The Chalk Girl km-10

by Carol O'Connell

  Riker’s escort confided that the rest of the chairs had been removed to discourage people from remaining for long. ‘The mother declined a religious service.’ Mr Harrow seemed very young to be scandalized by this, but it made sense to Riker. Sending up prayers for a pedophile was like begging for seven plagues upon your house.

  The air was thick with the perfume of floral offerings. They were extravagant, as if each sender of a basket or a wreath feared being outdone by another. Central Park did not have so many flowers. At their center was the coffin, a grand affair of ornately carved wood. Humphrey Bledsoe’s hair had been restored to its natural red color, and there was no sign of the autopsy damage. The face had a creepy lifelike quality – and it smiled. On Coco’s behalf, Riker was inclined to spend a bullet to mess up that smile. Instead, he took up a post behind the chairs of Mrs Driscol-Bledsoe and her daughter. And now he watched his partner moving from one flower arrangement to another, admiring the blooms – while stealing cards of sympathy, acquiring a list of those most anxious to curry favor with the pedophile’s mother.

  For the next hour, the mourners entered the room single file and walked to the casket for the obligatory view of the dead pervert, and this was followed by condolences to the family. One by one, they were dispatched in polite society’s version of the bum’s rush. Riker admired the matriarch’s ability to keep the crowd in motion, quickly withdrawing her hand from one person to offer it to the next in line. Even the mayor was given short shrift. And then it was Rolland Mann’s turn. The acting police commissioner had an anxious look about him. He leaned close to Humphrey’s mother, but he had not gotten out three whispered words before he was dismissed.

  The last of the mourners were three stragglers in the clothes of workaday people, a man, a woman and a teenage girl with red hair the same shade as Coco’s.

  Phoebe leaned toward her mother, and Riker heard her whisper, ‘Who are those people?’

  ‘I think those are the Coles,’ said Mrs Driscol-Bledsoe. ‘I only met them once or twice, and the girl was much younger then.’

  The three Coles queued up at the coffin and took turns spitting on the corpse.

  ‘That’s different,’ said Riker.

  The pop-eyed funeral director was obviously another Harrow of Harrow and Sons, an older version of Riker’s escort. This distinguished gentleman sucked in his breath, and then, wits recovered, moved toward the desecrators. Mallory snagged him by one arm and pulled him back to the coffin, commanding the man as if he were a dog, saying, ‘Stay.’ Now she followed close behind the little family of vandals. Their leader was angry as he approached the dead man’s mother.

  ‘Mr Cole, thank you for coming.’ Grace Driscol-Bledsoe said this with surprisingly little sarcasm. The man expelled a huge glob of mucus, and it rolled down the front of the lady’s silk blouse. Without missing a beat, she said, ‘Always a pleasure.’

  Mallory and Riker followed the Cole family outside, and there on the sidewalk they learned that these people were residents of a small Connecticut town where Humphrey had attended prep school. The father then held his tongue until his wife and daughter were safely ensconced in a taxi. ‘He raped my child when she was six years old, but the town wouldn’t prosecute. They wouldn’t even arrest him. The parents and the politicians, they did this dirty backroom deal, and that little bastard was sent to a mental institution – more like a spa for rich people. So we sued the parents.’

  Riker looked up from his notebook to ask, ‘What grounds?’

  ‘Negligence. They neglected to warn the town that their son was a monster.’ Mr Cole’s anger and pain seemed brand-new, as if the assault had happened only this morning and not years ago. ‘They knew what their kid was. They always knew. That’s why they settled out of court.’ The man climbed into the waiting taxi, and the damaged little family rolled away.

  ‘The settlement almost put a small dent in my husband’s stock portfolio.’

  The detectives turned around to see Grace Driscol-Bledsoe standing behind them atop the steps of the funeral home.

  ‘Of course, the lawsuit was ridiculous. It would’ve been dismissed for lack of merit, but my late husband actually gave the Coles more than they asked for.’ She descended the stairs, stopping short of the final step, no doubt liking the advantage of looking down on them. ‘He wanted to spare the little girl a painful court appearance. My John was a sentimental man.’

  ‘You mean, he knew his kid was a cockroach,’ said Riker. ‘So how did Humphrey wind up with all that money?’

