The Chalk Girl km-10

by Carol O'Connell

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Charles, ‘I should’ve mentioned that most Williams people have remarkable hearing.’

  And that would explain why this child had been the only one to hear muffled crying from a burlap bag at the top of a tree.

  The little girl looked down at the carpet, mortified, and this destroyed Riker, a sucker for every redhead ever born. He put up both hands in surrender. ‘Coco? You’re right. I’m so sorry.’ He stabbed himself in the chest with one finger. ‘I’m an idiot. I wish I could play the piano like you . . . You play just great, kid.’

  She smiled, eyes lit from within, her face lifting to his like a flower starved for light and warmth – and this exhausted the policeman’s entire repertoire of poetic metaphor. ‘You tell great stories, too. Tell Charles about your Uncle Red.’

  ‘He turned himself into a tree.’ Coco had lost all interest in this topic. Riker could almost see a door closing in her mind. When she had returned to the piano in the next room, both men waited until her playing would safely mask their conversation. This time it was a classical piece, but Riker prided himself on not recognizing the titles of longhair music.

  ‘A standard IQ test won’t help you,’ said Charles. ‘Based on what Mallory tells me, I’d say Coco’s both quicker and slower than average. She has the verbal skills of an older child, but the attention span of a much younger one. And I’m sure you noticed her Velcro straps. They’re customized, added on to regular shoes. She obviously can’t tie laces.’ He looked down at the plastic bag on the floor by the detective’s chair. ‘You brought her clothes?’

  Riker nodded. The clothing was more evidence that had not been turned over to the Crime Scene Unit. He was not looking forward to the inevitable showdown when Heller would claim the heads of two detectives for his trophy wall.

  Charles opened the plastic bag and pulled out a small stained T-shirt, only glancing at it, and then he examined the tiny pair of blue jeans. ‘Another Velcro fastener. She has trouble with buttons, too. So . . . fine motor skills are a problem for Coco.’ He nodded toward the music room. ‘And yet she can play a complex piece by Mozart – from memory. However, if she were to walk out the door right now, I don’t think she’d recall the way back. You see the problem? A Williams child is paradox incarnate.’

  ‘How would you rate her as witness material?’

  ‘Well, she’ll tend to ornament her sentences. She’s a natural fabulist. For instance – her uncle turned himself into a tree?’

  ‘But she believes that,’ said Riker. ‘The guy was inside a bag strung up in a tree. She heard him crying. That’s how she found him in the Ramble. Hundreds of people walked under that tree, but she’s the only one who heard him.’

  ‘Hyperacusis – sensitivity to sounds.’

  ‘We can’t get one straight answer from that kid.’

  ‘Quite understandable. Another Williams quality is heightened empathy, and the victim was a relative. But she’d have problems with any change in her environment. She’s probably been in a state of high anxiety all day.’

  ‘Longer. Coco won’t say or can’t say, but she had to be on the heels of the guy who kidnapped her uncle. Central Park is just too damn big for her to stumble on the right path, the right tree. The uncle was strung up maybe three days ago. So she’s been loose in the park all that time, eating out of trashcans and running from rats.’ Riker covered his eyes with one hand, as if that would kill this picture in his head, for he was a man who loved children.

  ‘Then it’ll take quite a while to work through the emotional damage.’ Charles turned toward the music room to watch the tiny piano player. ‘She’s very small for her age. What did Edward Slope say? Is she physically healthy?’

  ‘The doc says she doesn’t need meds. Her heart’s in real good shape. And she wasn’t molested. Can you evaluate Coco’s disability – put something in writing for a judge? We need an order of custody.’ Riker handed him a folded paper. ‘And I need your signature on this.’

  Coco ceased her piano playing and reappeared in the front room. She pointed down the hallway. ‘That’s a Eureka. It’s the brand-new canister model.’

  Riker listened as if ears could squint, and now he made out the low hum of a vacuum cleaner behind a closed door on the other side of the large apartment. The cleaning lady was here; hers was the woman’s voice Coco had heard from the hallway. He smiled. ‘A Eureka, huh? You saw the vacuum in the park playground, right? It was in that lady’s wire cart?’

  Coco giggled in the spirit of guess again.

