Blind Sight

by Carol O'Connell

  Mallory sat down beside the woman. “I’d like to show Patty the photo. Maybe she saw the man around the house when you weren’t home. . . . I won’t say anything about the murder.”

  With the mother’s nod of permission, Mallory left by the kitchen door and walked into the sweet smell of fresh air. Casting a long shadow, she crossed the grass to stand near the swinging tire’s wide arc. She held out the cell phone to show the child Conroy’s photograph. “Do you know this man?”

  The girl swung up close, touching distance, to stare at the small screen, and then she swung down and away. “He doesn’t have hair anymore,” said Patty on the backswing. “He shaved it off.” On the upswing, she added, “He’s got a five o’clock shadow like Daddy’s.” The swinging slowed. “But it’s all over his head.” The tire dangled. The child turned pensive. “Iggy’s one of those things we don’t tell Mommy about.”

  “You can tell me.” Mallory smiled. “I won’t rat on you. Promise.”

  “He never comes to the front door. He goes in that way.” Patty pointed to the French doors at the back of the house. “I don’t like him. I don’t like his eyes. . . . That’s all I know.”

  “Are there other things you’re not supposed to tell Mommy?”

  Patty drummed her fingers on the tire’s rim, giving this grave consideration. “Well, there’s the clown in my bedroom. His head comes off, but Mommy doesn’t know that. And Daddy’s the only one who knows how to take it off. He does it after lights out . . . when he thinks I’m asleep. I tried to pull the head off myself—but I just can’t do it.”

  “I could help you with that. . . . No one else has to know.”

  Patty liked this idea. She liked it a lot. Her smile was adorably evil.

  Hand in hand, they walked back to the house, entering by the French doors of Gail Rawly’s low-tech office. A standard landline sat on the desk beside a laptop that was six years out of date. Even the fax machine was a dinosaur. At Patty’s insistence, they crept down the hallway on their toes.

  The stuffed clown had a chair of its own in the corner of the pink bedroom, where it lay facedown because the child hated clowns. “And I think Daddy knows that, but he gave it to me. So we both pretend I like it.”

  Very smart. Mallory picked up the large doll with the red bulbous nose. This would be the toy that Patty was least likely to play with, cuddle with, and maybe notice the faint rattle in its belly. If only Daddy had known how much the trick feature intrigued the little clown hater, who longed to rip off its head.

  Mallory unfastened the buttons that held a ruffled collar in place. When the ceramic neck was bare, she could see the hinge at the front and a tiny keyhole on the other side.

  Would the mother mind this search, this act of breaking into the head of a clown? In a worst-case scenario for evidence not in plain sight, the need for a warrant would lead to a war with the local cops who owned Gail Rawly’s murder. In any case, time would be lost. She reached into her back pocket and pulled out a velvet pouch of lock picks. “Patty, this is another one of those things we don’t tell Mommy about. So . . . whatever we find inside the clown . . . ?”

  The little girl gave her a thumbs-up agreement that the less Mommy knew, the better.

  When the small lock was undone, the clown’s head swung forward like a lid, and inside the body was a stash of tiny cassettes, the ones used in early-model answering machines for landlines. At the bottom of the belly, she found an old palm-size recorder with the jury-rigged look of something customized. Its bay was just large enough to hold the cassettes, and its add-on connection port held a cell-phone jack for the illegal covert taping of calls. Gail Rawly, a man who favored outmoded technology, could have used a speakerphone feature to record conversations the old-fashioned way, but not with a child running through the house. Patty might overhear details of murder for hire—one more thing that Mommy should not be told about.

  —

  GAIL RAWLY’S recorder sat on Mallory’s desk. She played a small cassette with the voice of Dwayne Brox ordering the death of a twelve-year-old boy.

  “Not good enough,” said ADA Joseph Walton.

  Assistant district attorneys were prime obstacles of law and order. They were not the brightest, not top of the class, and Walton had the further disadvantage of a smarmy attitude, but it was the silly pencil-line mustache that really offended Riker.

