Crime School

by Carol O’Connell

  ‘I never made the connection to the hooker’s case.’

  ‘Both women were hung by the neck and gagged with their own hair. How many connections did you need?’

  ‘The crimes scenes were nothing alike.’ Loman stood up and jangled car keys in his pants pocket. ‘I’m not gonna stick around for this, Jack.’

  ‘I’m not giving you a choice, Harvey. You’re on my list of material witnesses. So you stay till we wrap it.’ Jack Coffey was smiling as he rose from his chair, daring the man to push his luck in this precinct.

  Still smiling, the commander of Special Crimes Unit stepped into the hall and locked the door behind him.

  The squad room was quiet and dim. All but one of the overhead fluorescents had been killed, and only a few independent lamps were left on, though all the desks were empty. The only bright light was focused on Mallory and the rookie detective. Ronald Deluthe wore a bloody T-shirt. His jeans and baseball cap, ripped from the wall of the incident room, were free of stains.

  Riker stood by the window and watched the crowded sidewalk below. He saw Charles Butler’s head above the crowd of normal-size human beings and that other species, the reporters.

  Mallory was still instructing her star performer. ‘Keep your face down.’

  Well, that should be easy enough. Riker doubted that the boy would have the strength to lift his head. ‘We should send you back to the hospital, kid.’

  ‘He wants to do this,’ said Mallory, speaking for Deluthe. ‘So he stays.’’

  Riker was about to make another comment but let it slide for Deluthe’s sake. In the aftermath of killing the scarecrow, this was almost therapy, though that was not Mallory’s motive. She only wanted an authentically battered doppelganger.

  ‘One problem,’ said Riker. ‘Even if they don’t see his face, they’ll recognize the hair. You can see that bleach job through solid walls.’

  ‘I know.’ Mallory resolved the problem with a mascara wand. After a few deft strokes, the fringe of hair beneath the bandages was turned to brown. ‘Deluthe, you’ve got everybody’s attention now.’ She leaned down to his eye level. ‘So no more bleaching.’ And that was a direct order. ‘You’re not invisible anymore.’

  Riker was startled. Empathy was not his partner’s forte. She should have been the last one to work out the puzzle of Deluthe’s bright yellow hair.

  ‘I don’t want to see any emotion at all,’ she said. ‘We’re clear on that?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Deluthe.

  Mallory dabbed at his bleeding lip with a tissue, perhaps perceiving fresh blood as a sign of overacting. ‘When Janos brings you back to the squad room, I’ll ask a few questions. Don’t speak. Just nod.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  ‘A lot hangs on that nod.’Jack Coffey crossed the squad room to join them. ‘We got nothin’ else, kid. No physical evidence.’

  They could not even justify an arrest warrant. And since there was no need to mention that Deluthe had dispatched their only eyewitness with a baseball bat, the lieutenant led him down the hall in silence.

  ‘So you got your perp.’ Geldorf s voice came from the stairwell door, where he stood with Charles Butler. ‘Nice work!’

  ‘Hey, Lars.’ Riker returned the old man’s broad smile. ‘You know all your lines?’

  ‘Oh, yeah. Charles briefed me. Don’t worry about – ’

  Mallory made a motion to silence Geldorf as the stairwell door opened again, and Alan Parris was escorted into the room by Detective Wang. Riker studied the suspect with the eye of a fellow alcoholic. The ex-cop showed no signs of a recent binge, but fear could sober a man. At least Parris did not reek of booze. His new suit was another sign of fear, disguising him as a respectable taxpayer instead of an unemployed drunk.

  ‘Mr Parris?’ Mallory pointed to the door on the far side of the room. ‘Could you wait in there? Thanks.’

  Geldorf watched the man enter Coffey’s office and take a chair near the glass partition. ‘He’s gonna be way too comfortable in there. You need a closed room, no windows, no air.’ The old man was reborn, and all the annoying cockiness was back as he turned to lecture Mallory. ‘You want complete control over him. You decide when he takes a piss, when he eats – if he eats.’

  ‘It’s not your call,’ she said, reminding the old man that he was visiting Special Crimes Unit on a provisional passport. ‘Parris thinks he’s here for a friendly little chat.’

