Ed McBain: Lullaby

'I'm sorry?'

'Two-thirty,' her husband said.

Peter Hodding. Thirty-two. Straight brown hair combed to fall casually on his forehead. Brown eyes. Black bow tie slightly askew. Face a pasty white, shell-shocked expression in his eyes. Both of them walking-wounded. Their baby daughter was dead.

'Was the door locked?' Meyer asked.

'Yes.'

'You had to use a key to get in?'

'Yes. I was drunk, I fumbled with the lock a lot. But I finally got the door open.'

'Were the lights on or off?'

'On.'

'When did you notice anything out of the ordinary?'

'Well, not until ... we ... Annie wasn't in the living room, you see. When we came in. So I called her name . . . and . . . and when I ... I got no answer, I went to look for her. I figured she might be in with the baby. And didn't want to answer because she might wake up the baby.'

'What happened then?'

'I started for the baby's room and . . . found Annie there in the hallway. Stabbed.'

'Could we have her last name, please?'

'Annie Flynn.'

This from the woman.

Coming alive a bit. Realizing that these men were detectives. Here to help. Had to give them what they needed. Carella wondered when she would start screaming. He wished he would not have to be here when she started screaming.

'You've used her before?' Meyer asked. 'This same sitter?'

'Yes.'

'Pretty reliable?'

'Oh, yes.'

'Ever any trouble with boyfriends or . . . ?'

'No.'

'Never came home and found anyone with her, did you?'

'No, no.'

'Because kids ...'

'No.'

'Nobody she was necking with or . . . ?'

'Never anything like that.'

All this from Hodding. Drunk as a lord when he'd walked in, sober enough the next minute to be able to dial 911 and report a murder. Carella wondered why he'd felt it necessary to tell them he'd been drunk.

'Excuse me, sir,' Meyer asked, 'but . . . when did you learn that your daughter . . . ?'

'I was the one who found her,' Mrs Hodding said.

There was a sudden silence.

Someone in the kitchen laughed. The Crime Scene technicians were in there. One of them had probably just told a joke.

'The pillow was on her face,' Mrs Hodding said.

Another silence.

'I look it off her face. Her face was blue.'

The silence lengthened.

Hodding put his arm around his wife's shoulders.

'I'm all right,' she said.

Harshly. Almost like 'Leave me alone, damn it!'

'You left the apartment at what time?' Meyer asked.

'Eight-thirty.'

'To go to a party, you said . . .'

'Yes.'

'Where was that?'

'Just a few blocks from here. On Twelfth and Grover.'

This from Hodding. The woman was silent again, that same numb look on her face. Reliving that second when she'd lifted the pillow off her baby's face. Playing that second over and over again on the movie screen of her mind. The pillow white. The baby's face blue. Reliving the revelation of that split second. Over and over again.

'Did you call home at any time tonight?' Meyer asked.

'Yes. At about twelve-thirty. To check.'

'Everything all right at that time?'

'Yes.'

'Was it the sitter who answered the phone?'

'Yes.'

'And she told you everything was all right?'

'Yes.'

'She was okay, the baby was okay?'

'Yes.'

'Did she sound natural?'

'Yes.'

'Nothing forced about her conversation?'

'No.'

'You didn't get the impression anyone was here with her, did you?'

'No.'

'Did you call again after that?'

'No. She knew where to reach us, there was no need to call again.'

'So the last time you spoke to her was at twelve-thirty.'

'Yes. Around then.'

'And nothing seemed out of the ordinary.'

'Nothing.'

'Mr Hodding, does anyone except you and your wife have a key to this apartment?'

'No. Well, yes. The super, I guess.'

'Aside from him.'

'No one.'

'Your sitter didn't have a key, did she?'

'No.'

'And you say the door was locked when you got home.'

'Yes.'

In the hallway, one of the technicians was telling Monoghan that the knife in the sitter's chest seemed to match the other knives on the rack in the kitchen.

'Well, well,' Monoghan said, and smiled mysteriously.

'All I'm saying,' the tech said, 'is that what you got here is a weapon of convenience. What I'm saying . . .'

'What he's saying,' Monroe explained to Monoghan, 'is that your killer didn't walk in with the knife, the knife was here, in the kitchen, with all the other knives.'

'Is what I'm saying,' the tech said. 'For what it's worth.'

'It is worth a great deal, my good man,' Monoghan said, and nodded gravely.

Monroe looked at him. This was the first time he had ever heard his partner sounding British. He turned to the technician. 'Michael was out partying when I called him,' he said.

'Which may perhaps explain why he seems a little drunk,' the tech said.

'Perhaps,' Monoghan said gravely.

'Which, by the way, I didn't know your name was Michael,' the tech said.

'Neither did I,' Monoghan said, and smiled mysteriously.

'So what it looks like we got here,' Monroe said, 'is an intruder finds a knife in the kitchen, he does the sitter, and then he does the baby.'

'Or vice versa,' the tech said.

'But not with the knife,' Monroe said.

'The baby, no,' the tech said.

'The baby he does with the pillow,' Monroe said.

Monoghan shook his head and clucked his tongue.

'What a terrible thing,' he said, and began weeping.

He was weeping because he had suddenly remembered a very beautiful, dark-haired, dark-eyed woman who'd been at the party tonight and the terrible thing was that he'd forgotten her name. He was also weeping because he'd had his hand up under her skirt when Monroe telephoned.

Lying on a lot of coats on the bed, his hand up under her skirt when the telephone rang. Scared him half to death. He took out his handkerchief and wiped at his eyes. Monroe patted him on the shoulder. The technician went back into the kitchen again.

A pair of ambulance attendants came into the apartment, took a look at the dead teenager, and asked Monroe if he wanted them to leave the knife in her chest that way. Monroe said they should check with the officers investigating the case. One of the ambulance attendants walked over to where Hodding still had his arm around his wife.

'Leave the knife in her or what?' he asked Carella.

Which was when Mrs Hodding began screaming.

* * * *

It was four o'clock in the morning when Carella knocked on the door to the Flynn apartment. Both detectives had the collars of their coats pulled up. Both detectives were wearing mufflers and gloves. Well, Carella wore only one glove, since he'd taken off the right glove before knocking on the door. Even inside the building, vapor plumed from their mouths. It was going to be a cold year.

Meyer looked colder than Carella, perhaps because he was entirely bald. Or perhaps because his eyes were blue. Carella's eyes were brown and they slanted downward, giving his face a slightly Oriental cast. Both men were tall, but Meyer looked cold and burly whereas Carella looked warm and slender. It was a mystery.

They had obtained the baby-sitter's address from Hodding, and now they were here to break the news to her parents. This would have been a difficult thing to do on any day of the year. Bad enough that a child had died; it was not in the natural order of things for parents to outlive their children. Bad enough that death had come as the result of a brutal murder. But this was the beginning of a new year. And on this day, two strangers dressed for the freezing cold outside would stand on the Flynn doorstep and tell them their sixteen-year-old daughter was dead. And forevermore, the first of every year would be for the Flynns an anniversary of death.