Read Online Murder at the Falls by Stefanie Matteson - Free Book Online

nearly complete absence of modern buildings meant that the gracious turn-of-the-century landmarks had not been eclipsed by modern glass and steel towers. With the exception of the church spires and the smokestacks, the highest structures were the public ones. The aura of importance vested in these buildings by their physical dominance gave the city a sense of order that was missing from many cities—American cities, that is; European cities seemed to do better at preserving some kind of architectural sense. Charlotte marveled at the wonderful old architecture as they drove by (in several cases, more than once): the elegant Beaux Arts City Hall, with its shining white clock tower; the neoclassical county courthouse, with its cool, gray dome; the old Flemish-style post office, now a court building, with its stepped red brick gables. Even the old Fabian Theatre, where she had sold war bonds, was still there, though it was now divided into five movie theaters. What had happened to the marvelous vaulted lobby with its showpiece chandelier? she wondered. And, although many of the historic mills had been abandoned, a surprising number were still in operation, the signs above their entrances proclaiming that they made shirts or silk thread or machine parts. Between the mills, the quiet streets were lined with squat clapboard four-family houses of the type that used to be called cheeseboxes when cheese still came in boxes. Children played on the streets while mothers watched from the stoops or from the open first-story windows. Though the ethnic identity of the inhabitants might have changed—they were now Spanish, Portuguese, and even Lebanese and Syrian instead of Irish, Italian, and German—the ambiance remained the same. It was a city in which people still lived within walking distance of where they worked. It was a city of neighborhoods.
    The other thing that struck her was the city’s sense of being fortified against the outside world, like a frontier garrison. Unlike most eastern cities, it lacked a river or ocean port. Its raison d’être was the Falls, not its access to the wider world. The closed-in feeling that came from the absence of a port was reinforced by the fact that the city was bounded on three sides by the great arc of the meandering river, which insulated it from the surrounding suburbs like a castle moat, and on the fourth by the craggy summit of Garrett Rock, which loomed over it like an ancient watchtower.
    It was a city encapsulated not only in time, but in space; a city living in its own cozy little world, and pulsing to a primordial rhythm that had been established long before the beat of commerce was added to the score: the rhythm of the heavy waters of the river plunging into the narrow gorge and crashing onto the sharp-edged rocks below.
    At last they found the public safety complex. It was a giant concrete fortress that took up several blocks, the exception to Charlotte’s observation that Paterson had no modern buildings. Voorhees was right. How could they have missed it? A cop at a reception desk directed them to the Criminal Investigation Division on the second floor, where Voorhees met them at another reception desk and escorted them into an office cubicle. After inviting them to sit down on a couple of the folding chairs that were ranged against one wall (he must not have wanted the people he interrogated to sit too close, Charlotte thought), Voorhees took a seat in the swivel chair behind his desk and leaned back with his hands folded over his paunch. A blow-up of a photograph of a girl poised on the end of a diving board hung on the wall behind his desk, the only decoration in an otherwise sterile office.
    “Someone you know?” asked Charlotte, nodding at the photograph. It had obviously been taken at a competition of some kind; the background was a crowded grandstand.
    Voorhees swiveled his chair around to face the photo. “My daughter. She’s a diver. She’s also my second job. Every