The screen image changed to show an elderly man emerging from a parked car on a residential street in suburbia. The ancient wrinkled face was fearful as his startled eyes took in the approaching mob, an onslaught of reporters with cameras and microphones, coming to crush him. Now the camera shot the old man’s back as he hurried up the flagstone path toward the sanctuary of his little house. His walking canes slowed his flight, and every reporter was able to beat him to the door. He stopped and covered his face with both hands, yelling, „Yes, she’s dead! My wife is dead! Are you happy now?“
A reporter was asking – shouting, „Was it a sudden death?“
„No,“ said the old man. „She was ninety-two years old. It took a long, long time.“
In the background, a garage door flew open to reveal a young amazon in strapping good health. The girl ran into the front yard, armed with a baseball bat. She was heading for the reporters, swinging her weapon in blind fury and screaming, „My grandmother died of pneumonia, you freaking – “ The camera crew dispersed quickly, and now their lenses recorded the jumpy, quirky images of many pairs of feet running across the lawn at top speed.
Riker turned to Mallory and raised his eyebrows to say, I told you so. „Who are you gonna believe? Me or those clowns?“
The large screen behind the news desk went dark as the redhead stood up to greet a slender young man with a concave chest and a failed goatee of straggling hairs. Riker noted elbow patches on the man’s blazer and took this as a sign that the fop did no real work – probably a writer. But now the guest was being introduced as a weapons expert.
Go figure. In Riker’s experience, weapons technicians were all actual men – even the women.
Beside the newswoman’s desk, a large easel displayed the cartoon of a cartoon, a diagram of the Goldy balloon floating above the drawings of tiny spectators.
The weapons expert stood by the easel and pointed to bold blue lines drawn through the big puppy’s body. „This is the trajectory of the bullet. These lines mark the entry of the bullet through the tip of the dog’s tail, nicking the rear paw, passing through the hindquarters, exiting the dog collar and entering the jaw.“ He paused to catch his breath. „Finally exiting the top of the puppy’s left ear.“ His pointing finger moved to a position on the pavement, and the camera lens zoomed in for the close-up of a cartoon blonde with a gun.
Riker glanced at Mallory, relieved to see her absorbed in the newspaper.
„And this line,“ said the expert, „shows the origin of the bullet as being consistent with the position of the policewoman who shot the balloon.“
Mallory looked up as the newscaster turned to her television audience and flashed her glorious overbite. „So there we have it. Damning new evidence against the cop who shot Goldy. Expert testimony from the writer of best-selling technothrillers, Rolf Warner.“
„That hack looks familiar.“ Riker leaned closer to the television. „Hey, isn’t he the same expert they used to explain the war in Bosnia?“
The redhead was saying, „ – to recap for viewers just tuning in. We have the sudden death of a witness to the shooting. And the mysterious disappearance of another witness, Crossbow Man.“ The woman smiled, momentarily dazzling Riker with her large buckteeth. „The police have made no progress in their search. Our sources at Number One Police Plaza tell us this has all the signs of an NYPD cover-up. Crossbow Man is still – “
Mallory grabbed the remote control from his hand and switched off the set. „I’ll find that little bastard myself.“
„No you don’t,“ said Riker. „Coffey’s right on this one. You don’t go near Richard Tree. The lieutenant put two full-time men on the kid. They’ll find him.“
„So we do have an open homicide case.“ Suspicion was back in her voice.
„No, Mallory, we don’t. But somebody leaked the kid’s juvenile record to the press.“
And now she glared at him to say, So you were holding out on me.
Riker knew when to make a timely exit. He grabbed up his hat and walked toward the closet to retrieve his coat. „We’re following a directive from the mayor’s publicist. He wants us to find Crossbow Man and deliver him to the reporters. This has nothing to do with police business.“
He opened the door to the closet and looked down to see a cardboard package large enough to house a Shetland pony. „What’s in the big box?“
„Rabbi Kaplan’s bread board,“ she said.
