The Cradle Will Fall Read online

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  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  In Tender Memory of

  Laura Mary Higgins

  May 4, 1961-August 30, 1962

  “ . . . for some patients, though conscious that their condition is perilous, recover their health simply through their contentment with the goodness of the physician.”

  —HIPPOCRATES

  ♦1♦

  If her mind had not been on the case she had won, Katie might not have taken the curve so fast, but the intense satisfaction of the guilty verdict was still absorbing her. It had been a close one. Roy O’Connor was one of the top defense attorneys in New Jersey. The defendant’s confession had been suppressed by the court, a major blow for the prosecution. But still she had managed to convince the jury that Teddy Copeland was the man who had viciously murdered eighty-year-old Abigail Rawlings during a robbery.

  Miss Rawlings’ sister, Margaret, was in court to hear the verdict and afterward had come up to Katie. “You were wonderful, Mrs. DeMaio,” she’d said. “You look like a young college girl. I never would have thought you could, but when you talked, you proved every point; you made them feel what he did to Abby. What will happen now?”

  “With his record, let’s hope the judge decides to send him to prison for the rest of his life,” Katie answered.

  “Thank God,” Margaret Rawlings had said. Her eyes, already moist and faded with age, filled with tears. Quietly she brushed them away as she said, “I miss Abby so. There was just the two of us left. And I keep thinking how frightened she must have been. It would have been awful if he’d gotten away with it.”

  “He didn’t get away with it!” The memory of that re assurance distracted Katie now, made her press her foot harder on the accelerator. The sudden increase in speed as she rounded the curve made the car fishtail on the sleet-covered road.

  “Oh . . . no!” She gripped the wheel frantically. The county road was dark. The car raced across the divider and spun around. From the distance she saw headlights approaching.

  She turned the wheel into the skid but could not control the car. It careened onto the shoulder of the road, but the shoulder too was a sheet of ice. Like a skier about to jump, the car poised for an instant at the edge of the shoulder, its wheels lifting as it slammed down the steep embankment into the wooded fields.

  A dark shape loomed ahead: a tree. Katie felt the sickening crunch as metal tore into bark. The car shuddered. Her body was flung forward against the wheel, then slammed backward. She raised her arms in front of her face, trying to protect it from the splinters of flying glass that exploded from the windshield. Sharp, biting pain attacked her wrists and knees. The headlights and panel lights went out. Dark, velvety blackness was closing over her as from somewhere off in the distance she heard a siren.

  The sound of the car door opening, a blast of cold air. “My God, it’s Katie DeMaio!”

  A voice she knew. Tom Coughlin, that nice young cop. Hetestified at a trial last week.

  “She’s unconscious.”

  She tried to protest, but her lips wouldn’t form words. She couldn’t open her eyes.

  “The blood’s coming from her arm. Looks like she’s cut an artery.”

  Her arm was being held; something tight was pressing against it.

  A different voice: “She may have internal injuries, Tom. Westlake’s right down the road. I’ll call for an ambulance. You stay with her.”

  Floating. Floating. I’m all right. It’s just that I can’t reach you.

  Hands lifting her onto a stretcher; she felt a blanket covering her, sleet pelting her face.

  She was being carried. A car was moving. No, it was an ambulance. Doors opening and closing. If only she could make them understand. I can hear you. I’m not unconscious.

  Tom was giving her name. “Kathleen DeMaio, lives in Abbington. She’s an assistant prosecutor. No, she’s not married. She’s a widow. Judge DeMaio’s widow.”

  John’s widow. A terrible sense of aloneness. The blackness was starting to recede. A light was shining in her eyes. “She’s coming around. How old are you, Mrs. DeMaio?”

  The question, so practical, so easy to answer. At last she could speak.

  “Twenty-eight.”

  The tourniquet Tom had wrapped around her arm was being removed. Her arm was being stitched. She tried not to wince at the needles of pain.

  X-rays. The emergency-room doctor. “You’re quite fortunate, Mrs. DeMaio. Some pretty severe bruises. No fractures. I’ve ordered a transfusion. Your blood count is pretty low. Don’t be frightened. You’ll be all right.”

  “It’s just . . .” She bit her lip. She was coming back into focus and managed to stop herself before she blurted out that terrible, unreasoning, childish fear of hospitals.

  Tom asking, “Do you want us to call your sister? They’re going to keep you here overnight.”

  “No. Molly’s just over the flu. They’ve all had it.” Her voice sounded so weak. Tom had to bend over to hear her.

  “All right, Katie. Don’t worry about anything. I’ll have your car hauled out.”

