The Man Who Lied To Women

by Carol O’Connell

  ‘You know,’ said Riker, ‘I don’t like to speak ill of the dead either, but I don’t think Amanda would mind. And I know you want to help us find the killer, don’t you? So, you figure the boyfriend is married, right?’

  ‘Amanda never talked about him, and he only came in the afternoon when no one was at home.’

  ‘But you heard them downstairs. You heard them together.’

  And oh, what she had heard, said the nervous fidgeting of her fingers about the cookie tin. She would not meet his eyes.

  Mallory scrolled through the lines of the novel, looking for anything out of place, any sign of a damaged file. The fire escape window was at her left. Beyond the glass pane, she heard a baby crying, and then the soft thudding on the glass. She turned to the window. Not a baby.

  She was staring into a pair of slanted eyes as green as her own. The cat’s fur had been white, but now it was grayed with dust and dirt, and one ear was torn and bloody. Amanda Bosch must have been in the habit of feeding the stray.

  ‘Tough luck, cat, you’re on your own.’ She turned back to the computer and continued the scrolling, scanning the lines for gaps and odd characters, gleaning a little from the plot. One of the main characters lived in an expensive condo on the Upper West Side. Now that fit nicely with the missing file card bearing the address of Betty Hyde’s condo. The fictional man was a married cheat. Better and better. The cat would not shut up.

  Mallory looked back to the window and tried to convey, by narrowing eyes, that the cat must stop, and right now, or she would dispatch it to kitty heaven. The animal misunderstood, its own eyes narrowing to the slits of I love you, too. Then the cat was on its hind legs, pawing at the glass with mewls of, Let me in, now, now, now.

  Mallory raised the sash. But, before she could terrorize the small animal, it slipped under her arm and into the room, depositing cat hair on the sleeve of her blazer in passing. It ran through the galley kitchen and into the front room.

  She shrugged. What the hell. Bosch was dead, the apartment was tossed, let the cat steal what it could. It was nothing to her.

  It began the mewling again. Mallory looked at the cat with a new idea for making it shut up. A rare change of heart caused her to abandon that solution. The cat would have enough problems out on the street without a fresh injury.

  She watched it hook a paw in the closet door and open it. After a brief search, it was out again and sniffing the floor. It came back to the bedroom to rub up against her leg. The plaintive meowing ceased, and the soft roar of purring began. Mallory repressed the urge to kick it. She pushed it off with her leg. And now the cat went to the bookshelf and knocked out the bottom cartons of computer ribbon to pull out the catnip toy.

  Not a stray.

  Mallory got up and walked into the galley kitchen. She looked in the cupboard. All the dishes were neatly stacked, but one seemed out of place, a bowl sitting on the dinner plates. Over the blue ceramic glaze, the word Nose was printed in gold letters. The cat was staring up at her, and now she noticed the long gray marking around the muzzle, a shading she had taken for dirt. It had the comic illusion of making the cat’s nose seem long and bulbous. Nose was well named.

  It was mewling again. Mallory put one hand on her hip, drawing back the blazer to expose the bolstered gun, forgetting momentarily that this gesture would have no effect on a cat.

  The cat stood up on its hind legs and twirled in a circle, dancing with delicate, practiced steps. Done with dancing, it sat quietly staring at the bowl in Mallory’s hand. And now the small animal had been further reduced in her eyes. The only thing a cat had going for it was the refusal to do stupid pet tricks. This one had copped out.

  She opened a can of tuna, guessing food would keep it quiet. The cat ate as though it had been starved.

  She went back into the bedroom and set the printer to spit out the cued-up files. And now she checked the closet and looked down at the cradle on the floor.

  A cradle for an abortion!

  She walked into the bathroom. In the closet under the sink was a long plastic box, the kind used for Kitty Litter. It was dusted with black powder, but there were no prints. The killer had cleaned the litter box.

