The Man Who Lied To Women

by Carol O’Connell

  The boy nodded. Mallory looked down at Kipling, who was squirming on the floor. ‘Harry, I just don’t think you’ve got a handle on the situation. You’re an adult, you’re bigger than he is, or to put it briefly, a dead man. Right again, Justin?’

  ‘I’m afraid so.’

  ‘Damn straight. Not too bright, is he, Justin?’

  ‘I did kill her! I killed Amanda Bosch because she was a bitch,’ said Harry in his best attempt to pass for a fellow disciple in the hatred of women. And the boy who believed all women were bitches seemed to be weighing this.

  ‘Well,’ said Mallory, ‘let’s have some details that weren’t in the papers. In my case, it’s professional interest. Now Justin’s killed twice before. We can’t call him an amateur. But you are, Harry. Details. Did Amanda cry? Or did she take it like more of a man than you are?’

  ‘Hey, it was her own fault. If she hadn’t threatened me, it wouldn’t have happened. The bitch brought it on herself ’

  ‘All women are bitches,’ said Justin in the descending note of an amen.

  ‘Details, Harry.’

  ‘I hit her with a rock, and then I snapped her neck. That wasn’t in the papers.’

  ‘Did you grab her by the throat and strangle her?’

  ‘No, I twisted her head until her neck snapped.’

  ‘How long did it take you to teach the cat to dance?’

  ‘Four days! Okay, kid? Now untie me!’

  ‘No,’ said Justin, ‘I don’t think so.’ He pointed the gun at Kipling, and the man froze. Then the gun turned slowly back to Mallory. ‘It would be more logical to kill Mallory first. She’s the dangerous one. You, sir – you’re pathetic. You didn’t even hate that woman, did you?’

  ‘No, he didn’t. It was a panic kill,’ said Mallory. ‘And then he ran away. Not your style, Justin.’

  It was like Markowitz was in the room with her. They like to talk, Kathy, the old man had told her. Even after you read them their rights, you can’t shut them up.

  The boy giggled, clearly enjoying this power over two adults.

  ‘I’d bet even money, you put more thought and planning into your murders,’ said Mallory. ‘Or maybe I overestimated you. Your mother and stepmother died alone. Maybe you’re blowing smoke here too.’

  ‘You know better than that. You were close, weren’t you? You must have been. You were planning to dig up my mother. I heard you say that to Mr Butler.’

  ‘If I had dug up your mother, what would I have found?’

  ‘You might have found out that I replaced her heart medication with vitamin pills the same size and colour. The absence of medication might have been noticeable.’

  ‘Why did you kill her?’

  ‘Well, let’s say I never miss an opportunity for fun.’

  ‘So she died for lack of proper medication? That’s pretty boring.’

  Arthur was holding the door for a tenant, when he saw the large man running at him, clutching some object to his chest and then concealing it in his pocket. Now the man was close enough to identify as Miss Mallory’s friend. And as the man drew closer still, Arthur could see the twenty dollar bill extending out from the man’s hand. The bill hung in the air as Charles shot past him, and Arthur clutched the twenty before it hit the ground.

  ‘No time to be announced – I’m late!’ yelled the large man in passing. ‘She’ll kill me if I’m any later.’ The words trailed behind the man as he ran past the occupied elevator and pushed through the side door and into the stairwell.

  Arthur nodded his understanding at the closing stairwell door as he pocketed the twenty. He would not like to cross Miss Mallory either.

  ‘Oh, no. I killed her,’ said Justin.

  ‘She died of a heart attack,’ said Mallory. ‘I’ve seen the death certificate.’

  ‘Yes. I suppose you could say I scared her to death. Once she was weakened by the lack of medication, it wasn’t all that difficult. I did the sort of things that would make her seem crazy if she told anyone. She was hardly going to tell my father she saw things flying through the air. You’ve met my father. A bit intractable, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘You are an interesting kid, I’ll give you that much, but this still sounds very tame as murders go.’