  ‘No, he doesn’t,’ said Janos walking toward them. ‘When he saw Geldorf, he panicked. Now he wants a lawyer. So we gotta kill an hour till – ’

  ‘The hell we do.’ Riker strode across the room, entered the office and shouted, ‘What’s all this crap about a lawyer!’

  Parris’s voice was surly. ‘You plan to crucify me for these hangings, right?’

  ‘You don’t watch TV? You don’t listen to the radio? We nailed our perp this afternoon, okay? Now I read your statement, and I got some questions on Natalie Homer.’

  ‘I wasn’t – ’ Parris turned to the door as two more people stepped into the office. Mallory sat down behind Coffey’s desk, then glared at Lars Geldorf, warning him to keep silent and wait for his cue.

  ‘Parris,’ said Riker. ‘You were saying?’

  ‘I wasn’t the one who took Natalie’s complaints. I was a uniform, not a dick.’

  ‘But you knew her.’ Geldorf stood behind Parris’s chair and placed one gnarly hand on the man’s shoulder. ‘You saw her every day on patrol.’

  Parris shook off the man’s hand. ‘She never even looked my way.’

  ‘That bothered you, didn’t it?’ Geldorf leaned down to Parris’s ear. ‘She was so pretty. And here you got this gun, all this power, but she don’t even know you’re alive.’

  ‘Back off,’ said Mallory. Now everyone in the room, including Alan Parris, was united by a common enemy – Lars Geldorf.

  The old man pretended to ignore her and reached into his breast pocket. He pulled out a Polaroid of Natalie Homer, a close-up of a dead woman with mutilated hair and flesh. ‘Not so pretty now, is she? Not so high and mighty anymore.’

  Mallory leaned over and snatched the photograph. ‘I said that’s enough’ Some of her anger was genuine. She disapproved of ad-lib remarks and unauthorized props.

  ‘I want a lawyer,’ said Parris.

  ‘I don’t blame you,’ said Riker. ‘This is bullshit. But you haven’t been charged with a crime.’ He turned on Geldorf. ‘Not one more word.’ This small gesture had endeared him to the smiling Alan Parris.

  ‘Mr Parris – Alan,’’ said Mallory. ‘You were a cop. You know how hard this job can be. So what can you tell me about her? Anything that might – ’

  ‘Nothing. Every time she came into the station, there was a crowd of dicks around her. They talked to her for hours. For all the good that did her.’

  ‘You felt sorry for her.’ Riker nodded his understanding, his commiseration. They were brothers now.

  ‘Damn straight. She deserved better.’

  ‘Tell me about the extra patrols in that neighborhood,’ said Mallory. ‘You checked in on her, right? Maybe you stopped by her place to – ’

  ‘Why should I? The detectives never asked me to.’ Parris turned to Geldorf. ‘You bastards liked her well enough, but you never believed her.’ He turned back to Mallory. ‘They only saw Natalie when she was really scared. I guess they figured that was just normal for her.’

  ‘But you knew better,’ said Riker. ‘You saw her every day. You knew what she was going through.’ She was always Natalie to Alan Parris, a first-name acquaintance and not a woman who had never given him the time of day.

  Jack Coffey had left the door to the lock-up room wide. And now Lieutenant Loman watched the back of a prisoner being marched down the hall. Mallory was right. No one else could have been as convincing as this young cop in bloodstains, chains on his wrists, chains on his ankles, faltering steps and now a stumble. Janos’s massive arms reached out to catch Deluthe before h
e could fall.

  ‘The leg irons are overkill,’ said Harvey Loman.

  Coffey stared at the sweat shining on the back of Deluthe’s neck. The mascara hair treatment was running in a brown streak that mingled with the T-shirt’s bloodstains. Then he realized that the game was not over when Loman went on to say, ‘I can’t see that pathetic bastard outrunning Janos.’

  ‘Yeah, well, the DA’s coming,’ said Coffey. ‘So we’re going by the book, leg irons and all. We’re cutting a deal with the perp.’

  ‘Yeah? What’s he offering?’

  ‘A photo ID on the man who killed Natalie Homer.’ Lieutenant Coffey rose from the table and slammed the door. ‘So you remember that crime scene pretty well.’

  ‘Like I could forget. That room was hell on earth. The stink and the bugs. But it was a different kind of freak show for the hooker.’

  ‘Sparrow.’

