‘Hafner doesn’t know – ’
‘I have no use for Hafner. I’ll sign off on your own shrink. But you open up to the possibility that the perp planned the kill, and maybe he’s killed before. And what about motive? She caught him out in some kind of a scam? Is that the story you want me to take to the district attorney?’
‘She was a researcher. If you’ve got the skills to check out the father of your baby, you do it. She got something on him. If she could find it, I can find it.’
‘You don’t even know that he was the father of the baby. You see what you’re doing?’
No, she didn’t see, didn’t hear. He was talking to the air.
‘You underestimate a perp and you’re dead. You’re hanging out there on your own.’ And that took guts, or maybe not. Perhaps she was merely fearless, and it was that which would get her killed – the lack of a healthy sense of fear.
‘Are we done?’
‘No, there’s just one more thing. Be careful you don’t shake out the wrong tree, Mallory. You may have more than one of them coming after you. I can see the lawsuits piling up now.’
Charles sat back in his chair and waited out the family ritual of Robert Riccalo admonishing the boy and the woman.
He didn’t like Riccalo.
The man craved a spotlight and a stage so he could strut up and down all morning and display his mind, his maleness, his ruthlessness. And then, after lunch, he would want to rule the world. The man’s eyes were black water. God only knew what was really under the surface, and God had probably shuddered and looked away quickly, only checking briefly to maintain His reputation for omniscience.
Now the man was leaning close to Justin, denying the child any possession of personal space. The boy turned to the woman. No help there. Sally Riccalo always avoided looking directly at Justin. And that was interesting.
‘Justin, this nonsense will end!’ the man was saying, booming, threatening.
The cat was backing away to a corner of the room. Nose didn’t like Robert Riccalo either. Charles smiled at Justin, and the boy seemed to take a little heart from that.
Mallory walked in, and all conversation stopped. The cat trotted up to her, eyes fixed on the one it clearly adored.
Mallory cut the small animal dead with a look. In tacit understanding, the cat backed up a few steps to sit down and love her from a safe distance. The purr was audible all over the room.
The purring stopped when the square wooden pencil caddie on the desk began to rock. The cat was under the couch before the caddie fell over on its side. A fury of color flushed Robert Riccalo’s face. His hand gripped his son’s arm, and the boy winced with the pain.
‘Not so fast,’ said Mallory, walking over to the desk. It was a command, and Riccalo seemed stunned to see his hand obey her, as it released the boy’s arm and fell back to his lap.
Mallory picked up the pencil caddie and righted it. ‘We’re accustomed to objects flying around the office. Aren’t we, Charles?’
And now a pencil came flying out of the caddie and aimed at Charles’s throat. Mallory’s hand shot out and intercepted it.
Charles swallowed. ‘Well, some of us are more accustomed to that sort of thing than others.’ Oh, fine. Now Mallory had added flying pencils to her private arsenal.
‘It happens all the time.’ Mallory was staring at the boy, who only showed curiosity. She walked behind Charles’s chair and another pencil flew out of the caddie and neatly into her hand. ‘Nothing to it.’
The boy was showing no reaction any more. Apparently he had grown bored with airborne pencils.
‘So it is a trick!’ said Riccalo, turning on the boy with a look which promised something nasty when they were alone again.
‘Not necessarily,’ said Charles. ‘But you see, so many things in the area of psychokinetics can be duplicated with illusion. That’s why it’s so difficult to test for a gift. It’s going to take a while is all my partner meant by that demonstration.’
He looked up to Mallory, willing her to nod and smile in agreement. Fat chance, said her eyes. He turned back to Riccalo. ‘We’re looking for something we can test. Come back after Christmas, and we’ll get into this in more detail.’
When goodbyes were said, a new date set, and the Riccalo family was through the door and gone, Charles turned around to find Mallory standing close behind him.
