In the silence of his living room, the children already asleep, Teddy wearing a long white hostess gown that reflected the colored lights of the Christmas tree, he put his arm around her and relaxed for the first time that day. The telephone rang at a quarter past one. He went into the kitchen, catching the phone on the third ring, hoping the children had not been awakened.
“Hello?” he said.
“Steve?”
He recognized the lieutenant’s voice at once. “Yes, Pete,” he said.
“I just got a call from Calcutta,” Byrnes said.
“Mmm?”
“Ralph Corwin hanged himself in his cell, just after midnight. Must have done it while we were still taking Fletcher’s confession in the squadroom.”
Carella was silent.
“Steve?”
“Yeah, Pete.”
“Nothing,” Byrnes said, and hung up.
Carella stood with the dead phone in his hand for several seconds, and then replaced it on the hook. He looked into the living room, where the lights of the tree glowed warmly, and he thought of a despairing junkie in a prison cell, who had taken his own life without ever having known he had not taken the life of another.
It was Christmas Day.
Sometimes, none of it made any goddamn sense at all.
