Killing Critics

by Carol O’Connell

  She ignored him, letting his words go by with no nod or thank-you. He knew she distrusted every compliment on her beauty. If only Markowitz had found Kathy the child before the damage was done. What twisted thing did Mallory see when she looked into the mirror every morning?

  She glanced over the edge of the roof, and quickly ducked her head back. Andrew Bliss was looking skyward in all directions.

  She turned to Riker. “Quiet night?”

  “A lot quieter than yours, kid. Did Coffey ream you out?”

  “No, he was even sympathetic when I told him Koozeman was murdered right under my nose.” She seemed almost disappointed in Coffey.

  “Wait till the press gets onto this.” Riker made a mental note to caution Coffey never to go easy on her again; it was costing him respect. “Too bad you’re so damn photogenic. You know the newspapers are gonna run a picture.”

  “Maybe after Coffey sees the morning paper he’ll decide to pull me off the case.”

  “No, I don’t think so. When they turn on the heat downtown, Coffey will tell them you had a good instinct in going to the gallery. He’ll hint around that you were following a lead. He knows how to work the brass and the press.” But that didn’t seem to cheer her up at all. “Mallory, don’t worry about it. Go get some sleep.”

  “No, I’ll take the late shift,” she said. “I’m just going home to change clothes, okay?”

  “Take your time, kid. Andrew’s not going anywhere. Oh, he’s run out of candles again. And I was right about him developing a new religion.” Riker pointed down to the late edition of the newspaper lying over the rifle at his feet. “The press is off the fashion terrorist angle. Now they’re calling him the messiah of Bloomingdale’s. Fits nicely with the altar, doesn’t it? That mannequin is really weirding me out.”

  “Yeah, but think of what it’s doing to Andrew.”

  He didn’t really want to think about that. He worried about the little man on the roof below, and the slow disintegration of Andrew’s body and his mind.

  And what was this case doing to Mallory? “You know the FBI is gonna love the Koozeman murder. It’s a bona fide serial killing, and that’s where they shine-if you believe their own quotes to the press. We have to come up with our own profile to keep that idiot Cartland locked out of the case. You got any ideas?”

  “Well, this killing was different,” she said. “I don’t think it was planned. This time it was the bartender’s pick. We found blood traces, but the pick was too short to reach the heart. Slope thinks the assault brought on a massive coronary. When he cracked Koozeman’s chest he found evidence of heart disease and a valve-”

  “Hold it, Mallory. Slope did the autopsy tonight? How’d you get him to do that?”

  “He owes me a favor.”

  “Slope might owe Markowitz, but he doesn’t owe you anything. You’re not shaking him down, are you, kid?”

  Now why had he said that? Slope was the last honest man in New York City. What could she have on him? Well, maybe the scenario just fit so well with Mallory’s own character.

  She turned away from him. “Something happened in that gallery tonight, and it set the perp off. I told Slope I didn’t have time to sit around waiting on him-I might lose another taxpayer. There was a lot of thought behind the first kill, if this one was done in anger-

  “A copycat killing?”

  “No, it’s the same perp.”

  He bit back the impulse to argue the difference between what she knew and what she wanted to believe. It was all the same to her. She was leaving now, crossing the roof, when she turned around with one last detail. “Oh, and now I’ve got Quinn on the site of three murders.”

  Mallory locked her apartment door and headed for the bedroom, unzipping as she walked. After stepping out of the black sheath and stripping off the nylons, she opened a dresser drawer to stacks of expensive, but identical blue jeans. In the next drawer, her T-shirts only varied in the selection of color, and the materials of cotton and silk. Her everyday wardrobe had been designed for efficiency-no time lost in deciding what to wear. White running shoes were for daytime, black for formal wear. It had never taken her more than three minutes to dress- until tonight.

  She pulled on the blue jeans, but left them unzipped. Her reason to hurry was forgotten as she stared at the candle on her bedside table.