And this was another trick of hers which unsettled him. There was never any warning noise of footfalls. Sometimes he wondered if she just liked to see him jump outside his skin for a second or two. Nose trotted into the room to sit at her feet. When Mallory was around, he could at least keep track of the cat by the purring.
Mallory ignored the sound of the small, contented engine, and settled into a wingback chair with dancing Queen Anne legs. She nodded to the couch, beckoning Charles to sit down with her. ‘Aren’t you going to ask me how I made the pencil fly?’
‘No, let me guess, all right?’ He was smiling as he sat down. ‘Every now and then I see a street vendor who still sells the Wonder Widow, a black rubber spider on a nearly invisible nylon string. When the vendor works the string, it looks like the spider is crawling along by itself. When a large crowd gathers, he makes the spider fly to the face of a victim, who invariably screams and then buys ten of them. Did you ever have a spider like that?’
Mallory nodded. ‘Riker gave me one when I was a kid. He said it was a souvenir from his last round of the DTs. And if I liked that one, he knew where he could get a million more.’
‘So you took a nylon thread from a stocking, attached it to something sticky, but not too sticky – maybe a small bit of tape dusted with lint or talc. Then you attached this sticky sliver of tape to the pencil. When you jerked the thread, the pencil was aloft and the sliver of tape came loose. So whoever picked up the pencil would find no evidence of the method. You maneuvered the direction of the pencil by angling the thread around my chair.’
‘Right. So, now at least we know how it’s being done. A kid could do it.’
‘Mallory, you’d make a terrible paranormal investigator. When I accepted the case, I let go of my preconceptions. Just because you duplicated the flying pencil, that doesn’t mean that was how it was done. This type of investigation must be conducted by gathering facts, and with no preconceived ideas about guilt or method.’
‘You’d make a bad cop, Charles. While you’re dicking around with empirical evidence, someone is going to get hurt or dead.’
‘Now you see, you’re doing it again. You develop a hunch and hang the evidence. Damn anyone who gets between you and your preconceived solution.’
Charles watched the cat curl up in a patch of sunlight at her feet. ‘However, you’re probably right about one thing. There’s an unhealthy dynamic in that family. I have no idea which one of them is doing it.’
‘Well, yesterday, the pencil flew at the stepmother. That’s something.’
‘It is easiest to make the pencil fly in your own direction, isn’t it?’ Though Mallory had rather neatly sent a pencil toward his own throat.
‘I wouldn’t rule out the stepmother. But with two women down, it seems more likely that she’s the new target. Either that or she wants to frame the boy.’
‘But for what reason? What a mess.’
‘What are you complaining about? You started out with a set of suspects and a walking, talking victim. I had to work at the park murder.’
‘Solved it yet?’
‘Yeah, right,’ she said, rising to a stand and placing one hand on the hip of the blue jeans, the soft material of the blazer falling back from the gun. ‘When is Henrietta coming?’
Before he could respond, the cat stood up on its hind legs. Charles watched Nose turn gracefully in a perfect circle, and then another. From Mallory’s expression, he gathered she had seen this trick before.
‘I think you’re supposed to give Nose a reward when he dances. He might have been trained that way. The dancing is in the novel.’
‘Four days? I thought it took longer to teach an animal tricks. Especially a cat.’
‘Not if you know what you’re doing and you don’t mind being ruthless with the animal. I expect he withheld food from Nose.’
Mallory turned her back on the cat, who was dancing still. ‘Well, he doesn’t have to do that for food any more.’
The cat dropped softly to ground as though she had commanded him.
‘So, Mallory, you were also right about the manuscript. It’s a matter of weeding the truth out of the fiction. Listen to this:
“When New York is covered with snow, it’s beautiful for all the minutes before you’re mugged, shot in the crossfire of a drug war, run down by a drunk, attacked by a psychotic who has forgotten to take his medication, sued by your landlord, threatened by the tax collector, bullied by the mouthy neighbor, bitten by the pet pit bull, surprised by rats running across your path with full-grown house cats clenched in their teeth, dive-bombed by pigeons, infested with mice and roaches, shorted by a payroll clerk… When the baby comes, I will take her away from here to a safe place where it’s beautiful all the time.”
