I’ll swear to it in court, Linda Ottomanelli heard him say. There’s no way Arlo Wilde hurt that girl. Not that day, anyway. Probably not any day.
Bianchi left.
The water kept running, flooding the Wildes’ side lawn and reaching into the Schroeders’。 Linda Ottomanelli and Rhea Schroeder sat drinking red wine on Rhea’s porch, but the rest stayed inside their houses with their doors shut.
At last, Rhea stood. She made a big deal of it, arms wide as if to say: It’s always me, isn’t it? The buck stops here. She cut through the Wilde lawn, to the Walsh house, and turned off the hose. Petite and walking with what they noticed was just the hint of a limp, she dragged the Slip ’N Slide toward her porch to allow the Wildes’ lawn to dry. The rest of Maple Street felt silly, that they had not done this.
They felt ashamed.
* * *
While Gertie and Arlo were waiting on the police department front steps, Fred Atlas walked to an outgoing connection and called them back. Arlo explained the problem. Fred told him to sit tight. He had a criminal attorney friend by the name of Nick Sloss, who’d meet him there.
“I can’t believe this is happening,” Arlo said.
Silence on the other end for a good few seconds. Arlo waited, shorn of pride. “I think you’d better believe it,” Fred said.
When they returned, it was explained to the Wildes that because Arlo was the suspect, and Gertie was not, they needed to be placed in different rooms while they waited. This seemed specious—like a divide-and-conquer plan of attack. But they felt that arguing would make it seem like they had secrets to protect—a story they needed to get straight. And in truth, the nature of the accusation was so shocking that they weren’t thinking straight.
Gennet led Gertie to a new room, shut the door behind him, and sat next to her instead of opposite. “Are you absolutely certain this accusation is false?” He had a kinder demeanor than Hudson. She felt empathy from him, even though his expression, too, was an emotionless mask.
“It’s a sickness. You’d be helping him if you told me the truth,” Gennet said.
“Have you met Rhea?” she asked. “Her son threw a rock at our house. This”—she pointed at the fresh scab on her cheek—“this is from her ring. She slapped me. She blames me for what happened to Shelly, I think. Because my kids lived… Or, I don’t know. I can’t pretend to understand how she thinks.”
Gennet took a photo of her scab. “Did anyone see her slap you?”
“Sure. The whole crescent. Ask any of them.”
Gennet wrote this down.
“I should tell you something,” Gertie said, her voice lowered. “I’m not an eye-for-an-eye person. Bitter just makes more bitter. It’s toxic. Every book says so. So that’s not why I’m saying this, but you tell me you’re doing your job and you want to find out the truth, and I think you’re being honest with me, so I should tell you.”
Gennet looked up from his notes. He had freckles across the bridge of his nose. His wedding band was an old-fashioned claddagh, heart pointed down. She pictured him meeting his wife at Croxley’s Ale House in New Hyde Park after work, noshing the all-you-can-eat wings. He looked the type.
“Rhea’s the one who hurt that child. This is her guilt talking.”
“What makes you say that?”
“She told me once, that she was unhappy. That she wanted to cause her family hurt. That Shelly galled her. Something about her hair. She hated brushing it. And Julia, my daughter, she told me. She saw the bruises. Said there was evidence Shelly was keeping. Pictures.”
Gennet kept writing. His pen-to-paper made a soft, reassuring sound.
“Where’s the evidence?”
“Her room, I’ll bet? But I don’t know. My daughter said she kept it in something called a Pain Box.”
“What’s the evidence?”
“Julia said it hurt her to be hugged.”
They sat like that, in quiet. Gertie stopped shaking enough to pour herself a glass of water. She let that sink in again: it had hurt Shelly to be hugged. She wondered where Shelly was right then, and if anything had comforted her, at the end.
“People from your kind of background cope with a lot of stresses.”
“My background?”
“You were raised by a Cheerie Maupin in Atlantic City. She had a rap sheet for fraud. You never finished high school. Your husband’s got a rap sheet, too.”
“That was before I knew him,” Gertie answered. “It was just drugs. He never hurt anyone. He’s not that guy anymore.”