Carol O’Connell - Winter House

Mallory’s statement posed a different problem. The arson team had already interviewed her, and so he could not erase the passage about the radio. He added a line about oxygen deprivation. That would fix it.

The lieutenant laid his pencil down on the clipboard and turned to the sorry-looking man beside him. „Charles, you look like hell.“

„I’ve been there.“ The man leaned far forward, elbows propped on his knees, and buried his face in both hands. „Mallory only told me six times that Nedda was in grave danger. I should never have been trusted to look after her.“

„Hey, Charles, if it makes you feel any better, Mallory never trusted you to look after that woman.“

The man’s hands fell away from his face, and Jack Coffey could only describe this naked expression in terms of a slaughterhouse steer stunned with a bat and awaiting the blade that would slit his throat.

The lieutenant rushed his words to explain all the failures of the night, naming the names in Riker’s original, unedited report and describing the precautions taken. „It was our job to keep Nedda Winter alive, not yours.“ He ended this litany with the officer who bungled the last watch. „Bad timing all around tonight, and everybody gets a piece of the blame – except you.“

Nothing said had undone the damage to Charles Butler, for he was hearing none of this. The psychologist’s eyes were fixed on the window of the intensive-care unit, where Nedda, his only patient, lay dying.

The old woman seemed so frail, so tired and older now by at least a decade. And, once more, she had been invaded by high technology. Wires ran from the bandages that taped electrodes to her flesh and connected her to monitors perched on a pole by the bed. Wavy lines charted every function of her body. Tubes ran in and out of her, carrying fluid to the veins of her bruised arm, and other liquids were carried away and emptied into plastic bags. Her eyes opened and closed in long slow blinks.

As Mallory approached the bedside, Nedda asked, „Did the fire destroy the house?“

„No, it’s still standing. Lots of smoke damage everywhere, but the fire was contained on the second floor.“

„Poor house.“ She turned her eyes to the detective. „That night in the park – I always wondered – why did you return my ice pick?“

„I thought you might need it.“

„So you didn’t think I was paranoid, just a crazy old woman.“

Oh, yes, Mallory had believed that this woman had been driven insane long ago, but now she said, „No.“

„You’ve seen the trunk with Sally’s bones?“

Mallory nodded.

„You risked your life to save me tonight,“ said Nedda. „It’s greedy, I know… but I have a favor to ask.“

„Name it.“

„Mercy for Lionel and Cleo.“ Her words were more labored now. „See them as I do… as they were… children with no one to love them. All they ever had was each other. I promise you… they didn’t kill Sally… They could never – “ She coughed up a bit of blood, but stayed Mallory’s hand as the detective reached for the nurse’s call button. „Please, listen… Those three children shared a bond of abandonment… and loss. Can you understand that?“

Mallory understood it too well. She was always losing people. „All right. I’ll never go near them. I promise. I’ll leave them in peace.“

„No, Mallory… I want you to talk to them. Tell them about the massacre… what really happened. And tell them… I didn’t know they survived it.“

The old woman faltered, drawing breath and creasing her face with deepening lines of great pain. What was it costing her to say these words?

She reached out for Mallory’s hand and wound her weak fingers around it. „There’s a metal suitcase under my bed… Maybe it survived the fire. Find it. It’ll help you… make them understand that I never abandoned them… never stopped loving them.“ Her fingers tightened on the detective’s hand. „They’ll believe it… if it comes from you.“

Mallory nodded. Of course they would. She was the one person who would never stand accused of insincere platitudes and lies of kindness. Nedda had chosen her messenger well – but too late. „I promise. I’ll tell them everything.“ The words sounded awkward and false, and she credited this to her lack of practice in her attempt to lie with good intention – to be kind.

And yet she was believed.

Nedda Winter’s mouth twisted between a smile and a grimace. „At least, at the end, I was there for Bitty… My life wasn’t really wasted. And I understand Walter McReedy so much better now… If saving Bitty was all that I had ever done with my time on earth… it’s enough. I finally found out what I was made of… and I was better than I knew.“

The eyes closed, and the muscles of the face relaxed in the absence of pain, years fading off with the loss of agony lines. The lines of life signs on two of the bedside monitors went flat, and a third continued on with its recording of a body function displayed in electric-orange waves of light. But Mallory knew that the technology lied. There was no mistaking death for even the deepest sleep. It was the unnatural stillness that gave it away, that frozen quality of a bird photographed in flight.

Good night, Red Winter.

Mallory’s left hand was slowly rising, closing to a fist – a hammer. She rammed it into the wall above the bed, wanting the pain.

This was not righd It was not fair!

Again and again, she attacked and cracked the plaster as she counted up all of the dead on her watch. She was bleeding when the doctors came to take her away and to mend her broken hand.

SLEEPLESS, CHARLES BUTLER HAD TAKEN TO BAREFOOT WAN-derings at all hours. It was five o’clock in the morning when he padded down the narrow hall of Butler and Company to the office in the rear.

Mallory’s computer monitors were all aglow, and her knapsack lay on the desk alongside the remains of a take-out meal. The half-filled coffee cup was still warm. He faced her cork wall and the penultimate symptom of a neat-freak spiraling out of control – a violent sprawl of paperwork. Her case elements were pinned in a horizontal splatter pattern. How many hours had she spent on this? All night long? Yes, her loss of sleep was apparent in the abandonment of perfect alignments. The wall was so messy that, at first, he thought this must be Riker’s work. But no – there was a rudimentary order in the chaos. However primitive, this linear progression was very un-Riker-like and all Mallory. Her signature ruthlessness survived in the single-minded march of data across the wall.

When would she ever let it go?

When would he?

Charles sat down at the desk and covered his face with both hands, somewhat surprised to discover that he had grown a three-day stubble of beard. And how many days had he worn this bathrobe?

Grief and profound depression were exhausting him. Guilt was even more tiring, and he was not yet done second-guessing his time with Nedda Winter. That was the horror of hindsight: there were always a hundred different paths that one might have taken to a different outcome. What truly drove him mad was that he had not listened to Mallory. How many times had she warned him that Nedda might die? Accidental death or not, if he had only kept Nedda close, she would be alive.

At odd moments, tears streamed down his face. He had no control over them. Before him, there was always a picture of Nedda happy in the realization of a simple little dream, Nedda free of sorrow and pain – what might have been. He laid his head on the desk. He would never take on another patient.

Her burden was more difficult, more death than he was accountable for. Unaccustomed to failure, Mallory had never acquired the emotional muscles necessary to pick herself up when she tripped and fell from grace. How well he could empathize with that, but he could not help her. Spliced together, he doubted that he and she would make one complete and healthy human. The other impediment was their friendship. Friends did not call attention to one another’s bloodstained souls and psyches.