“Then it fits in his case,” Jack said.
He turned to Margaret, who had been silent throughout the story.
“You’ve spent more time with the girls than anybody. Do you have any thoughts on how to proceed?”
She took a moment to pat her mouth dry with her napkin, and then she cleared her throat. Margaret appreciated good manners and respectful gestures, and Jack gave her both. In return she answered with more candor than Anna would have anticipated.
“I do have an opinion,” she said. “But I’m afraid I’ll offend you, as a Catholic.”
Jack said, “I’m not Catholic. I was never baptized, but that’s a longer story for another time. Go on and say what you’re thinking.”
Margaret studied him for a moment. Anna could read her expression very easily: she was fighting the urge to ask him for details. Margaret needed to put him in a box marked Lutheran or Protestant or Baptist; it would never occur to her that he might be something other than Christian. But Jack respected her opinion in the matter of the Russo children, and so she restrained her curiosity.
“From everything I’ve read about the Church of Rome, I can’t imagine that they’d allow a child to be taken away from a good Catholic home to be brought up in such an unconventional household as this one. It could take months or years and might even go to court, and that without much hope of success. Worst of all, the girls will have to live through it all. They are just starting to really come into their own, but this—this would set them back. The knowledge that their brother is nearby but cut off from them would be more than Rosa could cope with.”
Sophie said, “There’s also the boy himself, and the family to think about. We might well do more harm than good, in the greater scheme of things.”
This morning, getting ready for the day on one side of the room while Jack dressed on the other, Anna had hoped that going back to work would be distraction enough to keep her mind off Vittorio, but the image of him in his adoptive mother’s arms stayed with her while she saw patients and met with her assistants and students and answered mail.
Even in Judge Benedict’s courtroom her thoughts kept wandering back to Staten Island. And not to the good things—the excellent things—that had transpired, but to the little boy who was no longer lost, and still, not yet found.
She said, “I promised Rosa I would try.”
“You have tried,” her aunt said. “Are you feeling guilty?”
Anna felt Jack’s gaze on her, waiting, patient. “Not guilty exactly, but to make myself feel better I would have to cause a lot of other people great distress. I’m not so self-centered as that.”
Aunt Quinlan nodded, pleased with her.
Jack said, “I’ll approach Father McKinnawae. Just to be sure of what we think we know. And in the meantime—” He paused, and Anna could almost see the question hovering there, unspoken: What will you do with the boy if you get him?
“I won’t be here to deal with the results of your decision,” Sophie said, as if Jack had spoken out loud. “But I will be back, and I will do whatever needs to be done. I would gladly take on all three children, if it comes to that.”
“You’d give up your profession?” Margaret’s tone was unapologetically doubtful.
“I don’t know,” Sophie said. “But it’s a possibility.”
Anna didn’t like that idea at all, but she understood, too, that Sophie would want something to come home to, when Cap was gone. She wondered if her cousin was even aware of this herself.
When Jack announced that he would see Sophie home and then spend a little time with his parents, Anna was so happy to go off to bed that she could barely contain herself. She kissed him good-bye in the front hall, and tried to think of something to say. Be quick. Be careful. Hurry home. Must you go? None of those things would come out of her mouth.
“Married barely two days and you’re eager to get rid of me.”
She was relieved and surprised both by the way he was smiling at her.
“Savard, you need a little time to yourself. I’m not offended. I’ll try not to wake you when I come in.”
Anna went to bed, and slept.
• • •
AS THEY GOT into Cap’s carriage—Sophie’s carriage, now, Jack reminded himself—a police runner dashed up and handed him an envelope. He put it away in his pocket without looking at it, but she had not missed the exchange.
“From Oscar,” he explained. “It can wait.” Which wasn’t exactly true, but he would act as if it were.
Sophie looked distracted, and he was fairly sure he knew why. Still he waited for her to ask.
“Do you know anything about the Campbell boys that isn’t in the newspapers?”
He shook his head. She didn’t believe him, he could see it, but why should she? Men lied to women all the time, and called it protection or concern for their sensibilities when really what they wanted was an end to the questioning.
“I would like to hear the truth,” she said. “No matter what it is.”
He inclined his head. “That’s good to know. The truth is, I don’t have any information that isn’t in the papers, at this moment. If and when I do, I will share that information with you. No matter how distressing.”
Satisfied, Sophie sat back. She said, “What do you think should happen with Vittorio?”
This was a question Jack could answer without hesitation. “I think he should stay where he is.”
“Does Anna know you feel that way?”
“No, but then she hasn’t asked me directly. If she does, I won’t lie to her.”
“She isn’t sure herself what would be best.”
“Yes, she is,” Jack said. “But she’s not ready to acknowledge it.”
“You do understand her,” Sophie said. “I’m glad.”
“Don’t congratulate me yet,” Jack said. “I’m sure to fall on my face sooner or later.”
“You’ll pick yourself back up, and let me tell you a secret about Anna. She doesn’t hold a grudge. At least not with people she loves.”
