Crime School

by Carol O’Connell

  A woman answered, ‘Hello?’ One more stranger out of a thousand calls from the street said, ‘Hello? Is anyone there?’

  Mallory had not forgotten the ritual. She knew what came next, the words, It’s Kathy, I’m lost, but she could not say them anymore.

  ‘Hello?’ The stranger’s voice was climbing into the high notes of alarm.

  Oh, lady, can you hear the rats on the telephone line?

  Charles abandoned his previous theories. The child had neither believed in heroes, nor had she relied on fictional people for friends. Far from it. She had once ruled a stable of prostitutes bound to her by stories. It was an ancient lure dating back to the cave, the need to know what happens next.

  Brilliant child.

  He pulled another chair into his cubicle for Gloria and Maxine. The women were not related, but resembled one another and even dressed in twin red halter tops and shorts. They were younger than the rest. Their makeup was low key, and they were not battered where it showed. The two prostitutes had insisted on being interviewed together.

  ‘We do everything together.’ Gloria’s smile was very friendly. ‘Everything, hon.’

  On request, Charles was about to finish a story begun in The Cabin at the Edge of the World.

  ‘And don’t tell us that preacher made it rain,’ said Gloria.

  ‘Oh, no, nothing like that. When Wichita comes out of the fever, the cabin is still in flames. Now if you recall the clifflianger in the previous book – ’

  ‘Like we’d forget that,’ said Gloria. ‘The farmers think the old woman’s a witch and she caused the drought. They move burning bushes in front of all the windows and the doors. Every wall is on fire, and Wichita’s dying. That’s what the old woman thinks. So she gets down on her knees and screams to God for mercy.’

  ‘Right,’ said Charles, recalling the final sentence, ‘ „A scream that shivered the stars in the firmament.“ Well, in the next book, Wichita wakes up and soaks the old woman with a bucket of water.

  He slings her over one shoulder, then leaves by the front door. Walks right through a wall of fire.’ And now he thrilled the prostitutes with another quotation from the page, ‘„… stripped to the waist, his long golden hair flying in the wind and burning with sparks, his skin steaming with the burnt sweat of his fever.“ It’s an imposing sight on the heels of a very loud prayer from the old woman. Now the fake preacher gets religion. He falls down on bended knee and declares the outlaw is an angel. Well, as you can imagine, that gives a few of the farmers pause. Then the Wichita Kid draws his six-gun, and the rest of them have second thoughts about this business of witch burning.’

  The prostitutes were enthralled. ‘The Kid walked through fire.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Charles. ‘But then, toward the end of the book, he guns down another man.’

  ‘Oh, he always does that,’ said Gloria. Apparently, this credential of a serial killer was a character flaw she could live with. ‘So the Wichita Kid walked through fire.’

  ‘Now,’ said Charles, ‘I believe you mentioned running into Sparrow recently.’

  ‘Last week,’ said Gloria. ‘Maxine and me, we were cruising for Johns at the computer convention in Columbus Circle. Sparrow was there. Wasn’t she, Maxine?’

  ‘She was.’ Maxine resumed chewing her gum.

  ‘She was workin’ the crowd, same as us,’ said Gloria. ‘But nothin’ obvious – no flash. She didn’t look like a whore no more. She looked real nice, didn’t she, Maxine?’

  ‘Very nice.’

  ‘Excuse me,’ said Charles. ‘Did you ladies notice anything odd that day? Something out of the – ’

  ‘You mean Sparrow’s new nose job? Or the guy who slashed her arm with a razor?’

  ***

  Deluthe sat at a squad-room desk, very close to Maxine, as the woman concentrated on the computer monitor. They were attempting to create their own monster with photographic slices of other people’s faces, eyes and noses, ears and mouths, assisted by FBI software.

  A few desks away, a sketch artist was working with Gloria and using an old-fashioned pencil. ‘Can you describe him a little better?’

  ‘Yeah, he was a cold one,’ said Gloria.

  ‘Well, that doesn’t – ’ The exasperated sketch artist saw Riker’s hand signal to keep his mouth shut, and the man fell silent.

  ‘The color of his hair,’ said Riker. ‘Was it light or dark?’

  ‘Blond,’ said Gloria, raising her voice to be heard across the room. ‘His hair was blond, wasn’t it, Maxine?’

