Crime School
Page 23
‘No,’ she said. ‘The boy was hiding, watching through a keyhole or a crack in the door. Maybe he never saw the killer’s face.’
‘Or even the actual murder,’ said Charles. ‘The scarecrow doesn’t imitate his mother’s death by strangulation – only the postmortem hanging.’ And now he noticed the dead quiet in the offices of Butler and Company. ‘So where’s Lars Geldorf?’
‘I had Deluthe take him home. The old man is out of the loop. We’re consolidating all the hangings. From now on, he doesn’t get past the front door.’ She turned her eyes on Charles. ‘You’ve got a problem with that?’
‘Well, he has so much invested in Natalie’s murder.’ And now, judging by the hand gravitating to her hip, Charles realized that the correct response would have been, Oh, hell no. But he rather liked the old man, and so he persisted. ‘Lars could still contribute to the – ’
‘Wrong.’ She turned her back on him. ‘All Geldorf ever had was a stalker pattern and an ex-husband, every cop’s favorite suspect. He spent all his time trying to break Erik Homer’s alibi.’ A more linear personality was taking shape on the cork wall as Mallory finished pinning up a straight line of text and pictures. One red fingernail tapped the statement of Susan Qualen. ‘Natalie’s sister hated her brother-in-law. Every other word on this paper is bastard. But later the same night, she was talking to Erik Homer for hours, and they weren’t discussing funeral arrangements.’
Charles nodded. ‘You think they conspired to hide the boy.’
‘Right,’ said Mallory. ‘They didn’t want the killer to know there was an eyewitness. That’s why no one could find Junior. He was shipped off to relatives out of state.’
A computer beeped to call for Mallory’s attention, and she sat down at a workstation to watch the text scrolling down her screen. ‘An hour ago, I found rapsheets for Rolf and Lisa Qualen, a husband and wife in Wisconsin. They were arrested for kidnapping a little boy, but the age doesn’t match Natalie’s son.’ Mallory scrolled down the single-spaced text. ‘One hell of a lot of material.’ She watched bundles of paper pouring into all the printer beds. ‘I’ve got a time problem here.’
Laden with Mallory’s printouts, Charles had retreated to the comfort of his own private office, a soft leather chair and a wooden desk from a less technical age. When he had finished speed-reading the last of the court documents, a trial transcript and attendant reports from social workers and police, he looked up at his audience. The weary detectives were pressed deep into a plush sofa. They were raiding delicatessen bags and awaiting his synopsis on the arrest and trial of Rolf and Lisa Qualen.
‘Mr and Mrs Qualen had a son named John, who drowned shortly before his eighth birthday, and that was a year before Natalie Homer’s murder. Two days after Natalie’s body was found, the Qualens abandoned their house in Racine, Wisconsin, and resettled in a small town a hundred miles away. That’s where they enrolled their dead son, John, in grammar school.’
‘Freaking amateurs,’ said Riker.
‘Hmm.’ Mallory finished her bagel. ‘Bad match for Natalie’s son. The dead boy’s birth certificate was off by two years.’
‘The school principal noticed that, too,’ said Charles. ‘He was told that the boy’s scholastic records were lost in a fire. Eventually, he located those records in Racine – along with a death certificate for the real John Qualen.’
‘So that’s when the cops were called in?’ This was Riker’s polite way of moving the story along, for it was not his habit to state the obvious. And now he glanced at his watch in yet another attempt at being subtle.
‘Yes,’ said Charles. ‘The police suspected kidnapping, but the Qualens wouldn’t cooperate with the investigation and neither would the little boy.’
‘Junior was scared,’ said Mallory.
‘That was the case detective’s opinion,’ said Charles. ‘The police had no idea where the boy came from. He didn’t match any reports on missing children. So they put him in foster care, and the Qualens went to trial. The kidnap charge was never proved, but they were found guilty of falsifying records, and that got them a stiff fine. The foster-care records were sealed, and the boy disappeared into the bureaucracy.’
