SARAH WAS BONE WEARY AS SHE MADE HER WAY down Bank Street late Saturday morning. She wasn’t sure how much of her fatigue had been caused by the middle-of-the-night call to deliver a baby and how much by her depression over not being able to help find out who’d killed Emilia Donato. At least the earlier rain had stopped, but the gray sky matched her mood perfectly.
As usual, her next-door neighbor was out sweeping her front steps, or pretending to, even though the porch would have been washed clean by the morning rain. In reality, she was waiting to welcome Sarah home and find out how her delivery had gone.
“Good morning, Mrs. Ellsworth,” Sarah called when she was within hailing distance.
“Good morning, Mrs. Brandt. Were you on a delivery?”
“Yes, a little boy. He’s doing fine, and so is his mother.”
“That’s a blessing.”
Sarah thought of all the unwanted children in the world, children like Emilia Donato. Were they blessings? Sarah didn’t think she wanted to know right now. “Mrs. Ellsworth, would you come in for some tea? I’d like to ask your advice about something.”
Since Sarah had never asked Mrs. Ellsworth for anything at all, the older woman looked startled for a second. In the next second, however, she looked extremely pleased. “I’d be happy to help in any way I can, my dear. Just give me a moment to take off my apron!”
Sarah went into her house, and after removing her cape and opening her umbrella and setting it on the floor so it could dry thoroughly, she went to the kitchen to start a fire in the stove. It was burning well by the time she heard Mrs. Ellsworth’s knock.
Mrs. Ellsworth must have been even more impressed by her request than Sarah had thought for her to be using the front door, as if this were a formal visit. She usually came to the kitchen door.
When Sarah admitted her, she saw the rain had started up again, and Mrs. Ellsworth was half-hidden beneath an enormous black umbrella. The old woman closed it and shook it out on the front stoop, then came inside.
“We can set it here by mine to dry,” Sarah offered, reaching for the umbrella. Mrs. Ellsworth made a strangled sound of alarm, pointing in wordless horror.
Sarah looked where she was pointing, expecting to see that a poisonous snake had somehow crawled into her foyer. Instead all she saw was her own umbrella dripping quietly onto the floor.
“You can’t open an umbrella in the house!” Mrs. Ellsworth informed her, appalled. She hastily dropped her own onto the floor and snatched up Sarah’s to close it. “What were you thinking?”
She’d been thinking it would dry more quickly if it were opened, but of course she didn’t say that to Mrs. Ellsworth. “I suppose that’s bad luck,” she guessed. Mrs. Ellsworth’s superstitions were legion.
“It certainly is,” she said, clutching the offending object to her as if she could shelter it from the evil spirits that might be ready to descend.
“I had no idea,” Sarah admitted apologetically. “I’ll be more careful in the future.” Then she reached down to pick up the umbrella that Mrs. Ellsworth had dropped in her haste to rescue Sarah’s.
“Don’t touch that!” Mrs. Ellsworth cried, startling Sarah all over again. She jumped and hastily straightened, holding both hands up to prove she had obeyed the command.
“It can’t be bad luck just to pick up an umbrella, can it?” she asked in amazement.
“It’s bad luck to let someone else pick up an umbrella you’ve dropped,” she explained as if to a child, bending to pick up it up herself. “Of course, now that I remember, the bad luck is that you’ll become a spinster for the rest of your life. Since I’m not in any danger of becoming a spinster, I suppose it’s all right after all,” she added in amusement.
“I suppose so,” Sarah agreed, taking both umbrellas from her and setting them in the umbrella stand beside the door. When Mrs. Ellsworth made no further protest, Sarah assumed this was a safe way to deal with them. “Come into the kitchen. I was just going to put the kettle on.”
“I must say I’m intrigued,” Mrs. Ellsworth said as she followed Sarah through her front office and into the back of the house. “I can’t imagine what you might need my advice about.”
Sarah put the kettle on, and the two women seated themselves at Sarah’s kitchen table. “Remember I went to visit the Prodigal Son Mission last Sunday?” she began.
“Oh, yes,” Mrs. Ellsworth said with elaborate casualness. “With Mr. Dennis, I believe,” she added expectantly.
Sarah bit back a smile. She wasn’t going to explain her relationship with Richard to the mother of one of Richard’s employees. “Yes, he accompanied me there.” She proceeded to tell her neighbor about meeting Emilia at the mission and then how Malloy had found her body in the park wearing Sarah’s clothing.
“That poor man! It must have been a shock to him, thinking you were dead,” she observed.