‘The baby is in the last few chapters of the book. The female character doesn’t seem to have any emotional involvement with the man. The child is everything to her, all she cares about.’
Mallory nodded. ‘The baby might argue for Harry Kipling or Judge Heart. They’re both fertile. Maybe I should scratch the blind man off the list.’
‘You’re not serious? A blind man?’
‘He was blinded on the job. He was working for a newspaper then – huge settlement.’
‘I understand your love of the money motive.’ For this was her father’s influence at work on her; Markowitz had loved this motive best. ‘But the man is blind?’
‘Charles, I always took you for the politically correct type. I hope you’re not suggesting that blind people are too handicapped to kill right along with the rest of us.’
‘A blind man would never have returned to the crime scene. He’d have no way to know who might be watching.’
‘Suppose he panicked and did the murder, and then an accomplice came back and cleaned up after him?’
‘Seriously?’
‘No. I don’t think a blind man did this. You’re an expert on gifts. Tell me about the gifts that come out when a man loses his sight.’
‘Oh, that’s a myth,’ said Charles. ‘The blind do not have more acute senses of smell and hearing, if that’s what you mean. They merely have fewer distractions without the sense of sight. And there’s more dependence on the other senses, so they tend to pay more attention to them. Does he have a Seeing Eye dog?’
‘Yes. Everyone in that building has a dog.’
‘It is true that blind people are less likely to walk into plate-glass walls – the cane or the dog prevents that. A good dog will also watch traffic and lead the blind away from obstacles. The dog is the truly gifted partner in the relationship.’
‘What about a really good adaption to blindness?’
‘Well, some people do make an art form out of it. They look directly at you when you speak to them, trying to create the illusion of being sighted.’
‘Eric Franz doesn’t do that. But he does come across as the bastard child of Sherlock Holmes and Mrs Ortega with his acute senses bullshit. And he can find his way across a crowded room without touching anyone with his cane.’
‘Interesting.’
‘I think so. So I’m keeping him. Now I’ve got a blind man, a wife beater, and a beauty-and-the-beast combo.’
Charles stared at his hands. He had his own beauty-and-the-beast problems. He looked up to the antique mirror by the couch. No, his own story would be beauty and the clown. Her reflection moved behind his own. That incredible face did not belong in the same gilded frame with his own ridiculous ensemble of features. And if he didn’t get to the barber soon, his longish wavy hair might take on the character of a clown’s fright wig.
He turned to face her, and waved one hand toward the door near her chair. ‘Would you mind opening the door for Henrietta?’
And only now, the buzzer sounded.
Mallory stared at him. ‘One day, you must tell me how you do that.’
‘When Henrietta’s working, she’s nearly as punctual as you are. She’s joining us for lunch.’
Mallory opened the door to the psychiatrist from apartment 3A. Today Henrietta was dressed in her work clothes, a neat tailored suit and soft pastel blouse.
Charles left them to the business of the park murder and wandered into the kitchen. The cat followed him, knowing this was the place from whence all food flowed. Mallory had stocked the office refrigerator anew with all the makings of sandwiches. He pulled out a tray neatly prepared with every imaginable condiment, cheese and meat.
Henrietta walked into the kitchen as he was bending down to feed the cat a piece of pastrami. In the last twenty-four hours he had learned a lot about the cat’s likes and dislikes.
‘Hey, Nose, how are you?’ asked Henrietta.
Charles looked up. The cat did not.
Ten minutes later, Charles and Henrietta were seated at the kitchen table, drinking coffee to the music of purring which originated at Mallory’s feet. Mallory stood at the chopping block on the counter, slicing cheese. She looked down at the cat and seemed to be weighing the knife in her hand against the cat’s potential value.
