I have never seen Spirit giddy at injury.
Sergeant Mullany puts a boot on Blanck’s back. “Okay, everyone. We need to take these jewels with us as evidence. We will log every item and its value. Officer Hoogland over there”—the sergeant lifts his chin at a pimple-faced young man in an oversized uniform—“will keep a ledger of what belongs to whom. Please line up to claim what’s yours and keep things orderly. Your valuables should be released from evidence in a few weeks.”
Doyle, who has now shifted into the role of the guests’ ambassador, steps forward. “Sir, we’d very much like to take our valuables and put this awful evening behind us.” The guests simper and nod.
“Sorry, folks,” Sergeant Mullany replies. “I know you’re shaken. But there’s this new technique out of Chicago we’re using now calledfingerprinting. It offers more evidence that the culprit did indeed commit the crime.”
Doyle lights up, and Spirit flashes me an image of a child being offered a lollipop. “Ah, yes!Fingerprinting!I’m familiar! Soglad the boys in blue have finally caught up to my fictional Mr. Holmes!” He guffaws.
“It wasn’t me, I tell you!” Blanck shouts. “I have no idea how those jewels got into my locked safe. It had to be that awful entertainer locked in the back bedroom.”
I feel a deep unrest. Something about Blanck being detained… I’m not as satisfied as I thought I would be, seeing him in handcuffs. There are still so many loose ends here, so many unknowns. What will become of my merry bandits now? Especially Kiyoko.
Mullany heaves Blanck off the floor and shoves him toward the elevator. “Don’t worry. We’ll question her, too.” He nods to two additional officers. “Peterman, Jones? Check on the ladies in the back rooms. I’m taking this guy uptown. Hoogland? You come with me.”
Officer Hoogland heaps the jewels into a hefty, sagging black evidence bag, and follows Mullany into the open elevator.
Before the doors slide closed, I dash forward, rubbing the spot on my throat where his hands were, moments ago. I need to say this.Thismight settle my deep rage at long last. I lean in and snarl through the elevator cage, “This was for Daisy Bohdan and Julia Princip.”
Blanck howls, “I’m INNOCENT.” And Blanck’s guests are treated to watching Mullany give Blanck a swift swipe to the shin with his billy club as the elevator slides from view.
Oof.
That’ll smart.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
The crowd follows the remaining police officers down the hallway to check on Evalyn McLean. Her head has stopped bleeding, but oh, the purple goose egg blooming on the wide expanse of her forehead.
She is dazed and demands, “I need my dog and a drink.” Both are fetched promptly.
The police move next door, to the room where Kiyoko was tossed inside.
The police unlock the door—
Aye, that creep Blanck has bedchambers that lock on the outside, take note.
—but they struggle to open it, as if the door suddenly weighs five times its heft or is blocked by a large piece of furniture.
Neither is the case.
I realize with growing sickness that they are pushing the door against a strong wind.
The window in this bedchamber, smashed.
I stand on tiptoe and see in the moonlight the jagged shards of the broken panes. A wave of horror as chilling as the wind rushing inside this penthouse bowls me over.
And here again, I am five, filled with red-eyed rage, looking at a hole in a window. A hole with hungry, jagged glass teeth. A hole of glass that eats lives.
“No no no no no,” I whisper. I shake. Terror clogs my throat, stings my eyes. I squeeze my jaw, my fists, my heart. I do not want to see what’s on the other side of that broken glass.
Broken glass cuts lives apart.
“Stand back!” The young officers push the crowd out of this room, toward the hallway. “Do not come in here!”
I ignore them and stumble into the wind-filled room. My hair lashes my face. My skirts whip in the wind.
I am five years old, and the redness has cleared from my eyes, and the boil has left my blood, and I watch as Maman and Daisy lean through a jagged glass hole, crying, muffling their screams, Maman panicking:We’re done we’re going to jail merde qu’est-ce que tu as fait, Rose?!And Daisy—seven-year-old Daisy, it was always Daisy—shushing ourmaman, gathering our things, ushering us silently out the door and into our new lives.
