She had been unsuccessful in her efforts to bully the maid. Perhaps it was true that Betty Hyde was not at home this morning. And neither was Eric Franz answering his telephone. But the judge was in, and so was Harry Kipling.
She picked up the plastic evidence bag and held it up to the camera to visually record the chain of evidence written on the seal, and then the breaking of the seal. She pulled out the cap gun and set it down on the table in the front room.
Back in the den, she ran a test of the camera equipment which had just made her visual record of the evidence. On her way to the front door, four gilded wall mirrors caught the swift passing reflection of her T-shirt, shoulder holster and jeans. She was pulling on the new brown cashmere blazer, a twin to the garment Amanda Bosch had been wearing when she died. The tailor had reproduced it exactly. Not that most people would appreciate the detailing.
She had been tempted to re-create the cigarette burn on the sleeve, but the ghost of Helen Markowitz wouldn’t let her do it. And Helen would have been the first to comment on the bulge the gun made in the line of the blazer. Mallory stopped at the mirror in the foyer, checking the giveaway bulk with a critical eye.
She called the cat to her, and it came. She snapped her fingers, and the cat made a leap into her arms and nuzzled her neck. She looked back to the mirror. No, it wouldn’t do. The squirming cat wouldn’t hide the bulge of the gun unless she killed it first and pinned it on like a furry corsage.
She dropped the animal on the floor at her feet, shrugged off her blazer and removed the shoulder holster. She slid the gun into the drawer of the small table beneath the mirror. Putting the coat on again, she snapped her fingers for the cat.
With no self-respect, no pride, Nose jumped back into her arms.
She made her way down the hall, wondering that doors didn’t open to inquire about the racket of purring. She stopped at the door to Judge Heart’s apartment and knocked. It was a repeat of last night; the chain had apparently been replaced. The door only opened a crack. The judge was staring at her.
‘I want to see your wife,’ said Mallory.
‘Go away.’
‘I could be discreet or not. Up to you. I want to see that she’s all right. I want to see her NOW!’
The door closed to the sound of the newly installed chain slipping off the latch. Now the door was opening, and the judge was calling out, ‘Pansy! Pansy!’
Pansy Heart entered the room. Her face showed only the damage of the previous night and no fresh marks.
‘Just checking,’ Mallory said, turning to go. She stopped and looked back over her shoulder at the judge. ‘I know what you did, and I’m going to get you for it.’
Judge Heart’s face was in rage shades of red as the door slammed.
When she knocked on the next door, one flight up, the Kipling boy opened it. There was no leer on the boy’s face this time. He stepped back to make room for Mallory, and she walked in. Harry Kipling was seated at the table. He looked at the cat and rose quickly to his feet, but not quickly enough.
A Springer spaniel was bounding across the carpet and heading for the cat, jaws wide and joy in his eyes.
The apartment was still, with no current of air or sound to indicate an animate being, not even a cat. Then, the quiet of no-one-home was broken by a pair of feet crossing the foyer and dragging a shadow along by the heels.
The intrusion was short-lived, for the revolver lay in the first drawer opened. The gun metal gleamed for the moments between the drawer and the dark of a bag. Stepping softly, the thief quit the apartment.
When Mallory slammed the door behind her, the Kipling boy was yelling, ‘Look what she did to my dog!’
Mallory returned by way of the stairwell. The door to the Rosens’ apartment was open. Could she have been that stupid?
This time, the cat didn’t cry when she dropped him. He was even prepared for the fall. Nose had grown accustomed to this game of holding and dropping. He padded away, yawning.
She opened the drawer of the table by the door.
The drawer was empty; her Smith & Wesson revolver was gone.
Nothing else had been disturbed. The cap gun lay on the table where she had placed it.
What now? She couldn’t call in for backup and admit she’d lost the gun. Neither Coffey nor Riker would let her live that one down. A rookie would not have lost her gun.
A crash came from the direction of the bedroom.
She passed through the kitchen and slipped a wine bottle into her hand. Now she entered the bedroom. The cat was standing over the remains of a broken lamp. There was no mystery to the breakage. A fringe of the lamp shade was tangled in the cat’s paw.
But there was still the problem of the gun.