  “No, this won’t do at all,” said the lawyer. “It may sound like Mr. Brox, but let’s nail it down, shall we? Send the cassette to One Police Plaza for voice-print analysis. Then you’ll get an arrest warrant.”

  Mallory turned to Jack Coffey, who said, “It’s the ADA’s call.”

  “We don’t want a lawsuit for false arrest, now do we?” Walton said this to Mallory in the tone of talking down to imbeciles.

  Fifteen detectives and their boss waited for her to shoot him, but they were disappointed.

  Unbloodied and smug, the ADA sidled past Charles Butler at the stairwell door. The tall psychologist crossed the room with a broad smile, a good sign that he had been allowed to visit Jonah in the hospital. When the man was two steps away, Riker asked, “How’s the kid?”

  “Jonah won’t lose his leg. He’ll be out of intensive care in a few more hours, but he can’t be moved to another hospital.”

  Riker guessed that Charles was anticipating a problem with his report. The big man picked up a chair, as if it weighed no more than a paper clip, and he set it down in Switzerland, that borderland on the line between the detectives’ joined desks, and he said, “I finished my assessment. The boy’s a credible witness.”

  “Yeah, right,” said Mallory. “Is he still talking to the dead nun?”

  “Yes, and his aunt talks back, but Jonah’s only intuiting what she might say, and he knows that. He’s not insane, not actually hearing voices.”

  “Just acting like it,” said Riker. “Please tell me he doesn’t do that in front of the doctors and nurses.”

  “Jonah doesn’t do it in front of anyone. It’s not a performance. It’s a private conversation.”

  “With a dead woman,” said Mallory. “That has to stop. When we catch the hit man, Jonah has to make a voice ID. That won’t hold up in court if Conroy’s lawyer finds out our witness talks to a ghost—and the ghost talks back. You have to fix this.”

  “Oh, right,” said Charles.

  Riker smiled. This shrink was more accommodating than most.

  “Just flip a switch? Wave a magic wand? That sort of thing?”

  Maybe not so accommodating.

  “After what Jonah’s been through,” said Charles, “he belongs in therapy. I’ve found him a good child psychiatrist.”

  “No more shrinks till he makes that ID,” said Mallory. “Just fix him.”

  “Jonah doesn’t need fixing. It’s a coping mechanism. Over time, he’ll slough off his ghost like a coat he doesn’t need anymore. The boy’s not insane. He’s grieving. Therapy and time is what he needs.”

  “I don’t have that kind of time,” said Mallory. “And I don’t want a defense lawyer asking Jonah about his psychiatrist.”

  Riker leaned in to translate. “If you put Jonah and a shrink in the same sentence—goodbye witness ID. The jury’s gonna stop listening right there. Out in Jersey, there’s a burnt-up corpse to take the fall for kidnapping the boy. Reasonable doubt for a jury. And our hit man’s a pro at staging fires. We’ll never get a finding of arson.”

  “Oh, I can help you with that,” said Charles. “He told Jonah he was going to burn down the house.”

  “Great,” said Mallory with no enthusiasm, “assuming anyone can believe a kid who talks to a dead nun.”

  “Heads up,” said Jack Coffey, and all eyes turned his way. “We caught a break on containment. The Jersey ME can’t ID the corpse in Conroy’s bed. No dental records, no DNA reference. If he can’t notify next
of kin, no press release goes out on the fire. And nobody in that Jersey hospital’s gonna make a connection to the kid with the sooty face and smoke in his lungs. Gonzales says they didn’t even know Jonah was blind.”

  “But now Jonah’s awake—in another hospital,” said Mallory. “The staff sure as hell knows who he is.”

  Riker chimed in with “And their husbands, wives, drinking buddies—”

  “Okay,” said Coffey, “we’re screwed. But right now, the media’s got nothing, and our perp thinks the kid’s dead. We bought some time.”

  —

  THE SLOW-ROLLING white van passed the driveway for the mayor’s residence. There were no more reporters on the avenue. The story must be winding down. So far, the NYPD had not made a connection between a crispy-critter drug dealer in the torched bed—and a dead boy in the basement.

  He had time.

