Dead Famous aka The Jury Must Die

by Carol O'Connell

  "So I'm right," he said. "You planted a threat in that poor man's mind. You might as well have put a gun to Johanna Apollo's head. What about the effect on Riker? Did you give that any thought at all?" He was angry, close to shouting. Oh, what the hell. He yelled at her, "Clearly, you don't know what you're doing!"

  Though – actually – she did.

  He could see that now. Her cat's smile came stealing back, forcing him to admit that he had also been sucked into the game. And his own fears for Riker, hostage number two, would bind him to Mallory until it was played out. His hands fell away from her shoulders. His two-minute experiment with insurrection was over.

  Hostilities forgotten – as if she had ever taken him seriously – she leaned down to tap the keyboard of the nearest computer, saying, "If Riker's afraid of the psych evaluation, he can fake it." She brought up a file with a questionnaire. "The test is in two parts, written and oral."

  Charles recognized the screen image as the cover page of a personality profile. Many other pages would follow. The lengthy test would repeat and reword questions as traps for false replies. Mallory split the screen to display another document with recommended responses.

  "All he has to do," she said, "is memorize this one. The city's too cheap to order new tests. This is going to be so easy. After a little coaching from you on the oral evaluation, he'll be back at work."

  "This won't help him, Mallory. It's not that simple." He could read the look on her face. This was desertion from the ranks. "Getting his job back and getting him back on the job – that's two separate problems."

  "He's already on the job," said Mallory. "He took this stuff out of Apollo's place so we wouldn't lose it to the feds."

  "No, he's protecting his friend, Johanna – " Charles lost his train of thought. He was staring at the computer monitor and a dateline that corresponded to Mallory's last psychiatric evaluation, a mandatory test following the shooting of a suspect. He had always wondered how she navigated these examinations, missing all the traps set to catch her own peculiar bent of mind. This electronic cheat sheet forever killed his idea of her as an innocent savage. She knew exactly what she was. And Mallory was now twice wounded in his eyes, for she must realize that she would never be quite -

  "Do you ever listen to the radio, Charles?"

  "If you mean Zachary's program, no." He preferred newspapers to television and radio accounts of the Reaper, and he believed his view was less biased for that.

  Mallory had moved on to another computer in the row of three terminals. She tapped the keyboard again, and the speakers announced the Ian Zachary show. "I have them all in my audio file. This is shock radio."

  Charles was left alone to listen to the archived programs, and soon he had the gist of the game and the man who ran it – another sociopath.

  Johanna had returned from her last stint at cleaning up crime scenes, and Mugs was still drowsy from his long nap. He slowly followed her into the bathroom and sat down at her feet, not having the energy to rub up against her legs for a fresh spate of agony, love and slashes – a proper hello.

  The blood of the last job had never touched her skin, yet she washed her hands. It was a fight not to wash them a second and third time, though the cat would be the only witness to her compulsive behavior. She could not say when this urge had begun. Perhaps when she had opened her mind to Timothy's paranoia, a second neurosis, a hitchhiker sickness, had also entered in. She looked at herself in the mirror, then looked beyond her image to the shower curtain surrounding the bathtub. Though there was not even the shadow of an interloper, she pulled the curtain aside.

  No one there. Of course not. And no one in the closets. She checked them all.

  After changing into a suit, she wrapped her shoulders in a stylish shawl, then pulled it over her head to form a hood. The bulk of material hid the line of her deformity quite well. Mugs was slow to react to this signal that she was going out again. Thanks to the drug, there was no sign of panic in his eyes. He padded alongside her as she walked to the door, and he did not cry this time. There was only mild curiosity in his eyes as he watched her leaving him once more.

  Chapter 8

  IT WOULD BE GENEROUS TO SAY THAT THE DINING AREA was eight feet wide and twelve deep. There were four tables, small as postage stamps, and Riker was the only patron who did not take his foil-wrapped food and run. He was hoping to avoid his meal for as long as possible. The counterman was back in the kitchen having a protracted discussion with the cook. The subject of their argument was the simulation of a cheeseburger from their store of strict vegetarian ingredients. Riker had no plans to eat their concoction. He had ordered lunch for the sole purpose of renting a view of the hotel across the street. Having given up any hope of coffee, he opened the beverage cabinet and passed over all the health food juices to select a bottle of water.