Riker threw his hands up. „Okay, okay. Forget I asked.“
The young detective had left her gun hanging on the coatrack by the rabbi’s front door, but she still seemed a bit dangerous as she leaned over the kitchen sink with her screwdriver and coaxed sparks from a jumble of wires in the wall.
Rabbi David Kaplan stood near the empty carton and nodded politely, as if he were actually following her plan to extend wireless electricity across the floor to the outlets of the new butcher-block island. But he knew nothing of electrical affairs. Only his wife understood overloaded circuits and knew the secret location of the fuse box. So the rabbi had no idea what Kathy Mallory was talking about.
While she replaced the cover of the wall outlet, he averted his eyes and stared at the grand piece of furniture she had assembled in the center of the room. The cart was well crafted, surfaced with strips of hardwoods in complementing grains.
The rabbi shook his head in silence. Kathy always went too far.
Or perhaps this was an atonement of sorts. But was it for past or future crimes? Should he regret arranging an interview with the old man?
Too late now.
Mr. Halpern was looking forward to seeing the ‘pretty child’ he had met so briefly last night.
What was the worst thing that could come of their meeting again?
Well, Mr. Halpern was very fragile.
She had finished testing the outlets on the cart, and now she was frowning at Rabbi Kaplan, misunderstanding his expression. „You don’t like it?“
„Oh, yes, Kathy. I like it very much. It’s wonderful, but so – “ So extreme? So suspicious? „You broke a five-dollar bread board, not an heirloom.“ She had also broken his heart and shaken his faith. It might be a bad idea to let her get away with that. But he must pick his words carefully; she was not very tolerant of criticism.
„Last night, you said anyone at the table could tell Malakhai how twisted you were. How could you say such a thing in – “
„You didn’t rush in to contradict me, did you, Rabbi?“
Her face was turned away from him as she bent over to tighten a screw, but he had heard the cold accusation in her voice, the opening cut. The game was on.
„Kathy, under the circumstances, how could I contradict you? I would’ve stepped on your best line of the evening.“
Good parry.
The rabbi smiled as he stepped up to the butcher block and pressed his advantage. „But now I want to know if you really believed that, or were you lying to a purpose?“
„You believed it.“
He made note of her game point – a fast shot to a vital organ. His hand rested over his heart as he rallied with, „You think I believe you’re twisted? I never did.“
Was that entirely true? Well, no, but he had not intended to lie – not that time. Some of his counterpoints were pure acts of self-defense, words pulled quickly to fend her off. „I’ve known you since you were ten years old and – “
„Eleven.“
„Ten. You lied a year onto your age. Don’t deny it.“ Here he stopped to compliment himself on this maneuver, insisting upon honesty on the one hand, while the other hand was busy obfuscating the truth. „Helen Markowitz’s judgment carries more weight with me than yours.“
She was somewhat subdued by this. Invoking Helen’s name still had some stopping power, but it would not last long. He needed a hook of words to hold his ground with her. „I remember the night when Louis brought you home to Helen.“ As if he might have forgotten a child felon in manacles, a tiny hell
mouth of obscenities. „Do you remember your room, the way it looked that first time Helen put you to bed?“
She nodded. „It used to be the guest room.“
„Yes, that’s what they called it. They bought that house ten years before you came to live with them. And for all those years, Helen changed the sheets in the guest room once a week without fail. But whenever there was a houseguest, she always made up a bed on the fold-out couch downstairs. A little odd, don’t you think?“
Yes, he could see that she thought so. „Ten years before you arrived, there was a baby’s crib in that room. Louis disposed of it before Helen came home from the hospital – without the child.“
Other than replacing the crib with a bed, over the ensuing decade, the bedroom had remained unchanged. The wallpaper stripes had never faded, but stayed true to the primary hues of a child’s coloring book. A soft woven rug invited the soles of small bare feet, and the bed quilt was a cheerful patchwork of folk-art animals. The entire room had the look of a crafty trap that Helen Markowitz had set to catch a loose child on the fly. For ten years, that gentle woman had never uttered one soft word about her dead baby, lost before it was even born.