  Charles shook his head. ‘Mrs Ortega doesn’t carry a vacuum cleaner around with her. That one’s mine, and Coco’s right about the brand name. Excellent auditory memory skills.’ He turned to her. ‘So you recognized the sound of the motor.’

  She nodded. ‘Our upstairs neighbor had one. My granny’s vacuum was an older one, louder – a scary Hoover.’ Coco faked a little shiver for them to illustrate that this was not her favorite noise. ‘That one could suck up the whole world. There were lots of vacuum cleaners in the house, and they all had different sounds and different names.’

  ‘So your granny lives in an apartment building,’ said Riker. ‘Well, that’s something.’

  ‘She couldn’t take care of me anymore. So I went to live with Uncle Red, and I never saw her again.’

  ‘That must’ve happened recently,’ said Charles. ‘Granny’s neighbor had the new canister model, and it’s only been on the market for a few weeks.’ He had finished reading Riker’s paperwork. ‘Hold on. This document requests that custody be awarded to me.’

  Both men looked up to see Mrs Ortega pass by with a feather duster in hand. The woman stopped, surprised and wide-eyed. If Riker had not known how tough she was, he would say she was frightened. Turning away from the little girl, the cleaning lady quickly made the sign of the cross. By Riker’s lights, this was no sign of religion or relief. He had watched her make this gesture once before to ward off the evil of a three-legged cat encountered on a SoHo sidewalk. Apparently, in Mrs Ortega’s native land across the river, a square block of Brooklyn that housed her whole clan, those cats were trouble – and so was Coco.

  Hours had passed since Riker’s departure to join in the park search for more victims. And during this time, Charles Butler had filled a notebook with lines of childish fancy to decode. He had come to a few dark conclusions about the gaps in Coco’s memory, places in her mind where she could not or would not go.

  Such a fascinating mind.

  Mrs Ortega returned from Brooklyn in time for Coco’s bath. She brought with her a collection of clothing culled from relatives with small children. The woman seemed agitated, but the little girl did not mind. The child clung to her when they emerged from the bathroom. Scrubbed pink and clean and dressed in secondhand pajamas, Coco sang for Mrs Ortega, and then she did a little dance, smiling all the while. Growing tired as any child at the end of a long day, she curled up on the floor at the cleaning lady’s feet and closed her eyes – and snored.

  ‘Are they supposed to do that?’ Charles could only wish that the child had come with a manual of operating instructions. ‘The snoring?’

  Mrs Ortega nodded. ‘The kid’s getting over a cold. That’s why I gave her the chicken soup.’ She wagged her finger at him. ‘Do not give her any crap from the drugstore.’

  ‘Of course not.’ It would not occur to him to second-guess this woman, who had many children in her extended family.

  He scooped up the sleeping child and carried her to the guest room, where he put her to bed. Mrs Ortega hung back on the threshold, clearly not wanting more contact with this little girl. It was Charles who covered Coco with a blanket and tucked her in. He closed the door softly, and whispered to his cleaning lady, whom he also counted among his friends, ‘Tell me what’s bothering you.’

  She did not speak for a while, not until they were seated in the front room and she had finished her second round of sherry. Mrs Ortega set the empty glass on the table, her eyes fixed
upon the etched pattern of century-old crystal. ‘My mother, rest her soul – oh, her and her stories.’ She threw up her hands, exasperated, and then began again. ‘When I was a kid, I lost a lot of sleep ’cause Ma told me that fairies stole kids and replaced them with changelings.’ What if – that was the question in her eyes. She could never voice this thought, for she was a woman who prided herself on good horse sense.

  ‘I can assure you,’ said Charles, ‘Williams children are blood relations to their parents. It’s a problem of two missing chromosomes, not magic. She’s merely a little girl, and they never would’ve found her if not for you. I hear you also saved Coco from a pedophile.’ He leaned forward to cover her hand with his. ‘You did a wonderful thing today.’

  This did nothing to brighten her mood. She turned in her chair to stare in the direction of the child’s room down the hall, as if she could see what lay beyond walls and a wooden door. ‘You gotta wonder if fairy stories began with kids like that one.’