She picked up the phone and dialed Charles from the bedroom. ‘I’m in a big hurry, Charles. Go to the center drawer in my desk and get the old Long Colt. And bring the box of ammo with it. You’ll have to turn off the…’ She lowered the phone at the sound that may or may not have been the cat. Now she set the receiver back on its cradle to stifle Charles’s loud repeated ‘Hello?’ coming from the mouthpiece.
She left the bedroom, quickly, silently gliding down the short hallway to the den. She flipped the array of switches for the cameras, backup tapes and audio.
She entered the front room to find the cat crawling under the couch and Harry Kipling standing in the center of the room. The cap gun was lying on the coffee table.
How much time would it take Charles to get to her with the real gun?
‘You left your door open,’ said Kipling. ‘That was careless.’
She had meant to make his access easy, but she had planned to have a gun in her hand when he came through the door. It was an odd moment to be thinking of Riker’s I-told-you-so grin. Too late for backup, and Charles was miles from here.
The cameras were rolling.
There was time to wonder if Coffey would catch her in this screw-up, or if she could lie her way out of it.
Max Candle’s knife lay on a shelf of the bookcase behind Kipling. Had he seen it? Originally, she had planned to steer him to it, so he would have a weapon in his hands in the event the cameras should catch her blowing away a taxpayer. But that plan had been contingent on having a gun in her own hand. And where was he hiding her gun?
Kipling was still staring at the cap gun on the table.
‘You recognize it, Harry? It’s the same toy gun you used to teach the cat to dance. Now Nose only has to see a gun and he dances. Was it the noise of the caps? Did you fire that toy close to his head to make him dance?’
And now the cat began to snore.
Charles was closing the door to his apartment. So that was it? I’m in a hurry! Bring me a gun! How many weapons did she need all at once? She had a rather large gun and a sharp knife in her possession now. But who was he to question Mallory, he who kept company with a dead woman.
He was crossing the hall to the offices of Mallory and Butler, Ltd, wondering which of all the stupid things he had said had made her the most angry. He had accused her of lack of logic, and of underestimation of…
Oh, fool.
She had questioned him about a blind man. Not too quick to underestimate that suspect, was she? And now she was gathering more weapons. No lack of caution there. Where was his own logic?
Perhaps he had gotten everything wrong, genius that he was. What had possessed him to take Coffey’s side in this? At the time it had made some sense, but now? Maybe Coffey had only feared she was too fixed in her knowledge of the suspect. Riker had been right to caution him. He should have shown her more respect. He must not let her down now.
He unlocked the door to Mallory’s private office and strode quickly to her desk. The center drawer was locked.
Now that was a snag. He had no keys for drawers. Mallory must assume that everyone was as gifted as she in the art of breaking and entering. He picked up the letter opener he had given her. It was the only object in the room not manufactured in the current decade. In fact, it dated back to another century. He hesitated only for a moment, hefting the irreplaceable piece in his hand. Then he inserted it into the space above the drawer and used force to pry the metal open.
An ear-splitting squeal was the first warning, followed by a cascade of bells, giant bells, gongs in hellish amplification. This must be Mallory’s idea of accommodating his aversion to high technology. She had wired the office for an alarm, and in place of an annoying beep or siren, she had worked in his recordings of church bells. And now he was inside the bell tower, inside the bells themselves.
He put up his hands to cover his ears. He would altogether lose his ears if he stayed much longer. He could turn it off, but there was not time enough to hunt the wiring from the drawer before serious damage was done to him. And the speakers might be anywhere in the myriad of electronic equipment. There could be no direction to sound when one’s head was itself the clapper of a monster bell.
He opened the wooden case nested in the center drawer, and there was Markowitz’s old.38 Long Colt, gleaming with Mallory’s good housekeeping, which extended into the barrels of antique guns. He picked up the revolver and the ammunition box and ran for the door. The peal of the church bells from hell followed him down the stairs and into the street, where every window had a head sticking out of it.
He put out his hand to flag down a cab, silently begging forgiveness from the neighbors.
Kipling walked back to the front door and locked it. ‘I don’t think we want to be disturbed right now.’
What would Charles do when he met with a locked door? He had the size to kick it in, but he would not know how.
‘How did you get on to it?’ Harry Kipling lowered himself to a straight-back chair and motioned her to another.
She remained standing.
