He had never lusted after her as the other watchers did, for her smile had reminded him of the painted madonnas and statuettes that had adorned this apartment while his mother was alive. Pretty Natalie in her long summer dresses.

William studied Charles Butler’s tell-all face, checking for signs that he had given away too much. ‘It wasn’t just me that watched her, you know. She turned heads everywhere she went. All those men, they just had to look.’

‘And after she died, you took her photograph,’ said the visiting mind reader. ‘Nausea doesn’t come on in an instant. I’m guessing you had time to get off one shot before you vomited. You’re such a fine photographer. It would’ve been a natural reflex action – taking that picture.’

So he knew about the vomiting too.

‘All right. I’ll give it to you.’ William was actually relieved, though this certainly meant that Butler was a ghoul, the kind of customer who paid the rent, but a twisted type he had never wanted to confront outside of an art gallery. So this was really all the freak wanted, a grisly crime-scene souvenir.

Upon entering the bedroom, William locked and bolted the door behind him. When he emerged again, a print of the old photograph was in his hand.

After the man had departed with his purchase, William noticed that the amount entered on the check was more generous than the quoted price. He looked around at the evidence of his poverty, and he was frightened anew, for he suspected Charles Butler of being a compassionate man and not a freak after all.

William Heart returned to his bedroom. Again, he carefully locked the door and drew the bolt, though his landlord had no keys to this apartment. He lay down on the bed and stared at the opposite wall. Every night, before switching off the lamp, this was what he saw, a wall of a hundred pictures, all the same – the same face, the rope, the massing insects. This photograph was the best work he had ever done. The flies had been so thick and fast that the camera could only capture them as a black cloud surrounding the Madonna of the Maggots and Roaches.

CHAPTER 12

Erik Homer’s second wife, now his widow, lived in a large apartment on East Ninety-first Street. ‘It’s rent control,’ she said. ‘Two-eighty a month. Can you beat that? This used to be such a crummy area. But look at it now.’

Detective Riker guessed that this woman’s view of her neighborhood was limited to what she could see from the nearby window. He nursed a cup of strong coffee and longed for a cigarette, a little smoke to kill the stench of a sickroom.

Jane Homer was a mountain of sallow flesh, and he could roughly guess when she had become housebound, unable to fit her girth through a standard doorway. Her hair was a long tangle of mouse brown. Only the ends had the brassy highlights of a bleach blonde. Vanity had died years ago.

On the bureau, there were dozens of photographs of her younger self posed with her late husband. Jane had once been as slender as the first Mrs Homer. There were no portraits of her stepson.

A visiting nurse bustled about in the next room, chattering at Mallory while cleaning up the debris of a meal.

Mrs Homer’s handicap worked in Riker’s favor. Like most shut-ins, she was eager to gossip, and now she was saying, ‘I saw the TV coverage the other night. Natalie’s hanging was never on TV.’

Riker smiled. ‘Yeah, the murders are a lot alike, aren’t they?’

The woman nodded absently, and this gave him hope. He waited until he heard the door close behind the departing healthcare worker. ‘Did your husband ever talk about the murder?’

‘Oh, yes. Erik and Natalie’s sister – what was her name? Susan something. No matter. They talked on the telephone for hours. Erik made the funeral arrangements – paid for it, too. He didn’t have to do that, you know.’

Riker thought otherwise. Taking possession of his ex-wife’s body fit the pathology of a control freak. Even in death, Natalie never escaped Erik Homer. ‘What about the little boy? How did you get along with your stepson? I mean – after his mother died.’

There was a touch of surprise in her eyes, or maybe guilt. ‘Junior was no trouble.’

‘No trouble? I’ll bet.’ Mallory had quietly entered the room. She held a silver picture frame in her hands as she glared at the woman on the bed, saying, accusing, ‘You palmed him off on a relative after your husband died.’

‘Yeah,’ said Riker. ‘That was in your last statement to the police. You said you gave the boy away.’

‘Well, Erik’s life insurance wasn’t exactly a fortune.’ Jane Homer’s eyes were fixed on the picture frame in Mallory’s hand. It was something she prized or something she feared. ‘And I had all these medical problems that year. My thyroid gland and all. Junior loved his grandparents.’ The woman stared at Riker, then Mallory, perhaps realizing that she had made some mistake. She filled their silence with a rush of words. ‘I couldn’t take care of him. You can see that, can’t you?’

Mallory stepped closer to the bed. ‘You told a detective the boy went to Natalie’s sister in Brooklyn.’

‘That’s right’ said Mrs Homer, trying to appease Mallory with a feeble smile. ‘I remember now. My father-in-law had Alzheimer’s. Well, his wife probably couldn’t cope with that and a little boy too. So, after a while, Junior went to live with Natalie’s sister. That’s what I meant.’

Mallory reached out across the body of Jane Homer to hand the silver frame to Riker. He turned it over to see a picture with the familiar backdrop of the Bronx Zoo. There were light creases through the image of a man and a woman, as if someone had crumpled it into a ball before it was framed. Had Jane Homer rescued this picture from a wastebasket? Yes, that was exactly what had happened. This one flattered her more than the others. The girl in the photograph was not yet wearing a wedding band, and she had been happy that day. A third person had been cut from the photograph. All that remained of the unwanted figure were the fingers of a small child caught up in the much larger hand of his smiling father.

‘Was the boy having problems?’ asked Riker.

Mallory leaned down very close to the other woman’s face. ‘How did Junior adjust to his mother’s death?’

‘Natalie died in August,’ said Riker. ‘And we know your husband didn’t send Junior to school in September.’

‘Tell me what you did with that little boy,’ said Mallory.

Jane Homer’s eyes widened with the realization that she was caught in the middle of a police crossfire. ‘His grandparents – ’

‘No!’ Riker scraped the legs of his chair across the floor, edging closer to the bed. ‘No, Jane, I don’t think so.’

Mallory leaned close to the woman’s ear. ‘I know how Erik Homer treated his first wife. He never gave her any money – never let her out of the house. Is that – ’

‘Erik did the shopping. I didn’t need to go out. I didn’t – ’

‘Your first police interview was right after your marriage,’ said Riker. ‘The cops thought you were afraid of your husband.’

‘When did the beatings start?’ Mallory raised her voice. ‘On your honeymoon? Was that the first time he knocked you around?’

‘You have lots of photographs.’ Riker nodded toward the cluster of frames on her bureau. ‘I see you and your husband, but not the little boy. You never lived with Junior, did you?’ He caught the sudden fear in the woman’s eyes. ‘What did you do to Natalie’s son? Is he alive?

Jane Homer shook her head from side to side.

‘Is that a no?’ Mallory asked. ‘The boy’s dead?’

The woman trembled, and her bosom heaved with sobs. Speech was impossible. Her mouth formed the words I don’t know.

Mallory moved closer. ‘How could you not know?’

Riker leaned toward her. ‘Did you think your husband went off on the kid, maybe killed his own son?’