The Chalk Girl km-10

by Carol O'Connell

  Officer Maccaro looked up to see a rat running along the lowest bough. ‘Oh, Christ, when did they learn to do that?’

  Mrs Ortega took some satisfaction in the sound of a bone breaking. The pervert sank to the ground and lay there screaming. She rested her baseball bat on one shoulder and looked around in all directions.

  Where was that strange little girl?

  There was no one to ask. The playground was empty now.

  Two police officers were running toward her, and she waved to them with her free hand, yelling, ‘You gotta find a little girl!’

  The youngest cop was the first to enter by the iron gate. He looked down at the man on the ground, who was curled up in a fetal position, not screaming anymore but crying softly. The officer turned on the cleaning lady. ‘You did this?’

  Stupid question. Was she not holding a bloody baseball bat?

  Mrs Ortega nudged the weeping pervert with her foot. ‘Never mind this piece of garbage. He’ll live. You gotta find the kid real fast. She’s a magnet for creeps like him. You’ll know her when you see her. She’s got red hair, and she looks just like a little fairy.’

  ‘Oh, yeah,’ said an older policeman, smiling as he passed through the gate. ‘I think I saw her flying over the park.’

  ‘Don’t humor me.’

  ‘Okay.’ The officer drew his gun and leveled it at her head. ‘Lady, drop that bat! Now!’

  ‘I’m serious,’ said Mrs Ortega.

  ‘Yeah, I can see that.’ The man was staring at the bloody end of the bat.

  Well, this was new.

  The detective stood before a red prefabricated building, temporary housing for the Central Park Precinct. Next door, the older quarters, badly in need of renovation, were partially hidden by tarps, and the rooftops were crawling with workmen.

  Damn town was always falling down.

  He was far from his own station house down in SoHo, this man in a rumpled suit stained with week-old mustard, but Detective Sergeant Riker never had to show his badge. Uniformed cops stood in a cluster around the entrance, and then they parted in a wave, recognizing his rank by the air of entitlement that came with carrying a gun and a gold shield. Civilians only saw him as a middle-aged man with bad posture, an amiable, laid-back smile and hooded eyes that said to everyone he met, I know you’re lying, but I just don’t care.

  Mrs Ortega had used her telephone privilege to call in a favor. He anticipated spending his lunch hour to plead her case with the man in charge of this cop house, but after a few minutes’ conversation, the commander handed him the key to the lockup, allowing Riker the honor of uncaging the Upper West Side’s most dangerous cleaning lady.

  Though the little woman scowled at him through the bars, the detective grinned as he worked the key in the lock. ‘I’m impressed.’ He opened the door and made a deep bow from the waist. ‘They tell me you broke the guy’s right arm and three ribs.’

  Riker escorted her downstairs, where she was reunited with her wire cart. Mrs Ortega carefully inspected her property, maybe suspecting the police of stealing her cleaning rags or the stiff brushes she favored for bathroom grout. ‘Where’s my bat?’

  ‘Don’t push your luck,’ said Riker. ‘I’ll get it back for you, okay? But not today.’

  ‘Took you long enough to bail me out.’

  ‘No bail,’ he said. ‘The charges were dropped. I’d like to take credit for that, but the call came from the mayor’s office. He sent his limo to pick you up.’

  ‘What about the little girl? She’s still out there.’

  ‘There’s fifty cops in the park right now. They’re hunting down kids from a New Jersey day camp. You told them the girl didn’t belong in that playground, right? So she’s probably one of the Jersey kids.’

  ‘No, that girl hasn’t had a bath in days. She’s lost or homeless. And I told them that!’

  ‘If the park cops don’t find her, I will. Okay?’ And now that the cleaning lady seemed somewhat mollified, he asked, ‘Don’t you wanna know why the mayor sent his limo?’

  She waved one hand in a shoo-fly way to tell him that she did not care.

  Playing the gentleman, he held the door open as she steered her cart outside and into the smell of dust and the sounds of jackhammers and traffic along the busy road bisecting the park. He guided her to a wide strip of pavement where VIPs illegally parked. Beside the waiting limousine stood the mayor’s personal chauffer, a man in a better suit than any cop could afford, and he was staring at his approaching passenger with disbelief. A nod from Riker confirmed that this little woman was indeed the mayor’s new best buddy. ‘Hey, pal, open the trunk. The cart goes where she goes.’

