Killing Critics

by Carol O’Connell

  He blamed his loss of temper on Detective Mallory. She had a gift for getting on his nerves.

  “That’s the trouble with lies, Oren. They only look good on paper. They never work out in real time and space. Now would you like to tell me how Senator Berman fits into this murder?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Mallory stood beside him, edging closer, saying, “My father used to say we all know more than we know we know.”

  What was good enough for the script girl might be good enough for the cop. He grabbed her shoulder and shoved her back to the wall. She gave him no resistance, but she showed no fear either. And now she was even smiling at him. He had always been comfortable in the sure knowledge of his own sanity. It crossed his mind that she might be the crazy one.

  “Oren, aren’t you going to tell them about the Outsider Artist scam? Big names, big scandal for the evening news. It might boost the ratings if you nail Senator Berman.”

  Enough! Bitch!

  He put one flat palm against the wall close to her head. “Now listen, honey-”

  He heard the click of metal before he saw the handcuff dangle from his wrist. In the next moment, he was being spun round and knocked off balance. His cheek was pressed to the hardwood floor when he heard another click of the cuffs, and his left hand was prisoner to the right.

  All the following moments were barely comprehensible to him. He was on his feet, being hustled toward the square of daylight in the distance. As he rushed his body forward, she kept him off balance. He was staring at the floor now and fearing that he would fall on his face. Then he was out on the sidewalk, and she was pushing down on the top of his head, forcibly seating him in the rear of a small tan car. In another minute, they were rolling, speeding through the streets, ignoring stop signs and lights, barely avoiding a collision with a bus.

  He was sweating profusely when the car pulled to a curb in SoHo. She pulled him out of the car and escorted him in a quick shuffle through a door and into an elevator, then down a hallway and into a room luxuriously decorated for another century. They passed down a short hallway and into another room of computers, modern furniture and a familiar face he had not seen in years. What was this cop’s name?

  “Hi, Riker,” she said, answering his question.

  Riker seemed stunned.

  “I want my lawyer,” said Oren Watt.

  “Up to you, Oren,” said Mallory, pushing him roughly into a chair. “But if we call your lawyer, then we have to go down to the precinct and go through all the damn paperwork, pressing charges for an assault on a police officer.”

  “I did not assault you!”

  “You’ve been away a long time, haven’t you, Oren? Eleven years? It’s a new world. There’s a huge political base out there that says I get to lock you up just for calling me honey. Yeah, the assault charge will stick. Four people saw me identify myself as a police officer while the cameras were still rolling. And there are a few old charges I could make stick.”

  “The statute of limitations was over-”

  “Is that what you were counting on, you idiot?” She brought her face close to his. “Murder never goes away. You didn’t do it, but you’re tied to it. You might need police protection, so play nice.”

  “Protection?”

  “The whole scam is coming apart now, Oren. Koozeman and Starr are both dead, and I think you’ll be the next man down. Want to come in out of the cold?” She leaned down to forage in a cardboard carton. When she stood up again, she had an axe in her hand. “Last chance, Oren.”

  “This is insane!”

  “Isn’t it? A bit like a bad acid trip through Wonderland.” She slammed the axe down on the table with great force. Oren Watt stiffened. “Well, come on, little Alice, it’s time for the unconfession. No? I wonder if the killer will use an axe again? The last murder had a little more creativity. Koozeman died eating the artwork. He was a greedy bastard, wasn’t he? Everything he saw was food, animate, inanimate. Now you sell drawings of body parts. Yeah, I think the killer will use the axe for you. It’s so fitting, isn’t it?”

  “I’d go to jail if I told you anything. You said obstruction of-”

  “Ease up, Mallory.” Now Riker spoke to him in a rational voice, almost kind. “This is the way it works, sir. The last one to cooperate loses immunity and takes the fall.”