  ‘An interesting idea.’ And now Charles Butler was newly intrigued with all things regarding fairies – or that was the excuse he offered when he invited her to stay with him until she felt right with the world. And did she see through this ruse? Well, of course – yet she stayed. The hour was late when Mrs Ortega told him the final fairy tale handed down through the Irish side of her family, and then a car service was summoned to take the lady home.

  Charles never heard the door open and close. It was thirst that had awakened him in the small hours. He came to the end of the hallway and came fully awake, surprised to see that a wingback chair had been moved into the foyer, where it now faced the only entry to his apartment. By the dim light from the hall, he approached to find Mallory asleep in the chair.

  Though he had known her for years, he could not set eyes on her without loosing a flock of crazed butterflies in his chest cavity. And this happiness of the moment coexisted with pain, the concomitant symptoms of a one-sided love affair. He was a realist on this matter. In the aftermath of Mrs Ortega’s night of fairy tales, he borrowed one from his own days in the nursery, and he substituted young Beauty’s Beast with himself, a hapless man with the face of a clown.

  He reached out to pull the chain of a nearby floor lamp. It came to light in bright-colored stains of Tiffany glass, and now he saw the revolver that lay across Mallory’s lap. According to Riker, the rest of the force carried clip-loaded Glocks, and it was the detective’s theory that his partner favored the old .357 Smith and Wesson because it was scary in a way that a semi-automatic never could be. It was a damn cannon of a gun, so Riker said, and Charles agreed.

  Her fingers were loosely closed around it so that she might shoot the first person through the door. He listened to her steady breathing, the sound of deepest sleep, and he thought to gently lift the weapon from her hand – just as a safety precaution. Her grip tightened, and he promptly gave up on this idea, so startled was he to be looking down the barrel of the gun.

  And then her eyes opened.

  She lowered the revolver and fell back into sleep. And Charles thought to breathe once more.

  Miles away, another woman was awakening, but she could not open her eyes. They were taped shut, as was her mouth. Wilhelmina Fallon could hear nothing, not the rumbling of her empty stomach or any sounds that might help to identify her place in the world. And how long had she slept? Was it day or night? She ceased to strain against the bonds of hands and feet. The only other tactile sensation was the feel of rough material against her naked skin. Her body’s lack of hard support fueled an idea that she was suspended in space – that she might drop to earth at any moment, and this image chained back to an old memory of Ernest Nadler.

  Oh, no. Oh, please no.

  If she could have screamed, she would have.

  This is the Ramble! The Ramble! The Ramble!

  SIX

  On the way home from school, I quote Phoebe a line from a comic book. ‘If I can defeat my demons, I can be the hero of my own life.’

  And my father will love me again.

  Phoebe thinks my comic-book philosophy will be the death of me. She says, ‘Remember Poor Allison.’

  ‘The jumper?’

  And Phoebe says, ‘Maybe the girl thought she could fly.’

  —Ernest Nadler

  Privileged New Yorkers had high windows in the tallest buildings facing Central Park. Those who were still awake could see trees lighting up in a moving line, a glow worm slowly rolling across the Ramble as policemen in tight formation shined their flashlights up into the leaves. Cadaver dogs had proved useless for bodies in the sky. A sergeant called out to his officers, calling them back to the station house to wait for daylight.

  High above a group of retreating searchers, Wilhelmina Fallon, not yet a cadaver, awakened stone blind. Thirsty, so thirsty. Hungry, too. And all the way crazy, she strained to hear.

  Silence only.

  Muscles weakened, she gave up the struggle against her bonds. The panic ebbed away, and so did the cramps in her belly. Dehydrated and disoriented, she made friends with delusion, and in her waking dream, she drank great tumblers of ice water. In the real world, her body was consuming itself in a ruthless effort to survive. Life was everything. Life was all.

  It was morning in her mind, where an imagined table was laden with food, glorious food.

  The aroma of fresh-brewed coffee was heady. An old-fashioned percolator bubbled on the front burner, and batter sizzled in the frying pan.