  Iggy Conroy drove on.

  —

  THE FURNITURE of Gracie Mansion’s spacious foyer was carted into the adjoining dining room, giving technicians more space to set up their pole lights and cameras. A lectern was decked out in microphones bearing logos for TV stations. Reporters milled about, keeping their distance from the door to the library, where Mayor Polk was swaddled with a bib as a makeup artist powdered the shine from his skin.

  Samuel Tucker handed his boss the final list of talking points—with a surprise ending. Andrew Polk looked up from his reading of the final item. With a flick of his fingers, the makeup artist was shooed away, and the mayor lowered his voice to ask, “Tuck, you’re sure about this?”

  “My source at the DA’s Office guarantees it.” Tuck grinned wide, awaiting praise—the reward of a smile at the very least, but there was only suspicion in the mayor’s face. “Sir, this is solid information.” He watched his boss heft the sheet of paper, as if weighing it, questioning its worth.

  Not worthy enough, said the mayor’s shiny little eyes.

  And though they were alone, Tuck whispered, “My guy’s the ADA assigned to the Special Crimes Unit.”

  “That would be Joe Walton, right? Affected little asshole. I know his family. Not a brain in the pack.” The mayor shook his head. “The cop’s would never give him—”

  “They didn’t. And Joe’s not a complete idiot. He asked me if there was a survivor or a witness. On his way into the SoHo station house, Joe overheard a desk sergeant’s call to another precinct. The sergeant was sending his own cop to the Upper West Side—a cop to guard a hospital room. That change was authorized by the commander of the Special Crimes Unit. I worked out the rest of it. I went to that hospital. I know a kid was transported to the roof by helicopter, a boy. He’s the right age. And Special Crimes is only working one case. So why—”

  “Witness protection.”

  Yes! Samuel Tucker expelled a happy sigh. If he only had a tail, he would wag it. Intently, he watched for every nuance of his master’s expression. To his amazement, this corroboration did not make the man happy.

  “Okay, Tuck.” The mayor ripped off his makeup bib. “Did you win any friends at that hospital?”

  Did he bribe anyone? Of course. “Yes, sir, an orderly.”

  “Good. The orderlies go everywhere. Now you go back there. Give your guy some flowers for the room with a cop posted at the door. That’s all you tell him. Then follow those flowers. If there’s no cop on that door anymore, the boy’s dead.”

  Tuck was out the door and into the thick of reporters in the foyer. They were gathering before the lectern like parishioners. They had a hungry look about them, but no communion wafers for this crew; they were praying for more blood and guts and, God willing, a dead child as a broadcast tease for news at eleven.

  28

  The man dressed in orderly’s whites held a bouquet of carnations, and this should have been his ticket off the elevator, but “No,” said the guard in the gray uniform of hospital security. “Nobody gets off on this floor.”

  “What’s going on?” The orderly leaned into the corridor. “I was up here an hour ago.”

  “Then you must’ve come up on the north side.” The security guard put one hand on the smaller man’s chest and pushed him back into the elevator. “This area’s off-limits. We got a contagious case here.”

  When the metal door slid shut, the irritated orderly turned to the passenger at the back of the elevator. “That was bullshit. The guard would’ve been wearing a mask if there was anything that catchy. And they wouldn’t just seal off one section, either. They’d quarantine the whole damn floor.”

  “Did you notice any policemen in the hall? Real cops?”

  “Yeah, there’s one sitting in a chair outside the kid’s room. He’s not wearing a mask, either.”

  Samuel Tucker texted his boss to say, “Still here. Still alive.”

  —

  AS THE METAL DOORS slid open, Iggy Conroy pulled down the brim of a tri-cornered cap. He could count on a security camera in this elevator, and now its lens would be looking down on the uniform of an NYPD cop. The man who owned these clothes would sleep the night away in his underwear.

  Iggy listened to the chatter of a police-ban radio clipped to the cop’s utility belt. Apart from the codes for domestic violence and a car wreck, this neighborhood was quiet. With the press of a button, Iggy was on the rise to a high floor. A fast ride. No stops.

