“In his letters to me, he didn’t admit guilt. I hear now he’s trying to plead to manslaughter and they won’t have it because he hid the body.”

“Well of course not. They’re determined to make a liar out of him, if you ask me. They rejected the insanity plea, said he doesn’t meet the standard, when he’s clearly crazy. So he keeps saying what they want to hear, but it’s never good enough. I hate to say it, but—he was never very bright, my Stephen. It was such a disappointment to me. I went to Woodlawn High School and made straight A’s.”

Maddie widened her eyes as if this were a singular achievement.

“His father’s genes were—not what I thought they would be. Not at all. Then he left us. It was almost a relief. But I see him every time I look at Stephen. How odd to have married a redhead when I don’t care for them at all. I think it was because I was scratched by a ginger tabby when I was small. My family was very well-to-do.”

Maddie let the woman talk and talk and talk, although she quickly despaired of the idea that Mrs. Corwin would ever say anything relevant. Her voice was bizarrely hypnotic—squeaky, yet low in volume. It was like trying to listen to a mouse. A garrulous mouse.

After a very confusing story about her father’s golfing at Forest Park—“We could afford a private club, but he was very egalitarian, when you are truly to the manor born, you don’t worry about such things”—Maddie tried to jump in.

“You know, they still think your son had an accomplice. If they could find that person, it would give your son leverage. Or the accomplice would have leverage. That’s how it was explained to me.”

“Stephen didn’t even have friends, I find it hard to believe he could find anyone to help him.”

“He called here, right? The afternoon of Tessie Fine’s murder?”

The woman pursed her lips. All her life, Maddie had heard the phrase and failed to understand it, but she saw it now, the way Mrs. Corwin’s thin lips snapped together.

“How did you come by this information? Have the police been telling their tales?”

Maddie remembered she must be careful about referencing the police. “A little bird told me. A little bird from C & P.” Then, gently, almost as if she were offering an apology: “It was you, wasn’t it, Mrs. Corwin? Who helped Stephen?”

“Does my boy talk to you?”

“What? No, never. I mean, he wrote me a couple of letters last spring but stopped speaking to me after they were published.”

“Yes, he wrote to you. And that’s why he’s in this fix. There was no accomplice. He had the car that day. I don’t know why he keeps lying about that. He did something very bad and he has to face up to it. It’s not really his fault. The experiments—”

“At Fort Detrick.”

“Yes.” She looked at the plate. “I’m going to get you some cookies to take home, Miss Schwartz.”

“Mrs.” Maddie wondered if she still was that, or would continue to be. She was going to be divorced soon. What did people call divorced ladies? At any rate, there would be a new Mrs. Milton Schwartz. Ali, whatever that was short for. It had to be short for something.

Mrs. Corwin returned from the kitchen with a white cardboard bakery box, tied with red-and-white string. “Oh, I couldn’t take so many—” Maddie was saying as she brought a hand up in protest, only to have Mrs. Corwin insistently thrust the box toward her. It felt almost as if the woman had tried to punch her in the midsection with the box, only to drop it. Why was the box red now? How had paint gotten on the box?

A steak knife, she saw it now in Mrs. Corwin’s tiny fist. It was not large, but it was large enough. The woman made a second ineffectual pass, this one at Maddie’s chest. She managed to block her hand, to grab her wrist and twist it, so the knife clattered to the floor. Mrs. Corwin screamed in pain. Why are you screaming when I’m the one who’s stabbed? Maddie thought. She was experiencing a sensation wholly new to her—a supercharged energy, a clarity of thought. She was aware that she should be in pain, but there was no actual pain.

Beneath the screams were words, sputtered, hissing words. “Stupid, stupid, stupid. I was being kind, helping him put that girl out of her misery. I’m trying to be kind to you.”

Oh lord, the mother had instructed him. Was it possible that she had even—

“Just like the chickens on Auntie’s farm, just like the chickens on Auntie’s farm, what was the big deal? Easier than the chickens because the chickens run from you, before and after.”

Given enough time, the woman would kill her, Maddie did not doubt it. She had to get away, but how? Could she run? She felt as if she could. She felt as if she could run, climb mountains, do whatever she had to do to survive.

To her amazement, the first thing she chose was to box the woman’s ears and shout in her face: “Naughty!” Where was the phone? Was there a phone? Of course there was a phone, Stephen Corwin had called his mother from the fish store that day.

She pushed the older woman away with tremendous force, hard enough to knock her flat on her back, and bolted for the kitchen, where she shoved a chair beneath the doorknob and dialed 0.

“Send the police, send police,” she panted. “A woman is trying to kill me.” They asked for the address and she went blank, then remembered it. Even as she spoke, she was rummaging through the drawers, looking for a knife of her own. “A knife,” she told the operator. “She stabbed me with a knife.”

Outside, she heard a car starting. She peered through the window, saw Mrs. Corwin behind the wheel of an older-looking car, comically small. Was Maddie safe? She was probably safe. By the time police arrived—seconds, minutes, hours later, she couldn’t tell—the burst of adrenaline that had saved her was long gone. She pressed a kitchen towel to her middle, watching the blood seep out. She was going to be okay, she thought. She was almost certainly going to be okay.

Then: She did it. She all but confessed she did it. Even if Stephen twisted the girl’s neck, it was because she told him to. Tessie Fine was alive when his mother got there.

The police would talk to her at the hospital. She would have to tell them what had happened, what Mrs. Corwin had said to her. Then what? Should she call the Star, tell them what she had learned?

No, she thought. They’d just make her talk to rewrite.

November 1966

November 1966

They took her to Sinai, the same hospital where she had given birth. Milton insisted they keep her overnight, and Maddie was almost weepily grateful to him for being there, taking charge. Later, she learned that he knew having her spend even a night in the Pikesville house would mean resetting the clock on their legal separation, which would slow down his marriage to Ali Whoever. But she didn’t mind even when she understood. She didn’t want to be in the Pikesville house, either, but she was too tender, in body and mind, to be alone in her apartment.

She was given a private room with her own television and watched through the evening as the story unfolded. Mrs. Corwin had not gotten very far; she had crashed her car on Northern Parkway. She was in custody for stabbing Maddie and was expected to be arraigned for her role in the murder of Tessie Fine. She was her son’s accomplice and she had stabbed Maddie because she believed he had told her as much.

It was very satisfying, hearing her name in Wallace Wright’s mouth. He described her as a reporter on assignment. Not accurate, but who cared. She had assigned herself. She had not broken her promise to Ferdie. The paper’s top editor called her, ever so solicitous, making it clear that he expected Maddie, once recovered, would give the Star the scoop.

“We’d have you write it in the first person,” he said. “Face-to-face with a killer. I could put you on with rewrite now, or in the morning if you need to sleep—”

But Maddie was an old hand at not making promises to men and she glided through the call with her usual grace. “I’ll call when I feel up to it,” she said.

She was exhausted, sincerely, yet had trouble sleeping. It was almost midnight when she closed her eyes. A few hours later, she woke disoriented from a thankfully dreamless sleep. Where was she? What was going on? She was in the hospital. She had been stabbed. She had helped police find the accomplice—perhaps the perpetrator. With the two of them charged, police could then press one to cooperate, ensuring the death penalty for the other. Surely, that mother happily would see her son dead, would make that deal in a heartbeat if it meant a better outcome for her. How unnatural she was, but then—what is natural? People might call Maddie unnatural, too, if Seth were to screw up one day. What do you expect when his mother up and left when he was just sixteen?