The Chalk Girl km-10

by Carol O'Connell

  It was childhood’s perfect nightlight.

  The squad room was dimly lit, but the lights burned bright down the hall in the geek room, Mallory’s domain. During her three-month absence, other cops, who only knew their way around laptops, had been lost in this small space packed with electronics, nests of wiring and computer elements stacked in alien configurations. And now Riker noticed that more toys had been added since his partner’s homecoming four weeks ago.

  Once upon a time, this had been her after-school playground. In those days, when she was shorter, only twelve or thirteen years old, the computers allocated to Special Crimes had been antiquated castoffs from other departments, always crashing, totally useless. But Lou Markowitz’s foster child had shown a natural affinity for these machines, and Lou had set her loose in this electronic playpen one afternoon.

  As Riker recalled, only an hour or so had passed before the little runt had come stealing into Lou’s office, saying, ‘With the right parts, I can fix the computers like new.’

  The former commander of the unit had been preoccupied with a murder at the time. And so Lou had missed this moment as the beginning of a brand-new crime wave – even as he was abetting it, giving her the forms she needed to requisition her parts. And then the boxes had begun to arrive in the squad room – not small boxes of spare parts, but great big boxes, new computers. Lou had been baffled by the first delivery. What the hell? There had been no paperwork to backtrack a requisition, and no one had even asked him to sign for the packages. Then he had noticed little Kathy dragging her loot down the hall to the geek room, and he had averted his eyes – for years. Perhaps the old man had seen this as a kind of progress: His baby felon was stealing for a higher purpose.

  As the grown-up Kathy Mallory would say – yeah, right.

  On some level, the child had always been all about getting even with Lou for ending her childhood career as a feral street thief. But once Kathy’s stolen hardware needs were met, she had found a whole new world of things to steal on the Information Superhighway. The child would lay her stolen goods on Lou’s desk, pages of purloined intelligence from data banks in the federal and private sectors. How many times had she stopped the old man’s heart this way? Kathy had always worn her Gotcha smile each time she crept into Lou’s office to hand him one of her – gifts.

  Enigmatic brat. That had been Riker’s thought on those curious occasions, though he would never say a four-syllable word out loud. That little half smile of hers had driven him nuts. And then one rainy night after three rounds had been poured in a cop bar down the street, Lou Markowitz had clarified this small mystery, saying, ‘Kathy thinks she’s stealing my soul . . . and it’s true.’ And then the old man had lifted his glass in a toast. ‘That’s my baby.’

  Tonight Riker cleared a small table and laid it out with deli napkins and sandwiches. The aroma of hot pastrami filled the geek room. ‘The park worker’s clean, no rap sheet. When the CSU guy picked up the dolly, he collected the coveralls, too. Pollard says you can buy ’em anywhere.’ Was Mallory even listening to him? No, she was communing with her computers, turning from one monitor to another.

  He put a cold can of beer in her hand – ladies first – and then popped the metal tab on his own. ‘Coffey never called Tech Support while you were gone.’ Riker settled into the chair beside hers. ‘He wasn’t sure how much of this equipment was legal.’

  Mallory tapped her keyboard, her eyes on the screen that displayed the ViCAP logo. Days ago, Detective Janos had used the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program to run a national search of old crimes that would match up with the Hunger Artist. Janos had followed every FBI protocol, answering a tedious hundred and ten questions, writing up addendums, and filing separately for each victim. And after all that work, he had come up dry.

  Tonight Mallory was visiting the same federal computers, making no polite knock on the door with a password, no badge number and no tracks left behind. Backdoor access was the phrase she used for robbing the feds blind. ‘There were better places to string up those bodies,’ she said. ‘It’s not like the old days when you could hide an elephant in the Ramble.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Riker. ‘The way it is now, any bird-watcher could’ve spotted those sacks.’ Though sacks in trees were not likely to wind up on a police report. ‘Maybe we’re just looking at a high-risk perp.’

  ‘No,’ said Mallory. ‘I think he’s got some history with that place.’