  This apartment was not the crime site; she knew that after a careful inspection of the other closets. She sniffed the insides of the closet doors for the familiar odor of the recent cleaning. He wasn’t cleaning up after a break-and-enter. This was a place where he had spent a lot of time. He was the one Amanda Bosch had locked out of her subfiles, her novel. She might have done that if he figured prominently in the book.

  But he had left the card file behind. How convoluted was he?

  Of course.

  He had to leave the addresses of the clients for the police, so they wouldn’t have to go looking on their own, maybe asking for public assistance on the evening news. It fit. The park site where the body was found was only a few minutes’ walk from Hyde’s condo. It was the address he was hiding.

  Now she went over the rooms of the apartment with greater care.

  Details, said Markowitz from the room inside her brain which she had outfitted with his favorite chair, a rack of pipes and a pouch of cherry-blend tobacco. Details.

  She went through the canned goods in the kitchen pantry. Two cans of fish, but no pet food. Well, some people were a little strange about animals. Now she found the vacuum in the living room closet and pulled it open. The bag was gone. Heller would have taken it. Around the insides of the vacuum cleaner she found cat hair.

  The cat was rubbing up against her leg again, depositing more hair. It stood up on hind legs, soft paws on her jeans. Mallory bent down and picked up the cat’s paws.

  No claws. Not an outside cat.

  And that would explain the torn ear and the rest of the blood. Such a cat could not survive on the street. The animal had escaped when the killer returned. Or did he throw it out for a reason?

  The cat had eaten its food with ravenous hunger, and now the bowl was licked clean. It must have gone without food for a long time. That would fit if the killer had returned to the apartment the day of the murder, the last date on the computer log.

  Riker had never expected to see Mallory with a cat in her arms. Cats were the natural enemies of the compulsively neat. It had already deposited a mess of white hairs on her gray blazer. And most surprising, the cat was still alive. She set it down on the carpet beside her. The cat rubbed up against her leg, shedding more fur, and yet, she didn’t kill it.

  ‘Who’s your friend?’

  ‘The cat’s name is Nose. He lives here.’

  ‘Oh, yeah?’ He bent down to pet the cat. It shied around to the other side of Mallory’s legs. ‘So, what else have you got?’

  ‘This isn’t the crime scene,’ she said, pushing the cat off with one leg and uncharacteristic restraint. ‘The original crime scene is in the park. The perp lives in that neighborhood. Not likely he’d drag a dead body home to dump it. That’s where she had a meeting with him,’

  ‘A meeting? You got that off the computer?’

  ‘No. It rained that morning, and there’s no umbrella in this apartment. She had something on him, so she met him in the park and threatened him.’

  ‘How do you figure that?’

  ‘She was a freelance researcher and fact-checker. It fits. So she threatened him, and he killed her. He panicked and ran. Later, he came back, dragged her deeper into the woods and worked her hands over with a rock to get rid of the prints. That bought him the time to come down here that night and clean up the evidence of a relationship with the victim. He lives at the Coventry Arms. I’m betting he’s married, and he’s over six-one. So what have you got?’

  Riker smiled and slowly folded his notebook into his coat pocket. ‘The kid’s story checks out.’ He followed her into the bedroom. The floor was littered with rolling sheets of paper which were still pouring out the mouth of the machine on the shelf below the computer. She scanned the sheets until she found the one she want
ed and ripped it free of the rolling paper.

  He read the list of names.

  ‘First he deleted this client file. Then the jerk only took that one client address out of the card file. Bosch did occasional work for a gossip columnist, Betty Hyde. They also had a social relationship.’

  ‘So you figure Hyde is tied to it?’

  ‘No. Hyde hasn’t used Bosch’s service in two months.’

  ‘Maybe Amanda was in the neighborhood picking up more work from Hyde.’

  ‘No. Look at this.’ She ripped another sheet free of the roll. ‘This is her production schedule. There’s nothing on her calendar for Hyde’s projects. There’s even a note saying Hyde is out of the country. I checked it out with the paper and the airline. She’s due back in the country this afternoon.

  ‘Look at the billings on these accounts. Bosch logged in all her time – she never worked weekends. And she never made pick-ups. For the past two months, all her work was messengered in and out of this apartment.’

