Free New York Nocturne by Walter Satterthwait

knife. Or a hatchet. Your uncle didn’t have any.”
    â€œSo?” The single word was so adolescent that, hearing myself speak it, I nearly cringed.
    â€œ So ,” said Becker, smiling his wintry smile, “that means he knew the killer. He knew you . You walked right up to him, and he never knew what you were planning. You—”
    â€œWait a minute, wait a minute,” I said. “How could I walk up to him with a hatchet in my hand?”
    â€œYou hid it. Behind your back.” He shrugged his broad shoulders. “Maybe you wrapped it up in some clothes. Or maybe he was nodding off. It was late. He’d probably put away a fair amount of booze last night.”
    â€œIf he was nodding off,” I said, “then anybody could have killed him.”
    â€œThere wasn’t anybody else in the apartment.”
    â€œThere had to be.”
    â€œHere’s what happened,” said Becker. “Something went on between the two of you. Maybe he did do something he shouldn’t have. Maybe, like Mr. Vandervalk says, he went over the line and he deserved to be punished for it. We can take that into consideration. But last night you went and you got the hatchet—”
    â€œI didn’t even know there was a hatchet.”
    â€œIn the kitchen pantry, in the wood box. You had to know that.”
    â€œI’ve never seen the wood box. I’ve never been inside the pantry. We haven’t used any wood since I got here. It’s summertime .” My voice was reedy, and I could hear the panic crackling in it. They could hear it, too, I knew, and that shamed me.
    Another thought occurred to me. “What about fingerprints?” I said to Becker. “You didn’t find my fingerprints in there. You couldn’t have.”
    â€œYou wiped them off,” he said. “Obviously, you know about fingerprints. For a little girl, you’ve had a lot of experience.”
    I looked from him to Mr. Vandervalk. “But this is crazy! I didn’t kill him. I didn’t kill anyone. It’s crazy for me even to have to say that.”
    Mr. Vandervalk unwrapped his arms, leaned forward, and put his hands on the table. “Now listen to me, Amanda,” he said earnestly. “We can’t help you if you won’t help yourself.”
    â€œBut I didn’t kill him!”
    He smiled sadly. “Sweetheart,” he said, “come on. Do yourself a favor. All you’ve got to do is tell us how it happened—how your uncle, you know, touched you. It upset you. Naturally it did. It frightened you. And you were all alone in the big city. You had nowhere to go, no one to talk to. Anybody in the world could understand that. So last night—”
    â€œBut it’s not true .”
    â€œThis’ll all be over, Amanda. We can get you out of here. Get you a nice big meal, eh? Find you a nice comfortable place to stay.”
    The notion that I would betray my uncle for a “nice big meal” was so infuriating that I threw myself back in the chair. “No,” I said. I folded my arms, locking them across my chest. “I won’t. My uncle was a good man. He didn’t do what you said. He didn’t and he never would have.”
    I raised my chin in a defiance that seemed feeble even to me. But it was all I had. “And I didn’t kill him,” I said.
    He looked at me for a moment. Then, shaking his head, he sighed. He turned to Becker. “Tell Mrs. Hadley to take her downstairs.”

Chapter Six
    The cell was perhaps seven feet by eight and it stank, like just about everything else in the building, of pine disinfectant. Overhead, a single lightbulb dimly glowed behind metal screening. The floor was bare concrete. Two of the walls were cinder block, painted a flat dull gray; the other two consisted of long black metal bars, running vertically. Along the two cinder-block walls were narrow cots, each holding a swaybacked