“She has a son who’s all grown up, but she doesn’t tell anyone. They’ll think she’s old, and she needs to stay young and pretty . . . like her name. Rose. Her name is Rose Wallace. She looks better than the white girls. Her skin is holding up. Her figure too. But she feels old inside.”
The room was silent as she chased the current, but it was gone as quickly as it had come.
“Why do you get more with some things?” Eliot asked.
“She liked this hat. Wore it often, I suspect. And hats don’t get laundered much . . . if at all.”
“None of these things have been laundered,” Cowles argued.
“No. But a hat isn’t laundered hardly ever. Even a knit cap like this. Washing doesn’t remove the ground-in memories, ones reinforced and layered over the years. But it can—and does—obscure details and specifics. If an item is freshly laundered, often I’m just left with a sense—not a specific scent—of the person who owned it.”
“So some things . . . reveal more?”
“Yes. Shoes. Coats. A hat one wears every day. Hats sit on our heads too, where thought is centered. A pillow can be quite telling. A handkerchief that is carried in the same pocket, year after year.” Malone shifted in his chair.
“And some fabrics reveal more. Cotton talks. It absorbs everything. Silk is a little more coy. It clings, but it’s fragile too, and the weave is very tight. Very small. It doesn’t absorb anything.”
“And leather?” Ness asked, intrigued.
“Leather takes time. It’s tougher. But I could probably get something from a belt someone’s owned for a while. Or a holster.”
“Even an empty one?” Cowles asked, his tone wry. “Eliot wears a holster but never carries a gun.”
“Let her hold your holster, Eliot. Maybe she can explain that one to us,” Malone said.
“I’m not letting her anywhere near me,” Eliot said, a small smile playing around his lips. “That was impressive, Miss Kos.”
“Thank you. Is there anything else?” She desperately hoped there was nothing else. Her head ached and her stomach was gnawing a hole in her back.
“Just one more. On January seventeenth, someone found some bloody women’s clothing in an empty lot on East Sixty-Fifth, not too far from Jackass Hill. There’s a coat among the items. People don’t abandon their coats. They don’t generally bleed on them either. We’ve been waiting for a body to turn up.”
“A body did turn up,” Cowles said. “Remember Victim Number Ten?”
“We don’t know if they’re even connected to the Butcher at all. But . . . maybe you can tell us something,” Ness said.
“All right.”
Cowles moved to the end of the table and took a black coat from a box. He set it in front of her and then added a black cloche hat beside it. Both were caked and stiff in areas, though with filth or blood, she didn’t know. She closed her eyes, trying to ease the pounding for one last look.
“You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do, Dani,” Malone reminded her, his voice low. “And don’t forget to let go.”
She reached for the coat with timid hands. She immediately smelled coal and newsprint, sharp and black and tinged with . . . glee?
“He thinks he is very funny. He leaves these things for you, Mr. Ness. Along with lots of fun clues that mean nothing at all.”
“Dani?” Malone warned.
“Who?” Ness asked.
“I’m not sure. It was just an impression of amusement and your name in the papers.”
The ink and merriment were quickly drowned out by stronger currents.
“These belong to Flo Polillo,” she said. She felt the woman’s weariness and her thirst. But both were old. Older than years. She’d worn this coat through many disappointing, parched days. Dani made herself hold it until she was sure there was nothing else to see and picked up the hat.
“She hopes he’ll be quick,” she said. The weariness again. The thirst. “The last time Frank bought her a drink, he didn’t make her earn it. She’s surprised he’s insisting tonight.” She waited. Turned the hat in her hands. “She hopes the little girls will take good care of her dolls.”
Silence.
“That’s all,” she said, and she heard the note of pleading in her voice.
Ness exhaled and Malone reached for her hand as Cowles placed the coat and hat back into the evidence box.
“Is there a place I can wash my hands please, Mr. Ness? A bathroom perhaps?”