  When she was only ten, she had asked Helen Markowitz for candles, and Helen had bought her a night-light, believing the child must be afraid of the dark. Young Kathy had insisted on candles, and then Helen bought them in every color of the spectrum, and candle holders for every surface of the bedroom. When the child lay in her bed, between waking and sleeping, Helen would steal into the room and blow the flames out. And so her foster mother had become intertwined with this nightly ritual.

  Now Mallory could not light one candle without thinking of her. But this candle habit had begun years before life with the Markowitzes. She had lost the origin of the ritual somewhere on the road. Why had she ever lit the candles? It had all slipped away from her.

  Early on, Helen had tried to uncover her past. Forays into this area had been gentle, never pressing, but the child had only folded into herself. Don’t touch me there, said her posture and her eyes. It hurts. Every memory had hurt her.

  Mallory sat down on the bed and lit the candle now, as she did each night without fail. She stared into the flame, searching for a memory, yet fearing if she concentrated, it would come and catch her in the dark.

  Confront your demons, the priest had counseled her when she was fourteen years old. And she had done just that. She had hunted through the halls of the private school for girls, stalking the nun. And when she had found her, she made the woman scream. The priest was startled when she told him she had only followed his advice.

  She never saw Father Brenner again.

  The candle had burned down some before she found Helen’s old address book in the wooden box at the back of her closet. Mallory had never completed the task of clearing precious things from the old house in Brooklyn. And why should she? It was home, and it would always be there waiting for her. Home was where memories of Helen and Louis Markowitz were piled from the basement record collection to the store of school uniforms in the attic.

  But in this wooden box, she had the personal things, papers which had belonged to Markowitz and might be dangerous, and small pieces of Helen-a thimble, her reading glasses. And now she held Helen’s address book, a connection to all people and things past. She flipped through the pages of the B section, and dialed the number. She finished dressing before the third ring was answered.

  “Hello,” said the old priest, roused from sleep. “Hello, is anyone there?”

  “It’s Kathy,” she said, in the presumption that he might recognize her name and voice out of all the students who had passed through the private school.

  After a moment of silence, Father Brenner said, “Sister Ursula misses you. She tells me her shin still smarts on rainy days, and this reminds her to light a candle for you.”

  “Why does she light the candle?”

  “I believe the thrust of her prayers is that you’ll be better-behaved in the future… Kathy? Are you still there?”

  But what do I light the candle for?

  “Yes, I’m here.”

  And who was Andrew praying for? The dead Aubry? There was no one in life he cared for. No parents. He’d been raised by a trust fund since birth. Who was he praying for? Or what?

  “Kathy, may I tell Sister Ursula that her candles have had some good effect?”

  “Tell me all the reasons for lighting the candles. What about guilt? Forgiveness for your sins?”

  “No, that’s the province of the confessional. What sort of sin?”

  “Suppose you’re a witness to murder and you never tell. Is that a mortal sin or a venial sin?”

  “I’m so pleased that you remember all the buzzwords. Now, what murder did you witness, Kathy?”

  “A woman. Let’s
say it was my mother.”

  “Oh, no, let’s not say it was Helen.”

  “My mother before Helen. So what’s the payoff if I tell, and what’s the penalty if I don’t?”

  “That neatly sums up your childhood philosophy of ‘What’s in it for me?’ Oh, and there was the companion tenet, ‘What’ll you do to me if I don’t?’ I believe those were your two guiding principles while you were with us.”

  “So?”

  “Well, the ultimate payoff is forgiveness-you won’t die with a stain on your soul. But before you can be forgiven, you must confess your sin, and there must be an Act of Contrition and a devout intention never to repeat your sin, a sincere desire to change your ways.”

  “Did you ever light candles when you were a kid?‘’

  “What? Well, yes. For my father. He died many years ago when I was a boy. But I still light the candles.”

  “So he won’t get lost?”

  “Yes, something like that. People do get lost in time, don’t they? Images and memories fade. But when I was very young, I think I lit the candles so I would not be lost…Kathy?… Kathy?”

