Murder Among Children Read Online Free PDF Page A

upstairs and returning. The front door kept opening and closing, giving blinding semaphores of sunlight. I saw Donlon twice more, once talking with a group of plainclothesmen that included one of the two that had questioned me, once with two others interrogating Padbury.
    After about fifteen minutes a thin guy in a short-sleeved white shirt, needing a haircut, came over to me and said, “What do you think?”
    “I don’t,” I said.
    “Understand it was a girl killed them,” he said.
    I looked at him. “You press?”
    “That’s me. You want to see my card? I got an okay at the door.”
    “I’m a citizen,” I said. “You want to talk to one of the other fellas.”
    He started to grin, as though I were kidding him, but then he saw I was serious, and he frowned instead. “You ain’t a dick?”
    “Where’d you get that word from? The funnies?”
    He pointed at me. “You’re a cop,” he said.
    “Wrong. What did they find upstairs?”
    “What are you asking me for?”
    “Because I don’t know.”
    He kept studying me and studying me, trying to figure me out. Finally he said, “Two stiffs.”
    “Who?”
    “One male, vanilla. One female, chocolate.”
    I said, “What’s that supposed to mean?”
    “Integration,” he said. “A white guy and a spade chick, both cut up with the same knife. How come you’re sitting here and you ain’t a cop and you don’t know anything?”
    “I happened to be here.”
    “You hang out in this kind of place all the time.”
    “No.”
    “If I don’t get it from you I’ll get it from somebody else.”
    I said, “You get it from somebody else.” I knew it was stupid to antagonize him, but I couldn’t help it. It wasn’t in me to tell my story any more. Besides, he’d get the background from somebody else anyway, there was no way to cover that. I’d made the papers in a small way when I was thrown off the force, and now if this homicide was juicy enough there’d probably be a rehash of it all in the tabloids. It sounded juicy enough.
    Where had the female Negro body come from? I wished I could ask George Padbury about Negro girl friends of Terry Wilford’s, past or present, but we had been separated now and it wasn’t likely we’d be allowed back together. Besides, it didn’t matter. I was just working from reflex, as though nothing had ever come to an end.
    It felt odd to be in the bleachers.
    The reporter asked me a couple more questions, but I didn’t have any answers that were any use to him, so he finally went away. I saw him get into conversation with a couple plainclothes-men in the kitchen.
    A few minutes later one of the two who’d questioned me came over and said, “That’s all we need for now, Mr. Tobin. We’ve got your address, we’ll probably be in touch. You going to be in town?”
    “Yes,” I said. “I’ll be in town.”
    “Thank you for your cooperation,” he said. His face and voice and eyes were blank.
    “You’re welcome,” I said. I got up and went out to the bright humid sunlight, and a news photographer snapped my picture in an offhand fashion. I suppose he thought I was one of the investigating officers.
    A small semicircle of spectators stood around on the sidewalk, perspiring. Most of them wore sunglasses. They looked hot and uncomfortable, but they didn’t move. I stepped through them, and walked over to Sixth Avenue and Fourth Street and took my subway out to Queens.
    Kate met me at the door, saying, “How did it go?”
    “Bad. Have you got any iced coffee?”
    “I can make some. Come on out to the kitchen. What happened?”
    We went out to the kitchen, and I sat where Robin had sat yesterday, and while Kate made iced coffee I told her what had happened. She listened in silence for the most part, only once turning and looking at me and saying, “Oh, Mitch.” As though I were the one she felt sorry for.
    As I was finishing, the phone rang. Kate went out to the hall to answer it, and came back to say, “It’s a