  Riker watched as his partner neatly bypassed the long FBI questionnaire; she wanted no helpful interference from a federal crime analyst. And now an inserted disk released her pet, a virus named Good Dog, a computer canine that could run wild, leaping security fences to roam every file and bring home a bone. Mallory made no mention of winches, sacks and pulleys, batteries or drills. Instead, she typed in a narrow field of description for her dog’s bone: Central Park, NYC, abduction, hanging.

  Simple. Elegant. Riker liked it. These few words guaranteed a short list. Swinging by the neck or strung up in a sack, any form of hanging was a rare crime.

  ‘I’ve got one hit.’ Mallory tapped a key to print out the pages on her screen. ‘Not a match – just a questionnaire from somebody else’s search.’

  ‘And it wasn’t Janos.’ Riker scanned the pages as they came from the mouth of the printer. ‘This is a real old one – a hundred and eighty-four questions.’ This prior search dated back to a time before the ViCAP forms had been streamlined. Fifteen years ago, some NYPD detective had typed in this description to search the data bank for a similar crime. Back then, the FBI had come up with no matches.

  An hour later, when both detectives had finished their late dinner and read all the pages, Mallory said, ‘You know there’s something wrong here.’

  Riker nodded. This old case should have been front-page news in its day. ‘It’s the kind of crime you don’t forget, not ever.’ Yet he had never heard of a young child strung up and left to die in the Ramble. How was that possible?

  Mallory used one long red fingernail to call her partner’s attention to the line that named the author of this early search.

  ‘Oh, Christ,’ said Riker. ‘The detective was Rocket Mann?’

  The moniker had no good connotation. Also known as Rolland Mann, this former detective, a mediocre cop in every way, had risen quickly through the ranks for no clear reason beyond that catchall term dirty. And today he was only one rung below Police Commissioner Beale.

  ‘This is bad.’ Riker picked up his copy of the Post and turned to an inside page to show her a news item. ‘Check this out.’ Rhyming lines of bold type above the story read: TOP COP’S HEART STOPS. Old man Beale was in the hospital awaiting bypass surgery.

  ‘And that makes Rocket Mann the acting commissioner.’ Mallory tapped keys until she was inside an NYPD archive. Slowly she scrolled down the items on the screen. ‘Mann never opened a case file on that boy. No one did. That year, there were only routine assaults and homicides in the Ramble.’

  Over her shoulder, Riker read the site-specific list of dead junkies, winos, one tourist shot and two stabbed.

  ‘No kids,’ said Mallory. ‘Nothing to fit Rocket Mann’s questionnaire. That case got buried . . . and now we get to ask him why.’

  The acting police commissioner could not legally refuse an interview, but Rolland Mann could make life hell for the cop who demanded it. Following protocols and ascending hierarchy, one rank reaching up to the next – the first man in the line of fire would be their boss, the commander of the Special Crimes Unit.

  Riker lifted his beer to salute his partner. ‘Well, kid, this is the ultimate payback for a month of desk duty. When you tell Coffey we have to interview Rocket Mann, the lieutenant’s head will explode.’

  Mallory clinked her beer can with his in a toast. ‘Good times.’

  SEVENTEEN

  This time the skin’s broken, and I bleed through my sock.

  At lunchtime, Phoebe looks at my bloody ankle and says it’s too bad Aggy’s a
legacy student. Otherwise, they’d put her down for biting humans.

  —Ernest Nadler

  Elderly Mrs Buford paced the floor in her fuzzy pink slippers, awaiting the newspaper delivery. Yesterday’s Times had been stolen, and she had her suspects. Chief among them was the man across the hall, the one least likely to care about the terrible importance she placed on her morning paper. The crossword puzzle helped her to chart the inroads of Alzheimer’s by the boxes she could not fill with her diminishing inventory of words and names. Getting old was such a pain in the ass.

  She consulted the clock on the wall. Where was that damn paperboy?

  Her pacing stopped. She held her breath. Ah, there it was, the soft ploff of the Times hitting the carpet in the outer hallway. Mrs Buford opened the door to the sound of more ploffs as newspapers were dropped at other doors. She waited for the woman across the way to retrieve her own paper. Their neighborly exchange of good mornings was another high point of the day’s routine.

