Free Winter House by Carol O'Connell Page A

„I don’t expect to see your faces for three days. Got that?“
    He very much wanted to lay his head down on the desk and bang it a few times, but his detectives were still seated in their chairs, perhaps not fully comprehending that they had gotten away with this.
    „Leave,“ he said, „now!“ And leave they did.
    They left the door open, unfortunately, and he heard a snatch of their conversation.
    Riker asked his partner, „Where to now?“
    „We ‘re going to mess up a lawyer,“ she said.
    „That’s my girl.“
    Money was changing hands in the squad room, but the lieutenant no longer cared who had won or lost this round. He knew Mallory was going after the lawyer who had won a bail hearing, against all odds, for a cockroach who had murdered three women. The high school student, Boyd’s youngest victim, had been closer to a child. Jack Coffey had been the one to break the news to her parents, to show them the morgue photograph of their daughter’s face, a shot framed to expose the features least bruised and broken. The mother had touched the photo, caressing it with her ringers, then rubbing the glossy surface, as if desperately trying to break through that artificial dimension to get to her only child.
    Both parents had cried.
    The morale of the squad had gone down when that serial killer had walked out free on bail, spitting on the sidewalk and spitting on the law. The timing had been a gift from hell, the very hour of the schoolgirl’s burial. And so the lieutenant gave no thought to blowback from Mallory’s upcoming confrontation. Finally, he understood why she needed jurisdiction on the dead body of Willy Roy Boyd.
    She wanted payback.
    Coffey wondered if Mallory would go after the defense attorney’s testicles. There were some things in life that were worth his rank and pension; neutering a lawyer was high on the list.
    He picked through the cards on his Rolodex until he found the number for the parents of Boyd’s last victim. He would call them first and tell them that the man who had destroyed their lives was dead – stabbed to death by an elderly woman. They might find some just irony in that.
    No – they would cry.
    N edda Winter pulled back the sheer white drape of the front window for a better view of the old Rolls-Royce. Once it had been her father’s car, and now it belonged to her brother. A dozen suitcases were disgorged from the car’s trunk. Tall Lionel, sixty-nine on his last birthday, handled the bags with surprising ease, though he did this service grudgingly, for most or all of the luggage would belong to his sister Cleo Winter-Smyth. Bitty’s description of the summer house in the Hamptons filled its closets and drawers with her mother’s clothing. And Cleo’s room upstairs was packed with more designer dresses like the one that she wore now.
    So why this spectacle of suitcases? What was the point of two houses if one could not travel lightly from one to the other?
    Without taking her eyes from the window, Nedda spoke to the small woman behind her. „They’re here, Bitty.“ She glanced back at her niece, who was still holding the Bible. „Go up to your room if you like. I’ll deal with them.“
    This arrangement was very agreeable to her niece, who stole up the staircase with exaggerated stealth, perhaps on the off chance that Cleo and Lionel could hear escaping footsteps through the solid walls of the house.
    Nedda turned her eyes back to the sidewalk activity. Her brother stood beside the car, shaking his head. He was refusing to lug the suitcases up the stairs. Lionel put two fingers to his lips and whistled. The doorman from the neighboring condominium came running, smiling as a dog would smile if it only could. Money changed hands, and Lionel slipped behind the wheel of the Rolls and drove off to the parking garage, leaving his sister to supervise the doorman, who gathered up her bags. Cleo looked up at the parlor window, saw her elder sister standing there, then