• • •
AT HOME—AT what used to be home—Jack spent a half hour being peppered with questions, some of which he answered, many of which he ignored. It was a familiar dance with his mother; he ignored a question, she stepped away and then swung around to approach it from another direction.
“I like her,” his mother said. “You know that I like her.”
“I know that you wouldn’t hesitate to tell me if you didn’t,” Jack said. “Married or not.”
His father barked a short laugh, then went back to his newspaper. In the kitchen there was sudden silence, because his sisters were listening. Which meant that the little girls were listening, too, something his mother was well aware of.
“But we are married,” he went on. “For better or worse.”
Some of the tension in her face retreated.
“Mama,” he said then. “She’ll never be a housewife. Not even when we have a family.”
That got him a smile. “She wants a family.”
“Yes,” Jack said. “Though I don’t know why you would mind if she didn’t. You’ve got too many grandchildren to keep track of as it is.”
“Never too many grandchildren,” his father said from behind the pages of il Giornale.
“Never,” his mother echoed.
Jack stood up. “My work here is done.”
“We still have things to discuss,” his mother said. “But go back to your bride.”
• • •
INSTEAD HE WENT to the station house and took the time at the duty desk to write a note and arranged for it to be delivered to Anna at home.
Called into the station house, may be very late but I’ll be there to walk you to work in the morning. Ever yours, JM
• • •
UPSTA
IRS OSCAR WAS leaning back in his chair, his feet crossed at the ankle and one heel propped on the edge of the desk. It was how he did his best thinking, but it was also how he napped. Sometimes it was hard to tell the difference. In either case Jack didn’t see the need to disturb him straightaway, so he sat down to the pile of paperwork that had appeared on his own desk.
Arrest reports, most of it. He had been reading for a few minutes when Oscar said, “You leave for three days and I get stuck with two homicides, three assaults, and pulling Baldy out of trouble. Yet again.”
“Anna has rechristened him Ned,” Jack said. “He’s in the Tombs, I take it.”
“I’ll let him go tomorrow. No real evidence, but I thought he needed a night to cool off.”
“Your note said he pulled a knife.”
“Which disappeared.”
Jack whistled under his breath. “Where was this?”
“Outside the Black and Tan. He went looking for one of the younger boys and found him exactly where he didn’t want to find him. It got ugly.”
“As it always does.”
Oscar nodded and pulled his hat back down over his eyes.
He was an excellent detective, but not overly hampered by the letter of the law. Jack wondered if he should tell Anna about this newest situation with Baldy, and decided that the matter could wait. He needed to talk to Oscar about the Campbell boys, but instead Jack turned his attention to the paperwork and waited for his partner to rouse himself for the next conversation.
If he submitted the arrest reports as they stood, the whole pile would end up back here on Jack’s desk because nobody else could make out Maroney’s handwriting. He picked up a pen and uncorked an ink bottle.
Oscar’s feet hit the floor with a thump. “So what happened with McKinnawae?”
Jack put the cork back in the ink bottle and told him about Mount Loretto and Vittorio Russo. He watched as Oscar’s expression shifted from weariness to surprise.
“I’ll be damned,” he said. “You did it. You found the baby.”
“I’m just as surprised as you are. But it’s far from settled, and there’s still the older boy. Now, are you going to tell me about the Campbell case?”
Oscar said, “I’m hungry.” He got up and walked out of the office, fitting his hat to his head as he went. Jack followed him, raising a hand in greeting to a couple of other detectives bent over paperwork on the other side of the room. He wasn’t sure if his getting married was general knowledge yet, but he didn’t want to find out at the moment.
By the time he got downstairs Oscar had already disappeared down the hallway that led to the rear exit. Jack found his partner in the corner booth at MacNeil’s, with a cup of coffee in front of him.
The only door into the diner was in the alley behind police headquarters, which was why every man he’d ever seen in the place either had a badge now or had had one in the past. MacNeil himself had been a cop about a hundred years ago, before he lost a leg at Spotsylvania. Now he stumped around the diner’s kitchen shouting at everybody, good mood or bad. He worked the night shift alone and his sons took the day shift.
Jack paused at the counter to get the cup of coffee the old man poured for him, took a couple of minutes to be shouted at about the follies of marriage, and then slid into a booth across from Oscar.
“Any luck tracing Mrs. Campbell’s movements?”
MacNeil thumped a plate of eggs and bacon down, so Jack sat back to wait while Oscar ate. At the halfway mark he wiped his mouth and started to talk.
“You know what Grand Central’s like. I talked to every ticket seller, flower girl, bootblack, and baggage man that I could find who was working the depot that day. A few think they saw her with the boys, but nobody’s sure. I’m thinking now they traveled some other road.”
“A steamer?”
“I looked into that. Don’t seem likely, not for somebody watching her pennies.”
They were quiet while Oscar finished his plate. He had a dainty way of going about it for a big man with an appetite, something Jack hadn’t figured out until he had known the man a good six months: Maroney was vain about his mustache and lived in fear of getting food caught up in it.