For ten years, the room screamed.
„Helen had been waiting for you such a long time. You completed her life, Kathy. She thought you were perfect in every way – not at all twisted.“
And because of its blind spot, a giant gaping maw of a lacuna where heinous crimes were overlooked, motherlove was both imperfect and perfectly wonderful.
„Not by any word or act have I ever contradicted Helen – and you know that, Kathy.“
And thus he completed a neat escape by the artful framing of words, but at what personal cost? He knew what she was – though her foster mother had vehemently denied it. Helen Markowitz had torn up the child’s early psychiatric evaluation, putting great anger into the shredding of paper, strongly objecting to the word sociopath in connection to a little girl whose life had barely begun.
Rabbi Kaplan wanted to go on believing that Kathy Mallory did not know what she was. So long as she remained in ignorance of the truth, this ruthless, amoral child could exist in a state of innocent grace. Sometimes he believed that truth was not a shining thing, but a weapon of great destruction. At other times, he wondered if he had merely become a proficient deceiver, an uncommon liar.
In the moments of heavy silence between them, he scrutinized her face, looking there for signs of redemption – hers or his own? He could not say. Their wordplay was done, and he was bleeding only a little – as usual.
He ran his hand over the surface of the butcher block. „I didn’t thank you for this. It’s beautiful.“ He looked up, gratified to see the faint smile on her face. „Your meeting with Mr. Halpern is arranged for tomorrow. But it might be a waste of time. He wasn’t in Paris during the occupation.“
„I know those two have some history together.“ She picked up her tools and tossed them into her knapsack. „Last night, that old man was crying after he talked to Malakhai.“
She had what she came for, and now she was turning to leave.
Not so fast.
„Kathy, you will not interrogate Mr. Halpern.“ This was the tone of the teacher. He was not yet finished with the Promethean labor of Kathy Mallory’s moral instruction. „Mr. Halpern is a good storyteller. You will listen to him without interruption. He’ll tell you what he’s willing to talk about. Whatever causes him pain will be left out. When he’s done, you’ll leave with whatever he gave you – and no more.“
Chapter 8
„I see you’ve been busy this morning.“ Charles put the useless key back in his pocket and trained the flashlight beam on a metal box bolted to the accordion walls. The chains were gone, and the partition had been closed to a thin crack of electric light from the other side. A number pad on the new lock required a code to open the door latch. „Were you planning to give me the combination?“
Mallory touched four buttons on the pad. A green light blinked at the top of the box, followed by a click of metal. „It’s a good lock. Malakhai won’t be able to open it.“
Charles spread the wood sections apart. They moved silently on recently oiled tracks, and the hinges no longer creaked. „But I don’t mind if Malakhai comes and goes when he likes. I think – “
„It’s charming, right.“ And now she added trespassers to the list of decrepit furniture and malfunctioning electrical wiring that he found so endearing.
Charles walked around the dragon screen, pulling the new crossbow strings from a paper bag. He stopped to stare at the area in front of the platform. „Mallory, have you been cleaning?“
The debris of last night’s drinking and magic was gone. Empty bottles and broken bowstrings had been thrown out with the trash, and she had swept the floor at the base of the platform. But even without dust tracks, she could see evidence of Malakhai’s return visit. While she was busy with Riker and the rabbi, Malakhai’s search had expanded to the boxes and trunks on the first row of shelves. So he had found no difficulty in getting past the new lock. And now she must rethink cliches about the generation that could not program VCRs.
Charles was hunched over the toolbox. „Have you been following the news today?“ He pulled out a can of machine oil. „The reporters are taking another look at Oliver’s death.“ Screwdriver in hand, he walked over to the crossbow he had mounted on the pedestal yesterday. „I didn’t know his nephew had a juvenile arrest record. What did he do? Shoplifting? Something like that?“
„I’ll ask Riker.“ Mallory smiled. Lieutenant Coffey would suspect her of the press leak, but he would never prove it. And the brass at Number One Police Plaza would stay on Coffey’s back until he found the nephew – no matter how much it strained the budget. She had doubled the manpower on a homicide case that did not officially exist.
