Blood Innocents (24 page)

“What is this all about?” she asked again. “Reardon, the mysterious detective.” Jokingly she deepened her voice. “Does the Shadow know?”

“Do you know who killed the fallow deer?” Reardon asked bluntly.

Melinda grimaced. “No,” she said emphatically, “I don't.” She laughed, but she could not conceal her distress. “Do you know who killed them?” she asked tauntingly.

“We have a witness,” Reardon said quietly. “We have a woman who saw the man who killed the deer.”

“Well, who did it?” Melinda asked excitedly. “No more phony mystery. Who killed them?”

Reardon stood up. “Melinda, I want to show you something.”

“Where?”

“Here,” Reardon replied. “Here in the zoo. Just a little ways from here.”

“All right,” Melinda said. She stood up, putting her book away in her bag. “This better be worth it, though. It's hard to get a seat at this bench sometimes. I wouldn't give it up for just anyone, you know.” She smiled at Reardon.

“It's just right over here,” Reardon said. He pointed to the cage of the fallow deer.

Melinda stepped back. “No,” she said. “I don't want to go over there.”

Reardon took her arm gently. “It's just an empty cage now,” he said. “It's important.” He led her forward delicately. “Please.”

“I can't,” Melinda said. She took another step back.

Reardon still held her arm. “Please,” he said emphatically, more like an order than a request.

“Oh, all right,” Melinda said. “I'm a big girl now. Right?”

“Right,” Reardon said.

Together they walked through the police barricades and into the cage of the fallow deer. The chalk outlines of the bodies had faded considerably, although they were still visible beneath patches of dried leaves and litter. A sudden gust of wind rattled the tin roof of the shed, and Reardon felt Melinda's arm tremble.

“I want you to look at something,” he said.

Melinda's face was tense. “What?”

Reardon walked toward the rear of the cage, picked up a piece of tin about a foot square and, holding it face down, brought it back to where Melinda stood.

“This is part of the deer shed,” he said. “I asked for it to be brought back over here from the lab this morning.”

“What lab?”

“The crime lab.”

Melinda nodded fearfully. Standing within the black bars of the cage, her arms nestling her body, protecting it from the cold, she looked like an abandoned child, and Reardon wondered whether he could ever justify what he was about to do to her.

“This piece of the shed is evidence now,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“I want to show you something, Melinda,” Reardon said tenderly. “It may not mean anything, but I think it does.” He could see that her hand was beginning to tremble. “I think you'll know what it means,” he said. He looked at her now as if he would never see another human face, as if Melinda Van Allen were the only person left on earth, and he, Reardon, was about to disclose a terrible thing to her that would poison her life forever.

Slowly he turned the square of tin around. Scrawled clearly on the other side, in dark red, was the roman numeral “two.”

Melinda gasped.

“It's written in the blood of one of the deer,” Reardon said.

“Oh, no,” she said.

Reardon watched her. She did not look at him. She did not move. She only continued to stare at the square of tin.

“It doesn't really mean anything, does it?” she asked fearfully.

“Not by itself,” Reardon admitted. “But we have a witness. This witness saw a person running away from the deer cage. He was carrying an ax and he was covered with blood.”

Again Reardon paused. Melinda stared at him silently, helplessly, and Reardon knew that he did not want to go on with it. But all of this commitment to the work he had chosen so long ago seemed suddenly to focus on the fact that he had to go on with it. That it was out of his hands now. That something more important than himself or Melinda or even Petrakis was demanding that he go on.

“She identified a picture of your brother Dwight as the man she saw with the ax,” he said.

Melinda closed her eyes and drew a deep breath. She seemed to shrink into her clothes, to wither under Reardon's gaze.

“Where was Dwight the night the fallow deer were killed?” he asked.

Instantly her eyes shot open. “He was with me!” she blurted.

“No, he wasn't,” Reardon said sadly. He took Melinda by the arm and, still carrying the piece of the deer shed, led her to a bench outside the cage. He put the piece of tin across his lap as they sat down. “Dwight wrote this, didn't he?” he asked.

“No,” Melinda snapped. “He was with me that night.”

“No, Melinda.”

“Yes.” She would not look at him now. She sat sullenly beside him and stared dreamily at her shoes, as if to look at him would be to admit that what he said was true.

“Until three in the morning?” he asked.

“Yes. ”

“What did you do that night?”

She did not answer.

“You spent the whole night together,” Reardon said insistently. “What did you do?”

“We went to a movie.”

“When did you go to the movie?”

“I'm not sure.”

“What time did you get back?”

Melinda shifted uncomfortably on the bench and chewed on her lower lip like a resentful child.

“What time did you get back?” Reardon asked again.

“I'm not sure about that either.”

“What movie did you see?”

“I don't remember.”

“You don't remember what movie?”

“I can't think.”

“Try.”

“I can't! I told you I can't!”

“Well, you didn't spend the whole night in a movie,” Reardon said, “so what did you do when you got back?”

“I don't know for sure. Maybe we played cards.”

“All night?”

“Maybe we watched television.”

“All night?”

“Maybe.” She was beginning to whimper now, and Reardon did not know what to do about that. He stared at her helplessly, his palms face up in his lap as if giving up on a riddle. He only knew that he must go on, that he must pursue her until he captured her brother.

“What card games did you play?” he asked.

She did not answer.

“So you went to a movie you can't remember the name of, you don't know when you went, and you don't know when you got back to the apartment, and you don't remember what you did when you got there. Is that what you're telling me?”

Melinda turned her face away from him and riveted her attention on some distant object in the park.

“How about Tuesday night and early Wednesday morning?” Reardon asked, fixing his mind on the only imperative he knew: to protect Abel against the rage of Cain.

Melinda looked at him. “What do you mean?”

“The Wednesday morning after the deer were killed. Where were you between three A.M. and eight A.M. that morning?”

“Why?”

“Where were you?”

“I want to know why you're asking.”

“There's more involved than the deer.”

Melinda stared at him fearfully. “What do you mean?”

“Two days after the deer were killed two women were murdered in Greenwich Village. The women were killed exactly like the deer, the same number of blows. One of the women was cut to pieces. The other just had her throat cut. Your father knew both those women.”

“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, God,” 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 passed him in an elevator once.”

“You passed 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 sadist when it came to Dwight.”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, I don't mean a real sadist. 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 God.

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 hassle, 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 circumstantial,” 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 Massachusetts at some college,” Reardon said.