  She stared at the candle, transfixed by a memory of hell. And the old priest continued to call out to her across the wires of the worldly telephone company.

  Andrew’s eyes scanned the clouds for the hide-and-seek stars which winked on and off, appearing within holes in the overcast sky and then gone again. The night was chilly and he gathered his blankets about him, but never took his eyes from the heavens.

  It was like waiting up for Santa Claus, who never showed until all the children of the house were fast asleep in their beds. He feigned sleep, lying back and closing his eyes to slits.

  He had no sooner done this than he heard the sharp thwack on the roof. When he opened his eyes, three votive candles rolled out of a brown paper bag which also contained another small loaf of bread. He turned his face in time to catch the fleeting glimpse of his savior’s head, a cap of moon-gold curls in flight just beyond the edge of the roof. Slowly, he crept to the retaining wall and looked over the side, afraid of what he might see.

  No one there.

  He knelt down to light his candles, and an hour later, he was still on his knees.

  CHAPTER 6

  “But the homicide rate has gone down.”

  “Well, it’s an election year. The mayor won’t let us drag the East River,” said Riker, over the rim of his coffee cup. “Don’t worry about it, Charles. We’ll snag all the bodies next year and bring the stats back up.”

  Riker was reading Charles’s magazine, which detailed the new and improved New York. “Hey, Mallory, listen to this. ‘Fashionable New Yorkers adore the subways.’ ”

  “They didn’t print that,” said Mallory.

  “The hell they didn’t.” Riker slapped the magazine down on the kitchen table beside her plate.

  Mallory set down her coffee cup and picked up the magazine. She leafed through the pages, frowning. “Why do you read this stuff, Charles?” Her tone implied that she had caught him with a porno rag and not an upscale magazine for well-to-do New Yorkers.

  “I rode the subway once,” said Charles, as though this were an accomplishment. “But now that I think about it, it was an abysmal experience. The train was supposed to be a local, and then it turned into an express and dropped me a mile out of my way.”

  Mallory leaned toward Riker. “Did Markowitz really buy that fairy tale about Quinn showing up at the gallery late because he took the subway?”

  “Not at first,” said Riker. “But Quinn’s private car was parked in his garage all night. The garage attendant verified that, while Markowitz kept Quinn busy. It’s not like he had time to bribe the kid. And the only taxi log was for the dancer. Now if Quinn was running late, he might have taken the subway. Maybe he’d worry about a cab getting bogged down in traffic. He wouldn’t want his niece to spend any time in that neighborhood alone. The subway would’ve been the fastest way to get there.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “That’s why I took the subway,” said Charles. “It was urgent that I-”

  “And Charles screwed up too,” said Riker.

  Mallory scanned the article titled “Gilette’s Last Building.” The unveiling of the plaza was slated for the day after tomorrow according to an interview with Emma Sue Hollaran. She closed the magazine. “Riker, what do we know about Emma Sue Hollaran?”

  “I never heard of her.”

  “She’s the chairwoman of the Public Works Committee,” said Charles. “That’s the group that made Andrew Bliss a respectable shoplifter.”

  “And she was an enemy of Gilette’s,” said Mallory. “I got that from Quinn.”

  “Waste of time,” said Riker. “The old homicide wasn’t a woman’s crime.”

  “I’m a woman.”

  “Okay, we’ll put her on the list.” Riker pulled out his notebook and made a scribble of Hollaran’s initials to pacify Mallory.

  “Actually, I was thinking Hollaran might make a good victim. I’ve got two dead critics now. Maybe it’s worth a stakeout.” She turned the magazine facedown and smiled at Riker. “Speaking of critics, you know that scar on Quinn’s face, just above the moustache? He told me Charles did that.”

  Now Charles had Riker’s complete attention as a coffee cup hovered in midair.

  “It was a fencing accident,” said Charles.

  Riker’s cup settled to the saucer with a small crash, and Mallory’s eyes were bright as she leaned forward. “You scarred him with a sword?”

  “Well, it’s a long story.”