  He kept one eye on the front wall, all glass and neatly framing the Chelsea Hotel. When Jo had returned home from her last crime-scene cleanup, she had been followed by two men in suits. Federal shadows? In plain sight? This was not Riker's idea of a covert surveillance detail. Neither would those two men fit the protocols for bodyguards, for they had followed Jo at the distance of half a block. And now Marvin Argus stepped out on the sidewalk. Nervous little bastard, his movements were jerky as his head snapped left and right. Finally the agent's gaze settled on the restaurant window.

  Riker lifted his water bottle in a salute.

  Special Agent Argus crossed the street in an unseemly hurry, and pushed through the glass door to greet Riker with all the suspicion this encounter deserved. Taking the only vacant chair at the table, the FBI man was forced to sit with his back to the window. "You just happened to be in the neighborhood?"

  "I knew I'd find you here." And this was only half a lie. "I figured you'd stake out Jo's hotel."

  Argus smiled, so willing to believe that this visit was on his own account. "So you've given my offer some more thought." He splayed both hands to say he was waiting for the decision. "And?"

  Riker had never been susceptible to prompting. He drank his water, dragging out the silence and listening to the fast nervous tap of Argus's shoes under the table. He set the plastic bottle down very slowly. "Did Timothy Kidd ever give you a name for the Reaper? It's not like I think you'll tell me who the guy was. All I wanna know is – did Kidd give you a solid suspect before he died? Did he get that close?"

  Argus was startled. His eyes shifted to one side, a hint that he was preparing another fairy tale. In this moment, when Riker was not being watched, he glanced at the door to the Chelsea Hotel. The FBI man held his silence as the counterman appeared with a fake cheeseburger. Riker gave it the sniff test, and it failed. "Try again, pal. This isn't even close."

  The man walked away with his rejected offering, and another backroom discussion with the cook ensued, guaranteeing Riker at least fifteen minutes of privacy. He rapped his knuckles on the table to remind the fed that he was waiting for the next lie.

  "Timmy had a suspect." Argus pretended interest in the beverage cabinet by the table. "But he named the wrong guy. Poor bastard. He was really past it by then, seeing things that weren't there." The agent turned back to Riker, watching his face in earnest now. "I could give you more details, but first I'd need a little something from you. Just a little – "

  "How did you rule out Kidd's prime suspect?"

  "The alibi was me and my crew. The next juror died at three in the morning. We were watching Timmy's suspect round the clock, covering all the exits of the apartment building."

  "How many men were on that detail?"

  "What? Four agents. All day, all night. I'm telling you, the suspect's alibi was solid."

  Riker did the math of twelve-hour stints, partners split between two exits and no one to keep each agent company and awake in the graveyard hours. He recalled the drowsiness of that late shift, the first night of a detail when no amount of coffee -

  Agent Argus was turning round to look at the hote
l as Jo walked out the front door and down the sidewalk, and Riker said, "I know who the Reaper is." The window was forgotten, and he had all of the agent's attention. "I'm betting it's the suspect Kidd gave you. One of your guys screwed up and went to sleep on the job." Riker rose from the table, hoping to convey that he was suddenly fed up with this man's company – and that was true. "You had the bastard's name and address all this time." He laid down the cash to cover his uneaten lunch and walked quickly to the door, never glancing back to catch Argus's reaction.

  The slow hydraulic pump above the restaurant door prevented him from slamming it. Standing out on the sidewalk, he watched Jo's gray shawl in the distance. She was so changed in this disguise, he had almost failed to recognize her. But even without eyeglasses, he knew that long-legged walk; he knew it better than any man on the planet; he had spent that much time speculating on the shape of the limbs beneath her jeans. In the short skirt she wore today, her legs more than lived up to the fantasy. There was no need to close the distance as he followed her down Seventh Avenue, then underground and onto a southbound train. He already knew where she was going. According to his source, the woman was good at spotting and dodging her shadowers. This, of course, was Mallory's rationale for sometimes losing Jo's trail. But no one had ever shaken off Riker, not once in all his years on the force.