  ‘No,’ her friend called back. ‘It was brown, average old brown.’

  ‘Maxine, you’re nuts. He was blond, I tell ya. But real natural.’ The prostitute glanced at Ronald Deluthe’s head. ‘Not a bleach job.’

  Hoping to strike a compromise, Riker said, ‘Maybe it was blond hair that went dark when he grew up.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Maxine. ‘That’s it. His hair looked like Gloria’s roots.’ She turned to Deluthe. ‘Make it brown.’

  The sketch artist’s version was gray charcoal pencil. ‘No, this isn’t working,’ said Gloria. ‘Start over. Make it a profile picture -like a mug shot, ‘cause that’s all I saw of him. Maxine saw his whole face.’ She called out to her friend. ‘Didn’t you, Maxine?’

  ‘I did.’

  Gloria went on with her story of the encounter for Riker’s benefit. ‘Well, I was gonna say hi to her when this stiff-lookin’jerk comes up behind her. So I just stand there. Didn’t wanna say nothin’ to queer it for Sparrow. But the John, he don’t say nothin’, either. Sparrow hasn’t even noticed him yet. Then this freak pulls a box cutter out of his gym bag.’

  Gloria looked up at Charles, who wore the expensive clothes of a man unfamiliar with box cutters. ‘It’s a big metal grip with a razor.’ She turned back to Riker. ‘He cut her arm. I couldn’t believe it. All them people around, and he cut her right there. Cold as you please. Then he walks away, real calm, like he does this kind of thing every day. He stuck the box cutter back in his bag before Sparrow even knew she’d been slashed. She didn’t know till I told her. I said something like – Hey, you’re bleedin’. Isn’t that what I said, Maxine?’

  ‘That’s close.’ Maxine was no longer listening to her friend. She was staring at Deluthe’s monitor. The computer-generated image was taking shape faster than Gloria’s drawing. Deluthe had picked up on the other woman’s cue of a cold stare. A pair of vacant eyes slipped into place on the screen.

  ‘It’s better,’ said Maxine, ‘but it still needs work.’

  Charles crossed the room with a photograph retrieved from the cork wall of Butler and Company. He handed Maxine a wedding portrait of Erik Homer, the scarecrow’s father.

  ‘The eyes aren’t the same.’ She turned to Deluthe. ‘The mouth is, but don’t make him smile like that.’

  Riker handed Gloria a roast beef on rye. ‘Do you remember anything about the bag he was carrying?’

  ‘Nothin’ special. Right, Maxine? His bag wasn’t special.’

  Maxine shook her head. ‘It looks just like my gym bag. Got it on sale at Kmart. Paid almost nothin’ for it.’

  Riker moved to Maxine’s chair and handed her the container of soup she had ordered from the deli. ‘What did the bag look like?’

  ‘It was gray with one stripe.’

  Deluthe stopped work. ‘A red stripe?’

  ‘Yeah, just like mine.’

  The young cop stared at the image on his screen, then crossed the room to look at the sketch artist’s pad. ‘I’ve seen this guy. He was in the crowd outside the last crime scene. I remember his bag. I’ve got one just like it. But his had a red stripe. That was the only difference.’

  ‘Kmart?’ asked Maxine. ‘Nylon, right?’

  ‘No, L.L. Bean.’ Deluthe turned to Riker. ‘My bag is canvas, and so was his.’

  Riker turned to Charles. ‘Keep the ladies company.’ He grabbed Deluthe by the arm and propelled him down the hall to the incident room. They walk
ed to the wall where exterior crime-scene photos were pinned up alongside autopsy pictures of Kennedy Harper.

  ‘Which one?’ Riker pointed to the pictures of the crowd gathered outside Kennedy Harper’s building. ‘Which face?’

  The younger cop turned to point at the rear wall and the photograph between the scarecrow’s T-shirt and the baseball cap. It was the picture of a man whose face was turned away from the camera. ‘He’s that one… Sorry.’

  A breeze swept papers and cigarette packs down the narrow SoHo street, and a car alarm went off with a high-pitched incessant squeal. An irate tenant on an upper floor leaned far out his window and hurled a dark missile to the pavement, but the bronze baby shoe fell short of the offending vehicle and narrowly missed the two walking men.