  She was wheeled into a curtained-off section of the emergency room. Blood began dripping through a tube inserted into her right arm. Her head was clearing now.

  H
er left arm and knees hurt so much. Everything hurt. She was in a hospital. She was alone.

  A nurse was smoothing her hair back from her forehead. “You’re going to be fine, Mrs. DeMaio. Why are you crying?”

  “I’m not crying.” But she was.

  She was wheeled into a room. The nurse handed her a paper cup of water and a pill. “This will help you rest, Mrs. DeMaio.”

  Katie was sure this must be a sleeping pill. She didn’t want it. It would give her nightmares. But it was so much easier not to argue.

  The nurse turned off the light. Her footsteps made soft padding sounds as she left the room. The room was cold. The sheets were cold and coarse. Did hospital sheets always feel like this? Katie slid into sleep knowing the nightmare was inevitable.

  But this time it took a different form. She was on a roller coaster. It kept climbing higher and higher, steeper and steeper, and she couldn’t get control of it. She was trying to get control. Then it went around a curve and off the tracks and it was falling. She woke up trembling just before it hit the ground.

  Sleet rapped on the window. She pulled herself up unsteadily. The window was open a crack and making the shade rattle. That was why the room was so drafty. She’d close the window and raise the shade and then maybe she’d be able to sleep. In the morning she could go home. She hated hospitals.

  Unsteadily she walked over to the window. The hospital gown they’d given her barely came to her knees. Her legs were cold. And that sleet. It was mixed with more rain now. She leaned against the windowsill, looked out.

  The parking lot was turning into streams of gushing water.

  Katie gripped the shade and stared down into the lot two stories below.

  The trunk lid of a car was going up slowly. She was so dizzy now. She swayed, let go of the shade, and it snapped up. She grabbed the windowsill. She stared down into the trunk. Was something white floating down into it? A blanket? A large bundle?

  She must be dreaming this, she thought, then Katie pushed her hand over her mouth to muffle the shriek that tore at her throat. She was staring down into the trunk of the car. The trunk light was on. Through the waves of sleet-filled rain that slapped against the window, she watched the white substance part. As the trunk closed she saw a face—the face of a woman grotesque in the uncaring abandon of death.

  ♦2♦

  The alarm woke him promptly at two o’clock. Long years of learning to awake to urgency made him instantly alert. Getting up, he went over to the examining-room sink, splashed cold water on his face, pulled his tie into a smooth knot, combed his hair. His socks were still wet. They felt cold and clammy when he took them off the barely warm radiator. Grimacing, he pulled them on and slipped his feet into his shoes.

  He reached for his overcoat, touched it and winced. It was still soaked through. Hanging it near the radiator had been useless. He’d end up with pneumonia if he wore it. Beyond that, the white fibers of the blanket might cling to the dark blue. That would be something to explain.

  The old Burberry he kept in the closet. He’d wear that, leave the wet coat here, drop it off at the cleaner’s tomorrow. The raincoat was unlined. He’d freeze, but it was the only thing to do. Besides, it was so ordinary—a drab olive green, outsized now that he’d lost weight. If anyone saw the car, saw him in the car, there was less chance of being recognized.

  He hurried to the clothes closet, pulled the raincoat from the wire hanger where it was unevenly draped and hung the heavy wet Chesterfield in the back of the closet. The raincoat smelled unused—a dusty, irritating smell that assailed his nostrils. Frowning with distaste, he pulled it on and buttoned it.

  He went over to the window and pulled the shade back an inch. There were still enough cars in the parking lot so that the presence or absence of his would hardly be noticed. He bit his lip as he realized that the broken light that always made the far section of the lot satisfactorily dark had been replaced. The back of his car was silhouetted by it. He would have to walk in the shadows of the other cars and get the body into the trunk as quickly as possible.

  It was time.

  Opening the medical supply closet, he bent down. With expert hands he felt the contours of the body under the blanket. Grunting slightly, he slipped a hand under the neck, the other under the knees, and picked up the body. In life she had weighed somewhere around one hundred ten pounds, but she had gained weight during her pregnancy. His muscles felt every ounce of that weight as he carried her to the examining table. There, working only from the light of the small flashlight propped on the table, he wrapped the blanket around her.

  He studied the floor of the medical supply closet carefully and relocked it. Noiselessly opening the door to the parking lot, he grasped the trunk key of the car in two fingers. Quietly he moved to the examining table and picked up the dead woman. Now for the twenty seconds that could destroy him.