  It was a cold day, yet Victor Patchock was perspiring profusely. He blamed this on the cheap red wig and the press of the surrounding subway passengers. He had no fear of getting caught by the cop in the brown leather jacket. Riker was so intent on following his own prey that he never looked back at his stalker, a smaller man lost among the taller riders.

  The train stopped at the Franklin Street station in Tribeca. Victor had lost sight of the detective. With swipes of both hands, he wiped the sweat from his eyes, and the white cane dropped from his slippery fingers. He bent low to retrieve it, and the dark glasses slid down his wet nose and fell to the floor, where they were trampled by departing feet. He snatched up cane and glasses, holding each in a tight fist. And now his vision was blurred not by sweat but tears. He turned his crying face to another passenger, and the man stepped backward slowly in that New York drill of no sudden movements while encountering a lunatic. For the moment, Victor, the faux blind man, had truly lost his sight as he fought his way to the door of the train, colliding with those who were boarding. Tears falling, his mouth wide open in a silent scream, he waved his cane in the air, and the crowd magically backed away as he rushed off the train, stepping onto the platform, which might well have been a dark hole for all he knew. He made his way toward what he hoped was the exit, looked up and saw a bright patch of daylight.

  Victor scrambled up the stairs, stumbling on every second step, and out onto the sidewalk, breathing deep and blinking like a mole. He opened one fist to see the twisted frames of his sunglasses, then put them on, lopsided as they were. He fancied himself to be all but invisible now and fearless. And then he spotted Riker – and he was terrified.

  Riker walked the streets of Tribeca, craning his neck to look up at the buildings, unabashed at playing the gawking tourist. He loved this town, terrible and wonderful. Each time he turned a corner, he walked into another state of mind. Though he might flirt with Mexico, he could never leave this great, grand, bitch city; it had him by the balls. His immediate surroundings lacked the hustle of the Financial District or any other distinctive marker. Tribeca was a shifty character among New York neighborhoods. There was no quirky definition to the facades; her face gave no clue to her intentions. Between the sprawling yuppie lofts and the hole-in-the-wall bodegas, anything might be going on.

  Riker glanced over one shoulder – just checking his back. He was vaguely unsettled by the blurred shape of a dark coat disappearing round a corner, but this was beyond squinting distance for a man who would not wear eyeglasses in public. He caught only the impression of a splash of bright red and a long slice of white on black. Was this another stalker, one of the people who followed him day in and day out?

  No. This feeling was only nerves, nothing more; this was his mantra as he headed toward a renovated warehouse, home to a slew of small commercial ventures. The sign in one third-floor window advertised classes in self-defense. If the feds had ever followed Jo this far, that would have been their first guess for her business at this address. After entering the building, he followed Mallory's instructions, emerging from the elevator on the third floor. There was a sign on the fire door at the end of the hall, large block letters that even he could read told him that there was no access from the stairwell side. Clever Jo had picked this location well. No covert surveillance crew would have dared to use the elevator and risk a hallway encounter with her.

  According to Mallory, the offices that did not advertise their businesses were rented on time-shares and paid for in cash – always a good sign of criminal activity. Neither the tenants nor a tax-evading landlord would readily share information with local police or government cops. And any verbal inquiries by a tall blonde with memorable green eyes would have gotten back to Jo and put her on guard. Mallory must have been so pissed off. On his way down the hall, he looked in on the karate class of women slamming one another to floor mats. They were playing roles of victims and attackers, and deeply bowing with entirely too much courtesy. He wondered if these students understood that their training would only help them if a real rapist agreed to strike the classroom poses. Then the guy would have to wait for the women to kick him in the right place. And maybe, given a good-natured pervert, time would be allowed for a second shot if they missed the testicles on the first try.

