weeds.
Besides which, what good would it possibly do this woman to falsify a connection between her missing great-grandson and the child we’d found?
Paranoia. Get over yourself before you start babbling about Zapruder footage and the grassy knoll.
“Are you all right?” Cate touched my shoulder, gently. “You’re
shaking.”
“I’m just cold,” I said.
“I’ll get my jacket out of the car.”
“I’m okay.”
“I’ll get my jacket,” she said again.
She crossed my field of vision, taking a dozen long strides to reach her car.
“Okay,” I said, though she was out of earshot.
Skwarecki’s dark sedan coasted to a halt just shy of the gate.
Skwarecki crouched down beside the tiny shoe. “You guys did good today.”
Latex gloves back on, she used my same twig to lift the sneaker by its still-tied laces, lowering it gently into the brown paper bag she’d taken out of her trunk.
“It doesn’t feel good,” said Cate. “Just awful and sad.”
Skwarecki closed the top of the bag. “You’ve gotta concentrate on the positive. This little boy can be laid to rest now. His family can have some peace.”
“I’m trying,” said Cate.
She wandered a little distance away, kicking at stray gravel with the toe of her shoe.
“You think they all deserve that?” I asked Skwarecki. “It’s hard to believe Mrs. Underhill had anything to do with this—from how she acted today, and the way you described her—but, you know, his mother? You think us identifying her son is going to bring her any peace?”
She glanced up at me, lips pursed, then tilted her head an inch to the side with an upward twitch of her corresponding shoulder.
No, she didn’t think so. Not for a second.
I nodded and Skwarecki dropped her eyes, extracting a pen from her jacket pocket to jot words and numbers into underscored blank fields on a tag already stapled to the bag’s brown paper.
“How come you’re not using a ziplock this time?” I asked, remembering the plastic bag into which she’d placed the vertebra.
“Certain kinds of trace evidence, you need paper.”
I glanced toward Cate, making sure she was out of earshot.
“Blood,” I said.
Skwarecki nodded. “Any dried fluids.”
Urine. Semen.
“Seal something like that in plastic, you get humidity,” she said. “Contaminates everything.”
“That makes sense.”
Skwarecki stood up. “You got cops in your family or something, Madeline?”
“Or something,” I said.
She cracked a little smile. “It just seems like you know the drill.”
I twitched my shoulders.
“And you’re wishing you didn’t know,” she said.
“Damn straight.”
“Yeah,” she said, shaking her head. “Kind of shit like this-here?”
“Fucked up.”
“Tell me about it. Fucking assholes.”
“No shit.”
“I mean, a little kid?”
“ His little shoe?” I pointed at the paper bag.
“What the fuck, am I right?”
“Shitheads.”
“Yo,” said Skwarecki, “fucking exactly.”
And then we shoulder-bumped each other.
I felt much better.
Having bonded, the two of us rested our hands on our hips, standing side by side and looking over toward Cate.
“Skwarecki?” I asked.
“Yo.”
“What’re the chances of actually nailing someone for this?”
“Like I told you before, close to bubkes.”
“Promise me you’ll go for it anyway.”
“That’s what we do.”
“Cool.”
“Fuckin’ ay,” said Skwarecki.
Cate turned around, looking calmer, and started walking back over to us.
“What happens next?” I asked Skwarecki.
“Paperwork. See if little Teddy was in the system.”
“Which system?” asked Cate.
“He was a battered child,” said Skwarecki. “We need to know if anyone reported the abuse.”
“How can we help?” asked Cate.
Skwarecki tucked the evidence bag under her arm. “If we build any kind of a case, Bost’ll need you and Madeline to testify.”
“Detective,” said Cate, “we have to get the fucker who did this.”
“Amen,” said Skwarecki.
17
I don’t see how I’m going to stop thinking about all this, after today,” said Cate.
She was driving me back to Jamaica Station, the light already fading around us: early dusk, that thin blade-edge of winter.
“Don’t you wish you could do something about it, right now?” she continued.
“Of course,” I said, “because I have absolutely no patience.”
“And that poor Mrs. Underhill. Do you think she knew?”
“That Teddy was being abused? She had to.”
“But Madeline, she obviously cared a great deal about him. I can’t believe she would have stood by if she knew he was being hurt.”
“How do you ignore broken bones?” I asked. “We’re not talking bruises here.”
“Why would she bring cookies to the cop station all the time if she knew—without ever bringing up the abuse?”
“Could she miss spotting multiple fractures in a three-year-old? I can’t even imagine how his mother tried to explain them away. I mean, what—she just kept saying, ‘Teddy jumped off the roof again, guess he didn’t learn his lesson the first three or four times,’ and Mrs. Underhill went,