"So what?" Melinda asked with attempted haughtiness.

"Melinda," he pleaded, "it"s no good. The word *dos" was written on the wall of one of their rooms."

He saw her pale in horror. She stared at him, wide-eyed, as if hoping to see something in his face that would deny what he"d said.

"It was written in their blood," he said.

Melinda lowered her head and began to cry gently.

"Dwight followed your father there. He waited until he left their apartment. Then Dwight killed two women not much older than yourself."

"Oh, G.o.d," Melinda whispered.

"What I have to know," Reardon said, "is why he did that. Why he killed the deer and the women."

Suddenly Melinda"s face hardened. "It"s his fault," she said bitterly.

"Whose?"

"His," she said, spitting out the word. "My father"s. You don"t know what it"s like living with him."

"No, I don"t," Reardon said.

Melinda stared out across the park. "He used to humiliate Dwight all the time. He used to call him stupid, say that Dwight wasn"t his real son, that there"d been a mistake in the hospital, and my father"s real son went to someone else, and he got Dwight." She turned to Reardon. "Have you ever met him?"

"Your father?"

"No, Dwight."

"I pa.s.sed him in an elevator once."

"You pa.s.sed him in an elevator?"

"Yes."

Melinda smiled bitterly. "What a strange job you have," she said.

Stranger than she knew, Reardon thought, stranger than mourning and the Buddha"s solution to it, stranger than anything she would likely ever know.

"We made a party for my father the night the deer were killed," she said. "Dwight and I. For his birthday. For his fifty-seventh birthday. But he never showed up. I don"t know how many times Dwight reminded him about the party that day. He kept reminding him all day. But he never showed up." Her eyes narrowed hatefully. "If it had been Dwight"s birthday, he would have been there."

"Why?" Reardon asked.

"Because my father was a kind of closet s.a.d.i.s.t when it came to Dwight."

"What do you mean?"

"Oh, I don"t mean a real s.a.d.i.s.t. It wasn"t like he really beat Dwight." She sneered. "That would never be tolerated by his circle of friends. But there was a certain way he looked sometimes, a certain look in his eye. Do you know what I mean?"

"I guess," Reardon said. He had seen cruelty split its mask.

"And there was one place, one time when it really came out," she said. "On Dwight"s birthday."

"His birthday?"

"Yes. On Dwight"s birthday my father would bend him over his knee and start hitting him, you know, on his backside. Then he"d really beat him. And each time he"d hit Dwight, he"d call out a number. You know: One. Whack. Two. Whack. Three. Whack!" With each number, she struck the sheet of tin on Reardon"s lap. "Last year it went to fifteen," she said, tears filling her eyes, her shoulders beginning to shake as she began to cry. She raised her hand and brought it down angrily on the tin. "Fourteen. Whack! Fifteen. Whack!" and her hand made the tin reverberate across the Children"s Zoo. She was crying almost hysterically now. She raised her arm high above her head and brought her hand down furiously on the sheet of tin. "And one to grow on!" she shouted, and then collapsed in convulsive weeping. "Dwight said he"d like to give it back to my father someday," she said through her crying. "Fifty-seven. And one to grow on."

Fifty-seven and one, thought Reardon. Dear G.o.d.

He drew Melinda under his arm. She was sobbing uncontrollably now; he could feel her body convulsing against his own, her tears falling on his hand. "All right, all right," he said gently, knowing that it was not all right, that it never could be.

24.

Reardon went directly to Piccolini"s office after his encounter with Melinda Van Allen. He did not feel victorious or jubilant, and he related the details of his conversation with Melinda in a weary, unemphatic voice. Piccolini"s eyes remained riveted on Reardon throughout his report. He shook his head dejectedly from time to time, but Reardon was unable to fathom exactly what that meant.

"What are your conclusions?" Piccolini asked after Reardon had finished.

Reardon did not hesitate. "Dwight Van Allen should be arrested on suspicion of murder immediately. I don"t think we have any time to waste."

"Well, I don"t know," Piccolini said. He stood up and thrust out his hand. "But you"ve done a great job, John. I mean it. It was a ha.s.sle, but you did fine work."

Reardon took Piccolini"s hand but said nothing. He could not understand why Piccolini was balking on the arrest.

"I don"t know if we can act right away with the arrest of the Van Allen boy," Piccolini explained peremptorily as he resumed his seat behind his desk, "but I think we may have the beginning of a case."

"The beginning of a case?" Reardon asked, astonished. "Are you saying you"re not going to arrest Dwight Van Allen just as quick as you find him?"

"Yes," Piccolini said without hesitation. "That"s exactly what I"m saying." He waved his hand as if dismissing Reardon from his office and began to fumble through some papers on his desk as if he were looking for something.

"Why not?" Reardon demanded.

Piccolini looked up. He seemed almost surprised to see Reardon still in his office. "Well, the evidence is still somewhat soft," he said. "The old lady"s testimony is kinky, you know, her being such an eccentric and all. I mean, that stuff about trying to get somebody to kill her. Don"t you know what a defense attorney would do with that?" Piccolini casually returned his attention to the papers on his desk. "And the rest of the case is pretty circ.u.mstantial," he added offhandedly.

Reardon leaned forward, pressing his palms on Piccolini"s desk. "Two women are dead. Let the DA worry about a soft case. I want Dwight Van Allen off the streets."

