Blood Relatives by Ed McBain Read Free Book Online Page B

Saturday, the sixth.”
    “Gee, I don’t know where I was,” Gloria said.
    “Would you have been here?”
    “Home, you mean?”
    “Yes. Here in the apartment.”
    “Yeah, I guess so,” Gloria said.
    “Was anyone with you?”
    “My parents, I guess.”
    “Your parents were here with you?”
    “Or maybe not. Saturday night, huh? No, wait a minute, they went out, that’s right.”
    “Where’d they go?”
    “A movie, I think. I’m not sure. Yeah, a movie. Mm-huh. You sure you don’t want something to eat?”
    “Were you here alone?” Kling asked.
    “I guess so. If my parents were out, then I guess I was here alone.”
    “Any of your friends stop by to see you?” Carella asked.
    “Not that I can remember.”
    “Well, this was only Saturday night,” Carella said. “It shouldn’t really be too difficult to remember whether—”
    “No, I’m pretty sure nobody stopped by,” Gloria said.
    “So you were here alone.”
    “Yes.”
    “What’d you do?”
    “Watched television, I guess.”
    “Alone?”
    “Yes.”
    “Gloria, do you know a man named James Donatelli?”
    “No, I don’t believe so,” Gloria said, and poured more milk from the container into her glass.
    “He says he knows you.”
    “Really? James who did you say?”
    “Donatelli.”
    “No,” she said, and shook her head. “I don’t know him. He must be mistaken.”
    “He says he was here Saturday night.”
    “Here? You’re kidding. I was here alone.”
    “Then he wasn’t here, is that right?”
    “I don’t even know who you’re talking about.”
    “James Donatelli.”
    “Nobody by that name was here Saturday night. Or any other night, for that matter.”
    “He said you might lie for him.”
    “Why should I lie for somebody I don’t even know?”
    “So he won’t go back to prison.”
    “I don’t know anybody who’s been in prison. You’re making a mistake. Officers, really, I mean it. I don’t know this man, whoever he is.”
    “Gloria, a girl was killed on Saturday night—”
    “Well, I’m sorry, but—”
    “Please hear me out. This man Donatelli has a prison record, we picked him up this morning because we wanted to question him about the murder.”
    “I don’t know him, I’m sorry.”
    “He says he was here Saturday night. That’s his alibi, Gloria. He was here at the time the girl was killed.”
    “Well, that’s…Is that what he told you?”
    “Yes. And he also said you’d deny it.”
    “Well, he was right, I am denying it. He wasn’t here.”
    “That means he hasn’t got an alibi.”
    “I’m sorry about that, but how can I say he was here if he wasn’t here?”
    “Gloria, we’re going to have to assume that Donatelli was lying to us. Which means we’re going to keep questioning him about where he really was on Saturday night. And if we still can’t get some satisfactory answers, we’ll run a lineup on him and try to get a positive identification from the girl who witnessed the murder.”
    “Well, if he didn’t do it, he’s got nothing to worry about,” Gloria said.
    “Before we put him through all that, I want to ask you again—are you sure you don’t know anyone named James Donatelli?”
    “I’m positive.”
    “No one by that name was here on Saturday night.”
    “No one. I was here alone. I was here alone watching television.”
    “Gloria,” Carella said, “if you know this man, please say so.”
    “I do not know him,” she said.
    At 2:00 that afternoon they ran a lineup in the squadroom. Six detectives and James Donatelli stood in a row. The detectives all had dark hair and light eyes, and they were all wearing dark suits and shirts without ties. None of them wore hats. James Donatelli was the third man in the line, flanked by two detectives on his left, and four detectives on his right. In addition to the seven men in the lineup, there were three other men in the room: Carella, Kling, and a man named Israel Mandelbaum who had been appointed as Donatelli’s