She moved in front of him and looked deep into his eyes. “Did you cry?” she whispered.
Hard to imagine those eyes with any emotion in them. She let him stand there, knowing that this was wrong. What did he do with the time? It might have been different if there was someone else in the gallery. Then there would be conversation, planning, questions asked, plans laid.
But he had told Markowitz that he came alone.
“Well, that wouldn’t be your only lie, would it, Quinn’?”
And now she created a shadowy figure to stand beside him. But who could it have been, and why would Quinn shield this player who had accompanied him to the gallery? She stared at this second dark form, the one made wholly of shadow. Who was it?
And then she knew.
She stood before the shadow figure. “I’ve seen your face before, haven’t I?”
Now the shadow wore Sabra’s face as Mallory had constructed it on her computer.
Suppose the brother and sister had both visited their mother that night, and both had come to the gallery. So this was what sent Sabra over the top of her mind—not just the news that her only child had died horribly, but the sight of Aubry in this horrific work of art. Perhaps it had been Sabra’s fault that they were late getting to the gallery. That would have bent her mind even more. If they had come in Sabra’s car, and if she had left by herself, then Quinn’s story about the subway would have a reason.
Mallory closed her eyes and ended the gory art show.
At last she understood the crime. The artist and the dancer were very different kills, for different reasons, only coming together when the body parts were assembled into a single piece of bloody sculpture.
There was no one at home in the old house in Brooklyn, no one to hear the footsteps on the cellar stairs, squeaking under the old wood, nor the softer steps across the linoleum of the kitchen and the slam of the back door.
It began in the basement. Louis Markowitz’s collection of rock’n’roll records melted in the heat, the album covers turning brown and bursting into flames. His old recordings of the Shadow and other superheroes of radio days were consumed by fire.
Smoke wound up the stairs, invading the kitchen, where Helen Markowitz had made meals for the small family. The flames captured Helen’s sewing basket, then raced up the stairs to the room which had been Kathy’s, a room Markowitz had preserved until the day he died, a constant reminder to him of his only child. The flames licked down the hall to Markowitz’s den and ate his letters and his books, and at the bottom of his desk drawers it ravaged the pictures of Kathy Mallory’s growing up, beauty flowering into a woman who amazed him.
When Mallory entered the Gulag, Sandy the waitress was leaning on the counter watching the clock, probably counting off the last minutes of her shift. Sandy looked at Mallory with annoyance, her eyes saying, Go away.
Quinn stood up and waved to Mallory from the far table. Suddenly the waitress’s attitude changed. With a tired but pleasant smile, Sandy plucked a menu from the rack on the counter and handed it to Mallory.
Quinn was delighted to see Mallory, but even his own mother would not have noted the difference between this display of emotion and his facial arrangement for stepping on a dog turd. He was well aware of his own uncommunicative shortcomings, his limited repertoire of expressions.
Mallory ordered the cheeseburger on his recommendation, but when it arrived, she ignored it. She was gazing at him steadily, and he was quietly coming unhinged, but he was also assured that this would never show.
“Will you explain to me how a little weasel wakes up one morning, decides he’s going to be an art star and lands a one-man show in an important gallery?”
“Dean Starr wasn’t really an overnight success,” said Quinn. “He used a lifetime of public relations and marketing skills to pull it off. And his timing was good. His targeted market was a generation with conversational points of reference taken from the constant repetition of fifteen-second television commercials. This was the perfect age for it.”
“I like to keep things simple. I think he had something on Koozeman, something big—say the murders of Peter Ariel and your niece. I think he was there that night. Starr made a lot of money after those murders, but then most of it went into his arm with a heroin habit. So he was looking for another hype. So he went to Koozeman, the genius of hype. Wasn’t that what you called him?”
“Well, I suppose that would fit rather nicely, but it’s a moot point now that they’re both dead. If you’re quite sure that Koozeman was the murderer, then you’ve finished your father’s case, haven’t you?”
“I still have the small detail of who’s killing the killers. You didn’t think I was just going to leave that hanging, did you? Quinn, if I can prove you’re mixed up in that, I’m going to get you for it.”
“And how can I help you toward that end?”
“I need some background on Emma Sue Hollaran. What kind of critic was she?”
“Are you figuring her for the next victim? I did notice a plethora of critics in this case. But I think you’re wasting your time there.”
“Maybe the old case isn’t wrapped yet.”
“Seriously, you’re still looking for another killer?”
Mallory looked up as a new waitress, just starting her shift, refilled their coffee cups and then left them alone again. “She has the same name tag as the other one. Why are all the waitresses named Sandy? And why does a dive like this have real gold name tags?”
“The owner bought the name tags from a liquidator, who bought them from a bankrupt jeweler. And you’re right, they are real gold. But since they were already engraved, he got a good price.”