  He continued on down the hall and found a young man in conversation with an elderly janitor. The pair stood in front of the room that was Riker's own destination.

  "You're late. They've already started," said the old man with his cluster of keys in hand. He unlocked the door for the other visitor, not wanting to disturb a meeting in progress by using the buzzer. Riker followed the other man through the door, nodding his thanks to the janitor, as if he had also come here by invitation.

  In order to find out which of the many doors led to Jo's rented rooms, he guessed that Mallory, poor kid, had probably been forced to plant illegal eavesdropping equipment in every office on this floor. He could never ask her about that, but it was a safe bet.

  Upon entering the small reception area, he could hear Jo's voice behind a closed door. She was welcoming the new arrival. Instead of following the other man into the next room, Riker settled into a shabby chair with worn upholstery and pretended to read a magazine plucked from the only table. More people entered this waiting room, and now he knew that Mallory had been right about the members of this select group, for he recognized these two visitors.

  The little girl tugged on her mother's hand, wanting to stop awhile by Riker's chair, saying, "I remember you."

  "Mr. Rikerr The child's mother was more enthusiastic with her own greeting. Fortunately, her voice was too soft to carry above the conversation in the next room. The woman reached for his hand and pumped it up and down, grinning widely, so happy to see him. " Thank you. Thank you so much." She caressed her child's curly dark hair. "Not the same little girl you met the night – the – "

  The night your husband cracked half the bones in your face? The night you killed the bastard with a kitchen knife?

  The damage was still visible in the broken planes of the mother's cheek and nose. Riker remembered her injuries well. The catching detective had called him to this woman's home while the blood was still wet on her kitchen floor and droplets streamed down the walls. An assistant DA had made the call of justifiable homicide, and the confessed killer, the victim's own wife, was not charged. The crime scene had been released to the cleaners that same night, for the mother and her child were poor. They had nowhere else to go.

  Riker knew that feeling.

  Jo, his new trainee, had been his helper on that pro bono job. And he well remembered this little girl, the witness to
an assault on her mother and the death of her father. What a difference. Once she had been a painful reminder of Kathy Mallory at the same age – same look about the eyes.

  Back in the days when he was still allowed to call his partner Kathy, the former street kid had been more determined to hold on to her own emotional wounds, insisting that her history belonged to her alone, and, as a child, she had dealt with it alone – and so quietly, without tears or complaint, without recovery or repair. But this little girl before him now was making a comeback, a return to humanity. Her eyes were no longer adult and wary when she smiled for him. Jo had done a good job. What a pity that there had been no talented Dr. Apollo to heal young Kathy.

  And while he was admiring this less damaged child, the mother expressed her thanks to Ned's Crime Scene Cleaners for the generosity of providing a therapy group. Mallory had uncovered the function of these rented rooms weeks ago, but Riker had only learned of it today. And now one mystery was solved: Jo's work on homicides was her introduction to the survivors, trauma victims all.

  Mallory must have been so disappointed to find no money motive here, that far from working a fiddle on the side for profit, Dr. Apollo was applying her old trade free of charge. But trust a cop to come up with a sinister reason for acts of charity. The young detective had damned the doctor with the filthy crime of atonement. And now he remembered the gist of Mallory's final caustic remark: for her next act, Johanna Apollo would be Washing the feet of lepers – expiating what sin?

  Mother and child disappeared into the next room, and Riker listened to the healing balm of Jo's conversation on the other side of the door. He closed his eyes to be alone with that voice that also spoke to him.

  Mallory slid her lock picks into the back pocket of her jeans, then opened the door to Riker's apartment. As always, her first impulse was to open a window, but Riker might notice the missing smell of stale smoke and the sweet rot of leftover food. Other emotions were in play: revulsion, and the almost unbearable desire to create order out of this unholy mess. But intuition and distrust held sway and led her to the fireplace, and there she found the evidence against him. There were no signs of a burnt log in the grate, only the flat ashes and remnants of papers.