  ‘Oh, it wasn’t tame at all. She crawled from room to room following that bottle of worthless pills. I walked along beside her kicking the bottle out of her reach. She screamed, she cried. She was terrified. It was glorious. You should have seen her face as she was dying. She just could not believe this was happening to her.’

  ‘And what about her replacement, the first stepmother? I suppose you killed her too?’

  ‘Yes. I also made things float through the air for her. She never told anyone either. She thought she was going crazy. In my opinion, she was half crazy when I started to work on her.’

  ‘But there was nothing wrong with her heart.’

  ‘No. But with her brief stay in the psychiatric hospital, the suicide was quite believable. They should have had a child guard on that window, you know. It’s the law.’

  ‘According to the ME investigator’s reports, both women were alone when they died.’

  ‘School was in session both times. I’m afraid the Tanner School doesn’t keep very good track of children. They’re very progressive – attendance is on the honor system. But I don’t think anyone bothered to check. They just assumed I wasn’t in the apartment. They also assumed neither death was all that suspicious.’

  Amanda was less the thing of solid stuff as she floated up the stairway beside him. ‘It’s three more flights. You should’ve taken the elevator, Charles.’

  ‘Now you tell me.’

  His side hurt from the unaccustomed exertion. He could feel a searing in his lungs as though he had swallowed fire.

  ‘Did you keep any trophies, Justin? It’s just professional curiosity on my part. All the big names in serial killing kept trophies of every murder.’

  ‘I kept the bottle of doctored pills, and the tricks I used on my first stepmother.’

  ‘How did you get her to jump out the window?’

  ‘Well, she didn’t actually jump. I had the window open. It was a large window. Then I took the knife and ran the cord to follow the bars of the track lighting system that runs across the ceiling. I only had to maneuver her into line with the window and make her back up. When you see a knife floating toward you, you do tend to back up in a hurry. When she was at the window and off balance, I only had to run at her to give her a push in the direction she was going in. That was the tricky part. There was a moment when she understood what was happening to her, and she was reaching out to take me with her. There was a bit of a risk in that one.’

  ‘But your new stepmother told your father about the floating objects.’

  ‘Yes, and I blame myself for that. I should have spent more time with Sally, gotten to know her better. I had no idea she was one of those pathetic New Age freaks, a paranormal obsessive. But it’s working in my favor. Now she’s a documented hysteric.’

  ‘So you’re still planning to kill her.’

  ‘Well, of course. You can kiss that bitch goodbye. And now I’m going to kill you. It’s been fun, Mallory. Really it has.’

  The boy was raising the gun.

  ‘Look, kid, the gun won’t fire,’ she said. ‘The safety is on.’

  ‘A revolver doesn’t have a safety. Good try, Mallory. What else have you got?’

  ‘Have you ever heard that old standby “Look, someone’s coming up behind you”?’

  ‘Once, I think. It was a television rerun from the seventies.’

  Charles Butler was standing in the foyer on the far side of the room, which seemed miles wide to her now. Markowitz’s Colt was in his hand. His head was turned to the side and down as though he were distracted by someone or something unseen. What was wrong with him?

  Charles, don’t fail me now.

  ‘So if I tell the guy behind you to shoot you, there won’t
be any hard feelings?’

  Charles was staring at her now, eyes wide, head shaking slowly from side to side.

  Charles, don’t fail me.

  The boy was smiling. ‘They’re your last words, Mallory. Say what you like.’

  The barrel was rising, aiming at her face when she yelled, ‘Charles, shoot him!’

  Charles raised the Colt and fired on the boy, not once, but pull after pull on the trigger, walking the length of the room on shock-slowed feet, firing and firing.

  The boy’s head had turned quickly with the first click of the empty gun, and now he stared at the crazed giant with the wide eyes, sad eyes, advancing on him, clicking and clicking and clicking.

  Mallory moved and the boy’s head snapped back. She watched his eyes making choices. He was opting for the larger threat. The barrel was turning to Charles as the cat ran out from under the couch and stepped lightly, delicately on its hind legs, dancing up to the gun. The boy stared. Mallory dived for the gun. It went off. The bullet spun the cat in a wicked turn, and blood splattered the rug.

