40

Samsa looked through the glass doors into the backyard. In the alley behind the house an ambulance spiked the dark with sharp turning lights, and a patrol car flashed red, white and blue. Cops in the yard searched the shrubbery under brilliant lamps that had been rigged up. He thought of the Purchase field. How could he not?

He had a hard time drawing his face away from the glass. He didn’t want to look back at what lay in the room. He turned anyhow and saw Charlie Bird, a tall man whose head was a little too tiny. Bird reminded him, fittingly, of a stork, even in the manner he walked, delicately picking up his feet and avoiding anything that lay on the floor – in this case, trophies and silver cups that bore the name Mandy Robbins, and prizes for athletic achievements, swimming, track and field. The girl who’d won these trophies lay half naked near the fireplace. Her eyes were closed and the lids were like blood-red coins.

‘This is savage,’ Charlie Bird said. ‘I never seen anything this bad before.’

Al Brodsky said, ‘It’s goddam brutal.’

Beyond a closed door directly behind the chief, bewildered grief-struck people filled a corridor – relatives, neighbors, a priest who’d hurried to the scene and was out there whispering the only thing he could: platitudes. The shock of homicide. You never think it’s coming to your house, touching your family.

Samsa shifted his eyes. He had an acid pain in his stomach.

Nick Mancuso lay close to the girl. His face was demolished, hair thick with drying blood, bare upper body covered in deep incisions. He’d been beaten to death.

Charlie Bird said, ‘We’re looking for a guy hauling around some serious rage here. Psychopathic rage.’

Samsa turned his face from the two dead kids. His mind wandered to Darcy, and he wondered how he’d tell her about this. Murder was vile, but there was an added element here: betrayal. Nick had strayed.

Charlie Bird crouched near the fireplace. ‘The poker’s missing,’ he said. ‘These fireside sets always have a poker.’

‘Could be your weapon,’ Brodsky said.

Bird stood up and looked across the room at Samsa with a muted form of sullen hostility: What the fuck are you doing here, this one is all mine, Pharaoh. This was Bird’s zone and Samsa, who felt like an interloper, gazed around, anywhere to take his eyes away from the sight on the floor. He saw the posters on the wall, mainly jock heroes, basketball superstars. He noticed a single bed in the corner and thought of the passion that must have flared up between Nick and Mandy, something so strong they couldn’t even wait to make it as far as the bed.

‘The girl’s parents were gone all day,’ Bird was saying. ‘This is what they come home to.’

Brodsky said, ‘Maybe there’s a jealous boyfriend.’

‘Who knows. Who knows anything these days,’ Bird said. He looked inside the fireplace, reached up into the chimney and rummaged. He straightened his back. His hands were sooty. He was the kind of guy who didn’t mind getting his hands dirty.

Samsa said, ‘I don’t know how I’m going to break this to Darcy.’

Charlie Bird looked puzzled. ‘Who’s Darcy?’

‘My daughter,’ Samsa said. ‘She’d been seeing Nick Mancuso.’

‘High-school romance?’ Bird asked.

‘Something like that.’

‘I’ll have to talk with her. Maybe she’d know if Mandy Robbins had a boyfriend somewhere. Maybe the guy walked in and found them screwing, lost control, went berserk big-time.’

‘I’ll talk to her for you,’ Samsa said.

‘She’s your daughter.’ Bird half kneeled alongside the dead boy, and stared at him as if he were about to give him a lecture on morality. ‘So Nick was seeing Darcy and fooling around on the side. What kind of kid was he? Or do I have to ask?’

Samsa said, ‘I only met him a couple of times. Seemed nice enough. Maybe trying too hard to please. Over-polite.’

Bird said, ‘You wonder what’s happening to the world.’

Samsa walked out into the hard sharp lights in the yard and watched men search the bushes silently. He took his cellular phone from his pocket and punched in his home number, but Darcy didn’t answer. He let it ring a long time before he shut his unit off. If she wasn’t at home, where was she? He tried to remember the names of her close friends. Ginny somebody. Maybe that’s where she was.

Ginny who? Last name beginning with F?

Or maybe she was asleep and failed to hear the ringing.

Jesus Christ. How do you convey such horror to your own daughter? His bandaged hand pulsated.