  “Seven years in a cell, Oren,” said Mallory. “Or maybe I could arrange to have you shipped back to the funny farm for three more months of unrestricted television privileges if you cooperate. But that shrink of yours is definitely doing time for this. If you don’t recant that confession, I’m going after him. Then you know what happens? He throws you to the district attorney as a bribe. If he rolls over on you, he gets immunity from prosecution. He walks, and you do the hard time by yourself.”

  “That’s enough, Mallory. Stop badgering him,” said Riker. “You really want to think it over, sir. But don’t talk to your doctor. She’s right about him, you know. He will give you up in a heartbeat. He couldn’t care less what happens to you. He’s a profiteer first. I’m not sure he ever was a doctor. I don’t trust any of those bastards.”

  “You’re both nuts.”

  She leaned down, her eyes level with his. “High praise from you, Oren, considering your mental history. Markowitz asked you if you had any trophies from the kill, maybe a body part. What did you tell him?”

  “I don’t remember. I was high, I was jazzed. I swear I don’t remember what we talked about.”

  “I’ll give you one more chance. You tell me what piece of the body was missing. If you guess right this time, I’ll leave you alone.”

  “Her heart.”

  “Too poetic. You lose.”

  Now she left her seat to walk around the table and stand behind his chair. “Let’s try an experiment, shall we?” She pulled the chair out from under him, tumbling him to the floor.

  “Mallory!” The other cop was leaving his chair, moving toward her.

  She gave Riker a look to say, Back off or you’re next.

  Oren watched her walk around the side of the desk, and now she was advancing on him, hands clenched into fists. He managed to right his body to a sitting position. Working legs and rear end like an inchworm, he scooted back to the far corner of the room, tucking in his head to protect it from the rain of blows that was surely coming. She pursued him on cat’s feet, slow and quiet. One hand came from behind her back, the hand that held the axe. That hand was rising now, and he was crying.

  The other cop came up behind her and took the axe away. Riker pinned one of her arms behind her back and dragged her from the room and into the outer office. The door was slightly ajar. Oren watched the other cop slam Mallory’s body up against the wall as he yelled at her.

  “I can’t trust you anymore, Mallory!” Riker reached inside her blazer and took the gun. “You know, you were right. Watt didn’t do it.” He slapped her face. “But you’ve snapped, kid. You’re a loose cannon now.”

  Suddenly, it was Riker’s turn to be surprised. He was being lifted bodily off the ground, and then he was flying toward the couch, landing there in a tangle of arms and legs. He looked up to see Charles advancing on him in slow deliberate steps, as Mallory moved quickly in the other direction to shut the door to her office.

  Charles’s mouth was set in a grim tight line of anger, an expression Riker had never seen on the gentle giant’s face before. He knew that at any moment, this large man he dearly loved could take his head off with one blow, and by his face, Charles meant to do just that. Riker still held Mallory’s revolver in his hand, and Charles didn’t like the gun at all, not in this proximity to Mallory, and he showed no fear of it.

  “Stay back, Charles.” But Charles was still coming. Now Mallory had moved between them.

  “Charles,” she hissed, “stay out of it! Back off.”

  He did stop, but his face showed no signs of abating anger, and he was not backing off. So Mallory only held the giant on a string for
the moment.

  Riker untangled his legs and placed them squarely on the floor. “The game is called good cop, bad cop, Charles.”

  He could almost see the mechanics of Charles’s beautiful brain rapidly processing this information, realizing what he had done, and changing his mood from rage to unbearable sadness. Charles turned and slowly walked back to his own office, pulling the door closed behind him.

  “It’s time,” said Mallory, motioning Riker toward the door.

  He entered Mallory’s office alone. Oren Watt was still shivering on the floor. Riker crossed the room to kneel down beside the man, and this made Watt drive his body deeper into the corner.

  “Oren, I’m sorry about this. Look here,” said Riker in his normal, amiable tone of voice. “Whatever happens, I want you to know that I really did try to get the gun away from her. She kicked me in the balls.”

  “She’s coming back? And that big guy? Him too?”

  “Yeah, ‘fraid so. You know, she never levels with me. I really got no idea what she wants from you.”