He went on to explain that the name tags had been the deluxe business cards of a prostitute named Sandy. The cards were all paid for, cash in advance, but never picked up because Sandy had died of a severe asthma attack. Her nine-year-old daughter waited an hour for the ambulance to come, not believing it would never come. Next, she called the fire department. The firemen were there in three minutes, but Sandy had stopped breathing five minutes before that. “And so, the phone number of Sandy’s answering service was covered with a pin glued to the back of the cards, and all the waitresses are called Sandy.”
“You went to a lot of trouble to find that out.”
“Yes I did.”
“You remind me of Charles. He’s a puzzle freak. He can’t let go of a problem until he’s worked it out. Hard to believe you ever stopped looking for Sabra—or the man who killed your niece. You had to wonder what had happened to your sister. You would have kept at it until you found her.”
“I never said—”
“A morgue attendant tells me you were first in line to view the body of a homeless woman, a jumper from Times Square. Did you think it was Sabra?”
He looked down at the table. Given his limited range of expression, he knew this simple aversion of the eyes must be tantamount to a confession.
“One more thing.” Her voice had a cold edge to it.
“The night Aubry died—Sabra was in the gallery with you, wasn’t she?”
He lifted his face, and discovered that his expressions were not so limited after all. Mallory was nodding in agreement, as if he had answered her question aloud. Apparently, pain was something she could read in his face, for her voice was softer when she said good night.
On the bedroom bureau sat a wedding photo in a silver frame. Youthful and smiling, Louis and Helen Markowitz stared out of the frame. Two pairs of young, laughing eyes watched the flames racing toward them, consuming everything in sight, every memory of home and family until, mercifully, the glass of the picture frame was coated with soot and ash, blinding their eyes to the end of memories stored away in precious, irreplaceable things.
Mallory stood by the open door of her apartment, taking in the damage of pulled-out drawers, overturned tables and broken glass from the bulbs of fallen lamps. The doorman followed her into the front room.
“I swear I don’t know how he could’ve got past me, miss.”
“He probably walked in behind a tenant. If they want to get in, they will. There aren’t any safe places in this town.”
She walked into the kitchen to stand amid shards of crockery. The burglar had wiped the shelves clean of dishes and cups. Canned goods lay on the floor alongside the contents of her refrigerator. A canister of sugar was spilled over the contents of the flour canister.
Thorough little bastard.
Her den was less damaged. Since she had moved all her computer equipment to Charles’s building, Mallory had not thought to put this room to any better use than storage. Clothes were spilled out of trunks and onto the carpet, and the few remaining computer manuals had been ripped.
Not just a robbery.
She picked up a winter dress of good wool and found it slashed with a razor cut. In the bedroom the carpet was littered with silk blouses slit the same way. More drawers had been pulled out, and a wide selection of running shoes were strewn all over a jumble of blue jeans and blazers, linen and nylons. The mattress had been gutted and its stuffing coated the room. The feathers from her pillows lay on every surface.
The doorman was fidgeting beside her.
“It’s okay, Frank. I’m fully insured. Now tell me everything that happened. Who told you about the break-in?”
“A tenant. Mrs. Simpson. She comes down and says a cop told her to get me up here. He was waiting for me at the front door.”
“Are you sure he was a cop?”
“Yes, miss. He showed me a badge and his identification. And he gave me this.” The doorman put a white business card in her hand. “He said he’d get back to you for a list of what was missing, and I should tell you that you don’t have to file the report. He said he’d take care of it.”
Now she read the card and recognized the name of Blakely’s gofer. A push for a shove? She went to the bedroom closet and pulled out the side wall. Nothing had been touched, he had missed this cache where her valuables were stored.
“Thanks, Frank. You can go now.”
“I’m sorry, miss.”
She looked at his face grim with worry over his job. Well, she wasn’t about to break in an entirely new doorman. “I don’t think I’ll be mentioning this to the management company, Frank. And I’ll talk to Mrs. Simpson, all right?”
“Thank you, miss.”
It took twenty minutes to determine that nothing had been taken. Simple harassment? No, Blakely had probably sent his gofer out to find something. Did Blakely know about the office in Charles’s building?
The sirens were screaming down the road as the flames shot up to the rafters of the attic, where Helen Markowitz had stored Kathy’s baseball glove and her school uniforms. The family albums of five generations were all burning. The book of photos on the top of the pile was stubborn, only smoldering, then finally catching fire, burning all the pictures of a child’s growing years from ten to seventeen, when she had her full height. Before the siren screamed up to the front door, every trace of young Kathy Mallory had vanished in the smoke.
She unlocked the front door of Charles’s building. He would be asleep now. She took the stairs slowly, gun in hand, listening for sounds that did not belong in this quiet building of sleeping tenants, but she heard nothing out of the ordinary. On the second floor, she walked the hall silently, approaching the office of Mallory and Butler, Ltd. She fit her key in the lock and worked the tumblers quietly, entering with no noise at all.
Nothing in the reception area had been disturbed. She opened the door to Charles’s private office. Nothing was out of place. She found her own office in the same perfect order. She settled down in the chair behind her desk and waited in the dark. If Blakely knew about this place, his gofer would come here next. She might have some time to kill.
