Seven Minutes to Noon (29 page)

Where were they?

She dialed Sylvie’s cell number and listened to it ring.

Dana meanwhile bent down to pick up the peony pillow which had fallen out of the bag at their feet. She held the pillow on her lap, studying the intricate needlework, running her hand over its rough surface, turning it around to study it from different angles.

Finally Sylvie answered the phone. “I brought the children to Maggie’s apartment,” she explained. “It was
closer. I wanted to get them out of the storm. Are you mad, Alice?”

“No, I’m not mad.”

“Is everything okay?” There was a hardness to Sylvie’s tone, a sarcasm that Alice didn’t like. Sylvie was young; she didn’t take things seriously enough sometimes. Which was why she was a babysitter, Alice reminded herself, dispelling the rasp of irritation.

“Yes, everything’s okay. Listen, Sylvie, you don’t have to bring them.” She wondered if she had been asking too much of Sylvie lately, piggybacking her children onto Ethan’s babysitting hours. “Mike’s on his way home. I’ll ask him to stop by and pick them up.”

“I can hear the worry in your voice,” Sylvie said. “Don’t worry so much. It’s unattractive, my mother used to say.”

“He’ll be there soon.” Alice wanted to end the awkward call. She wanted the traffic jam that had ensnarled Mike to break up, release him. She wanted Julius Pollack locked in a cell. She wanted to close her eyes and escape today. She wanted her children.

“Bye, Alice,” Sylvie said with a strange cheerfulness.

Alice pressed
END
and immediately called Mike’s cell.

“Can’t talk — traffic’s moving,” he answered.

“Pick up the kids on your way back, okay? They’re at Maggie’s, with Sylvie.”

“Will do. You okay?”

“Fine.” She would wait to tell him about the crime scene when he arrived.

“See you in a few minutes,” he said. “I’m getting close.”

She laid her head against the back of the couch and closed her eyes. Next to her, she could feel Dana pitching forward.

“Where did you get this?”

Alice opened her eyes to find Dana staring at the peony pillow.

“Judy Gersten,” Alice answered. “She makes them.”

“Them, plural?” Dana asked. “She’s made others?”

“She does all that stuff. Needlepoint, knitting, sewing. It’s all around her house and at work on her desk. She’s says it keeps her busy. Sylvie finishes the pillows for her.”

“What do you mean
finishes
them?”

Alice was surprised by Dana’s sudden interest. “You know, backing, stuffing, all the finishing work. Then Sylvie takes them over to the Women’s Exchange to sell them.”

“Why?” Dana sat forward, holding the pillow on her lap.

“Just to help out, I guess,” Alice said. “Sylvie’s a part-time assistant at Garden Hill. Judy said the peony was Sylvie’s idea as a tribute to Lauren. Lauren loved peonies.”

“So you bought this?”

“No, Judy gave it to me. She
threw
it at me, actually. She said I should have it because I was Lauren’s friend.”

Dana held the pillow up for Alice to see. “Look.”

“I know, it’s beautiful.”

Dana pointed at the lower left corner of the pillow.
“Look.”

Alice had never actually scrutinized the needlework; the large flower was captivating at a distance. She had come straight home with it, thrown it on her couch, headed straight for the newspaper. And then Julius decided to attack. The harder she looked at the pillow now, the more apparent it became that the background was not as simple as it appeared. There were two colors involved, not one as it first seemed, and in the corner where Dana was pointing, there was something else.

Alice held the pillow in front of her face. In the lower left corner, in a shade slightly darker than the background, were two tiny letters: LB.

“Lauren’s initials,” Alice said. “Lauren Barnet.”

“Where’s this Women’s Exchange place?” Dana asked. “I want to see the other pillows.”

“But Judy said she made the pillow with Lauren in mind,” Alice said. “That’s why Lauren’s initials are there, Dana. Don’t you think?”

“No assumptions.” Dana stood up.

“It’s on Pierrepont Street in Brooklyn Heights,” Alice told Dana. “Between Monroe Place and Henry Street, I think.”

Dana left the pillow where it was. “When Frannie comes, tell her I’ll be right back. And don’t go anywhere, Alice. Got it?”

“Got it,” Alice said, picturing herself, Mike, Nell and Peter running along the phantom beach. Air dry and light as cotton wisps. A placid ocean.