  Eighteen seconds later he was at the car. Sleet pelted his cheek; the blanket-covered burden strained his arms. Shifting the weight so that most of it rested on one arm, he tried to insert the key into the trunk lock. Sleet had glazed over the lock. Impatiently he scraped it off. An instant later the key was in the lock and the trunk door rose slowly. He glanced up at the hospital windows. From the center room on the second floor a shade snapped up. Was anyone looking out? His impatience to lay the blanketed figure in the trunk, to have it out of his arms, made him move too quickly. The instant his left hand let go of the blanket, the wind blew it apart, revealing her face. Wincing, he dropped the body and slammed the trunk closed.

  The light had been on the face. Had anyone seen? He looked up again at the window where the shade had been raised. Was someone there? He couldn’t be sure. How much could be seen from that window? Later he would find out who was in that room.

  He was at the driver’s door, turning the key in the car. He drove swiftly from the lot without turning on the headlights until he was well along the county road.

  Incredible that this was his second trip to Chapin River tonight. Suppose he hadn’t been leaving the hospital when she burst out of Fukhito’s office and hailed him.

  Vangie had been close to hysteria, favoring her right leg as she limped down the covered portico to him. “Doctor, I can’t make an appointment with you this week. I’m going to Minneapolis tomorrow. I’m going to see the doctor I used to have, Dr. Salem. Maybe I’ll even stay there and let him deliver the baby.”

  If he had missed her, everything would have been ruined.

  Instead he persuaded her to come into the office with him, talked to her, calmed her down, offered her a glass of water. At the last minute she’d suspected, tried to brush past him. That beautiful, petulant face had filled with fear.

  And then the horror of knowing that even though he’d managed to silence her, the chance of discovery was still so great. He locked her body in the medical supply closet and tried to think.

  Her bright red car had been the immediate danger. It was vital to get it out of the hospital parking lot. It would surely have been noticed there after visiting hours ended—top-of-the-line Lincoln Continental with its aggressive chrome front, every arrogant line demanding attention.

  He knew exactly where she lived in Chapin River. She’d told him that her husband, a United Airlines pilot, wasn’t due home until tomorrow. He decided to get the car onto her property, to leave her handbag in the house, make it seem as though she’d come home.

  It had been unexpectedly easy. There was so little traffic because of the vile weather. The zoning ordinance in Chapin River called for homesites with a minimum of two acres. The houses were placed far back from the road and reached by winding driveways. He opened her garage door with the automatic device on the dashboard of the Lincoln and parked the car in the garage.

  He found the door key on the ring with the car keys, but did not need it; the interior door from the garage to the den was unlocked. There were lamps on throughout the house, probably on a timing device. He’d hurried through the den do
wn the hall into the bedroom wing, looking for the master bedroom. It was the last one on the right and no mistaking it. There were two other bedrooms, one fitted as a nursery, with colorful elves and lambs smiling out from freshly applied wallpaper and an obviously new crib and chest.

  That was when he realized he might be able to make her death look like a suicide. If she’d begun to furnish the nursery three months before the baby was expected, the threatened loss of that baby was a powerful motive for suicide.

  He’d gone into the master bedroom. The king-sized bed was carelessly made, with the heavy white chenille bedspread thrown unevenly over the blankets. Her nightgown and robe were on a chaise longue near it. If he only could get her body back here, put it on top of her own bed! It was dangerous, but not as dangerous as dumping her body in the woods somewhere. That would have meant an intensive police investigation.

  He left her handbag on the chaise longue. With the car in the garage and the handbag here, at least it would look as though she’d returned home from the hospital.

  Then he walked the four miles back to the hospital. It had been dangerous—suppose a police car had come down the road of that expensive area and stopped him? He had absolutely no excuse for being there. But he’d made the trip in less than an hour, skirted the main entrance to the hospital and let himself into the office through the back door that led from the parking lot. It was just ten o’clock when he got back.

  His coat and shoes and socks were soaked. He was shivering. He realized it would be too dangerous to try to carry the body out until there was a minimal chance of encountering anyone. The late nursing shift came on at midnight. He decided to wait until well after midnight before going out again. The emergency entrance was on the east side of the hospital. At least he didn’t have to worry about being observed by emergency patients or a police car rushing a patient in.

  He’d set the alarm for two o’clock and lain down on the examining table. He managed to sleep until the alarm went off.

  Now he was turning off the wooden bridge onto Winding Brook Lane. Her house was on the right.

  Turn off the headlights; turn into the driveway; circle behind the house; back the car against the garage door, pull off driving gloves; put on surgical gloves; open the garage door, open the trunk; carry the wrapped form past the storage shelves to the inside door. He stepped into the den. The house was silent. In a few minutes he’d be safe.