Free New York Nocturne by Walter Satterthwait Page B

one of the cots, staring up at the ceiling.
    I remembered things I had not thought about for years. My father laughing at the shore, knee-deep in a foamy surge, his sunbrowned arms held out to me as he cheered at my awkward, lumbering splash through the water. My grieving brother in our living room, wailing because he and his new slingshot had actually killed a small sparrow. My first day at a new school, second grade, walking in line outside beside a stunning young boy named Adam whose blond hair caught and held the sunlight.
    I thought about my uncle. Who had killed him, and why? Who had come up to the apartment last night to take his life? Why would he—or she—risk coming up there? People lived in the building. They were moving in and out of it all day and all night. Any one of them could have seen the killer.
    I could have seen him. Why enter an apartment where you might be seen?
    And why were the police so convinced that I was responsible?
    Well, the hatchet, of course. As Becker suggested, I had a history with hatchets.
    But why had the killer used such a weapon? Certainly there were guns available in New York City, probably an endless supply of them. And there were knives and explosives and a thousand other means by which to take a life.
    Why a hatchet?
    But who? Who would want to kill John?
    Daphne Dale? That man at the Cotton Club, the man in the white dinner jacket?
    Someone else? Someone I had never met, a person I could never imagine?
    I harried myself with these questions, but sooner or later, inevitably, I would sink back into self-pity: How could they put a sixteen­-year-old girl in jail? How could they do this to me ?
    At some point, much later, I heard footsteps coming toward me, and the jingle-jangle of keys. Mrs. Hadley. I sat up, swung my legs from the cot, and straightened my dress.
    She held a small metal plate.
    I stood up. Between the bars was a small horizontal opening. Without a word, Mrs. Hadley shoved the plate through and held it there. I stepped forward and took it from her. The plate was heaped with some thick substance the color of rust, and lying atop the heap was a worn metal spoon.
    â€œThank you,” I said.
    She crossed her arms and said, “They want to know. Upstairs. If you’re ready to tell the truth.”
    â€œI’ve already told the truth.”
    She nodded, as though this were exactly the mulish answer she had expected. She pointed a bony finger toward the food. “Either eat it or give it back. I’m waiting right here.”
    I sat back down on the cot.
    The rust-colored substance was beans, boiled nearly beyond recognition but cold now.
    Although I had not eaten since last night, I believed that I owed it to John to spurn whatever food these people offered me. I hated beans, and my good intentions should have prevailed. But, like most of my good intentions, they failed me. I started scooping up the beans and shoveling them down. The body, as we learn over time, does not really care much about our good intentions.
    Mrs. Hadley had been watching me. I placed the spoon in the empty plate, stood up, walked to the door, and slid the plate back through the opening in the door.
    â€œWhen can I see a lawyer?” I asked her.
    She sniffed. “When you start telling the truth,” she said.
    She lifted the plate and then walked away, her shoes clapping at the floor, her keys jangling. I stepped back to the cot.
    Once again, her footsteps ebbed into the distance. And then, just as the sound stopped, all the lights went out.
    My heart slammed against my chest.
    At home, in hotels, in John’s apartment, everywhere I had ever slept, in all of my life, there had always been some residual light seeping into the room from somewhere. From beneath the door, from between the curtain and the wall. Even starlight, sifting through the draperies, can soften the darkness.
    But there were no windows down here. The darkness in that cell was absolute. I could