Such a shock that he actually hugged Sarah the next time he saw her, but she didn’t mention that to her neighbor. Mrs. Ellsworth already had too many romantic notions about Detective Sergeant Frank Malloy. “No one knew who she was, so he came here to find out how she might have gotten my clothes. I was able to identify her.”
“Do they have any idea who might have killed her?”
“Emilia had been involved with several disreputable men before she went to live at the mission, but I really don’t know what Malloy has found out about them. You see, he was so…” Sarah searched for the proper word. “… distressed by seeing the dead girl in my clothing that he forbade me from having anything to do with the investigation.”
“He’s right, you know. Those Italians are dangerous people.” She pronounced it Eye-talians. “You know about the evil eye! They can kill a baby in its mother’s womb with it.”
Sarah seriously doubted that, but she simply nodded her understanding. “Do you know anything about the Black Hand?”
“Only what I read in the newspapers. I don’t know what this world is coming to! We should never allow people like that into our country.”
“Mrs. Ellsworth, everyone in our country came from someplace else at one time or another,” Sarah reminded her gently.
“I know that!” Mrs. Ellsworth said, a little indignant. “I just meant we shouldn’t allow foreigners in!”
Sarah was beginning to wonder why she’d thought Mrs. Ellsworth could help her with her dilemma. Mercifully, she noticed the water was boiling, so she got up and fixed the tea. By the time she’d filled the pot and set it and the cups on the table, she figured enough time had passed so she could broach the subject she really wanted to discuss.
“Malloy has forbidden me to help him in this investigation, but I still feel like I need to do something to help,” she began while they waited for the tea to steep. “Because I feel so guilty.”
“Guilty? What on earth for?” Mrs. Ellsworth asked in amazement.
“I’m not sure. Ever since I visited the mission, I’ve had this feeling that I’m not doing anything important with my life.”
“That’s nonsense! I’m sure there are hundreds of mothers in the city who think you’re doing something extremely important.”
Sarah frowned. “Bringing babies into the world alive is just the beginning. Think about how many infants are abandoned or killed and how many children end up living on the streets because their families throw them out.”
“You can’t save them all, my dear. One person can only do so much.”
“That’s just it. I don’t feel that I’m doing anything at all.”
“What could you possibly do?”
This was what Sarah had been fretting about and why she’d asked her neighbor to come over. “I was thinking perhaps I should volunteer to help out at the mission, the way Mr. Dennis’s wife did.”
The older woman frowned, considering. “What did Mrs. Dennis do there?”
“I’m not sure. I think she may have taught the girls needlework or something like that.”
“Do you do needlework?”
“Heavens, no, but I could teach them something I do know. Like hygiene, how to keep themselves and their homes clean and free of disease. Things like that.”
“Don’t their mothers teach them those things?” Mrs. Ellsworth asked in all sincerity.
“Many of them don’t have mothers,” Sarah said tactfully. She didn’t want to explain all the reasons the poor lived in squalor. Mrs. Ellsworth’s opinion of “foreigners” was already low enough.
“In that case, I’m sure they would appreciate knowing such things. In fact, I’m surprised they don’t already have someone teaching those things at the mission.”
“Perhaps they do. I guess I’ll find out when I offer my services.”
“Is that what you wanted my advice about?” Mrs. Ellsworth asked. “Because if it was, I don’t think I was much help!”
“You were a tremendous help,” Sarah assured her. “I think I just needed to hear someone else say it was a good idea.”
“My dear Mrs. Brandt, I’m sure you’ve never had a bad idea in your life,” Mrs. Ellsworth said with a smile as Sarah picked up the pot and began to pour their tea.
Thinking of the ideas she’d had yesterday, about visiting Emilia’s family members to find out who might have killed her, she smiled in return. “I’ve had my share, I promise you.”
“Oh, look,” Mrs. Ellsworth said, pointing at the tea leaf floating on the surface of Sarah’s cup. “That means you’re going to have a visitor.”
“Can you read my tea leaves to find out who it will be?” Sarah asked good-naturedly.
Mrs. Ellsworth closed her eyes and pretended to go into a trance. “I see a man who asks a lot of questions. He’s a man who puts criminals in jail. And I also see that he is very fond of you.” She opened one eye and peered at Sarah slyly. “And you, I think, are very fond of him.”
“I think,” Sarah said, “that from now on, I will only serve you coffee.”