The uniformed officer by the door stood sentrylike with his hands clasped behind his back. Alice stretched out on the couch, pulled the blanket under her chin and closed her eyes. Mike would be back in Brooklyn any minute now. Pick up the kids. Come home. She wondered where Simon was and how he would react to the commandeering of his house by the police. Knowing Simon, it wouldn’t faze him; anyone with the fortitude to love Maggie and, moreover, to live with her had to be even-keeled, as was Simon, reliably.

After a few minutes the front door squealed open and
Alice heard footsteps cross the hall to the living room. She opened her eyes: Frannie was talking to the front hall cop. Alice sat up, letting the blanket slide to her feet.

“Frannie,” she said. “We’ve been waiting for you.”

“I heard from Dana.” Frannie crossed the room to Alice. “Pillow shopping, huh?”

Alice picked up the peony pillow from where it lay on the couch and handed it to Frannie. “Judy Gersten made it. When I told Dana how Sylvie finishes them and takes them to the Women’s Exchange, she got pretty excited. Ran right over there.”

“I didn’t take her for a shopper,” Frannie tried to joke. Her dark eyes shone, but she didn’t, or couldn’t, smile. “Sorry, it’s been a rough afternoon. Dana’s got good instincts.” Frannie sat next to Alice on the couch and rubbed her face. “I could use some coffee.”

“I’ll make you some.” Alice went into the kitchen and started a pot of coffee in the stainless-steel machine Maggie had bought when she lived here.

Frannie followed Alice and sat down at the large round table. “So, Dana told you we found the crime scene.”

“She didn’t tell me much, though,” Alice said. “She said when you got here, you’d fill me in.”

“There’s a lot we won’t know until all the evidence is evaluated,” Frannie said. “That’ll take a few days.” She hesitated, glancing longingly at the coffeepot, which sputtered and steamed, filling the kitchen which a rich smell Alice remembered yearning for before this pregnancy.

“But?” Alice asked.

Frannie sighed. “But we learned a lot. It wasn’t pretty, Alice. Are you sure you want to know?”

“I don’t want to,” Alice said, “but I need to.”

“Okay,” Frannie said. “Sit down, then.”

Alice obeyed, installing herself on a chair across from Frannie.

In a deliberately calm tone, Frannie began. “There
was blood splatter on the interior side door, which tells us she was probably shot right away, just after she got into the truck. The C-section was performed right there on the floorboard, with a common kitchen knife. It was crude and slow, a lot of blood loss.” Frannie watched Alice, pausing to let it sink in.

Alice nodded. “Go on.”

“We found the knife and the tape that was used to close her wounds. If the doer was as messy as the scene indicates, we’ll find fingerprints everywhere. The crime scene doesn’t show a lot of experience or even much thought.”

“But they’ve done this before,” Alice said. “What about Christine Craddock?”

Frannie leaned slightly forward, her body language insisting Alice discipline her thoughts, drop her assumptions, really
listen.
“We never found Christine. Other than the attack on Pam Short, there is no evidence that the attacker has any other experience with violence.”

“I watched Sal Cattaneo butcher a pig,” Alice said fiercely. “He knows exactly what he’s doing.”

“Yes, he does,” Frannie said, “when he cuts up an animal.”

“I’ve seen Julius Pollack up close,” Alice said. “He
is
an animal.”

“Assumptions, Alice.” Frannie’s voice was steady. “Put them aside.”

Alice heard the crying baby. Saw the video, the baby’s television face. She nodded. Okay, she would put her assumptions aside; at least she would try.

“The biggest mistake a detective can make,” Frannie said, “is to decide whodunit before evaluating all the evidence. We have evidence now. We finally have a crime scene. Only some of it is pointing in the direction of the Metro connection.”

“Some of it,” Alice said. “So it isn’t a closed option.”

“Everything’s open right now,” Frannie said. “Everything.” She got up, found a mug in Simon’s cabinet and poured herself some coffee. “Just remember that it’s a
puzzle. You collect all the pieces, which as you’ve seen can be a challenge. You put the pieces together. Then you look.”

“Am I a puzzle piece?” Alice watched Frannie sip her coffee.

“It seems like it.” She set down her mug. “But let’s face it. We don’t
know
who wrote that message on the window. It’s convenient to think Pollack did it, but we won’t know until we pick him up and have a chance to ask him.”

“What about Ivy?”

“Her umbilical cord may have been cut,” Frannie said. “Some tissue was found that might be leftover cord. If it is, if someone made the effort to tie the cord, it would indicate that whoever did this meant to keep the baby. That it was the motivation for the crime.”