  ‘When John sold his company, the proceeds went into a trust for our son’s psychiatric care. One condition – the boy would be institutionalized until he was cured.’ She bestowed a patronizing smile on Riker. ‘I know what you’re thinking, Detective. Pedophiles are only cured when they run out of money to pay their therapists. And we did our best to make sure that wouldn’t happen. But after my husband’s death, Humphrey hired lawyers to break the trust fund and get him out of the asylum. The court case dragged on for years. Even after taxes and legal fees, my son had more than a hundred million dollars . . . but only three months to enjoy it.’

  ‘And now all that money comes back to you,’ said Mallory.

  ‘So I’m told.’

  ‘My partner loves money motives,’ said Riker. ‘But I guess we’re looking at an insanity defense, right? Maybe it runs in the family?’

  ‘Oh, my son wasn’t insane – just a pedestrian little pervert.’

  ‘He’s talking about Phoebe,’ said Mallory. ‘Your crazy daughter is on our short list.’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with her.’

  ‘What?’ Riker tilted his head to one side. ‘She talks to people who aren’t there.’

  ‘No, she doesn’t. She only listens.’ Mrs Driscol-Bledsoe’s tone implied that this was a perfectly rational thing to say.

  ‘Okay,’ said Riker. ‘Phoebe only hears invisible people. That’s still—’

  ‘That’s a symptom of incompetent therapy, not mental illness. And I can name six people who visit cemeteries and converse with gravestones.’

  ‘So Phoebe has a psychiatric history,’ said Mallory, ‘and her invisible friend is dead.’

  ‘Dead and real short,’ said Riker. ‘Kid size. She always looks down when he talks to her.’ And now for a long shot. ‘This invisible, dead kid – what’s his name – Ernest?’

  Bonanza.

  Riker caught the startled look in the woman’s eye, only a flicker, gone in a second. Then he looked past her to see three men in suits walking down the stairs of the funeral home. Such beautiful suits. They gathered around Mrs Driscol-Bledsoe as she stepped down to the sidewalk. Mallory was focused on the action down the street, where yet another suit was opening the door to a waiting limo, and Phoebe Bledsoe ducked inside of it, escaping.

  Riker smiled. ‘Nicely done.’ So the lady had only spoken to them to draw fire from her daughter. ‘But now we have to wonder why Phoebe needs your protection.’

  Mallory stepped close to the society matron. Closer – threatening distance. ‘You just moved your own kid to the top of our suspect list.’

  Both women were tall, meeting eye to eye, and this had all the makings of a showdown, three hired guns and a diva against Mallory. One of the lawyers whispered in Grace Driscol-Bledsoe’s ear. Evidently, she was that rare client who heeded her legal advisers, and the attorneys walked off with her in the lockstep of a marching band. Another limo door was opened, and the lady vanished.

  There was no funeral for the other murder victim from the Ramble. And this was due to lack of interest by the parents of Agatha Sutton. So said the victim’s younger brother when he met the detectives at the door to his sister’s apartment. The boy looked to be in his early twenties, and his teeth were perfect, a hallmark of expensive orthodontia in his childhood. Now the score was three for three; all of the Hunger Artist’s victims had come down from money.

  Barry Sutton wore a long-sleeved shirt in the heat of summer
, a sure sign that he was covering the needle marks of drug addiction.

  ‘We’re sorry for your loss,’ said Riker.

  ‘Save it for someone who cares. My sister was an animal.’ The youngster jangled a ring of keys. ‘Mom and Dad are in Italy for the summer.’ He tried one key in the lock and then another. ‘They won’t be back anytime soon, not on Aggy’s account.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Riker. ‘How did you get along with your sister?’

  ‘I didn’t.’ He tried the third key. No luck. ‘Sorry. This is my father’s set. I’ve only been here once before to look at the place with a real-estate agent. My parents bought this condo for Aggy.’

  ‘Odd they didn’t pony up for her surgery,’ said Mallory. ‘The medical examiner told us your sister had an operable tumor . . . and her symptoms were hard to miss.’

  ‘Our family doctor warned them that removing the tumor might cure Aggy. They liked her better when she was insane. They could cope with insanity.’