  Riker glanced up at the civilian and yelled, ‘Lousy shot!’ In a lower voice, he said to Charles Butler, ‘But it could’ve been worse. It’s scary how many of these people have guns.’

  Another man emerged from a building just up ahead. He held a baseball bat. When he spotted Riker and Charles, he thought better of leaving the shadows of his doorway. As the two men came abreast of him, the bat disappeared behind the man’s back.

  ‘Now that guy means business,’ said Riker, when they were well past the car with the screaming alarm. ‘He’ll get the job done.’

  They turned the corner at the sound of breaking glass and the bangs of wood on metal – followed by blessed silence.

  They were heading toward Charles’s building on the next block. Mallory would be at work in the back office at Butler and Company, and there might not be another opportunity to speak privately with Riker. ‘When you said the little girl was dead – well, obviously, you didn’t mean Kathy had actually died. So presumably – ’

  ‘I’ve seen her death certificate. It was backed up by sworn statements from two fire marshals. And neither one of those guys owed any favors to me or Lou.’

  ‘You’re not going to explain that, are you?’ Charles’s tone was fatalistic. ‘Not a hint, not a clue.’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘And that business of murder and arson charges – ’

  ‘Not a chance.’

  CHAPTER 18

  Mallory stood in the office kitchen and poured another cup of coffee. Her eyes were closing. When had she slept last?

  Old pictures were breaking into her thoughts again, wreaking havoc with her concentration. The rats were coming for the whore. Greedy vermin. Not content with the blood and meat of Frankie Delight, they wanted Sparrow too.

  Mallory turned on the faucet, then leaned over the sink and splashed her face with cold water. She sat down at the kitchen table. Her coffee cooled in the cup. Her eyes closed, and down came the curtain between waking and sleeping dreams. Though she had never had the smoker’s habit, one hand went up to her mouth as she lit a cigarette that was not there. She was ten years old again. Sparrow was bleeding, saying, ‘Don’t cry, baby.’

  But Kathy could not stop crying. The frantic child shook Sparrow to keep her from drifting into sleep and death. ‘I’ll get help!’

  ‘Don’t leave me,’ said Sparrow. ‘Not yet.’ The prostitute nodded toward the shadows where the rats were fighting over the corpse of Frankie Delight. ‘Keep ‘em off me – till it’s over.’

  ‘You can’t die.’

  Sparrow gently touched the child’s face. ‘Baby, I’m always telling you stories. Read me a story – that’s all I hear from you. Suppose you tell me one. But mind you, don’t make it a long story.’ Sparrow’s eyes were closing as she smiled at her own little joke.

  ‘You need a doctor!’ Kathy shook Sparrow until the blue eyes opened. The child put her hands over the open wound, trying to keep the prostitute’s blood from leaking out.

  ‘Don’t leave me for the rats,’ said Sparrow. ‘Tell me, how did that book end? The Longest Road, yeah, that one. The Wichita Kid decided he was goin’ home. Did he ever say why?’

  ‘It ends when he’s on the trail.’ Kathy emptied Sparrow’s purse on the floor, straining to see by the daylight streaming in from the street door. ‘Wichita stops his horse in front of the sign for Franktown.’ The room was growing darker; the day was ending; Sparrow was dying. The child found a handkerchief. ‘He just stares at that sign for a while.’ She used the square of white linen to cover the stab wound. The cloth was soaked with blood the moment she pressed it to Sparrow’s side. ‘Then there’s these lines near the end. But I don’t – ’ Though the little girl knew all the books by heart, her panic was overwhelming her. Sparrow could not die.

  ‘What lines, baby?’

  Kathy bit her lip until it bled into her mouth. She needed this pain to concentrate, and now the passage came into her mind, clear as the spoken word, and she recited, ‘ „It was more than the call of home. He was riding toward his redemption.“ ‘

  ‘You know what that means, baby?’

  ‘No.’ And she did not care. Kathy undipped a long strap from Sparrow’s purse and used it to hold the red handkerchief in place. ‘I’m going for help. I’ll come right back.’

  ‘No, baby. Stay with me.’ Sparrow’s next word was hardly more than a whisper, a sigh. ‘Redemption.’ Her voice was stronger when she said, ‘How can I put that so a little thief can understand?’

  The rats were coming. The child stamped one foot and screamed at them, ‘You stay away! She’s not dead! She’s not!’