„I saw the mayor’s press conference this afternoon.“ Charles pulled the crossbow pistol from its slot in the pedestal. „A reporter asked about the murder in the park, and the mayor was livid – pounding on the podium. He said Central Park is the safest precinct in New York City. Said it three times.“
„He always does that,“ said Mallory. „Every time we find a dead body in the park.“
Charles unscrewed the metal plate that covered the firing apparatus. „Then Central Park isn’t the safest precinct in Manhattan?“
„Well, yeah, it is. The crime stats are lower. But the park is the only uninhabited precinct.“
She stared at the opened cartons on the shelves. They were not part of the shipment from Faustine’s Magic Theater. What was Malakhai searching for? And now she thought of another unanswered question, one that had hampered her background check. „What is Malakhai’s first name?“
Charles appeared to physically duck under this question, kneeling down to examine the center gear of the pedestal. „If he has another name, I’ve never heard it.“ He held up one finger slicked with a dab of recent oil, evidence of last night’s shooting party. „Have you been – “
„I searched the title on that upstate hospital. Nick Prado said Malakhai owned it.“
„He does.“ Charles wiped the oil off on his jeans. „You didn’t fire this – “
„According to the paper trail, a foreign trust fund owns that property.“
„He’s a very private man, Mallory.“ Charles pulled the crossbow off the pedestal and held it up to her. „I did mention that these were dangerous, right?“ He bent the curve of metal as he pulled the new string across the horns of the bow, then turned his back on her to reinstall the pistol grip in the pedestal slot.
So he did not plan to discuss Malakhai anymore. Fine. A change of subject, a little detour – no problem. There were other avenues of investigation, other suspects. She could make use of his Ph.D. in psychology. „What can you tell me about a classic narcissist?“
„So Nick Prado made your short list. He’ll be so pleased.“ Charles bent low to look through the sights of the crossbow. „A tru
e narcissist would enjoy being the center of your investigation, whether he was guilty or not. Does that help?“
„Let’s suppose he’s guilty.“
Charles shook his head in disbelief. „Nick had no reason to harm Oliver.“
„Then help me eliminate him as a suspect.“ She put one hand on his arm. „If Prado didn’t do it, I can’t hurt him, can I? So hypothetically, let’s say he did it.“
„I’m not worried about you damaging Nick. His ego is indestructible.“ Charles loaded an arrow into the crossbow, cocked it and depressed the lever to set the pedestal gears in motion. He bent down to an open crate and pulled out another crossbow. Mallory sat down on the floor beside him as he dismantled it.
„All right,“ said Charles. „He is a classic narcissist. You probably guessed that when he flirted with you the other day. Most men would never approach a woman like you.“
He looked up from his work of separating pieces of the crossbow. „You’re beautiful.“ This had the sound of a guilty confession. Charles’s face was comical even in serious moments. His were the eyes of a frog in love. „But Nick truly believes he’s a good match for you. I know it sounds ludicrous but he sees himself as young and virile.“
Charles slotted the bow at the end of the shaft, then reached into his bag of strings. „I wasn’t joking when I said he’d be pleased to be a murder suspect – even if he was guilty. The true narcissist believes he can outwit everyone in the immediate world.“
„So if he planned a murder, he might get sloppy with the details?“
„No, I wouldn’t put it that way. The plan would be very carefully thought out, but perhaps too complex. The more intricate the plan, the greater the possibility of error. That’s the blind spot of the narcissist. And it wouldn’t fit your theory of a key switch. That’s much too simple for Nick.“
The pedestal stopped ticking. She heard the twang of the string, and in the same instant, the arrow was wobbling in the center of the target on the stage.
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