Who, Alice wondered, had wanted Ivy that badly other than Lauren and Tim? Was it
Ivy
the monster had wanted, or
any
baby?

“What about Pam?” Alice asked. “She was shot with the same gun.”

Frannie took a long drink of her coffee, then nodded. “Yup. There’s that.”

Just then a small man with graying blond hair, one of the lab techs who had been working outside, came into the kitchen and knocked lightly on the archway’s molding. Frannie twisted around to face him.

“Hey, Jerry.”

“We’re almost done here,” he said. “We were able to lift one good print. Is this a rush?”

“Top priority.”

“We’ll take it over to the lab right now, ask them to skip it to the head of the line,” he told her, “if they can.”

“Thanks,” Frannie said. “Call me when it’s in. We want to run it through Printrak ASAP, see if we get a hit.”

Jerry nodded and went back outside.

Frannie turned to Alice. “You’ve had quite an afternoon.”

“We all have, haven’t we?”

“Oh yes,” Frannie said. “But in a way it’s just the beginning. This is when we start to find out what’s really going on. You should get some rest. You look wiped out.”

“I’m waiting for Nell and Peter to get home,” Alice said. “Mike’s picking them up. I won’t be able to rest until I see them.”

“Why don’t you lie down anyway,” Frannie said. “I’ve got to make some calls, find out what’s up with Dana, check in with Paul.”

Alice headed over to the couch, feeling unbearably exhausted, as if her twins had quadrupled in weight in the last hour alone. She carefully bent down to pick up the blanket where it lay pooled on the floor, and had just tossed it back on the couch when she heard a commotion in the hallway.

Dana rushed into the living room and dumped the contents of two large shopping bags onto the floor. She had bought three more of Judy Gersten’s pillows at the Women’s Exchange, miniscule floral arrangements on pale backgrounds: rose, baby blue, dove gray. They all shared the immaculate needlework of the peony pillow.

Frannie bent down and picked up one of the pillows. She held it up close to her eyes, turning it slowly around. Then she held the pillow still. “ZL,” she said, handing it to Alice. The pink-on-rose initials were almost imperceptible until you noticed them, and then they screamed.

Dana handed Frannie another pillow. “PS.”

When they looked at the next pillow, with its blue-on-blue
CC
in the corner, there was dead silence. Finally, Frannie spoke.

“Lauren Barnet, Pam Short, Christine Craddock,” she said. “It can’t be a coincidence.”

“Who’s ZL?” Alice asked.

“Don’t know,” Frannie answered. “We’ll have to find out.”

“Judy Gersten,” Alice said, vividly recalling the framed photograph in Judy’s apartment of her and Sal
Cattaneo, pressed together, smiling like an old couple. Except he was married to someone else. “She’s involved in this.”

Frannie and Dana glanced at each other.
No assumptions.

“Open them,” Frannie said.

Alice hurried to the kitchen for a pair of scissors.

Dana started with the peony pillow, carefully slicing open the pillow’s seam to reveal a neat track of tiny stitches. Dana continued to snip away until she had opened one side. Then she ripped apart the needlework canvas and velvet backing and peered inside.

“Can you bring me a clean sheet?” Dana asked Alice.

Alice went upstairs to the linen closet, found a neatly folded white sheet, returned downstairs and handed it to Frannie, who flipped it open and laid it on the floor.

Kneeling down, Dana upended the pillow’s stuffing onto the sheet.

Masses of long brown hair tumbled out.

“It’s Lauren’s hair.” Alice knelt in front of the pile of long, soft hair. She wanted to reach her hand into this last bit of Lauren, but was she allowed to? Was it evidence now?

“Are you sure?” Frannie asked.

The officers and forensics techs who were still milling around turned quiet. Everyone knew that something had just happened. Everyone was watching them.

Alice nodded. She couldn’t speak.

“Let’s open the other pillows,” Frannie said calmly.

Dana started in on one of the other pillows. ZL. Careful to follow the seams, she cut quickly and peered inside.

“It’s white.”

Frannie looked. “That isn’t hair.”

“It’s some kind of foam, I think.” Dana opened the CC pillow next. “More foam.”

“What the hell is this?” Frannie was peering into the PS pillow. “It’s gray.”

“Looks like some other kind of man-made stuffing,” Dana said.