  Oh, no. This time the door was opened by the husband, a most unsettling person. Rolland Mann made her feel like bugs crawled beneath her skin. He was a civil servant, if she remembered correctly, though this hardly squared with an apartment in a luxury high-rise building. Well, he must be far up the ladder of city politicians, but he was certainly not an elected official, not with that weak chin, that pasty flesh. And his hair was rather sparse in places. This put her in mind of a nervous cousin who pulled it out by the roots. When he bent down to collect his Times, she focused on the long, spidery fingers. And now for an uncomfortable shift in metaphor, he glanced up at her with reptilian eyes.

  Cold-blooded snake.

  No, wait – nothing so grand as that.

  Cold-blooded worm.

  She called out to him, ‘Good morning!’ Always cordial, Mrs Buford refrained from asking if he had yet murdered his wife. It had long been her impression that the poor woman only stayed with her husband under duress, and such marriages could only end badly.

  He took no notice of her.

  Rude bastard.

  Rolland Mann was fixated on the front page, wholly engrossed in a story, his fingers curling tight around the edges of the newspaper. His face was even paler than the usual cadaver countenance.

  The elderly woman looked down at her own copy of the Times to see a familiar title in bold headline type. It was something she had read in her school days. The earliest memories were strongest now. Yes, this was the title of a short story by one of the Russians – or maybe a German. In any case, it was a classic. She read on to learn that this was a sequel to a story in yesterday’s stolen newspaper, and the police had identified one of the Hunger Artist’s victims as Humphrey Bledsoe.

  Across the hall, the neighbor crept backwards into his apartment, softly closing the door behind him – quiet as a thief.

  Though pathologists were not in short supply today, neither were dead bodies. And so the chief medical examiner donned a plastic visor and a pair of latex gloves.

  Detective Mallory looked down at the corpse on the dissection table. The dead man was naked and washed, all prepped for the first cut of the morning. ‘This one can wait.’

  Dr Edward Slope nodded in perfect understanding. Of course. This middle-aged victim of a bullet wound was not her corpse, was he? No, this one belonged to a completely different precinct. ‘Go away, Kathy.’

  She had been on best behavior today, allowing his use of her given name to slide, but now both hands were on her hips, a prelude to bringing out all the knives and guns. ‘Cut Humphrey Bledsoe first.’

  ‘This is my shop. I get to pick the – Hey!’ The doctor managed to grab a scalpel before she rolled aside the table holding his instruments. ‘There’s no rush on the Bledsoe autopsy. I’m waiting for identification by a family member.’

  ‘It’s done,’ she said. ‘Mrs Driscol-Bledsoe identified her son at the hospital.’

  ‘That’s not quite the story I heard from Grace. She relied on the police ID when she—’

  ‘Grace? You know that woman?’

  ‘Yes.’ And what new crime had he committed now? ‘Of course I know her. The Driscol Institute funds half the costs of running my rehab clinic – thanks to Grace.’

  Many doctors had country homes; Edward Slope had a country clinic for drug addicts. Kathy Mallory had never understood his penchant for working on live patients after hours – and worse – free of charge. In her world, the only good junkie was a dead one.

  ‘Next time you come up to my clinic, read the patron plaque in the lobby. You’ll find Grace Driscol-Bledsoe’s name engraved at the top. Very generous woman. She presides over the board of trustees for the—’

  ‘How much money does she control?’

  ‘At least a billion dollars, probably more.’ He laid his scalpel down on the dissection table – too tempting. ‘Please tell me you’re not looking for a money motive in the Ramble murders.’

  ‘That woman recognized her son at the hospital – no hesitation. That’s a fact. So I have to wonder why she’d come all the way down here for another ID.’ The young detective folded her arms, regarding him with grave suspicion. ‘And how many other city officials does she own?’

  ‘That was hardly subtle, Kathy. Here’s a thought. Why don’t you ask her?’

  ‘We can’t get past her lawyers – and the mayor.’ She glared at the corpse on the table, the one in line ahead of her corpse. ‘So you’re giving a friend special privileges.’

  And did he rise to this bait? He did not. ‘Grace is only getting what she’s entitled to. She said she’d drop by sometime today. I’ll personally do her son’s autopsy, all right? Tomorrow.’

  ‘I need it done right now.’ She stood, firmly planted between the doctor and his table of instruments. ‘I arranged for the funeral home to pick up the body in three hours. That’s all the time you’ve got.’