Al Brodsky came and stood at his side. ‘You talked to Pritt about that car?’ he asked.

‘He used a stolen vehicle. He can’t remember the make. It’s all very vague.’

‘A stolen car. That’s really helpful. What do you plan to do with him, Greg?’

‘I’m waiting, see what Mcalister says.’

‘You know, I’m beginning to feel like a juggler with too many hoops in the air,’ Brodsky said. ‘We’ve got thirty-seven unsolved homicides still active on the books. No, make that thirty-nine now. If Pritt’s confession hangs together, it’s one we can chalk off the list.’

Samsa thought how the numbers could pile up and defeat you. You could get crushed by the dead weight of statistics. All that grief out there in the city. All that badness. Sometimes the city seemed to hang over him like a big black nuclear cloud.

‘You don’t need me around here,’ he said. ‘Bird has it under control. I ought to see what Darcy has to say.’

‘Good idea,’ Brodsky said. He stepped a little nearer. ‘You took your eye off the ball, Greg.’

‘About Pritt’s car, you mean?’

‘Yeah. Maybe there’s too much on your plate. Do you think that’s it?’

‘I’m tired. That’s what I think.’

‘You can’t let yourself get tired on this job.’

‘Is this a dressing-down, Al?’

‘If it is, I’m soft-pedaling, believe me. Go home. Sleep. You look wasted.’

Samsa walked out into the alley where he’d parked his car. He drove in the direction of his house. He traveled a couple of blocks before he tried to call home again. Still no answer. Where is she? He couldn’t remember the last name of her friend yet. Flynn? He chastized himself for knowing so little about Darcy’s life.

I took my eye off more than one ball.

It was going to be okay. He’d see lights in the house, she’d be upstairs safe in her bed. He reached 1900 Devine and slid the car into the driveway. The house was in darkness. He got out and moved to the porch, fumbling for his door key. Okay, she didn’t leave any lights on. Usually she did. This time she just forgot. That was the simple explanation. He unlocked the door, stepped inside, flipped on a light switch and breathed the still warm air of the hallway.

‘Darcy,’ he called out.

He climbed the stairs. He pushed open the door of her bedroom and turned on the light – no Darcy. He went through the house uselessly calling her name. There was clearly some very simple answer. There had to be. What the hell was her friend’s name? He entered the living room, switched on a lamp, had the very strange feeling that the piano had been played recently and the vibration of a note still lingered at a sub-audible level. But that was nonsense, something shaped in the crucible of his growing panic.

He went to the table, where the address book lay, flicked the pages, F, F for Flagg, there it was. Ginny Flagg. He dialed the number and a sleepy-voiced woman answered.

He said, ‘This is Gregory Samsa. Darcy’s father? I hate to call at this hour. Is my daughter there?’

‘I haven’t seen her.’

‘I’m trying to locate her.’

‘Kids. They just don’t think,’ the woman said. ‘They go AWOL without telling you. You have my sympathy.’

I don’t want your sympathy. I want my daughter. ‘You mind asking Ginny if she knows where Darcy is?’

‘I’ll try. She’s probably sleeping.’ The woman was gone a long time, and when she returned she said, ‘No, Ginny doesn’t know where she could be. I’m sorry.’

‘What about other friends?’ Samsa asked.

‘You tried Lindy Prosecki’s number?’

He couldn’t remember ever having heard of Lindy Prosecki. ‘I don’t have it,’ he said.

‘Four zero nine, seven nine eight eight.’

Samsa scribbled this down, apologized again, then called the number he’d been given. He got an answering machine. ‘We are not here to take your call …’

He hung up, walked into the kitchen, filled a glass with water and drank quickly. He saw his face reflected in the window, and for a moment was startled. He ripped off his bandage, looked at the dark cuts, and remembered Nick Mancuso. His own wounds were pitiful by comparison. He went to the bathroom, found some fresh bandage and wrapped it clumsily over the hand.

Darcy, where are you?

He went back into the living room. The trick was to relax. She’d have a good reason for not being here. He sat by the telephone, wondering who he could call next. He heard a sound on the porch, a footstep, and he thought, Okay, here she is.

Relieved, he went out into the hallway and opened the front door.

Eve was standing in the shadows. ‘Is this a bad time to call?’