  ‘But the perp lives in the same building as Hyde?’

  ‘The fool only took one card away. Yeah. He lives in that building. He didn’t want the police coming back to that address asking questions. It’s like he left me a map.’

  ‘When Coffey hears this, he’s gonna scream like a woman in childbirth. It’s a little out of your neighborhood, kid, but you know the kind of people who live in that building.’

  ‘Helen grew up in a building on that block. Her sister Alice still lives there.’

  ‘It’s good you got those kind of connections, kid. You’re gonna need ’em if you step on any toes in the Coventry Arms. I didn’t know Helen came from money.‘

  ‘Helen’s people were well off, but not wealthy. It’s an odd mix in that neighborhood. You can have a woman on Social Security living in the same rent-control building with a society matron.’

  ‘How’s your Aunt Alice’s building situated? You think she might give us some space for surveillance?’

  ‘I don’t think so. I only met her once, and she didn’t like me.’

  ‘How could she not like you? What’s not to like?’

  She was closed to him now, lost in the scrolling action of the computer which continued to spit paper.

  ‘So how come you never got along with Helen’s folks? I know they didn’t like Markowitz, but you?’

  ‘Aunt Alice just took a sudden dislike to me when I was a kid. She hasn’t spoken to me since.’

  What had Mallory done to Aunt Alice?

  Riker’s notebook lay open in his hand as he looked around the doctor’s private office. The room was thick with the scent and the green of living plants, some with delicate blooms. The doctor was also on the delicate side, and Riker pegged him for a gentle soul who trapped houseflies and released them out of doors. He felt sorry for the poor little bastard in the white coat, who was explaining to Mallory that he could not violate Amanda Bosch’s privacy, be she living or dead. The doctor would not tell her if Amanda did or did not have any sexually transmitted diseases. There was a principle of confidentiality here which he could never violate.

  Mallory was tensing, and Riker guessed the doctor could not read the warning signs. This poor man’s career of sensitivity to women and their gynecological problems had not prepared him for this.

  She was rising to a stand.

  Too late, Doc.

  Mallory slammed the autopsy photograph down on the blotter in front of the man, startling him. She leaned across his desk and pressed him deep into the cushions of his chair without laying a hand on him.

  Not raising her voice, but ticking off the syllables in the even meters of a live time bomb, Mallory said, ‘Look at what that bastard did to her.’

  These were not the pretty photographs the uniforms had shown to the doormen, the shots with the head wound and the damage of insects. This was the autopsy aftermath, the hardcore obscenity of a woman hollowed out like a bloody canoe.

  Mallory never mentioned that a pathologist had done this. She let the good doctor run the course of his imagination which was draining his face of blood, bringing him to his feet and leading him to the door of the washroom.

  Mallory settled down in her chair to wait out the noises of a man retching, splattering his lunch over water and porcelain. Her arms crossed and her mouth slanted down on one side to say she had expected more fortitude from a medical man.

  When the doctor returned to his desk, he sat down slowly in the manner of one who had just aged thirty years and had suddenly become careful of his brittle bones. His soft white hands grasped one another for comfort.

  He was Mallory’s creature now.

  ‘Did you know the father of the baby?’

  ‘No. She wouldn’t talk about him. I had the idea he was probably a married man.’

  ‘I want to know if any sexually transmitted disease could have been a motive. I don’t have all damn day to wait on lab results from the ME.’

  ‘No, nothing like that. I tested her for everything at her request. No disease of any kind. The pregnancy was compromising her health, but that was due to a physical defect of the uterus.’

  ‘Is that why she had the abortion? It was therapeutic?’

  ‘I have no idea why she aborted the baby. She wanted that child more than anything in the world. She had enormous difficulty conceiving because of the physical abnormalities. It was a chance in a million, her pregnancy.’

  ‘You did the abortion?’

  ‘No, it was done in a city hospital. She went into the emergency room complaining of bleeding and cramps. I got there as fast as I could. It wasn’t a hospital where I had privileges. And before they would even let me see her, it was over. It was done by a bad doctor with a cut-rate education. She was butchered.’