  “She wants to know who killed the artist and the dancer. And she wants to know why, but I don’t know, I swear I don’t know.”

  “So you never killed anyone.”

  “No, I never did. She already knows that. Ask her. But I don’t know who did kill them. And I don’t know anything about Dean Starr’s murder or Koozeman’s. It’s the truth, I swear it.”

  “I’ll tell you what, Oren. If you help me, I’ll help you. And when she comes back, I promise I won’t let her hurt you. Deal?”

  “What do you want?”

  “You met a woman at the mental institution. She was very attractive, fortyish, short black hair and large blue eyes, very white skin.” He held up the photo Mallory had manipulated on her computer.

  “Yeah, I remember her. She was my friend.”

  “Suppose I told you she was a famous artist under an assumed name. Who would she remind you of?”

  “Oh, shit, there are thousands of people in the famous-artist category. Who can keep track?”

  “You remember when she left the hospital?”

  “Yeah. It was the day they took her last dollar. She was worse off when she left, and I don’t mean the money. When she first came, she was very strong. I wondered what she was doing there. She never said. So she came in larger than life, and left when she was small. It was sad.”

  “She was your friend.”

  “My only friend.”

  “You were close.”

  “I miss her. I think about her all the time.”

  “Do you know where she might have gone?”

  “No. I wish I did.”

  “Okay, you were very close to her. You confided everything to her. You told her something about the murders. What was it?”

  “I told her the truth. All I did that night was deliver the pizza and the drugs.”

  “You never heard from her again?”

  “Oh, she keeps in touch. Sometimes she calls me, but she never leaves a number. I don’t know where she is, and that’s the truth.”

  “Did you give her the connection between Koozeman and the murders?”

  “What? You’re not gonna hang anything on me. I didn’t-” And now Watt’s eyes were showing entirely too much white.

  Mallory was standing in the doorway. Riker got to his feet, dusted his pants and walked toward the door.

  “Hey, Riker,” said Watt, voice straining, breaking. “We had a deal.”

  “I lied,” said Riker, closing the door behind him and leaving Oren Watt to Mallory.

  He walked to the door of Charles’s office and knocked.

  “Come in.” Charles was slumped behind his desk, staring down at the blotter. “You’ll never forgive me, will you?”

  “There’s nothing to forgive, Charles. I’m really glad you tossed me around. Ah, you think I’m kidding?” He sat on a corner of the desk. His smile was wasted. Charles would not meet his eyes. “I used to worry about the kid. I mean, suppose something happened to me?‘’ Something like his rainy day bullet, which would not wait forever. ”Now I don’t have to worry anymore. I know you’ll always be there for her.“

  Riker put out his hand, but Charles only stared at it.

  “You’re just gonna leave it hanging out there in the air that way?”

  Charles grasped Riker’s hand, but his face was a long way from coming to terms with what he had done, and what he had planned to do.

  “Snap out of it, Charles. You’re breaking my heart here. I don’t need that kind of crap from you. I got Mallory for that.”

  “Oren, I already know how scum like you happen to be on such friendly terms with a senator. He buys your work. That bastard is one of the ghouls, the crime scavengers.”

  Oren Watt had recovered a bit of his emotional stability now. Mallory had trained him like a rat. As long as he answered the questions, she kept her distance.

  “No, that’s not exactly right. He’s not a collector, he’s only in it for the money, the turnover profit. He’s part of the start-up market. He makes the initial investment.”

  “Then he makes his profits in the secondary market after he and his friends drive the price up.”

  “Right.”

  “So it’s a cartel?”

  “Nothing that sophisticated. He’s just an individual buyer. He bought Peter Ariel’s work, too. And then he made big bucks after the murder.”

  “Could Berman have had anything to do with the murders?”

  “That ass? Oh, give me a break. No. Let’s just say the money he made on Peter Ariel whetted his appetite for crime art. He also bought John Wayne Gacy’s work. He held it until after the execution, and then he made a bundle. And there are eight or ten minor mass murderers who paint. Berman buys ghoul art by the carload and makes a huge profit on volume. He gets it from prisons and mental institutions. It’s just business. He unloads it as fast as he can.”