  The fourth key turned in the lock, and Barry Sutton led the detectives inside. A simple dress lay on the floor in a pile with a pair of sandals and underwear – the same way they had found Humphrey’s clothing and Willy’s. The killer had also bopped and dropped Aggy a short distance from the door.

  The front room was bare of any furnishings. ‘I should’ve expected this,’ said the victim’s brother. ‘My parents bought the place fully furnished, but Aggy gives everything away. A lawyer managed her trust-fund allotments so she couldn’t give away all her money, too.’

  The space was generous in size, but even so, the word squalor came to mind with the smells of body odor and windows never opened. A stink of garbage led them to the kitchen, where a peanut butter jar stood open and roaches scaled its glass sides. A loaf of bread was moving, breathing with the activity of feasting bugs inside the wrapper. Barry Sutton recoiled and fled to the bedroom, and there a bare mattress lay on the floor. The open closet contained four simple dresses, all exactly like the one in the pathetic pile in the living room. This was a basic Mother Teresa wardrobe – not even a spare pair of shoes.

  ‘Okay, she’s nuts,’ said Riker. ‘We got that. How long has this been going on?’

  ‘A couple of years. I call it the brain tumor from heaven. Before the tumor, my sister was just mean. Then she went crazy.’ He turned to Mallory. ‘Crazy is good.’

  Her slight nod was an almost imperceptible agreement. ‘What did Aggy do to you?’

  ‘Aggy the Biter?’ Barry Sutton rolled up one sleeve to show them that he was not concealing any needle marks, only an ugly scar. The wound was healed, but the missing chunk of flesh made an indent in his arm. ‘She did that when I was ten and she was seventeen. That was the year my parents sent her to Europe. The bribe to stay there was plastic surgery and support money. Aggy was butt-ugly and flat-chested when she left. When she came back, she had breasts and a chin – but she’d lost her mind. My parents got a competency hearing so they could make all her medical decisions.’

  ‘And they decided to keep the brain tumor,’ said Riker.

  ‘You think that’s cold? I call it self-defense.’ Aggy’s brother rolled down his sleeve and then handed over the keys. ‘Lock up when you leave, okay? Mail me the keys. I don’t want to talk about my sister anymore.’

  TWENTY-TWO

  The gym teacher lines us up between basketball hoops, wall-to-wall boys and girls in school ties and blazers. It’s class picture day. Everyone takes a turn in the chair in front of a background screen that looks like a curdled sky.

  It’s my turn. The man behind the camera is stalled for a minute. He’s staring at my neck. My hair is slicked back with a comb I wet in the drinking fountain, and now half a bite mark shows above my collar. The photographer asks if he can see the whole thing. So I undo my tie and shirt buttons. He’s impressed. He whistles. Now he can see some of my bruises, too, the ones that only show in gym class. And the gym teacher says to him, ‘You can airbrush the picture, right?’

  ‘Oh, yeah,’ says the photographer, ‘and for a little extra, I can drop by once a week and airbrush the actual kid. Then it won’t matter who’s beating the crap out of him, right?’

  So the gym teacher walks away real fast, and I know he’s going to rat this guy out to the headmaster. But the photographer isn’t worried. He winks and says, ‘Well, kid, as Christ on the cross once said of the Romans – fuck ’em if they can’t take a joke.’

  I laugh. He snaps the picture.

  —Ernest Nadler

  By the terms of an agreement forged in the mayor’s office, lawyers would be in attendance for the police interview at the Driscol-Bledsoe residence on the Upper West Side. When Hoffman, the drab employee, opened the door to the detectives, she was still carrying her small Gladstone bag on a shoulder strap. The woman ignored Riker when he asked, ‘What’s in the bag? Is your boss shooting up or snorting it?’

  Hoffman left them alone in an entry hall larger than the average New Yorker’s apartment. The floor was a circular chessboard of black-and-white marble tiles, and a polished table at its center was decked out with a profusion of flowers. They strolled past the grand staircase, through an archway and into a space of ballroom proportions and a cathedral ceiling that spoke to Mallory, saying, Money lives here.