  Mallory made an odd picture of domesticity, flipping pancakes while wearing a large gun in her shoulder holster. Cooking was a skill she had learned from her foster mother, Helen Markowitz, and kitchens were her favorite rooms. This one was large, with warm ocher walls and a high ceiling. Charles Butler’s appliances only looked a hundred years old; they were custom-made to blend with an era where the Luddite felt more at home. It was a peaceful place where even New Yorkers lost their cautious edge; and this was why Mallory favored kitchens over interrogation rooms.

  The door in the hall closed. Charles Butler was gone. And now the detectives could begin.

  Coco had finished breakfast, and she idly ran one finger around her empty plate. ‘Rats like fruit and vegetables, but pancakes – not so much.’ She went on to explain why hungry rats were attracted to the faces of sleeping infants. ‘Babies smell like milk, and the skin around their mouths tastes like milk. If you wash a baby before you put it in the crib, it won’t get eaten.’

  ‘Good to know,’ said Riker, not even slightly put off his feed. Between bites, he smiled at the little girl. ‘Tell us about Uncle Red.’

  The child drew up her legs, hugged her knees and rocked herself. ‘He had red hair like mine. He said it ran in the family.’ She stood up to take a short walk around the table for the third time this morning.

  If Charles Butler had been present, this would have been the signal to stop. He would not permit questions that agitated her. And so the psychologist had been sent outside on the errand of buying newspapers that Mallory could have easily retrieved from her laptop computer.

  The detective filled the child’s glass with more orange juice to lure her back to the table. When Coco returned to light on the chair, she perched there on the edge – a tentative visitor.

  ‘So Uncle Red’s hair turned from red to brown,’ said Mallory. ‘When did that happen?’ She rephrased this for a child with a skewed sense of time. ‘After you got into Uncle Red’s car, did you stop anywhere on the way to his place?’

  ‘We stopped for food.’ Coco went on to describe the giant statue of a clown that greeted junk-food customers at a rest stop on the road. He was as tall as a mountain, she told them, and then she gave the statue lines of dialogue. But now she stopped mid-sentence, reading impatience in Mallory’s face.

  ‘So tell me,’ said Riker, whose patience with children was endless, ‘was that when Uncle Red dyed his hair? At the restaurant? Maybe he did it in the men’s room?’

  ‘No, his hair was s
till red when we stopped at the drugstore. I fell asleep in the car. When I woke up, we were at Uncle Red’s house. It was dark outside, and his hair was brown. Then he had himself delivered to the park.’ Coco excused herself to wash hands, her euphemism for a run to the toilet.

  Down the hall, the bathroom door closed. The front door opened, and Charles Butler walked into his apartment, carrying three newspapers. He entered the kitchen in time to hear Mallory say to her partner, ‘That kid was snatched.’

  ‘How do you figure?’ Riker laid down his fork. ‘Most perverts dye the kid’s hair. This guy dyed his own. Sounds more like Uncle Red was on the run from somebody he knew. That fits with him getting strung up in the Ramble.’

  Mallory flipped a pancake onto Riker’s plate, then traded the coffeepot to Charles in exchange for the newspapers, otherwise ignoring him as she spoke to her partner. ‘Two people with red hair, that’s a problem – that’s a detail for an Amber Alert. But he couldn’t bring himself to dye Coco’s hair. I say the creep had a thing for little redheads. That’s why he took her.’ She pulled a bill from the pocket of her jeans and showed it to him. ‘This twenty says Uncle Red’s no relation to Coco.’

  ‘You’re on.’ Riker turned a broad smile on their host. ‘What about you?’

  ‘No bet. I already know the answer.’ Charles filled three cups from the percolator, which he prized above a computerized coffeemaker that Mallory had given him one Christmas. That gift had been yet another of her failed efforts to introduce this man to a new century.

  Riker sipped the brew and pronounced it wonderful. He glanced at the headlines as Mallory laid the newspapers down on the table next to his plate. One by one, he summarized the front-page stories: ‘Flesh-eating rats for the Post, more rats for the Daily,’ and ‘Oh, shit!’ for the Times, which carried a picture of the second hanging tree and two uniformed officers.

  ‘It’s all there,’ said Mallory, ‘the bodies, the bags, ropes – everything except Coco.’ She glanced at the clock on the wall. The man in charge of CSU would be reading his own newspaper right about now, and so would their boss, Lieutenant Coffey.