Frank was getting tired of Mulberry Bend. Once again he came in the early evening, just as the sun was setting. He’d spent most of last night with Ugo Ianuzzi and learned enough to know the Black Hand probably had nothing to do with Emilia Donato’s death. Except for the weapon used – a thin-bladed stiletto – nothing else pointed to this group.
Emilia’s father was a laborer on the garbage scows, men who were known as rag pickers. They’d acquired this nickname because while their job was to level the loads of refuse as it was loaded onto the barges that would carry it out to be dumped into the sea, they were also allowed to pick through it for anything that might be of value to keep and sell. Most of what they found was rags, which could be cleaned and fashioned into rugs or stuffed into furniture or mattresses. The “cleaning,” of course, usually consisted of merely hanging the rags on clotheslines and letting the rain and sun do their work. Men who did this kind of labor owed their jobs to padroni, men who had managed to get the contract from the city and hired laborers to do the work. Mr. Donato, as a lowly laborer, was hardly powerful enough to arouse the interest of the Black Hand, much less inspire them to murder his daughter in some vendetta.
From what he’d learned of Emilia’s brother, he was a crippled beggar, likewise unlikely to have been involved with the Secret Society. Emilia’s lover Ugo, while a bit more successful, paid his protection money and kept in the Black Hand’s good graces. Even if he didn’t, killing his discarded mistress would hardly intimidate him.
That left the pimp who had exploited Emilia. Ugo had said his name was Lucca. Nobody seemed to know his last name. He wasn’t industrious or successful enough to keep a brothel. He exerted himself only to seduce young women and coerce them into prostituting themselves. Then he was content to live off the earnings of his latest victim.
Lucca had a tiny flat in one of the old Dutch houses, according to Ugo. Frank found the place easily enough. The elements had scoured the wooden siding clean of paint years ago, and the planks were now warped and rotting. Some of the windows hung crooked in their frames, the glass threatening to slide out with the slightest encouragement. Lucca rented part of the attic, which meant Frank had to trudge up the filthy, rickety stairs to the third floor. Halfway up the final flight, he could hear an argument going on above.
A woman was pleading and crying while a man was shouting and threatening. Frank could tell this easily, even though he didn’t understand a word of the language in which they conversed. He’d heard countless arguments just like it in many languages, and they were always the same. He quickened his step, hoping to interrupt it before its inevitable conclusion, but he wasn’t fast enough. The sound of flesh striking flesh, followed by a cry of pain and hysterical weeping, came to him just as he reached the top of the stairs.
The man’s voice rose to be heard above her weeping, shouting a warning and another threat. Frank reached the door and pounded on it before he could strike another blow.
“Open up,” he shouted. “Police.”
The door opened immediately, and the man stared back at him defiantly. He wore dirty trousers with the suspenders hanging down around his hips, and a yellowed undershirt. Although slight of stature, he’d planted himself squarely in the doorway and glared at Frank as if daring him to make trouble for what was obviously nobody else’s business.
“Lucca?” Frank asked and saw the instant of surprise register on the man’s face before he could collect himself.
“Not here,” he claimed, lifting his chin impudently. He was vaguely handsome, the way a snake can be called beautiful, no matter how dangerous it might be. The woman was still sobbing pitifully in the background.
“Maybe the lady knows where he is,” Frank suggested mildly, tilting his head to look over Lucca’s shoulder. He could see her sitting on the bed, cradling her cheek in one hand and rocking back and forth to comfort herself.
“She know nothing,” Lucca insisted. “Not here. Come back later.”
Frank looked him up and down. He wasn’t a big man, and what weight he had was soft. “I don’t want to come back later,” Frank said, still not raising his voice. That was why Lucca wasn’t prepared when Frank lunged at him. In one swift move, he threw the man off balance, caught his arm, and twisted it around his back. He propelled Lucca across the small room and slammed him face-first into the wall.
The woman screamed. Frank spared her a glance and was surprised to see she was no more than a girl, probably only fourteen at most. She stared at Frank, eyes filled with terror, her tears forgotten. “Get out of here,” he told her.
She blinked, either too frightened to understand or else she didn’t speak English. “Tell her to get out,” he said to Lucca, twisting his arm a little higher to encourage his cooperation.
Lucca howled with pain, but he said something to the girl in Italian, his voice high and strained.
She started to protest, but he cut her off sharply. Even though she wasn’t dressed for the street, she snatched up a jacket and hurried out. Her footsteps echoed lightly down the stairs and faded away.
“What you want?” Lucca asked. His voice was a little muffled because his face was still smashed against the wall.