  “He used Koozeman to broker all the deals quietly, right?”

  “Lots of people went through Koozeman.”

  “I found your shrink’s name in Koozeman’s computer,” she lied. “It looks like they started doing business about twelve years ago.”

  Oren Watt was nodding his head. All she’d been able to turn up were code names and dates. Blakely probably had the Rosetta stone to break that code. If so, it was burned by now.

  “So Koozeman had a lock on the sickness market? He was the one who did the deal with the shrink for your confession, right?”

  “Yeah, he snagged me outside the gallery the night of the murder-right after the cops let me go. He told me to go to his apartment building, and he put me into a cab. That night, we all met at Koozeman’s place. I signed an agent contract with the shrink, and the shrink did a contract with Koozeman. Koozeman had the lists of people who would pay the moon for art connected to high-profile crimes. No one seemed to care that I couldn’t draw.”

  “Koozeman and the shrink I can almost understand. But it’s a funny business for a senator, making profits on murdered taxpayers. So Senator Berman must have gone nuts when there was another murder in one of Koozeman’s galleries.”

  “He went through the roof. He thought it would all come out if Koozeman was investigated. Lucky the senator has powerful friends in the same funny business.”

  “You mean the lieutenant governor?” The ex-mayor of New York.

  “Sure. Why do you think that little bastard’s so in love with the damn death penalty? Every time one of those murderers dies, the price of their work goes up.”

  Father Brenner would give Kathy Mallory a worthy performance. He was still doing penance for the sins which could not be put to Ursula, for she was truly insane, and therefore blameless. The sins of blindness were his own. What he had prepared was a small miracle, given the time he’d been allotted to pull it off. And throughout the day, Ursula had been invaluable in putting the fear of God into lapsed Catholics, none of whom wished to be on the bad side of a mad nun on a mi
ssion.

  This was to be his finest mass. The music would be Mozart’s Requiem, for this was the piece which the precocious young student orchestra had been rehearsing when the priest made his begging call to the music school. A former student, a somewhat lax and guilty parishioner, was now the director of that school. Father Brenner had been refused with a hail of excuses from scheduling problems to personal problems. He had been told it was quite impossible on such short notice. Sister Ursula had then taken the phone, and the school’s director learned, once again, that it was a dreadful mistake to get between Ursula and God’s work.

  And so, the holy stage was now set with the well-scrubbed faces of music students. And he had packed many pews with their proud parents. It was a good turnout for the death of a woman whose name would mean nothing to any of them.

  The young musicians’ feet shuffled and tapped with stage fright as they held fast to their bassoons and bass horns, strings and trumpets, trombones and timpani. Father Brenner had pulled out all the stops for this most special occasion. The chorus would be sung by every gifted voice of choirs past and present whom the beleaguered choirmaster had been able to corral into service.

  Both choirmaster and conductor had told him it was insane to attempt the chorus without a proper rehearsal with the orchestra. The priest had counseled faith, and counted on good memory, for the Requiem Mass was not new to any of them.

  A parishioner who owned a mortuary had been leaned on to provide the flowers which graced the altar, a profusion of lilies and orchids borrowed for a few hours from the viewing room of the uptown funeral parlor. Actually, since some bereaved family had paid for those flowers, this might be considered a theft of sorts. But that was almost fitting, considering who he had in his front pew, the thief of candles.

  He was touched that Kathy had brought a recording device, which sat on the space beside her. So she wanted to preserve her mother’s mass. He was confident that both Helen and the birth mother would have been proud to see how far their child had come in her spiritual growth.

  He remembered the day twelve-year-old Kathy had stolen the communion wine from the school chapel and made herself sick on it. That day she had sat in his office, drinking strong tea and memorizing lines of scripture, preferring that to the alternative of his calling Markowitz at work to tell him his child could not hold her liquor.