  ‘That’s right, baby. You tell ‘em.’ Sparrow’s voice was failing. ‘Redemption – that’s when you buy back all your bad karma – so you can steal heaven.’

  What was karma?

  The prostitute closed her eyes again, and this time Kathy could not wake her. The child’s head snapped toward the shadows and the sound of a rat’s feet. She waved her arms, but the creatures had no fear of her anymore. The lure of blood was strong. And now another rat appeared at the edge of the failing light from the street door.

  ‘Stay away!’ Kathy pulled out her pellet gun and fired on the rat, missing her mark. She was crying, vision blurring, yelling, ‘She’s not dead! Not yet!'

  The child reached down to the debris from the prostitute’s purse and found something hard, a missile to throw. It was a silver lighter she had stolen for Sparrow. She held it tight, then picked up one of the cigarettes that had spilled on the floor alongside a can of hair-spray. Kathy hunkered down beside the purse, smiling – inspired.

  Once, Sparrow had nearly set her hair on fire, smoking a cigarette while waving the hairspray can.

  Kathy lit the cigarette, puffing and coughing until it burned. She stared at the glowing ember and waited, fighting down the panic until the rat was close to her feet. She pointed the aerosol can at the animal, then pressed down on the nozzle, wetting the rat through and through. It squealed with the pain of hairspray in its eyes. The child dropped the cigarette on its fur and stood back as the animal burst into flames and screamed.

  Another rat came out of the shadows, drawn by the smell of live cooking meat. Hunched over, Kathy crept forward to meet the creature. Holding the cigarette lighter low to the ground, she pressed the nozzle of the hairspray, aiming it at the tiny flame, and the chemical spray became a blowtorch. The second rat was burning, running in circles, streaking fire round and round. It was crying in a human way and drawing cannibals from the corpse of Frankie Delight.

  Kathy was numb, too stunned to care what the rats were doing to one another. Working by slow inches, the child struggled with her burden, dragging Sparrow out of the dark building and into the waning daylight where more rats awaited them, scrabbling out from between the garbage cans on the sidewalk.

  In the kitchen of Butler and Company, Mallory lurched to one side. Chair and woman crashed to the floor. Her face was pressed to the tiles, and she lay there for a few seconds of absolute stillness, quietly seeking her true place in time and space. Then she rose to her feet and gripped the edge of the counter for support. Her hands were shaking when she splashed more water on her face. If she could no
t stay awake, Stella Small would die.

  ‘It’ll never work.’ Riker turned his back on Mallory’s computers. ‘There’s gotta be ten million people in Wisconsin.’

  ‘Closer to four and a half.’ Charles could quote the atlas statistic to the last individual, but that would be showboating. ‘And we’re only looking at one small county where the boy went into foster care.’

  Riker shook his head. ‘We’re running out of time. Stella Small could be hanging by her neck right now – still alive.’

  Mallory looked up from her monitor. ‘What do you want me to do, Riker? Go door to door with those worthless cartoons?’ She nodded toward the cork wall where he had pinned up the hooker sketches.

  Indeed, Charles thought the images were more of a guide to what the man did not look like. He was not thin or fat, not African or Asian descent, and his hair was neither long nor short.

  Mallory turned back to her computer monitor. She was also showing signs of strain. ‘I’m checking every newspaper with a database. If anything jumps out – ’

  ‘It’ll take forever,’ said Riker.

  ‘And thank you for your support,’ said Mallory.

  Charles watched the screen over her shoulder, scanning text as fast as she could scroll down the columns of newspaper archives, and in another compartment of his brain, he addressed Riker’s concerns. ‘You have two possibilities. Some recent event triggered these hangings, or the scarecrow started acting out antisocial behavior with early juvenile offenses.’

  ‘Then we’re still screwed,’ said Riker. ‘The criminal records of juveniles are sealed.’

  ‘But not newspaper archives. The county is mostly small towns. Any sort of stand-out behavior would be worth a mention in a local newspaper.’ Charles could see that Riker was unconvinced. The man was looking at his watch, a reminder that Stella Small was running out of time, and now he left the room. A moment later, the door to the reception area slammed shut.

  Mallory handed a cell phone to Charles. ‘I’ve got a Wisconsin detective on the line. She works in Juvenile. Can you give her a profile for the scarecrow?’