  ‘Yeah, all those candles, a different noose. And she wasn’t even dead. I still don’t see the connection, Jack.’

  ‘It’s the scarecrow – Natalie’s son. I think you met him once, Harvey.’

  Charles Butler entered the office and stood behind Mallory’s chair. Since he had been given no further instructions, all he could do was loom over the proceedings, bringing his own discomfort to the party. And now they were five – too many people and just the right number, each one jumping up the energy level, the heat and the stress.

  Mallory stared at the window on the squad room. ‘He’s coming.’

  Five pairs of eyes watched Janos escort his prisoner to the desk beneath the only overhead light. From the distance of the lieutenant’s office, only the chains, the bandages and blood were visible. The battered face was shadowed by a baseball cap. Mallory glanced back at Charles, whose face could not hide a thought. He was merely curious. He had no idea that the injured man was Deluthe.

  She leaned toward Alan Parris, talking cop to cop, ‘I’ve got one break on this case, a witness. You met him once.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Riker. ‘You chased him away from Natalie’s door. Remember? He was only six years old.’

  ‘One of those little kids in the hall?’

  Riker turned to the glass wall and pointed at the wounded man being guarded by Janos. ‘He was Natalie’s son.’

  ‘Oh, Christ!’ Parris turned around for a better look at the man in handcuffs. ‘That’s your perp?’ From this angle, he could only see the curve of Deluthe’s cheek. ‘So the kid went nuts.’

  Mallory nodded to say, Yes, it’s all very sad. Yeah, right. ‘Natalie’s sister hid the boy out of state. You can guess why.’

  Parris shook his head as he stared through the glass wall, eyes fixed on the young man in manacles. ‘Her son hanged those women. I can’t believe it. Bloody Christ.’

  Detective Wang entered the office and tossed a manila envelope on the desk. Riker picked it up and inspected the contents, pictures of three detectives and two uniformed officers as they had appeared twenty years ago. He laid them out on the desk blotter.

  Predictably, Parris focused on the portrait of his own young self fresh from the Police Academy. He was about to say something when Mallory cut him off, saying, ‘This won’t take long.’ She picked up the photographs and rose from her chair.

  ‘Oh, yeah,’ said Lieutenant Loman. ‘I remember the little kids in the hall – one of them anyway.’ He was staring at the evidence bags that contained a twenty-year-old film carton and a set of notes written to Natalie Homer. ‘You know why I remember him, Jack? This tiny little boy – he reached inside the door of Natalie’s apartment and picked up an empty film carton. He wanted a damn souvenir of that poor woman’s murder. Cold, huh? I wish I could forget that kid.’

  Mallory stood before the injured detective, looking down on his swollen face. When she spoke to Deluthe, her voice was loud enough to carry across the squad room. ‘Take your time. This is what they looked like the year your mother died.’

  Deluthe kept his head down and stared at the photographs as she held them up, one by one, angling them away from the glass wall of Jack Coffey’s office. And now she fed Deluthe his cue, the first question, ‘ This one?’

  The young cop nodded.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  Deluthe nodded again.

  In a departure from the script, Mallory bent down to him and lowered her voice. ‘Don’t talk, don’t move. We’ve got some time to kill before I go back in there. I know you can’t get that dead man out of your mind. You never will. He’s part of you now – and what you did to him.’ She nodded toward the large man beside him. ‘Detective Janos volunteered to look after you for a while.’

  Deluthe stared at her with fresh damage in his eyes. ‘You think I’m a nutcase?’

  Mallory nodded. ‘We all go crazy.’

  ‘Crazy is a place,’ said Janos. ‘You go, you come back.’

  ‘Happens so often, we even have a protocol for it – the suicide watch.’ She held up the photograph again. ‘Now tap this picture and we’re done.’

  He stretched out his handcuff chain to do it.

  Mallory counted to ten slowly. ‘Nod one more time.’

  He did as she asked, then lowered his head, eyes fixed on the floor, a genuine portrait of remorse.

  ‘Good job.’ She prized realism.

  Deluthe slumped over, fists clenched, eyes shut tight. The anesthetic benefit of shock was wearing off. She turned to Janos. ‘Get him back to the hospital.’

  Mallory made a show of looking at one photograph on the long walk back to Coffey’s office. Arthur Wang blocked her way, handing her the evidence bags with the notes and the original film carton with the Polaroid logo. ‘The boss is done with these.’