He leaned back in the chair, lifting its front feet off the rug and rocking on the two back legs, staring absently into space. His face was drawn, dramatic in the hollows below the high cheekbones where afternoon shadows followed the contours. He seemed tired, at the point of giving in or giving up. ‘What mistake did I make?’
‘You made a lot of them,’ said Mallory. They had been tap dancing for ten minutes now. Where was the gun? It could be hidden in his belt at the small of the back. He had not yet looked directly at the knife with the crest of Max Candle.
‘How much do you want?’ Kipling smiled. ‘This is a simple case of extortion, am I right?’
‘What’s it worth to you, Harry?’
‘What’s my marriage worth? Call my wife’s accountant. I don’t have all day for this. How much do you want to keep it quiet?’
‘Why did you do it?’
‘Desperation. If you want the sordid details, you’re not getting them. Just tell me how much money you want.’
‘I’ll get back to you.’
She would not allow her eyes to travel back to the knife, to give it away. But she knew she could have it in her hand in a heartbeat if she only had the advantage of position. The chair and the rocking Kipling blocked the way.
Moving in slow silence, she angled around Kipling, who was holding the cap gun in his hand, examining it as a curiosity. She could see him in profile now. There was no gun concealed in the small of his back. He was dressed in a polo shirt and close-fitting slacks. There was no place on his person to conceal a large weapon.
So where was her damn gun?
‘So I had a relationship with Amanda Bosch – now how much do you want? How much not to tell my wife?’
‘Well, there’s a bit more to it than just the relationship with Amanda.’
‘You’ve only got me on one woman. If you believed there were others, you would have said so before now. I’m not going to pay the moon for this. Now how much do you want?’
‘Did I mention that I knew Amanda? I know you lied to her, and she caught you on it.’
‘But there were so many lies.’ By the way he smiled, he seemed to take some pride in that.
‘I’m talking about the lie that made her abort her baby. Does that narrow it down for you?’
‘That particular lie isn’t worth any cash to me. I don’t think you did know her. I think you’re a crooked cop. The news said you were a cop, and the daughter of a cop. Was your father crooked too? Does it run in the family?’
‘Let’s say I learned a lot from my old man. If I never knew Amanda, how do I know what tipped her off to the lie, what made her snap?’
She had not been a world-class poker player for nothing. Helen always wanted her to have a fine education, and now the weekly poker games of childhood were paying off.
‘Amanda was sitting on a bench outside the building on the day before she died, the day before she called you on the big lie. She never went up to the door, she just watched. It was a busy day for the doorman. People were coming and going, tenants, kids, dogs. Then she saw – ’
‘Let’s not get too dramatic, shall we? She saw Peter and she knew he wasn’t adopted. You know, until then, I always thought it was a blessing that he looked like me and not Angel.’
Still holding the cap gun in the palm of his hand, Kipling stood up and crossed over to the bookcase. He leaned against the shelf where Max Candle’s knife was sitting. He was only inches from it.
‘So it is a shakedown. If you know her, you know she was only using me for genetic material. She didn’t ask me if I wanted to make another brat, did she?’
‘She didn’t know that she could make one. It was a miracle pregnancy according to her doctor. So then you lied to her.’
‘Yes. I told her the genetic stew was botched. What of it? I told her it would be a monster, that all my children would be monsters – things growing on their outsides that really should be on the insides, missing their little eyes and little hands, little things like that. So what? That’s not a crime. A cop wouldn’t have any interest in that. This is a shakedown. Now how much do you want to make this nasty little business go away?’
‘It was a stupid lie, wasn’t it? You had to know she’d catch you in the lie when she saw your son.’
‘What were the odds they would ever meet? Most of the year, my son is away at school. There are camps in the summer. My wife has no maternal instincts. Peter looks so much like me, Angel hates the sight of him. He’s rarely around.’
‘But Amanda saw him. That’s why she forced the meeting in the park.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. We only met at her place.’
‘I know you met her in the park. You don’t have to talk to me. You could remain silent. If you say anything it could be used against you in a court of law.’
‘Are you reading me my rights? Still playing cops and crooks, are we? Next you’ll be telling me that if I can’t afford an attorney, one will be appointed for me. You’re no more a cop than I am. Did they kick you off the force? You’re a cheap little hustler, aren’t you? There’s no law against cheating on your wife. Maybe the two of you are thinking in terms of a multimillion-dollar civil suit? Well, forget it.’