“I want to know why you killed Emilia Donato,” Frank said.
“Who?” he asked.
Frank didn’t like people who tried to be coy with him. He gave Lucca’s arm another twist. When he’d stopped screaming, Frank said, “Emilia Donato,” very deliberately.
“Who is this girl?” he asked quickly, before Frank could encourage him again. “I do not know her!”
Was it possible Frank had found the wrong man? “Yellow hair. Emilia. She got sick, and you threw her out,” he tried.
“Oh, si, yes, I know her now!” he assured Frank hastily. “She not here long. I forget!”
Frank wanted to smash his head right through the wall. Couldn’t he at least have the decency to remember their names? “Tell me about her, Lucca,” he suggested instead, his voice dangerously low.
“She lazy girl. No work.”
“You mean she wouldn’t walk the streets?”
“She cry. Say she sick. No go out.”
“So you slapped her around like you did that girl just now?” Frank asked.
“Lazy girl,” he defended himself. “No work. Must work, get money.”
“So you made her go out to make money for you,” Frank offered.
“She go but no make money. Stay out all night. Afraid come home. Afraid I mad. Stay out all night in rain. Get sick.” He shrugged. “What I do? She no can work. I send her away.”
“When was the last time you saw her?”
“Long time. Can’t tell. Long, long time!” he insisted. “She nothing to me. Why you come here?”
“Because somebody killed her two days ago.”
Now the seriousness of his situation was finally sinking in. “Why I kill her?” he cried. “She nothing to me!”
“Because she met you on Thursday morning. She wanted you to see her new dress. She wanted you to see how pretty she was and make you sorry you threw her out. She made you angry, so you stabbed her to death.”
“No!” he cried frantically. “I no see her, long time! She nothing to me. She go to mission. I no see no more. I think she die. I no kill. Why I kill? She nothing to me!”
Either he was a better liar than he had a right to be or he was telling the truth. Frank was afraid he was telling the truth. Coming here had been a long shot in any case, but he’d run out of suspects. No one, it seemed, had any reason to want Emilia Donato dead.
Maybe if he had some more time, he could figure it out, but they’d told him yesterday at Headquarters to close the case. Emilia’s parents weren’t going to offer a reward or pressure the police to do anything. Even they didn’t care that she was dead. No one cared.
No one except Sarah Brandt.
Frank didn’t ask himself why he was walking down Bank Street. If he didn’t ask himself, he wouldn’t have to make up a lie to satisfy his pride. The truth was, he only needed the slightest excuse to come here, and this time his excuse was pretty substantial.
Darkness had fallen on the city, even though the hour wasn’t particularly late. The days were growing shorter as October wound to a close. As soon as he’d turned the comer, he’d seen a light on in Sarah’s front room. There was always a chance she’d be out on a call, but his luck seemed to be holding. The darkness would keep Mrs. Ellsworth inside, too, since even the busiest of busybodies couldn’t sweep her front steps in the pitch dark. He didn’t feel much like answering her questions tonight, no matter how well intentioned they were.
Sarah Brandt opened the door at his knock. She said, “Malloy,” but she didn’t smile the way she usually did. She looked worried, maybe even a little nervous. “Is something wrong?”
So that was it. She was worried about Brian. “No, nothing’s wrong, except that I haven’t found your murderer.”
That seemed to reassure her. “Come in. Would you like some coffee? Have you eaten?”
“Just some coffee,” he said, hanging his hat in her hallway the way he always did. He followed her into the kitchen, admiring the shape of her body in the worn housedress. Apparently, she hadn’t given all of her old clothes to the mission.
For an instant he remembered the way she had felt in his arms in that emotional moment he’d forgotten himself at finding her alive and well. The memory brought the heat to his face and to other parts of him, too, so he quickly banished it. Still, he wondered if she thought about it and how she felt when she did. She’d certainly never mentioned it, thank God. If she was willing to pretend it hadn’t happened, so was he.
“Sit down,” she said, pointing to the kitchen table, and began making the coffee.
He watched her work, enjoying these few stolen minutes of false intimacy when he could pretend he belonged here, with her. Too soon she was finished, and she sat down across from him at the table. Her eyes were guarded, as if she was afraid to hope too much.
“What did you find out?” she asked when he didn’t speak.
“That nobody had any reason to kill Emilia.”
“Did you find her lover?”
“Yeah, and her pimp, too. She wasn’t a very good prostitute. Even when this fellow Lucca beat her, she wouldn’t earn any money for him.”
“Wouldn’t that give him a reason to kill her?”