Riker pulled out his notebook and pen. ‘What’ve you got in the way of case numbers?’
‘For the boy? There’s nothing attached to the court documents. Sorry.’ He held up a sheaf of papers. ‘This is a brief filed by the Qualens’ attorney. They tried to adopt the boy, but they weren’t even successful in getting visitation rights.’
‘That’s why I can’t find him,’ said Mallory. ‘Social Services saw the Qualens as a threat. So they changed Junior’s name again and gave him a new case number. We don’t even know what age they settled on.’
‘With what we got so far,’ said Riker, ‘we’ll never get a court order to open sealed juvenile records. And he’s probably out there right now stringing up another woman.’
‘Then we’ll know soon enough,’ said Mallory. ‘He escalated with Sparrow. This time, he’ll put on a bigger show.’
***
Riker’s kitchen was wrecked, drawers pulled out, cupboards rifled, and a slice of pizza was glued upside down to the linoleum where he had dropped it the previous night – or perhaps the night before. And he had not yet found the playground tape. Years ago, he had put it away for fear of breaking it after running it so many times.
He glanced back at the living room. Charles Butler sat down on the sofa, and a dusty cloud rose up around him. At the man’s feet, cardboard take-out containers and months of newspapers were loosely piled, as if set apart for recycling, a practice Riker had only heard about, and all the ashtrays were overflowing with stale butts. However, Charles was so polite, so well bred that no one would have guessed he was not accustomed to squalor.
At last the detective found the videotape and fed it into the VCR in the living room. He handed his guest the last clean glass (Riker’s own version of good breeding) filled with bourbon and a splash of water, then made his own drink a bit stronger and settled into a leather armchair.
‘A friend of mine confiscated the tape from a pedophile. The freak was cruising Central Park for victims.’ He turned to Charles and noted the sudden rigid set to the man’s jaw. ‘Relax. He never got near the kid. He could only catch her on film.’ Riker hit the play button on his remote control. ‘This is what really got Lou’s attention. The film was a few years old when we saw it for the first time.’ In the absence of children of his own, the pedophile’s video was Riker’s substitute for home movies.
The screen brightened to a clear summer day, and the show began with the close-up shot of a small blond girl in a dirty T-shirt that fitted her like a tent. Riker pressed the pause button. ‘Kathy’s probably eight years old on this tape, but you can see she’s been out on the street too long.’
He pressed the play button, but the little girl remained frozen on the grass at the edge of a playground. She tilted her head to one side, not yet committed to going or staying. The homeless child must have known that she belonged here with kids her own age. Perhaps she recognized a normalcy that had been ripped away from her. So here she was – looking to fill a need.
Doing the best you can.
Kathy came to play.
Charles Butler leaned toward the screen, spellbound by the beautiful little girl, a miniature Mallory. All around her the world was aswirl with action and sound, small feet running in packs and tiny screams of outrage and joy.
The solitary child hesitated another moment. Then, light stepping, cautious as a cat, she padded toward a row of swings, gray boards dangling from long metal chains. She took her seat among the rest, looking right and left with grave suspicion, and she began to swing in a small tentative arc. Now Kathy leaned far back to steepen the pitch and made a soft giggling sound at the wonder of flight. On the upswing, she soared above a line of cruel spikes atop an iron fence. An illusion of the camera made these spears seem close enough to impale her.
Riker turned to Charles. The man’s mouth was working in a silent prayer, Don’t fall.
Toes pointed toward the sun, she rushed up to the sky, laughing – laughing.
All the joy died when Kathy looked into the camera lens. Her eyes were suddenly adult and cold. Her hands let go of the chains, and she took flight; literally airborne, she flew out of the camera frame, and the screen went black.
Though Riker had watched this film a hundred times, his hand tensed around the bourbon glass. For him, the child was still flying and always would be – a tossed coin that could never land.
Charles slept soundly on his office couch, still wearing yesterday’s clothes. Only Mallory was awake to watch the sun come up. She had returned to the offices of Butler and Company with a stack of morning newspapers, and now she sat in an armchair, sipping coffee and hunting for a police press release. It had not made any of the front pages. The scarecrow’s crimes were old and stale, last week’s news.