  Detective Wang opened the door to the lock-up room and handed Lieutenant Coffey a duplicate set of photographs. Mallory had only given him one line to say: ‘It’s the one on top.’

  Jack Coffey stared at the picture for a moment, then laid it down on the table in front of Loman. ‘The scarecrow picked you.’

  ‘He picked you.’ Mallory pushed Lars Geldorf s photograph across the desk, then turned to Alan Parris, saying, ‘You can go now.’

  The ex-cop quickly left the office, and Geldorf sank down in the vacated chair. He clutched the portrait of himself at age fifty-five and shook his head. ‘This is crazy. Crazy.’ There was a flicker of panic in his face when he looked past Mallory, raising his eyes to stare at the tall man standing behind her chair. No need to turn around.

  With only the eyes in the back of her head, she pictured Charles’s wonderful tell-all face stricken with surprise – the real thing. No actor could portray shock and betrayal so well as an honest man with her knife in his back.

  Welcome to my job.

  She watched Lars Geldorf s face and saw the reflected sorrow of Charles Butler, who had finally understood his role tonight. He had been gulled into preparing this old man, his friend, for the close, the kill. And now he joined the list of the wounded as he walked toward the office door, eager to put some distance between himself and his assailant – Mallory.

  Ah, but she was not quite done with him yet. ‘Charles?’

  He stopped. She knew he would. There was a bruised and battered look about him when he turned to face her. Was he wondering how far ahead she had planned for this moment?

  ‘I’m sorry. I wanted it to be Parris or Loman,’ said the queen of all liars, and only Lars Geldorf believed her. The door closed on Charles Butler, and the old man’s sole source of comfort was gone.

  The room was colder now.

  ‘I never set eyes on Natalie’s son,’ said Geldorf.

  ‘That’s probably what kept him alive,’ said Mallory.

  The old man turned to Riker. ‘Help me out here. I’m telling you, I never – ’

  ‘Lars – don’t,’ said Riker, deadpan. ‘It’s over. Why would the kid lie?’

  ‘My apologies.’ Mallory smiled. ‘I thought you botched this case because you were such a lousy detective. In fact,
you were the one who fed me that line.’ She picked up the small square Polaroids of the old crime scene, then dealt them out across the desk like playing cards. ‘I know why Parris isn’t in these shots. He was only in that room for two seconds. And you?’ She stacked the photographs into a neat deck. ‘You’re not in them because you took all the pictures that night.’

  ‘I could’ve told you that!’ said Geldorf.

  She held up the empty film carton. ‘This always bothered me. The scarecrow left one at every hanging. It had nothing to do with Natalie’s murder – only her crime scene. This one’s twenty years old. The boy found it in the hall while you were shooting pictures of his dead mother.’ She dropped the film box on the desk. ‘A little something to remember you by.’

  ‘And now it makes sense,’ said Riker. ‘The kid’s family always knew a cop killed his mother. We wondered how a six-year-old would recognize a cop in street clothes. We thought that narrowed it down to Parris or Loman – the uniforms.’

  ‘The scarecrow set us straight,’ said Mallory, lying as easily as she drew breath. ‘When he watched you shoot those pictures of his mother, he knew you were police. And that was his second look at you.’

  Geldorf sat back in his chair and grinned. ‘You guys are good, but you can’t scam the master. I invented this little game you’re playing. You got nothiri’.’ He stood up and buttoned his jacket. ‘Try this on some other sucker.’

  ‘Not so fast, Lars.’ The man was stunned when Riker put both hands on his shoulders and forced him back into the chair. ‘We haven’t booked you yet. The charge is murder.’

  And that charge hung on a pack of lies told by a fly on the wall.

  ‘All those sausages,’ said Mallory. ‘Too many for one person, remember? Natalie was making dinner for her son. The boy was in the bathroom while you were killing his mother. We always figured the perp was someone she knew.’

  ‘Her ex-husband!’ Geldorf shouted this in the tone of, Are you blind?

  ‘No,’ said Riker. ‘He was Natalie’s^irsf stalker. Then he met his new wife and the harassment stopped. You were the one who left the notes under her door. You scared her right back to the stationhouse – back to you. What a joke. You and that beautiful girl. Even twenty years ago, you were twice her age.’