  While the chauffeur loaded her cleaning supplies, Mrs Ortega settled into the backseat, taking everything in stride, as if this luxury ride might be routine in the average day of a cleaning lady. When the driver took his place behind the wheel and started the engine, she leaned forward and called out to him across the expanse of the stretch limousine. ‘Drop me off in Brooklyn!’

  ‘City Hall!’ yelled Riker, countermanding her order. And now he spoke to the cleaning lady in his let’s-make-a-deal tone. ‘The mayor just wants to shake your hand. Maybe you pose for a few pictures, talk to some reporters.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah.’ She turned her face to the passenger window, clearly bored by this idea.

  ‘Listen,’ said Riker, ‘this is big. That bastard you busted up? He’s a bail jumper from Florida. While he’s been on the loose, the Miami cops found bodies under the floorboards of his house.’ And still the detective felt that he did not have her full attention. ‘Hey, you bagged a kid-killer. Good job.’

  ‘Riker, they gotta find that little girl. There’s something wrong with her. Or maybe nobody raised her right. She just walks right up to strangers. And you know that creep wasn’t the only pervert in the park. Where’s Mallory? Why didn’t she come?’

  ‘Lieutenant Coffey nailed her little hands to a desk.’ For the duration of a probation period, his young partner was not allowed to leave the SoHo precinct during shift hours, not even to forage for food north of Houston, the demarcation line.

  The tired child stood in a copse of sheltering trees and watched the frenzy in the meadow. A man in coveralls plugged one end of a thick hose into a hole in the ground and then entered the meadow, the heavy coil unrolling behind him. The nozzle end was pointed at the rats when he waved to another man. And now a strong blast of water from the hose scattered the vermin. Policemen in dark blue uniforms moved toward the bloody mess on the grass, and they knelt down beside it as more people ran toward them, bearing a stretcher.

  Traveling in the wide circle of a lost child, Coco had come back to this place by an accident of wandering. She wandered on.

  After minutes or hours – the concept of time eluded her – she came upon the lake again, though not by intention, for she had only the sketchiest idea of geography. She stood by a railing and peered through the thick foliage to see a familiar fat orange ribbon of fencing strung around the water’s edge. Continuing on her aimless way, she kept close to a low stone wall that led her to another landmark. There were many drinking fountains in the park, and they all looked alike, but Coco recognized this one by the dead bird in the basin. The tiny brown carcass had attracted flies; their buzzing was loud and ugly. Hands pressed against her ears – stop it stop it stop it – she left the pavement and ran down a path into the woods, her thin arms spread wide, aeroplaning, feet flying. Farther down the path, another marker for the place of red rain was found by chance born of panic.

  Don’t cry don’t cry don’t cry.

  Coco slowed her steps to catch her breath. She walked over a trampled section of wire fence and into thick brush. Low branches reached out to make scratchy noises on her blue-jeaned legs. She stood on the thick root of a tree and hugged the rough bark of the trunk. Looking for love and comfort, she stared up into the dense leaves and called the tree by name.

  The tree was silent. The child me
lted down to the ground and curled up in a ball.

  TWO

  They’re not monster size, but adults are afraid of them. Not Dad, of course. My father doesn’t believe in monsters. And he doesn’t believe in me.

  —Ernest Nadler

  The detective closed the door to the lieutenant’s private office, perhaps sensing that his boss’s voice was about to rise a few octaves – a good instinct.

  ‘Let Mallory out of her cage? Are you nuts?’ The commander of Special Crimes Unit raked one hand through his light brown hair. A few years shy of forty, Lieutenant Coffey had a bald spot at the back of his head. It was his only outstanding feature and a reminder of what stress could do to a man. ‘It’s not like it’s the first time she’s done this.’

  ‘And she’s not the first cop to walk off the job with no goodbye,’ said Detective Sergeant Riker.

  However, this man’s partner was the only one ever to fight her way back from desk duty, that graveyard of damaged cops.

  But that was last time.

