‘So you kept silent, and Kathy took the blame.’

‘Well, the kid was guilty on the arson charge. Kathy decided to get rid of all the evidence. She soaked the body with kerosene. Very thorough. All the medical examiner had to work with was some charcoaled meat and bone. So a nameless, dead kid took the blame for everything.’ Riker yawned. ‘Case closed.’ And then his eyes closed.

Twenty minutes passed in silence before Charles pulled up to the curb at Riker’s address. Rather than disturb his sleep, Charles gathered the man into his arms, then carried him through the door and up the stairs to the apartment. He laid the detective down on an unmade bed, then removed the revolver and put it away in a drawer. After slipping the shoes from Riker’s feet, Charles followed the last of Mallory’s instructions. He entered the bathroom and flicked on the switch for a plastic Jesus night-light.

On the lonely ride home, he thought about Riker’s version of events and then the way it had really happened. On one point, he and the detective agreed. The drug dealer had made the first strike before his artery became a fountain of spraying blood. Sparrow’s wound had come first – but not while shielding a child. That woman had been laughing when Frankie Delight put his knife in her side – Mallory’s own words, the testimony of an eyewitness.

Caught by surprise, Sparrow had fallen to her knees, crippled with blood loss and shock, then a sudden drop in blood pressure and the resulting lightness in head and chest – the weakness of limbs. He could see her hands trying to plug that hideous hole.

Perhaps there had been time to pull a weapon, but no strength to drive it home. And the dealer would have been on his guard against reprisal.

There were two chips in the thigh bone of Frankie Delight, an act of violence powered by rage and fear. Only a ten-year-old girl could have taken him down by stealth and surprise. Charles could see the small thief stealing the knife from the hand of the fallen prostitute, then driving it into a man’s thigh once – twice – getting even. How surprised the child must have been to see Frankie Delight fall and die, wondering then, how could such a wound be mortal?

The little girl had killed a man for Sparrow’s sake, then risked her life in trial by fire, and Kathy’s reward was not the ongoing love she needed so badly, but betrayal and desertion. That was the only scenario to fit every fact and explain why the prostitute remained unforgiven.

Charles knew what was happening in Sparrow’s hospital room. The dying woman, though deep in coma dreams, had been defeating the death sentences of her doctors for days. And this will to live suggested the stuff of her dreams, unfinished business. All this time, Sparrow had been waiting for Mallory.

His car rolled to a stop, and he closed his eyes in pain, not wanting to imagine this reunion, a chanted litany of hateful acts and trespasses, music to die by.

And so he turned his mind to the last riddle, expecting to make short work of it: how had Kathy escaped the fire?

Logic could not carry him everywhere, but damned close. He liked Sparrow’s theory best. The child must have been thrown clear in the explosion. He envisioned Kathy surrounded by fire and running past the corpse of Frankie Delight as it burned brightly head to toe. Kathy’s feet barely touched the ground, all but flying to gain that staircase before the flames could eat her. Behind her, the boards were awash in roiling liquid fire. He could hear her scream the only prayer a child knows to ask for pity and mercy, ‘Mama!’ Or had she called out for Sparrow? The flames raced up the stairs with her, singeing hair as she climbed higher and higher. Bombs were going off on the floors below.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Kathy pushed through the rooftop door and saw the sky and – then what? No fire escape, no way out. She raised her arms like thin white wings. And what happened next? The whole world exploded under her feet. She must have been thrown clear, but how to account for her lack of injuries? How far could one throw a child without harming her? Given the probable force of the blast, the speed of propulsion, and the sudden impact – the child lay dead or badly broken in every logical scenario all night long.

Over the ensuing years, Charles would come to understand the persistence of whores, their book salon and the maddening quest for the end of a story. The problem of the escape would never be solved – unless one counted the last words he would write in his journal toward the end of a very long life. Because he had never betrayed his role as a keeper of secrets, an eater of sins, his children and grandchildren would be forever confounded by his homage to Sparrow’s faith in comic-book heroes, a single line at the center of the page, ‘Kathy, can you fly?’

EPILOGUE

Detective Mallory shuddered so slightly that the doctor beside her failed to notice. She dug her fingernails into her palms to bring on the pain – to stay awake and focused, to see this thing through.

Payback.

Rain drummed on the window of Sparrow’s hospital room. The lights were low, and Father Rose hovered over the sickbed, armed with his magical rosary beads. Mallory watched him don his surplice to perform the sacrament of last rites – a waste of precious time.

The young intern affirmed this idea, saying, ‘I don’t think she knows what’s going on.’ Mallory stared at the woman on the bed, eyes rolling, mouth drooling. Sparrow seemed smaller now, as houses do when children revisit them later in life. ‘How can you tell if she’s awake?’

The doctor shrugged. ‘Does it matter? There’s a big difference between awake and aware. She only has a few hours, I’m sure of that much. Her organs are shutting down.’

And the physician did not want to be here at the end. Why linger over his failure? He left the room quickly – escaping. Mallory listened to his footsteps hurrying down the corridor, outrunning death. Only a priest would be attracted to Sparrow now.

‘Do you heartily repent your sins?’

‘Father, that would take years. She’s a whore.’ Mallory opened the door as an invitation for the man to leave, and soon. The priest stared at her in surprise, as though her hint might have been too subtle. ‘Speed it up,’ she said. ‘I haven’t got all night – and neither does Sparrow.’

Father Rose bent over his parishioner. ‘Can you give me a sign of contrition?’

‘She’s sorry,’ said Mallory. ‘I saw her eyes move.’

‘You’re heartless.’

‘I know that.’

‘She’s dying. Why can’t you leave her in peace?’ The rest of his words to Sparrow were close to mime, inaudible and ending with the sign of the cross.

‘You’re done. Good.’ Mallory walked across the room and stood very close to the man. ‘Father, leave now.’ She held up her gold shield to remind him that she was the law. ‘I’ve got official business here. I’m not giving you a choice.’

She would have liked him better if he had put up a fight, but he turned his eyes to Sparrow’s, and every thought in his head was there to read when he shrugged. The priest was already writing off the whore as a corpse. What more damage could be done to her now? What comfort could his presence bring? None.

He left the room quietly, and Mallory shut the door behind him, then jammed a straight-back chair beneath the knob to keep it closed. There would be no more visitors tonight.

She walked back to her old enemy on the hospital bed, the woman who had betrayed her and, worse, abandoned her. Now the whore was the one who was utterly helpless, unable to lift one hand in defense. Her skin was as pale as the sheets.

‘Sparrow? It’s me!’

There was no response beyond ragged breathing and the endless demented motion of blue eyes that saw nothing. Could Sparrow hear? Could she understand the words? There was no way to tell. The only certainty in this room was death; it was coming.