  Kipling’s body went limp as his eyes rolled back, lids closing, chin falling to his chest, mouth hanging open, all still now.

  Before she and the boy hit the carpet, she had the gun in her hand.

  ‘Nice going…’ she said, pinning the boy neatly under one leg and looking up at Charles.

  His gun hand dangled by his side, but his grip was tight and the trigger finger continued to spasm and click the misfires. And then the ammo box fell from Charles’s other hand, seal unbroken.

  ‘You’ve never loaded a gun, have you, Charles?’

  ‘No, no I never have.’

  So he had gone up against the boy with no bullets in the gun, no cover, and no hesitation. And the empty gun had to be the explanation for the lack of hesitation. He couldn’t have fired so fast, not looking at a child in his sights. Civilians were not constructed that way. Charles was the soft and civilized type; such things were not done in his world. So, with his own peculiar courage and backward thinking, he had risked his life to draw fire and buy her time.

  Now Riker and Martin were coming through the door, Martin first, Riker panting behind him, guns drawn. They stared at the hogtied Kipling and the boy pinned under Mallory.

  Riker hunkered down beside her, panting from the run upstairs, fishing for his irons. In another moment the boy’s hands were cuffed behind his back.

  ‘How did you get here so fast?’ she said. It was an accusation.

  ‘Well, Charles caught my eye when he streaked by the car.’ Riker pulled a small device from one ear. ‘Oh, I’ve been listening in. I planted a highly illegal bug in the apartment the last time I was here. I’ve learned a lot from you, kid.’ And now he fingered the fallen drapes on the floor. ‘Very messy, Mallory. This is so unlike you.’

  Martin holstered his gun. ‘The reception kept going in and out. Most of the time, all we could hear was this noise like a little engine. So Riker tells me it’s a cat snoring. He thinks I’ll buy anything.’

  Riker nodded her attention toward Charles. ‘You think you could stop him from clicking that thing? It’s getting on my nerves.’

  Mallory stood up and moved quickly to Charles. She used force to pry his fingers off the gun, and then she closed her hand over his to stop the finger from its spasmodic firing of a gun that was no longer there.

  Charles’s eyes were locked with the boy’s. Justin was still and quiet, turning his eyes away from Charles to look inward. And it was only a little disturbing that he pouted like a real child, an angry child.

  Martin was standing over the hogtied Kipling. ‘Is he dead?’

  ‘No,’ said Mallory. ‘He fainted when the gun went off.’

  Riker and Mallory exchanged words without words. Do I know my perps? she asked with only the lift of her chin. Damn straight, he said with one thumb up.

  Martin was fishing out his cuffs.

  ‘Naw,’ said Riker, putting up one hand to stay Martin. ‘I don’t think the cuffs could improve on Mallory’s knots. Let’s carry Kipling out through the lobby like that.’

  Martin grinned. ‘Yeah, I like it.’ Now Martin stabbed his finger at the blood splatters on the carpet. ‘So, who took the hit?’

  His answer was crawling slowly across the rug, pulling itself along by its front paws, crying and making its way to Mallory. At last, it lay at her feet, bleeding on her white running shoes.

  ‘What happened to the cat?’

  ‘I didn’t do it,’ said Mallory.

  ‘Mallory, you’re going to love this.’

  Betty Hyde slipped the video cassette into the VCR. The picture was of the judge on the steps of the Coventry Arms. He was flanked by an escort of two uniformed police officers. A young woman reporter was thrusting a microphone in his face and asking him if it was true that the district attorney was planning to exhume the body of his mother.

  Then the judge advanced on the woman. One fist knocked the microphone out of her hand and the other fist was flung at the cameraman. The camera lay on the sidewalk shooting the feet of the officers scuffling with the feet of the judge, dragging him back from the feet of the woman reporter. The audio portion was a woman’s screams of’You’re hurting me, you son of a – ‘.

  ‘About that police escort with the judge,’ said Hyde. ‘I don’t suppose you could explain that?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ Mallory lied. ‘I heard a rumor that some ME investigator implicated a detective in an extortion racket. I think they just wanted to ask the judge if he had any information on the case. But you didn’t get that from me.’