  ‘This time is different!’ Whoa. Deep breath. In a lower voice that would not slip under the doorsill, Jack Coffey said, ‘She was gone for three months, and I still don’t know why.’

  Riker shrugged this off. ‘Since when does a cop have to explain lost time?’

  Lost time? For most detectives that meant taking a walk around the block to clear their heads when the job got too crazy. But Mallory had taken a drive around the lower forty-eight states of the country, an area of six million square miles – not quite the same thing.

  ‘The department shrink won’t sign off on active duty.’ Lieutenant Coffey retrieved a psychologist’s report from his wastebasket and handed it to Riker. ‘Cut to the top of page three – where Dr Kane says she’s dangerously unstable. I’ll tell you why that got my attention. Your partner is so good at beating psych tests.’

  ‘And I’m sure she aced this one.’ Riker tossed the report on the desk. ‘Dr Kane’s afraid of women – especially women with guns. That quack probably wets his pants every time he sees her.’

  ‘You knew what was in her psych report before I did. She told you, right?’ Jack Coffey held up one hand to signal that a bullshit denial was unnecessary. Mallory could pick the locks to any data bank, and those computer skills had been sorely missed. In her absence, his detectives had been reduced to begging for warrants.

  Closed venetian blinds covered a window that spanned one upper wall of his private office. The lieutenant lifted a long metal slat for a covert view of the squad room and his youngest gold shield. He was not the only one watching her. Other cops were stealing glances. Were they wondering if they could work with her again? These days, she could jack up the anxiety of any room just by walking in the door, and that had to stop.

  Going by mere appearance, she was unchanged, still wearing silk T-shirts and custom-made blazers. Even her blue jeans were tailored, and her running shoes cost more than his car payment. Mallory would wear money if she could, flaunting the idea that she might be on the take, though he suspected her of being semi-honest. Her blond curls were styled the same old way, framing a porcelain mask with a cat’s high cheekbones. So pretty. So spooky. And what did that damn haircut cost?

  And why didn’t she fight back?

  As a condition of reinstatement, he had humiliated Mallory by making her handmaiden to the squad. For the past month of probation, she had done all their grunt work without complaint, filling out reports and filing them, making phone calls and tracking down leads for other detectives, tethered all the while to a desktop computer. She daily took this punishment with no sign of reproach, not so much as the arch of an eyebrow.

  So how did she plan to get even with him?

  And when might that happen?

  The lieutenant watched her sort paperwork – busywork – and he knew those neat stacks would line up precisely one inch from the edge of her desk. Her other name was Mallory the Machine, and this worked well with the unnatural color of her eyes – electric green. Sorting done, she just sat there. So still. So quiet. He could not shake the idea that she was spring-loaded.

  Jack Coffey was a man in a perpetual state of waiting.

  She turned his way to catch him staring at her like a common peeper.

  The metal slat snapped shut as he backed away from the window. ‘I don’t make the rules.’ He turned around to face Mallory’s partner. ‘No fieldwork till she gets a pass from a shrink.’

  ‘Got it covered.’ Detective Riker reached into his pocket and pulled out a twice-folded wad of papers. ‘Charles Butler signed off on her. She’s officially sane.’

  As if that could make it so, simply because Butler had more Ph.D.s than God did. ‘Does Charles know why she walked off the job?’

  ‘That might be in here somewhere.’ Riker unfolded the new psych report and scanned it – as if its contents might be a mystery to him.

  Right.

  Jack Coffey snatched the papers but never even glanced at them. He knew everything would be in order, and this new psych evaluation would trump Dr Kane’s bad review. Mallory’s personal psychologist had better credentials than any department shrink, but the poor hapless bastard had one unfortunate weakness: Kathy Mallory. If she were barking at the moon, Charles Butler would just assume that she was having an off day. ‘Not good enough, Riker. She can’t just waltz back in here like nothing happened.’