Charles turned to Henrietta and asked, ‘Can you explain why the cat is so attached to Mallory? Nose won’t dance for me, and I’m the one who’s been feeding him.’
‘Does the novel tell you how the cat was trained?’
‘No, I just assumed it was food.’
‘Nose may have been trained with pain, and it could also be tied to visual cues. What happened to the cat’s ear?’
‘I didn’t do it,’ said Mallory, setting a plate of four varieties of cheese on the table alongside the rest of the sandwich makings. ‘It happened when Nose was loose on the street. The vet said the cat was otherwise well cared for.’
Charles nodded. ‘If the female character in the novel is Amanda Bosch, I don’t see her allowing the cat to be tortured.’
‘Her lover trained the cat to dance in four days,’ said Mallory.
‘If we can believe the novel,’ said Charles, to his immediate regret. Mallory didn’t like that. He could feel the tension crawling toward him from her side of the table. He filled Henrietta’s coffee cup. ‘The novel was started over a year ago. Signs of abuse might be gone by now.’
‘Then, most likely the cat dances to avoid pain.’ Henrietta was loading her sandwich with pastrami. ‘It’s like child abuse. The child may cling to the abusive parent. That’s why I wondered about the cat’s ear. Mallory bears a general resemblance to the victim. She’s probably triggering a memory.’
Charles took a string of beef from his own sandwich and dropped it into Nose’s open mouth. ‘But surely the cat knows its owner from Mallory.’ The cat returned to its steady occupation of shedding fur on Mallory’s jeans.
‘Animals can respond strongly to visual cues,’ said Henrietta. ‘I got my own cat from an animal shelter. I was walking by the cage, and the cat went berserk, paws reaching through the wire, crying nonstop. They told me the cat did that every time a woman with long dark hair walked by. So I went there for a dog and came home with a cat. It was instant love. Same as with Mallory and Nose.’
‘What else is in the novel?’ Mallory asked, pushing the cat away from her with one leg, love apparently always being one-sided with her.
‘Nothing that would isolate one of your three suspects,’ said Charles. ‘He doesn’t particular
ly like women, though he likes to make love to them. I don’t suppose that helps much. I have no idea what the lie might have been. There’s no clue in the manuscript.’
‘All three of the suspects could fit the profile of liars,’ said Mallory. ‘And they’ve all got something at stake. Judge Heart has a career to consider. Other nominations have failed because of reefers and illegal nannies. If she dug up something in his background, it wouldn’t have to be much to cost him the appointment. Harry Kipling has a rich wife and a brutal prenuptial agreement. Eric Franz was with his wife the night she was killed in the traffic accident. He might have had something to do with that.’
‘So what have we got?’ asked Charles. ‘A novel we can’t use in court and no physical evidence. There was nothing else turned up at the park site?’
‘Heller’s the best. If he can’t find another forensic detail, no one can.’
‘Well, there’s the cat,’ said Charles. ‘But, unless you think we can train Nose to bite the suspect on the leg in open court, the cat is worthless.’
‘No it isn’t.’ Mallory was staring down at the animal with an expression that gave her nothing in common with animal lovers. ‘I can use the cat and the book to flush him out. The tricky part is where I get him to incriminate himself.’
‘Any confrontation with this man is dangerous to you,’ said Henrietta. ‘If your theory is correct, he’s demonstrated his willingness to kill in order to protect himself.’
Mallory seemed unimpressed. ‘So? The perp I’m dealing with doesn’t have the nerve of the average psycho. It was a one-shot crime to cover another crime – all fear and panic.’
‘You can’t know that,’ said Henrietta. ‘It doesn’t matter that the murder wasn’t premeditated. He may have killed her a thousand times in his fantasies. He may be someone who knows her only as a service person, a maintenance man. And you can’t tell a sociopath from his appearance or public behavior. This man may very well have a dangerous pathology and still pass for a normal member of the community.’
‘A sociopath can’t pass for normal, not with everyone.’
The Man Who Lied To Women Page 14