He ate the last of his bacon, crossed his knife and fork over the plate, and leaned back in the booth, trying to look casual as he ran one knuckle over the brush on his upper lip.
Jack hid his face in his coffee cup for as long as it took to get rid of a smile.
“What are you thinking?” he asked, finally.
“Well, I don’t think she drowned them. That’s the rumor, you know. She went to the shore to toss those boys in the drink.”
Jack hadn’t been around long enough to catch up on the gossip, but it made sense that people would be anticipating the worst. A rumor was like an army on the march, no stopping it.
“But the timing just doesn’t work out,” Oscar went on. “She was home when Campbell came in from work on Wednesday. Don’t see how you could drown four boys and come away looking like nothing fails you. And then there’s what the Stone woman had to say, that business about her husband finding her when he got home.”
“Hawthorn didn’t seem to take any note of that,” Jack said.
“That’s because he owns a string of lumber mills and doesn’t know what he’s doing, questioning somebody on the stand. Boston went ahead and got rid of the coroner system, you’d think we could do the same.”
Jack had had the exact same thought, listening to Hawthorn question Mrs. Stone. He might be well-meaning and thoughtful, but he was also uninformed and untrained. If Janine Campbell had said Archer will find me when he gets home, then that was as good as a confession: she knew she was dying, and she wanted her husband to find her dead. A lawyer would have homed in on that and asked Mrs. Stone a dozen more questions, trying to get her to clarify the deceased’s state of mind.
Oscar said, “She figured it was less trouble killing herself than it would have been to kill him. So I’m wondering, if she was that angry, maybe she did find a way to kill the boys.”
“I don’t think so,” Jack said. “She knew she was dying, sure. What she wanted was not to leave the boys to their father’s tender mercies. He looks like a hard case to me.”
Oscar nodded. “Worse, he looks like a closet hard case. One who uses his fists behind closed doors. They didn’t say anything about bruises on the autopsy, though.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time a body turned up dead with no marks to show how it got that way.”
Oscar swallowed the rest of his coffee. “So she stowed the boys away somewhere, is that what you’re thinking?”
Jack lifted a shoulder. “They could be anywhere, by now. Canada comes to mind.”
“She was from Maine.”
Jack nodded. “I suppose we could get in touch with the Bangor coppers, but it’s a big state.”
“Well.” Oscar reached for his hat. “Tomorrow’s another day, as they say so clever and all. And there’s other things to be thinking about. First and most important, you’ve got to be back here at six thirty to start your shift and you’ve left your new bride all alone, just three days married.”
“Two days,” Jack said. “And five hours.” He rarely flushed, but now color ran up his throat to his face.
Oscar laughed, and slapped him on the back.
• • •
HE SLIPPED INTO bed quietly, drawn into the nest of often-washed linen sheets that smelled of sunshine and lavender and Anna. His Anna, her cheeks flushed with sleep, on her side so that he could study her face in the vague soft light of the lamp before he put it out.
One part of him wanted to wake her, but she had earned her rest. There would be more nights and mornings and middays, too, when they’d have privacy and time enough. He’d made sure of it.
27
TUESDAY MORNING NEAR the end of
May might have been July, by the weather. Later in the summer Anna would keep an extra set of clothes in her office, but today she was faced with a choice. She could take the noon hour to try to catch up with her paperwork—in which case she’d show up at the inquest wilted and damp with sweat, or she could go home and change.
She went home and found Aunt Quinlan alone in the parlor, smiling as if Anna’s arrival were the only thing in the world she had ever wished for. In return Anna might have started to cry. Things had happened so quickly, and she had let herself be drawn along without taking time for her aunt.
“Get changed quickly,” Auntie said. “And I’ll arrange things down here.”
By the time she got back Mrs. Lee had put out a plate of sandwiches and a pot of tea and disappeared back into the kitchen. Anna sat just beside her aunt and gently picked up one of her hands. They were very delicate, as if the bones had gone as hollow as a bird’s. The skin was soft and shiny and speckled with age spots.
“You’ve been using the wax bath for your joints,” Anna said. “I hope it helps with the pain.”
“It does,” her aunt said. “The heat is wonderful. And the teas, they help too.”
But not enough, Anna knew. This woman who had spent all her life doing things with her hands would sit just as she was, for whatever time was left to her.
“I can remember you painting,” Anna said. “You handled the paintbrush like I handle a scalpel. I was little, but I remember.”
“You were seven when I stopped.”
Anna nodded. “When you were working I had the idea that you were painting a window I could walk through if I tried.”
Her aunt smiled. “Very fanciful, for such a serious young mind. You were so quiet, sitting in the corner. I often forgot you were there. Of course that was before Sophie.”
Anna remembered what it had felt like to be alone. “I love Sophie and Cap,” Anna said. “And wouldn’t change a thing, but sometimes it’s nice to have you to myself.”
“So,” Aunt Quinlan said. “Here we are, by ourselves. You married Jack Mezzanotte.”