She reached out to the desk phone and dialed the priest’s number. And she knew from the weary “hello” that she had awakened him.
Well, tough.
“Father Brenner, what’s the religious penalty for defiling a corpse?”
“You woke me for that?”
“It was my mother’s corpse. This is under the seal of the confessional, right? You can’t tell?”
“Oh, God. Yes, if you wish. Kathy, is this real?”
“Oh, Father, it’s as real as it ever gets. Let’s say I lost my mind. Maybe it was all that blood, and the way she died. I had to leave her, but I couldn’t leave. But it was too dangerous to stay. I had to go, to run and right now. So I took a little bit of my mother with me—her brain.”
And now she looked down at her fingernails, examining the polish for chips. “So, Father, what’s the penalty for that?”
“How old were you, Kathy?”
“I was almost seven.”
“The church doesn’t expect a small child to reason out morality when the child is half crazed and in fear of its life. You must have—”
“Let’s say I wasn’t a child. Suppose I was a normal, moral person.”
“All right, let’s use our imaginations.”
She could hardly miss the sarcasm in his voice, and the creep of skepticism. “Rabbi Kaplan won’t like it when he finds out you’re doing his act.”
“He steals my jokes. Well, I suppose we share them. We shared you once. We talked about you behind your back, and we worried over you. We split up the prayers. Less work. I liked that.”
Time for a little side trip to hell, Father.
“The killer used an axe on my mother. He hit her over and over again. There was blood everywhere. It was like a slaughterhouse. I can still smell the blood, Father. She was crawling toward me, holding out her hand. She thought I was going to save her. But I didn’t. I ran away.”
“You were only a child.”
His voice was strained, he was buying it—all of it.
“What’s the penalty, Father?”
The beep came from the cellular phone in her pocket. She hung up on the priest with no goodbye, and pulled out the cellular phone, lifting it to her ear. “Mallory here,” she said, and listened to the stone silence on the other end.
“Mallory,” a voice whispered at last. “Your house is on fire.”
It was only a whisper—familiar though.
Blakely’s voice.
She stood in the front yard of the old house and watched the firemen wetting down the rafters of the attic, black charred ribs smoking and steaming under the arching waterfall from the hose.
“It was arson,” the fire chief was saying, though she barely heard him. “The guy didn’t even try to cover his tracks. We found the gas cans in the yard. Any idea who’d want to do this to you?”
“No,” she lied.
“Don’t bullshit me, Mallory. It’s like somebody went out of his way to leave you a message. Now is this connected to an ongoing case or not?”
She didn’t answer him, seemed not to see him anymore. Her eyes were fixed on the husk of the old house, her home. All gone now.
The fire chief leaned into her face and moved his hands across her eyes. She made no response. He drew away from her and turned to the man next to him. “There’s a doctor’s house three doors down the street. Go get him.”
She stood alone on the lawn, as firemen, going to and fro, made a wide circle around her. She stared at the ruins and rocked back and forth in a cage of solid hatred for a thing she could not put a name to. It was such a large beast, it threatened to become the whole earth.
Somewhere behind her, another siren was screaming up to the house. Now a car door was slamming, footsteps running.
The house was gone, that solid anchor to the world, all gone. She was airy and light, and in danger of being drawn up with the smoke. It was the sudden tight wrap of Riker’s arms about her that kept her bound to the earth. She was engulfed in rough tweed and the familiar scents of cigarettes, cheap spot remover and beer.
“So you went after Blakely,” said Riker, holding her close and watching the smoke twisti
ng up to the sky. “Now how did I know that?”
Charles opened the door to Riker and Mallory. She walked past him, through the foyer to the couch in the front room. Charles turned to Riker. “Is she all right? Does she need a doctor? Henrietta’s just up the stairs.”
“No, she’s okay. I just didn’t feel right letting the kid go back to her condo. Some bastard trashed it. So put her up for the night, and don’t ask her any questions. If she cries in front of you, she’ll never forgive you for it.” Riker handed Charles her duffel bag. “I gotta go, Charles. Somebody has to look after Andrew Bliss.”
“There must be something else I can do.”
“If you really want to do something for the kid, send Mrs. Ortega over to clean up the place before Mallory goes home again.”
“You know the old house in Brooklyn was her real home.”
“Yeah, well, the condo’s all she’s got left now. Good night, Charles.”
Mallory was sitting on the couch when he returned to his front room to lay the duffel bag at her feet. “I’ve made up the bed in the spare room.”
Seconds crawled by before she seemed aware that he had spoken to her. She looked down at the duffel bag by her feet as though it had appeared there by magic.
“Are you all right?”
She nodded.
Clearly, she was not all right. He detected the signs of shock in her eyes, which had gone to soft focus, staring inward and not liking what she saw there. He hunkered down before her and gently turned her face to his.
“Would you like me to call Henrietta Ramsharan?”
“I don’t need a shrink.” Her words were slow to come out.
“But Henrietta is also an M.D., you know. She could give you something to help you sleep.”
Killing Critics Page 25