  The detectives looked at their watches. “Give us the short version,” said Mallory.

  “It started with my acceptance to Harvard. I didn’t want to go.” No need to explain to them that he was only ten years old on the eve of his freshman year at college. “My mother asked Jamie Quinn to talk to me because he had just finished his junior year, and she thought he might be able to convince me that I would like Harvard.”

  Young Jamie Quinn had immediately understood the problem of a child leaving the shelter of a school for the unreasonably gifted to matriculate among tall people of normal intelligence.

  “He gave me a fencing lesson. He thought it might be a good sport for me. He said it would give me confidence.” And it might prepare him for the more subtle combat of navigating among the older students as a child with freakish intelligence which exceeded all known scores.

  “So we went out on the terrace of his parents’ apartment. He gave me the sword he had used as a child. But he had noticed the rust on the old mask and insisted that I wear his new one.”

  Mallory had done some fencing in college, but Charles was certain that Riker had not, and so he described the mask as a protruding steel mesh that allowed for peripheral vision. “It fits on the head like a protective cage. It has a padding around the face, and there’s a biblike padding at the throat to-”

  “Could we cut to the good part, Charles?” Riker poured another cup of coffee, and looked at his watch again. “I’m gettin‘ old here.”

  “Yes, of course, sorry. It was a freak accident-in fact, a combination of accidents. My saber was at least ten years old and it had-”

  “Sabers? Like the cavalry?” Riker cut a Z in the air.

  “Yes. Well, no. I do have an antique set of cavalry sabers, but the saber you fence with is more of a vestigial cavalry sword. There’s no cutting point, no cutting edge. It’s a tapered rod of steel with a blunted metal bulb at the point. Unless you’re using a sword that’s electrified for competition, and then, of course, the tip is quite-” He noticed Riker’s eyes glazing over.

  “Sorry. It doesn’t look much like the old cavalry saber, but the motions are the same. You make the slice and the stab, just as you would if you had a cutting edge and point. So I was using Quinn’s old saber. The sword seemed to be in good condition, but you can’t detect metal fatigue with the naked eye. He was going to give it to me as a gift, so I could-”<
br />
  Riker made a rolling motion with his hand in an attempt to speed up the story.

  “The tip of my sword broke off while we were fencing, and it made a jagged point of the blade. It was my first time with a saber in my hand. I was rather clumsy. I didn’t realize the blunt bulb was gone. I made a wild swing, and my sword went through the mask where the metal had rusted, and Quinn was cut.”

  “I’ll bet he was pissed off,” said Riker.

  “Actually, no. After the doctor patched him up, I tried to apologize. He just waved me off. Said he was honored and rather liked the scar. Then he thanked me for it. He really is the quintessential gentleman.”

  “But you were just a kid,” said Mallory. “He must not be a very good swordsman.”

  “He was superb, an Olympian. He was only nineteen years old when he won his first gold medal.”

  “But if a little kid can beat him,” said Mallory, “he must have a weakness, an opening.”

  “None that I’m aware of. And I didn’t beat him. I made a wild swing.” He turned to Riker. “You see, after a point is scored, you break apart. But I didn’t realize that, and I made the swing when he wasn’t expecting it.”

  “So he was unprepared for the unexpected, and he’s well mannered to a fault.” Mallory turned to Riker. “I’ve got fifty dollars says I can beat him.”

  “With a saber?” Charles stared at her as though she had proposed a flight to the moon. “You can’t be serious. A few fencing lessons at college do not prepare you to beat an Olympic champion. You can’t possibly win against him.”

  “If you want to bet against her, I’ll take a piece of it,” said Riker. “Is a marker okay, Charles? I’m short this week.”

  “Riker, I won’t take your money. She can’t possibly win.”

  “Then why not bet with him, Charles? You don’t do well at poker. I’d think you’d want to win at something.”

  “This is ludicrous. Quinn’s been a swordsman all his life. You fenced for one semester at school.”

  “She’s half his age,” said Riker, “and she fights dirty. I think she can do him.”