  The doctor’s eyes slid over to the photograph on his desk as though he had second thoughts on the definition of butchery.

  ‘After the abortion, there was no possibility of another pregnancy. No amount of corrective surgery could have repaired the damage done to her.’

  ‘When was the abortion done?’

  ‘It was one week ago today. She cancelled two appointments with me, and I never saw her again. I called and left messages. She never called back.’

  ‘So she miscarried? Is that how it started?’

  ‘No. There was no miscarriage.’

  ‘You think she tried to abort herself?’

  ‘No, of course not. Nothing like that, but the fetus was definitely in danger. She hadn’t slept for days, or eaten. There was an enormous amount of pressure on her.’

  ‘What kind of pressure?’

  ‘I don’t know. When I saw her that night at the hospital, she wouldn’t tell me what had brought it on. I don’t know what the emotional trauma was. The doctor in attendance had given her the option of saving the baby. He said she screamed at him, “No! Cut it out of me!” The fool never took Amanda’s emotional state into consideration, he just went ahead and cut her.’

  ‘What kind of trauma would bring on the bleeding and the cramps?’

  ‘Oh, something that would cost her peace of mind and sleep. Bed rest was important. It isn’t unusual for some women with her medical profile to spend the entire pregnancy in bed.’

  ‘Give me the reasons why she might want to get rid of the baby,’ said Mallory. ‘I know she wasn’t a hardship case. I’ve seen her bank account.’

  ‘Maybe there was some disclosure about the baby’s father or his past, something that made her revolt at the idea of bearing his child. She was just entering the second trimester of the pregnancy. I have no idea when she told the father about it. He may have recently disclosed some genetic problem.’

  ‘But you would have done tests for that, right?’

  ‘She wasn’t a good candidate for amniocentesis. It was a very delicate pregnancy. I’d need a pretty good reason to put a needle into the womb to extract the necessary fluid. But Amanda never mentioned genetic problems, or any other problems. She was a very ha
ppy woman – before she lost the baby.’

  ‘Can you think of any other possibilities?’

  ‘Women will abort in cases of rape. Of course, that wouldn’t apply here, but it’s the fact that the man is so repugnant to them that makes them abort the issue of a rapist. The emotional trauma could have been caused by any number of things, but it would have to be something horrible to make her abort her child.’

  The doctor’s face was set in real grief.

  ‘I liked Amanda very much.’ His eyes strayed back to the autopsy photos. He reached out and pushed them off the edge of his desk. ‘The bank account you mentioned – that was the down payment for a house. She wanted a house with a yard for the child to play in.’

  At the end of the day, in Coffey’s office, which was still called Markowitz’s office, Riker was saying, ‘And the perp gets Mallory’s good-housekeeping commendation.’

  Coffey turned to Mallory. ‘Did Forensics turn up anything?’

  ‘Heller’s team found a cap gun in the building trash bin. He thinks it’s tied to Bosch’s apartment.’

  ‘He got prints off it?’

  ‘No,’ said Mallory. ‘That’s why he thinks it’s tied. The toy gun was wiped clean. It’s a replica of an old six-shooter.’

  ‘I didn’t know they still made cap guns like that.’

  ‘Only a few companies do,’ said Riker, looking down at his notebook. ‘But that won’t help. This one was manufactured thirty years ago. It might have belonged to the perp when he was a kid.’

  ‘You think he tried to scare her with it?’

  ‘Could be,’ said Riker. ‘You gotta wonder about a grown man who keeps his toys.’

  A baseball with a Mickey Mantle autograph sat on the desk between them. Coffey smiled with no trace of ruffling, no rising to the bait. Riker shrugged.

  ‘What have we got on motive – anything?’

  ‘She had something on him and threatened him,’ said Mallory. ‘He panicked and killed her.’

  ‘Where is this coming from, Mallory?’

  ‘She was a researcher and a fact-checker. He was the father of her child – ’