  ‘Of course not. Thanks for the judge on a platter,’ said Betty Hyde. ‘Not that I’m greedy, but did you dig up anything else that was interesting?’

  ‘No,’ Mallory lied again as she continued her packing.

  ‘Well, I did. You were right, Mallory. I was holding out on you. Eric Franz is not blind.’

  Mallory pressed out the wrinkle on a T-shirt before she folded it into her duffel bag. ‘Eric Franz told you that?’

  ‘Oh no, he denied it for several hours. Actually he spent most of that time getting drunk and reminiscing about Annie. That’s the strange part – he really did love her. But the accident was certainly murder if he was sighted, and he didn’t – ’

  ‘If Franz didn’t confess to you, then where is this coming from?’

  ‘I told you I have spies everywhere.’

  Mallory folded a pair of blue jeans into the duffel and slowly zipped it shut. ‘Arthur, right? He was on duty the night of the crash. Is he the one who told you Franz killed his wife?’

  ‘Well, no. Arthur doesn’t know Eric can see. He only said that if Eric had been able to see, he could have saved his wife. But Eric’s version of the accident doesn’t match. Eric lied.’

  ‘How much did you pay Arthur?’

  ‘Fifty dollars.’

  ‘Well, you probably got the full treatment. I only gave him twenty.’ Mallory opened the flap pocket of the duffel and rummaged until she found the file she was looking for. ‘Arthur told you he gave the plate number to the police, and they caught the guy in an hour, right?’

  ‘Right, but – ’

  Mallory held up a sheet of paper. ‘This is the accident report. He did give them a plate number, but it was the wrong plate. And they didn’t pick up the hit-and-run driver until 7:00 am. The driver was parked outside of his own local garage, sleeping off the drink, waiting for the shop to open so he could have the dent removed from the fender. There was still blood on the car. A meter maid caught him.’

  ‘But Arthur described – ’

  ‘And did he tell you the part about the little silver Jaguar? It was a gray Ford. Nothing like a Jag, but it makes a better story for the money.’

  ‘He saw a fight between the Franzes.’

  ‘Across the street? I don’t think so.’ She selected another sheet of paper from the file. ‘This came off his optometrist’s computer. Arthur does fine for the first
twelve feet – without his glasses. So all you’ve really got is a case of the blind contradicting the blind. But even if Arthur’s vision had been 20/20, it probably would have been the same story. Any cop could have told you eyewitnesses are the least reliable evidence you can have. If your case hangs on a witness, you’re dead meat in a courtroom. And the testimony you have to pay for is the worst. I don’t think you’d make it as a detective. Don’t give up your day job.’

  ‘I’ve been had, haven’t I? You steered me into Eric Franz to keep me away from Kipling, didn’t you?’

  ‘You’ve got the judge’s head, and you’ve got an exclusive story on Amanda’s murder. So you don’t have anything on Eric Franz. Two out of three isn’t bad.’

  ‘I owe you one, Mallory.’

  ‘You owe me a lot more than that. If you’d printed any of that crap on Franz, you’d be in the middle of a lawsuit and looking for another job.’

  Out on the sidewalk, Eric Franz stopped a moment to talk to her. He lowered the dark glasses and stared at her as a sighted person would do. His face looked sleep starved and pained.

  ‘I understand we have some business to transact. I gather the computer messages were yours? You’ll be contacting me again?’

  ‘No,’ said Mallory. ‘We have no business, you and I. I don’t think we’ll ever meet again.’ She pulled out her shield. ‘I’m only a cop, and you didn’t break any laws.’ None that she could prove. He was just a little crazy. Charles could explain it better – he was good at guilt.

  She had neglected to mention to Betty Hyde that the doorman had been wearing glasses that night. Arthur had only made all the mistakes of the average eyewitness with good eyesight.

  The doorman had seen the lights of the oncoming car shining on Eric’s face. In that bright light, the doorman would have seen the proximity of the man who watched his wife cut down in the street. Like Cora, Arthur had witnessed a murder without realizing it.