“Not months after he’d thrown her out, and he’d found a new girl. He didn’t even remember her name.”
“How awful!”
“Pimps aren’t usually known for their social graces,” Frank reminded her.
“What about that Ugo, the man who seduced her in the first place?”
“He was finished with her, too. I took him down to Headquarters and let him sit in a cell for a while. He was pretty scared, so I’m fairly certain he didn’t kill her either. Neither of them had seen her recently, not since she went to the mission, at least.”
“What about our theory that she wanted one of them to take her back?”
“If she met a man in the park that morning, it wasn’t either one of them.”
She frowned. She didn’t like this one bit. “It must have been the Black Hand, then. They’re the ones who use stilettos,” she decided.
“I did some research into the Black Hand. Her family is too poor to attract their attention. Besides, every Italian man in New York owns a stiletto.”
She wasn’t going to let it rest. “What about her family then? Did you talk to her father and her brother?”
“I didn’t see her brother, but why would her family want her dead?”
“They’re Catholics,” she reminded him. “Emilia had left her faith.”
Frank didn’t know whether to laugh or take offense. “I know you Protestants think Catholics eat babies for communion, but we don’t kill people just for leaving the church.”
He was gratified to see her instant contrition. “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to sound so… so bigoted,” she said. “I just… I thought maybe… Her mother, at least, didn’t seem to care about Emilia at all.”
“If they didn’t like her, all the more reason why they wouldn’t have killed her for leaving the church,” Frank said before the real import of her words struck him. “Wait a minute, when did you meet Emilia’s mother?” he asked suspiciously.
She would have been a terrible failure as a criminal. Her guilt was as obvious as a scarlet brand on her forehead. “I… That is… one of my patients told me. I deliver a lot of babies in that neighborhood and – ”
“You went to the Donatos’ flat even after I told you how dangerous it was to get involved in this!” he accused her furiously.
“I just took her mother some food for the funeral. It was the Christian thing to do,” she added hastily when he clenched his fists on the table. “I also found out some very interesting information.”
“Then you wasted your time. It doesn’t matter what you found out, because the case is closed,” he told her, somehow managing to restrain his impulse to reach across the table and shake some sense into her.
“You mean you found the killer? I thought you said – ”
“I said I didn’t find the killer, and I’m not going to,” he snapped. “Headquarters ordered me to close the case.”
“But what about the person who murdered Emilia? Does he just go free?” she demanded, horrified.
“Like hundreds of others do every year,” he said. “There isn’t much justice in the world, Mrs. Brandt, and hardly any at all in New York City. You should know that by now.”
The coffee was boiling, splashing out of the spout to sputter on the stovetop. She jumped up to save it. He waited, trying to rein in his anger while she filled two cups and carried them to the table.
She was angry, too, if he could judge by the way she set the cups down. Coffee sloshed over the sides into the saucers. She didn’t even notice. “Somebody wanted her dead,” she reminded him, planting her hands on her hips. “Because she is dead. And it wasn’t a robbery because she wasn’t robbed, and it wasn’t an assault, because she wasn’t assaulted. Someone killed her deliberately and efficiently, and that person had probably planned it carefully ahead of time.”
“Fine,” he replied. “Tell me who it was, and I’ll arrest him.”
She looked like she wanted to spit nails, but she sat back down in her chair instead. “It had to have been someone who knew her.”
“She probably knew a lot of people. People in her neighborhood, people in the mission…”
She perked up at that. “I hadn’t thought about the mission. She probably met lots of unsavory people there.”
“Unsavory people do seem to be their specialty,” Frank observed, earning a black look for his efforts.
“I’m serious, Malloy. She could have made an enemy of someone who came to the mission but didn’t reform.”
He nodded. “Yeah, a girl who also happened to be a doctor or a nurse and knew that stabbing somebody in the back of the head would kill them without making a mess.”
“Other people could know that, too,” she argued, undaunted. Her persistence was amazing.
“Like who?”
“I don’t know. Someone who worked in a slaughterhouse or maybe a butcher…”
“I guess a lot of those girls at the mission used to be butchers.”
“Malloy, if you aren’t careful, I’m going to pour the next cup of coffee in your lap!”
He managed not to grin because she just might do it if he provoked her any more. He decided to try reason. “I’m just trying to point out that none of these theories make sense. Is this the important information you got when you visited Mrs. Donato?”
“Of course not!” In an instant, her anger was gone. He’d never known a woman who calmed down so quickly. But then, he’d never known any women like Sarah Brandt before. “I found out that Emilia wasn’t Mr. Donato’s daughter.”