  ‘You arranged it?’ Edward Slope removed his plastic face guard. Was he getting too old for these sparring matches? Hell, no. ‘You don’t give a damn about that autopsy. It won’t tell you anything you don’t already know.’ Did he sound sufficiently indignant? He hoped so. ‘It’s all about the funeral, right? I understand the interest in victim funerals, but since when do the police schedule them? Did you even tell the family about your arrangements?’

  ‘No, Edward, she did not.’ The voice of Grace Driscol-Bledsoe echoed off the tiled walls. In the company of a morgue attendant, the elegant redhead strode across the wide room with the tap of high heels. Another woman, drab and dressed in black, lagged a few steps behind on rubber-soled shoes, and this person was not introduced.

  The socialite took both the doctor’s hands in hers, drew close to him and kissed the air between them so as not to smudge her lipstick. ‘The funeral director gave me the news twenty minutes ago. His people have been burying my people for a very long time. My son’s funeral was arranged on the day he was born.’ She turned a disingenuous smile on Kathy Mallory. ‘But the family usually sets the date. So imagine my surprise when the director called – out of the blue – to ask my preferences for music and flowers . . . for tomorrow’s services.’

  When the detective approached her, Grace Driscol-Bledsoe handed over a business card, saying, ‘Call my lawyer.’

  Translation? Kiss off.

  The chief medical examiner so enjoyed that. He extended one arm to the lady and personally escorted her to the viewing room where Humphrey Bledsoe’s remains awaited her formal identification. And the young detective was left behind to reflect on what she had done wrong.

  Right.

  When the chief medical examiner and his most generous patron stood before the viewer’s window, the blinds were opened to display a corpse laid out on the other side of the glass. ‘That’s my son,’ said Grace. No hesitation. And that brought on the doctor’s first vague feeling of something a bit – off.

  ‘Not surprising that my daughter didn’t recognize him. Edward, dear, please try not to mess him up too badly. I’m
told that Detective Mallory ordered an open-casket ceremony.’

  The woman handed him a small, square envelope engraved with her name and return address. His own name was penned in an elegant script – like a party invitation. He opened it. Yes – a party, a purely social occasion. His eyes traveled from smiling mother to murdered son. Evidently, the rich were different.

  The cork walls of the incident room were newly bloodied with more cadaver photographs recently delivered by the Medical Examiner’s Office. Dr Slope, in an unexplained change of heart, had put a rush on the autopsy of Humphrey Bledsoe.

  Sixteen detectives sat on metal folding chairs arranged in audience formation. In advance of today’s briefing, a long table had been moved to the front of the room, where a crime-scene investigator laid out evidence and props to simulate the Hunger Artist’s murder kit. Lieutenant Coffey stared at the array of duct tape, a rope and a sack followed by a pulley, a drill, long screws and a metal plate. Make it stop. Next came a winch and a remote control – every damn thing but the trees. Oh, crap. The CSI had brought the trees, too. A circular chunk of barked wood was laid down alongside a section of branch.

  The lecture had not yet begun and the squad was already bored witless. Jack Coffey leaned against the door, cutting off their only avenue of escape.

  ‘I’m guessing you guys never went through our carton.’ CSI John Pollard smiled at his own lame joke about the box of useless leads.

  None of the detectives laughed, but neither did they draw weapons. They were all game to end the war with Crime Scene Unit. ‘Your perp’s been stockpiling his murder kit for a long time.’ John Pollard held up an evidence bag containing a coil of rope. ‘This brand was discontinued five years ago. It was sold in hundred-and-twenty-foot lengths. Forty feet of rope was found at each crime scene.’ And now, as if cops could not do simple math, he said, ‘The perp used up the whole coil.’ He moved on down the table to pick up a burlap sack. ‘The bags were made in only one batch and field-tested all over the city – docks, warehouses. That was four years ago. They were never sold to the public. So the Hunger Artist found them or stole them.’ Pollard looked down at the more common paraphernalia spread across the table. ‘Nothing here would cost more than a few hundred bucks. The perp paid cash. Count on it,’ he said, assuming that a roomful of seasoned detectives might need his help with this deduction.