Murder Among Children Read Online Free PDF Page B

It costs too much. I went out yesterday to help, and look what it turned into.”
    “Mitch—”
    “I don’t owe Rita Gibson a thing,” I said. “And I’m not going to start anything, I’m not going to let anything start around me.”
    She spread her hands, saying, “What do you mean, start? What could start?”
    “Do something. That’s what she’ll say, and then you’ll start saying it too. Do something. Robin Kennely didn’t kill anybody, so go on out and talk to people, nose around, do this, do that, find out who really did the killings.”
    “Nobody’s asking you to do anything like that, Mitch.”
    “Not yet,” I said. “But soon they will. She will, and then you will.”
    “Mitch, what if that girl is found guilty?”
    “Kate, what if she is guilty?”
    “But she isn’t! Won’t you at least listen? Read the newspaper stories about it, listen to the girl’s mother.”
    “I’m not going out there,” I said. “I’m staying in here. And I’m not talking to anybody about anything, I’m not thinking about anything. I’m staying in here, and one day is the same as the next.”
    She studied me, trying to find some way through, and then she said, “Is it really this important to you?”
    “Yes.”
    She spread her hands. “Then there’s nothing I can say.”
    She turned away, and I said, “I’m sorry, Kate. I just can’t, that’s all.”
    She nodded, not looking at me.
    I said, “If they’ve made a mistake, they’ll find it themselves. They usually do.”
    “Yes,” she said, and went out of the room.
    I listened to the sound of her going down the stairs, and then I listened to the murmuring silence. They were in the living room, too far away to really be heard except as a vague background murmur, rising and falling.
    But what else could I do? Any action I might take would be futile, pointless. To talk to the woman downstairs would require thinking about yesterday, which was not only futile but also painful and which I didn’t want to do. And besides, it is true that most police mistakes are discovered and rectified before a trial is reached. The exception gets the publicity, but it gets the publicity because it is the exception.
    I picked up Life on the Mississippi and opened to my page, but didn’t manage to read. I sat there, and waited, and after a long interval I heard voices, and then the sound of the front door. I waited for Kate to come upstairs, but she didn’t, and after a while I began to read again, finished that paragraph for the last time, turned the page, and went on.
    Kate came up an hour or so later, just a minute after I’d heard the phone ring down there. She came to the doorway and said, “It’s George Padbury. He says it’s important.”
    “No,” I said.
    “I told him I didn’t think you would,” she said. There was no accusation in her face or voice. She went out of the doorway and started again down the stairs.
    I got to my feet, left the room, stopped at the head of the stairs. I called her name, and she stopped and looked up at me. I said, “If it is cowardice, it’s still necessary to me.”
    “I know,” she said, and abruptly her face softened. “It’s all right, Mitch,” she said. “I do understand.”
    “I’ll come downstairs awhile,” I said.
    We went down together to the first floor, and she picked up the phone, listened, and said, “He didn’t wait. He’s hung up.” She cradled the phone and smiled at me, saying, “He solved the problem for us.”
    He hadn’t—no one ever would—but I smiled back and said, “Good.”

8
    T HE NEXT DAY, TUESDAY, at about four-thirty in the afternoon, the doorbell rang. I was in the living room, watching an Errol Flynn pirate movie on television, and I got at once to my feet.
    Kate passed through on her way from the kitchen, and said as she went by, “It’s all right, you can stay there. I won’t let anyone in.”
    “Good.” I remained on my feet, near the television set, watching the