  Foolish words. He wished he could call them back – for that was exactly what she had done: Four weeks ago, Mallory had appeared in the squad room, hovering by the staircase door like a visiting wraith. And then, when all eyes were on her, she had taken up residence at her old desk by the window, a coveted spot that no one had encroached upon while she was away. During those months of lost time, other detectives had avoided going near her desk, as if it might be haunted, and some had even mentioned that the air was always colder there. The squad room had gone deadly quiet on that morning of her return; fifteen men with guns had sat helpless as hostages waiting for a bomb to go off. Riker, whose desk faced hers, had been the first to speak, saying, ‘The coffee sucks since you’ve been gone.’ Only Mallory had ever thought to wash out the pot.

  Today, sanguine as ever, Riker said to his boss, ‘You want her to quit?’

  ‘For now, she stays on desk duty.’ The lieutenant lifted one slat of the blinds and resumed his vigil on the squad room. Mrs Ortega had arrived. He watched the cleaning lady pull up a chair close to Mallory’s and sit down for a visit. Well, that was normal enough. The two of them shared a mania for cleaning solvents. And now he glanced at the detective’s neat desk. All her work was done. How many hours had he devoted to dreaming up new things for her to do? He had stopped short of handing Mallory a broom and dustpan. She might have liked that.

  Riker flopped down in a chair. In the only concession this man ever made to his boss’s rank, he had not lit the cigarette that dangled from his mouth. The dejected detective stared at the television set in the corner of the office and watched silent news clips of rats and running people. ‘Why not send Mallory to Central Park for the day? That’s harmless enough. Worst-case scenario – she rounds up a missing kid.’

  Jack Coffey’s smile said it all: Not a shot in hell. ‘I just got off the phone with the park cops. All the kids from the day camp are accounted for.’

  ‘And the one Mrs Ortega reported?’

  ‘No, not that one.’ Charles Butler’s cleaning lady had filed today’s only missing-person report on a damn pixie. ‘I figure Mrs Ortega was going for a psycho defense after she beat the crap out of the pervert.’

  ‘I heard that!’ The cleaning lady stood in the open doorway, her jaw jutting out, defiant and up for a fight. ‘I only said the kid looked like a fairy.’ She reached into a deep pocket of her dress and pulled out a figurine. ‘Like this one.’ The small ceramic creature had a wide smile, curly red hair and the wings of a giant housefly. ‘The mayor’s limo driver took me home so I could get it for you.’ She walked into the office
and set her fairy down on the corner of his desk. ‘Take a picture. It looks exactly like that little girl.’

  ‘So the kid had wings?’ Coffey turned to his detective. ‘Riker, you left that out of your report. And what’s this crap about the mayor’s limousine?’

  ‘No wings,’ said the cleaning lady. ‘She’s just a little girl, and she’s lost. Her T-shirt had blood on it. Was that in Riker’s report?’

  ‘Blood?’ The lieutenant smiled. ‘Maybe a little backsplatter from your trusty baseball bat?’

  ‘No!’ Mrs Ortega held her breath for a count of ten. Then she dropped her scowl and the New York bravado; this matter was that important to her. The little woman’s tone was almost placating when she said, ‘There was blood on that kid before I creamed the pervert.’

  ‘Then she’s probably one of the Jersey kids,’ said Coffey. ‘While you were in lockup, did the park cops tell you about the rat attack in Sheep Meadow?’

  ‘The rats were on the ground. The blood was on the shoulders of her T-shirt – nowhere else.’ Mrs Ortega folded her arms. ‘Good try, though.’

  The telephone rang, and Riker leaned forward to pick up the receiver, as if expecting a personal call on his lieutenant’s private line. ‘Yeah? . . . Oh, yeah.’ The detective listened for a moment and then held out the phone. ‘Boss, it’s the mayor. He wants to talk to you.’

  A rat fell to earth, squealing all the way down, and landed with a thump at Coco’s feet. She had seen this miracle before. The lifeless creature lay with its pale yellow underbelly exposed, and the shiny eyes stared at the sky from whence it came. Red droplets fell down to disappear in the dirt at the base of the tree. The rat twitched, and Coco felt icy. Fluttery.

  She could hear her heart beating.

  The rodent’s body convulsed. Magically reanimated, it scrambled away in the underbrush, snapping twigs and making small mechanical squeaks and peeps. In a child’s game of statue, she stood still as death, and her heart – da dum, da dum, da dum – was louder now and faster.