He wasn’t sure what difference this could possibly make, but he’d humor her. “Who was her father then?”
“Her mother was… attacked by some sailors on the ship coming over. That’s why she had blond hair. She was only half Italian.”
That explained a lot about Mrs. Donato’s attitude toward her daughter. “I’m surprised Donato agreed to keep the girl.”
“He didn’t know. Mrs. Donato never told anyone about the attack.”
“He must’ve thought it was funny she had light hair.”
“I’m sure lots of people did, but Mrs. Donato claims he never suspected. She couldn’t bring herself to love Emilia, though. I’m sure that made life hard for her. No wonder she was deceived by the first man to pay her any attention.”
“That Ugo fellow has a wife and three kids back in Italy,” Malloy said, in case she was going to put any of the blame on Emilia.
“What? That cad!” she exclaimed, outraged.
“He didn’t marry Emilia because he didn’t want to be a bigamist.”
“How very noble of him,” she said acidly. “He should be horsewhipped.”
“At least,” Frank agreed.
“Maybe Emilia found out about his wife and threatened to expose him,” she said. “That would give him a reason to kill her.”
“Only if he cared that his wife back in Italy knew he had a mistress. I don’t think Ugo is too worried about things like that.”
She frowned. She knew he was right and didn’t want to admit it. “Her brother is an organ grinder,” she offered after a moment.
“Is he?” Frank wasn’t sure why this was important.
“He plays outside of Macy’s.”
“Do you think he killed Emilia?” Frank asked, trying hard not to sound sarcastic.
Apparently, he succeeded because she didn’t take offense. “He’s a cripple. He was… he was born without a foot.”
Frank couldn’t help flinching a bit. He’d instantly thought of Brian and the future he’d once imagined for his crippled, simple-minded son. Because of Sarah, Brian was no longer a cripple, and now Frank knew he was deaf, and not simple at all. He’d never be sitting on the pavement outside of Macy’s, begging for coins.
“That’s how I know he didn’t kill Emilia,” she went on. “He never could have come up behind her and stabbed her because he walks with crutches.”
Frank glared at her. “When did you meet him?”
She didn’t quite meet his eye, which was a good thing because the look he was giving her would’ve curled her hair. “I… I told you, he plays outside of Macy’s. I had some shopping to do, so I looked for him. He has a little daughter who dances for him.”
Frank decided it was a waste of energy to be angry at this bit of foolishness. At least she hadn’t been in any danger on a public street. “Are you sure she’s his daughter?”
“What do you mean?”
“A lot of those beggars don’t have children of their own or children the right size or that are cute enough, so they hire one.”
“How awful!”
“Not really. At least the kid isn’t working in a tenement sweatshop. She probably earns more money dancing than she would making cigars or paper flowers anyway.”
She frowned. “I guess that’s why he wasn’t very nice to her. She was so tired, she fell asleep sitting on the sidewalk, and he kicked her and made her get up and dance some more.”
“That doesn’t prove she’s not his daughter,” Frank pointed out. They’d both seen natural parents do far worse than that to their children.
“I suppose you’re right.” She sighed and studied her coffee for a moment. Then she looked up. “Mrs. Donato makes paper flowers.” Her eyes lit up. “Do you suppose she sells them in City Hall Park?”
“Do you think she killed the girl?” he asked skeptically. “Because she acted pretty innocent when I questioned her.”
She sighed again. “No, I guess I don’t think she did it.”
She looked tired. He figured she’d been delivering babies and hadn’t been getting enough sleep. Why did babies always come in the middle of the night?
“You aren’t going to find out who killed Emilia Donato,” he warned her. “Nobody is going to find out. Sometimes we can’t solve these cases. Most times, in fact. Girls like that, they take up with a stranger, and they end up dead. Maybe the girl herself didn’t know who he was.”
“But she wasn’t taking up with strangers anymore,” she reminded him. “She was going to get a job.”
“That’s what she told the woman at the mission. We don’t know what she did when she left there. And nobody knows why she was in the park that morning. She couldn’t have been there to look for a job.”
“Her killer knows why she was there,” she argued.
“Maybe. Maybe not. But you’ve got to accept the fact that sometimes there just isn’t an answer and some murders don’t get solved.”
“It’s not fair, Malloy.”
“No, it’s not. But you’ve got to accept it, and you’ve got to forget about Emilia Donato, Sarah.”
He waited for her to agree, but she never did.