  When he left the elevator, he saw a wooden chair in the hall, but no officer on duty. Probably gone for a piss or a smoke. Well, finally, a piece of luck on a bad day.

  He stood in plain view of the fish-eye lens on Dwayne Brox’s door when he knocked, and said, “Police! Open up!”

  —

  THE MAYOR read Tucker’s text on his cell phone as he listened to the grousing rabble on the other side of the door. Perhaps the ladies and gentlemen of the press had been kept waiting too long.

  Or maybe not long enough.

  Andrew Polk glanced at his watch. With only a slightly longer stall, the news stations would go to a live feed for the eleven o’clock news, and nothing could be edited out.

  —

  THE BRANDY SNIFTER was held at a tilt, and spilt booze puddled on the carpet. Dwayne Brox wore a shitfaced grin. Totally trashed? Yeah, this fool was way too happy to have a stone killer for company tonight, and Iggy took offense. There should be fear—a little respect.

  Brox turned his back, another insult, and leaned down to the coffee table to lift a bottle with a fancy gold label. “Could I interest you in Napoléon brandy?”

  “Naw. You got beer?”

  Brox stared at the low table littered with bottles of hard liquor and wine, an ice bucket with the shine of real silver, and three different kinds of dirty glasses with stems. He leaned down for a closer inspection, as if it might be hard to recognize beer in that mix. “I’ll check the fridge.” He walked away, though not in a straight line, and disappeared around the corner of a far wall, pressing one hand against it for support as he made this turn too fast.

  Six-year-old girls could hold their liquor better.

  Iggy found the remote control among the clutter on the coffee table. He aimed it at the wide screen on the wall and tuned the TV to a channel favored by news junkies. Soon enough, the cop on guard duty would return to his post outside in the hall, and so the volume was jacked up to mask conversation.

  Dwayne Brox came weaving back into the room to hand a cold beer bottle to his dangerous guest, and now he turned his back on Iggy—again—to fill the cart’s silver bucket with a tray of ice cubes and the remainder of a six-pack.

  This guy must believe that he was going to live for five more beers.

  “This can’t be no kidnap for ransom.” Iggy popped the bottle cap with his thumb and took a long swig. “’Cause that’s just nuts. Every time there’s a ransom—and I mean a hundred percent of the time, the NYPD brings ’em back alive. So I know you never asked
for no money.” Not true. He knew damn well there was money in play here, but he was fishing for something more solid. He wanted this to make sense!

  “Here’s all you need to know.” Brox spread out his arms and fell backward to land his butt deep in the cushions of the couch. Goofy smile. “My plan is foolproof.”

  “Ain’t no such thing.” Not in any scheme of amateurs. “The city’s never gonna give you a dime for—”

  “Not the city—the mayor.”

  “No way. Nobody like him pays ransom for strangers.”

  “Polk will. And nothing comes back on me . . . or you.”

  “Hey, the police hauled your ass in three times . . . but you don’t think they’re onto you?” Any day now, the cops would realize that all they had to do was take this guy out for a few drinks.

  “You can be certain I told them nothing.” Dwayne Brox had a swagger about him, even when he was sitting down. He even talked swagger. And that stupid smirk was just begging for a fist to break every tooth in his head.

  Yet Iggy flopped down beside him and spoke as if they were equals. “I’ll tell you why ransom’s a chump’s game. You got no way to get paid without gettin’ caught. There’s cops on the mayor twenty-four-seven. So he can’t make a cash drop, right? And you better believe they got a bug ridin’ his computer. Even if Polk’s got offshore accounts like yours—”

  “That’s not necessary. A personal check will do.”

  “How crazy are you?”

  “My plan is brilliant,” said Brox, slurring every word out of his mouth. “And me getting caught? That’s the last thing the mayor wants.”

  Make sense, you fucking idiot!

  —

  ANDREW POLK’S press secretary had run out of stalls for the crowd of reporters outside in the foyer. She pressed her back against the door, as if expecting them to charge in with flaming torches. “Please, sir?”

  Poor old girl. She was begging now. “Mr. Mayor, it’s almost airtime!”