The dog days of August marked the close of tourist-hunting season in Central Park, the scene of another daylight stabbing, but today’s headline victim was a man decapitated by a flying manhole cover described as the blown cork of a broken water main. The next runner-up was a woman killed by a stone gargoyle that had fallen from a crumbling building facade on Broadway. All the signs of a town out of control were here in black and white, decay and corruption from the sewers to the skyline.
And then there was Riker.
Yesterday, his sallow skin had been stippled with the small wounds of a shaving razor. His hands always trembled the morning after a binge. Booze poisoning was running its course and killing him slowly. With most cops on the decline, integrity was the first thing to go. Riker had clung to his long after everything else had been lost. He had always commanded great respect, even while crawling out of a bar on his hands and knees.
Why would he risk his job to rob Sparrow’s crime scene?
It was a common form of larceny for cops and firemen, stealing cash and baubles from the dead. But she had believed that all the manhole covers would blow up and the town would fall down before Riker would steal anything. And she still believed that, for now she suspected him of a worse crime – holding out on his partner, secreting evidence and working it on the side.
Mallory turned another page in search of the official press release, a warning to every blond actress in New York City. She found the story at the bottom of page three. Lieutenant Coffey had come through on his promise to give the next victim a sporting chance, but the scarecrow had also warned his prey; he had all but pushed the women into the arms of the police. Why?
She blamed her lack of sleep for seeking logic in a madman’s plan.
The young actress had grown up wearing the discards of the Abandoned Stellas, twice- and thrice-handed-down clothes bought from secondhand stores. Only the fabulous blue suit had never been worn by anyone else, and now it was ruined New York style, with blood, and she had lost her armor. Every passerby could see the genes of a third-generation bastard, the highway debris of traveling men.
This morning, Stella Small stood in front of an uptown cash machine and stared at her bank card. She never balanced her checkbook, for that sucked the last bit of charm out of life, and it also frightened her. She could roughly guess her account balance, enough for underwear, but she was hoping for more. A brochure was clutched in her other hand, and she paused to pray over it, God bless junk mail. Designer suits were featured on the second page of sale items. The fashion outlet store was only one block away, and she had an hour to spare before the next open audition. Stella had gambled a subway token on her belief in synchronicity, and now she fed her bank card into the magic slot.
Her eyes were scrunched shut. Please, please, please.
Stella’s white blouse and skirt had been washed and ironed twice, yet she could detect the smell of a thrift shop in the material.
It was the odor of failure. Her head was bowed and her shoulders slumped in a loser’s posture. But that was about to change.
When she had finished her ritual prayer words over the cash machine, it disgorged all the manna she needed to replace the ruined audition suit. Her first thought was that this was her rent money, that the Abandoned Stellas had made an early deposit to her checking account. Her second thought was that there was a god of cash machines, and he loved theater folk.
She ran to the end of the block and joined a herd of shoppers gathered outside the department store, all awaiting the early-bird sale. Stella had her battle plan ready. The doors opened, and the chase was on. She sped past older women in support hose, descended the stairs to the basement level, then charged toward the back wall where the suits were hanging. If the clothes fit, if the producer liked what he saw – her entire life would change. Her future might be literally hanging on the rack before her eyes, and she was rushing toward it.
And then she stopped.
Damn – another New York moment.
A lumpy woman with brown hair and gray roots pulled the only blue suit from the group of size eights. Stella watched, dumbfounded, as the middle-aged shopper popped a button trying to close the blazer over her bulging stomach. Oh, and now the evil bitch had left a smudge of makeup on one sleeve.
Stella was distracted by the sight of her own face in a mirror on the nearby wall. Without intending to, she had slipped under the skin of the aging brunette, imitating the scowl, the narrowed mean little eyes and the absence of a soul.
