So that’s when he worked out his second theory,“ said Riker, gently prompting her.
Susan McReedy nodded. „It was an old ice pick he found in the dead man’s chest. The painted handle was flaking. It used to be in Uncle Henry’s restaurant. He told Dad he tossed it out just after our Jane moved in upstairs. The girl must have found it in the trash and kept it all that time. Dad saw flakes of that same color paint on the underside of her pillowcase. And that’s how he knew, for all that time, she’d gone to sleep every night with that pick underneath her pillow. All that time she’d been waiting for that man, the one who’d left her for dead at the quarry. She’d been waiting for him to come back and finish her off.“
The retired librarian looked down at her hands as she folded the paperback book into a fat cylinder. „And then came the second theory of what happened at the quarry pool. Dad figured our Jane was the only one in the car when it went over the rim that night. So that was no accident. It was attempted murder. Dad didn’t see the driver as a local man, nobody who lived in walking distance. He’d stolen that car because he’d be needing his own car to make a getaway. So he was a stranger, just like our Jane.“
„After she killed that man with the ice pick – if Dad had only known – how young she was. Well, if he’d known, then I don’t think he would’ve let them take her to the hospital that day or any other day. From there she went to a state asylum. That made Dad and my uncle so crazy. They tried, time after time, to get her out of there and bring her home. But every time they got a new sanity hearing, she’d do something to mess it up. Once she slashed her wrists. Another time it was her throat. Finally, Dad had to let go of her. He came to understand – “ Susan McReedy’s hands were clasped tightly around her paperback and squeezing it. „This really hurt him – but he realized that our Jane felt safer in that place than home with us. He didn’t protect her when she needed him most. My father went to visit her every weekend until he died. Then the asylum was closed down for Medicare fraud, and the patients were scattered all over creation. Years later, I tracked one Jane Doe to a nursing home north of Auburn – but it wasn’t our Jane.“
„All right,“ said Mallory, moving on, „your father must’ve traced the dead man’s fingerprints.“
„Yes, he did. It took a while. No national data base in those days. The dead man had a record in three southern states, con games and stealing. Never killed anybody that we knew of. He was jailed under a slew of names, but never for any great length of time.“
„What about Humboldt,“ said Riker, „remember that one?“
„And all his other names.“ She bent down to the carpetbag at her feet and pulled out a thick envelope. Opening it, she emptied the file folders onto the coffee table.
Mallory leafed through the decades of yellowed documents, one man’s search for a red-haired girl’s past, an ongoing inquiry that had lasted another twenty years after Nedda had killed Stick Man. And now she was staring at the original cards bearing the dead man’s fingerprints.
„So,“ said Susan McReedy, regaining her poise, „you think that man, Humboldt, killed her family. You think that’s why our Jane took him down with an ice pick.“ She held tight to the paperback book with the painted image of a naked child, Red Winter, her Jane. „So she saw that – her family murdered. Twelve years old and she – “ Words had failed the woman from Maine.
„Yeah,“ said Riker. „If the reporters get hold of this story…“ He knew that he would not have to finish that thought for her.
The woman was nodding, saying, „I understand. We never talked, and I was never here.“ She turned to Mallory. „But could I see her – just a picture of her?“
Mallory held up one finger to tell the woman to remain where she was, then rose from her chair and left the room – taking the files of Jane Doe along with her. When she returned, she held out a crime-scene photo, and not the one that pictured Nedda Winter seated near a more recent corpse. It was a simple shot of the old woman standing before the grand staircase, majestic, her face and body no longer broken as they were in Miss McReedy’s memories. „Here, take it. Keep it.“
„Thank you.“ The woman stared at the image of her Jane grown old. „She looks good, doesn’t she? I never saw her face after – “ She looked up at Mallory, smiling at a sudden recollection. „My father paid for that, you know – after she was committed to the asylum. Three more operations with a plastic surgeon, and it cost the moon to do it. But Dad just had to finish putting her back together again.“ Miss McReedy became lost in the photograph once more. „Oh, what a pretty robe she’s wearing. And that looks like a real fine house.“
„Yeah,“ said Riker, „a mansion.“
The woman looked up from this treasure that marked the end of her own family quest. „This story doesn’t have a happy ending, does it?“
„No,“ said Mallory. „Don’t expect that.“
And now that Susan McReedy’s usefulness was over, the young detective turned her back and left the room and went to her own office, where she began to pin the contents of the Maine file to her cork wall. Fifteen minutes had passed, and she was not yet done marrying these pages to those in the file made by Riker’s grandfather when her partner sang out, „Hey, Mallory! You gotta hear this.“
She walked into the reception room to find Robin Duffy and Riker bent over the answering machine. They were playing back the messages from Bitty Smyth slurring her words more with each call and asking when her aunt was coming back home.