  These environs were familiar in a way. This was a grander version of Charles Butler’s taste – modern art on the walls and antiques on the floor. An education at Barnard allowed her to recognize the style of Frank Stella in a gigantic wall sculpture of curving shapes and primary colors. She was accustomed to artwork on this scale, having viewed it by slides projected on a classroom wall. Mallory could also name Motherwell as the artist of a large work on canvas. And the furniture was an elegant mix of pieces named for the reigns of long-dead kings and queens.

  All of this she saw with a cost accountant’s eye.

  This was the showroom, the gathering place for cocktail parties, for independent conversations upon a loveseat here and couches over there, and circles of armchairs on the far side. Though visitors clearly came here not to be entertained, but to be cowed by extreme opulence, to stand in awe beneath the largest crystal chandelier that money could buy.

  Mallory slowly revolved, finally turning her gaze on Grace Driscol-Bledsoe. The lady of the house was enthroned in a high-back chair by the fireplace – the only chair in that part of the room. She was surrounded by an honor guard of three lawyers, who stood tense and watchful. Their employer tapped one foot, annoyed to be kept waiting.

  Well, damn.

  As the detectives crossed the wide floor, Mallory deflated the props of the room with a dismissive wave of the hand, saying, ‘All of this belongs to the Driscol Institute, right? The antiques, the art. You don’t even own the house.’

  Grace Driscol-Bledsoe barely suppressed a smile of touché and inclined her head to say that this was so.

  Approaching the woman, Mallory looked down to see indents on an area rug, impressions left there by chairs recently removed, forcing the detectives to stand in attendance, less like a police interview, more like an audience with royalty. The furniture was telling them to state their business, make it quick and get out.

  Mallory held up a bulky envelope. ‘I’ve had a look at your personal finances.’

  One of the lawyers stepped forward from the chorus. ‘You’re out of line, Detective.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Riker. ‘Her family trust fund is managed by the Driscol Institute. A charity’s books are public record. Why do we need to explain that to a lawyer?’

  ‘After taxes,’ said Mallory, ‘you’re barely middle class.’ And now she engaged the socialite in a contest of who would blink first. ‘But then you’ve got the kickback potential that comes with control of a multibillion-dollar charity.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Riker. ‘So we’re curious about—’

  The attorneys were all talking at once, jockeying for position as the most indignant, the most outraged, until Riker waved his arms a
nd yelled, ‘Hold it! I got an easier question. Okay, guys?’ He turned to the woman in the throne chair. ‘You got any photos of Humphrey? We need a shot of him as a kid.’

  ‘A picture taken at least fifteen years ago,’ said Mallory.

  Grace Driscol-Bledsoe made her first error. Or was it an insult? Perhaps she thought so little of the police that she could not be bothered to feign surprise – to ask why they would need such an old picture of a recent crime victim. ‘Sorry.’ She only smiled at this lost leader of a long-ago murder. ‘I threw away his photographs, but I can show you a portrait of Humphrey and his father.’ She led the detectives and lawyers down a hallway to open the door to a small bathroom off the kitchen. A large, gilt-framed oil painting hung on the narrow wall above the toilet. Her husband, the late John Bledsoe, was posed with one hand on his son’s shoulder, conveying a sense of possession. ‘Humphrey was ten years old when that was painted.’

  Mallory pulled out her camera phone to snap a picture.

  ‘Oh, my dear. I can do better than that.’ The woman disappeared into the kitchen for a moment, and then she reappeared at Mallory’s side, knife in hand – a long knife – and so sharp. The attorneys took one step back in the unison of a startled Girl Scout troop. The detectives were more blasé about a potential stabbing.

  Grace Driscol-Bledsoe smiled. ‘You don’t think I’m dangerous? I can assure you . . . I am.’ She kicked off her stiletto heels, climbed up on the toilet seat and cut out Humphrey’s head. After handing it down to Riker, she carved out her husband’s head and gave him that piece, too. ‘Shame to break up the set.’

  Mallory’s eyes remained on the ruined canvas, the portrait of headless father and son. ‘So Humphrey was your husband’s favorite?’

  ‘Oh, yes. John had visions of building a dynasty, and Humphrey was his heir apparent.’ She climbed down and turned back to admire her handiwork with the knife. ‘I think I like it better this way. My husband gave me a diamond necklace when I delivered a son. For Phoebe I got nothing. And when the bastard died, he didn’t leave one dime to his daughter.’