The older woman gave up the attempt to shoehorn her body into the suit jacket, and she stormed away with heavy footfalls. Stella retrieved the fallen button and collected her prize from the floor where it had been dropped, but not, Thank you, God, trodden upon. She checked the label. It belonged to a designer she had actually heard of. The price had been slashed in half, another divine act, or, as the Abandoned Stellas would say, Jesus saves.
She glanced at her watch. It was late, but she would make the audition if she hurried, if the line at the cashier was not too long, if the trains were not late. She was still chaining her conditions of success when she ran into the fitting room, where she stripped, tried on the suit and pronounced it a perfect fit.
Stella slung her old skirt over one arm as she walked toward the cashier’s counter. Miraculously, there was no one in line. This afforded her the luxury of a few minutes of preening before a three-sided looking glass, admiring herself from every angle. The makeup stain was invisible as long as she kept her right hand by her side. And there was more than enough time to sew on a button during the subway ride. For a whole year, she had carried a small traveler’s sewing kit in every purse she owned, just waiting for a day like today, when her life might hang upon a button.
She was knocked into the mirror by a hard slam to her back. Stella sucked in her breath, then braced both hands on the glass. In one of the three reflecting panels, she saw a man standing behind her, breaking the rules, for all New York collisions were hit-and-run affairs. Everyone else in the crowd was in motion, hustling from rack to rack, flinging clothes and hangers. Only this man was absolutely still, and he only had eyes for Stella.
CHAPTER 14
The man in the department store mirror was obviously another fan of daytime soap operas. Stella smiled at his reflection.
Yes, it’s me.
He did not acknowledge her smile, nor did he make eye contact like any normal person. The man stared at her as if she were an object all of one piece and without eyes of her own to see him. She stiffened her body, imitating his posture, then focused on her own reflection and watched her eyes go cold and colder. Her mouth became a simple line, committed to no expression. And now she had his likeness inside and out. There was no one home inside of her anymore – just a little graveyard dust.
The man did not seem to appreciate or even notice her artful portrayal of him. Beneath the brim of a baseball cap, his face was unchanged, frozen, one inanimate object facing another – herself. Pushing the likeness just a bit further, Stella’s eyes had gone entirely dead, and she became -
The audition!
She was going to be late.
Stella broke off this eerie connection to glance at her watch.
When she looked up again, she saw the reflection of his baseball cap just visible above the heads of female shoppers as he moved backward, blending into the crowd, a player doing his walk-on in reverse.
Mesmerized, Stella did not move until he was out of sight. Again, she looked at her watch. More time had passed than she would have believed possible. Other customers were moving toward the cash registers. She ran full-out to beat a slow-moving elderly woman to the checkout counter. Hunched over, neck-and-neck with the stooped, white-haired shopper, Stella unconsciously mirrored the sudden alarm in her opponent’s eyes. The old woman put on some speed toward the end, then gave up the foot race to youth; panting and wheezing, support hose bagging at the ankles, the loser stood in line behind the grinning actress.
When it was Stella’s turn to be waited on, her mouth dipped down on one side, copying the face before her, and she also assumed the overly efficient air of the sales clerk. ‘I’m in a big hurry. Just cut the tags. I’ll wear it.’ Stella pushed her old skirt across the counter. ‘And bag this, okay?’
‘Suit yourself The clerk’s voice was the monotone of a telephone company recording. ‘No returns on sales.’
Stella held out one pale blue sleeve so the other woman could snip off the price tags. ‘You be careful with those scissors, all right?’
The clerk’s voice betrayed a sudden annoyance. ‘Like I said, lady – no returns.’ Not quite so efficient anymore, the woman allowed Stella’s arm to hang in the air. Taking her own maddening time to put the blond actress in her place, the clerk picked up the old skirt ‘twixt thumb and forefinger, then held it at the distance of a bad smell before dropping it into a bag. Finally, she reached for her scissors and slowly cut the tag strings from Stella’s sleeve. The cashier glanced at the mirror behind the line of customers, saying, ‘You know this jacket is damaged, right? Stained?’