"I know two women are dead," Piccolini said defensively.

"Arrest Van Allen," Reardon repeated.

"I can"t," Piccolini said.

"Why not?"

"Because he"s not on the streets anymore."

"He"s in Ma.s.sachusetts at some college," Reardon said.

"Not anymore. He"s been committed to a private mental inst.i.tution in upstate New York," Piccolini said. He slumped down into the chair behind his desk and stared at Reardon, waiting.

Reardon was incredulous. "When?"

"This morning."

"Who told you?"

"What difference does it make?"

"I have a right to know," Reardon said. This case, he knew, had very nearly broken him. He had been taken off it and reinstated like a puppet jerked on and off a stage. He had pried open secret, hidden lives and left them spilled out in the light of day where they filled the air with pain. He had endangered his career and reputation, even his sanity. Because of that, because of all that, he had a right to know.

"Somebody downtown told me," Piccolini said.

Reardon looked at Piccolini accusingly. "You told them about the witness, about Mrs. La.s.siter, about her making a positive ID of Dwight."

"So what?" Piccolini said. "They"re my superiors. I don"t run the New York City Police Department."

"You told the people downtown, and they told Wallace Van Allen," Reardon said. "And they just placed Dwight in a hospital. And that"ll be the end of the case." He looked at Piccolini. "That will be the end of it, won"t it? They"ll just put a cap on it like a well with an embarra.s.sing skeleton lying at the bottom of it. Karen Ortovsky"s skeleton. Lee McDonald"s skeleton."

"What difference does it make?" Piccolini said nervously.

Reardon shook his head with amazement. "Jesus Christ," he said. "They do have their own way of taking care of things, don"t they?"

Piccolini shifted in his seat. He looked small, shriveled, as if the flame that burned in Reardon"s eyes had singed and finally scorched him. "Like I said, what difference does it make? The kid is off the streets. The women he might or might not hurt are out of danger."

"For a while at least."

"For a long time," Piccolini said. "You can be sure of that."

"For as long as Wallace Van Allen wants him off the streets," Reardon said. "That"s how long he"s off the streets."

Piccolini waved Reardon"s remark away with a sigh. "Anyway the women of New York are safer tonight," he said halfheartedly, and Reardon could see that Piccolini could not look him straight in the eye.

"Bulls.h.i.t," Reardon said.

Piccolini ignored him. "And we don"t have to worry about Petrakis."

"You have to release him. I got a positive ID of Dwight Van Allen," Reardon said. He could not believe what was going on around him.

Piccolini glanced furtively at Reardon. Then he said, almost in a whisper, "Petrakis" fingerprints were all over the ax."

"Release him!"

Piccolini leaned back wearily in his chair. "Jesus Christ," he said quietly, almost as if hoping Reardon would not hear him, "what the h.e.l.l are we arguing about? I couldn"t release him if I wanted to."

"What the h.e.l.l is going on here?" Reardon said.

Piccolini"s face turned serious. "You don"t know?"

Reardon stared menacingly into Piccolini"s face. "What is it?" he asked coldly.

Piccolini cleared his throat and looked Reardon straight in the eyes. "Petrakis killed himself. He slashed his wrists in the Tombs. Bled to death."

For a few spiraling seconds, Reardon could have sworn that the earth shifted under his feet. It was like that moment on the corner of Park Avenue when he had lost his bearings and had not known where he was.

But it was laced with a deeper sense of loss, a fundamental helplessness more awesome and devastating.

Reardon walked out of Piccolini"s office and left the station house. He kept on walking until the chill wind seemed to scatter everything. And as he walked he tried to gather in the loose ends of the case like windblown strands of hair. He wanted to isolate what had happened, know about it in some fundamental way. But it was all too jumbled in his mind. All that he could capture of it was a sense of its enormity and impenetrable complexity. Something about wealth and power was here, and something about poverty and weakness, but Reardon recognized that he did not have the means to make sense of it.

And so he walked until afternoon became late afternoon, and late afternoon became night. He walked through the city, but he knew that he no longer really saw it. All those forms and structures and routines and functions that once had given it a certain dreadful stability were dissolving. Everything seemed in the process of closing in, and yet, at the same time, suspended precariously between chaos and absolute rigidity. Some great engine had crushed Andros Petrakis, but Reardon could not draw its image in his mind. Whatever it was, he knew that no interrogation room could contain it.

Finally he sat down on a bench in the Children"s Zoo and gazed at the silent, empty cage of the fallow deer. He was exhausted. He did not know what he would do tomorrow, or the next day, or any day after that.

After a while he rose and walked up the stairs to Fifth Avenue. A sidewalk newsstand stood to his left and he stopped to buy a newspaper, more as a gesture of tribute to his father than anything else, remembering how on that day long ago when he was still a child his father had defended the blind newsdealer, how he had struck out in the wild and hopeful gesture of a questioner of Cain.

Reardon pulled a ten-dollar bill from his wallet and placed it in the newsdealer"s hand. "Daily News, please."

"A single, sir?" the newsdealer asked.

Only then did Reardon see that the man was blind. For a moment he stared at the white, sightless eyes and the slight palsied trembling of the hand that held the bill.

"Yes," he said, then, with an inexplicable feeling of resistance and renewal, "yes, it"s a single."

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