Mallory shrugged. His constitutional rights were recorded on camera. His arm leaned on the shelf of the bookcase, close to the knife, only inches from it. It was working so well. The only snag was that she didn’t have the gun. What had he done with it?
‘You met her in the park. She called you on the lie. She had just killed her child, thinking it was a monster, but it wasn’t. She aborted it for nothing. She was so angry. You panicked when she threatened to tell your wife what a monster you were. She was going to do it then, wasn’t she? Right that minute. Then you killed her.’
‘So Amanda was the woman in the park killing. No wonder you thought you were going to score big. Cheating and murder. Has it occurred to you she knew more than one man in this building, that someone else killed her?’
‘No. It never did, not from the beginning.’
‘If it was me, I’d take the subway,’ said Amanda, taking a long drag on her cigarette.
Charles stared at her. There was no music in the cab. Perhaps it was the stress that had triggered the delusion this time.
Now he realized that there were flaws in his construction, glitches in the mechanics of freak memory, for every now and then, Amanda’s blue eyes would slip into Mallory green.
‘Amanda, you’re not allowed to smoke in this cab. See the sign? Perhaps you – ’
‘I ain’t smoking, buddy,’ said the cab driver. ‘And the name is Fred.’
Amanda smiled and continued to hold the cigarette. ‘One of the perks of being dead – no fear of lung cancer. But if it bothers you, I’ll put it out.’
He couldn’t smell the burning weed, and neither did the swirling blue smoke sting his eyes. That was a good sign. He was not altogether crazy. The gun pressed into his leg, and he removed it from his pants pocket and shifted it into his coat.
‘So, what’s with the gun?’
‘Mallory needs it.’
‘What did you say?’ asked the cab driver.
‘Nothing.’
‘Take the subway,’ said Amanda. ‘Just on the chance that she needs it in a hurry. This traffic is the pits.’ She stared out the back window at the still life of motionless vehicles trailing behind them.
‘I’m sure we’ll get moving soon,’ said Charles, waving his hand at the phantom smoke swirling around the interior of the cab. ‘You know, the cigarette smoke does bother me. The cab is full of – ’
The cab driver turned around to say, ‘For the last time, pal, I’m not smoking.’
And now the cab was filled with smoke that was not real, but which obscured every real thing. He was engulfed in the smoke, panic was rising.
Steady now. It’s not real.
But then he turned to Amanda, who was blurred by the thickening blue clouds of his delusion, and he realized he was getting lost in this very cramped space which was his mind.
‘Please stop! Stop it!’
‘Okay, that’s enough,’ said the driver. ‘Out of my cab, fella. Now!’
‘Cheating on my wife doesn’t make a good motive for murder.’
‘Oh, sure it will. I like it. Money motives are the best. According to your father-in-law’s will, you don’t inherit if your wife dies. Smart old man, your father-in-law. And you don’t get alimony if she divorces you for cause. And that, incidentally, is the clause that hangs you – you couldn’t afford to get caught in the act.’
‘You can’t possibly base a murder motive on the possibility that she wouldn’t overlook one small indiscretion. You’d be laughed out of court. Everybody cheats.’ And everybody lies.
‘You mean the way she overlooked your embezzlement? I found the transactions in the company computer. She covered the sale of the stock you didn’t own, and she covered the collateral loan on the condo. She wouldn’t haul you in court for that. It might make the stockholders nervous to find an embezzler in the family. But I’m betting she’d haul you in for adultery.’
‘The threat of divorce is still a weak motive for murder.’
‘Is it? If Angel divorces you, you get nothing. You even had to agree to give custody of your own child to another relative in the event of your wife’s death. That’s how much the old man trusted you.’
Kipling was backing off in the body language, regrouping for another tack. ‘My wife is rather cold. She never lets me touch her any more. I had to have a woman on the side. But I certainly didn’t kill Amanda.’
She had always known it would be something simple, and disappointing. Now there was only the tedium of letting him flap his mouth, catching him in the lies while the camera was rolling. He was exhibiting all the signs of the liar. He explained too much, emoted too much. And now he was going on and on about the tragic death of Amanda and his own, more important tragedy.
All his life, he’d been waiting on opportunity, which had arrived in the shape of an heiress. And now, when he was set for life, it was all falling apart on him, everything unraveling, and he could not, would not see it. The lies didn’t work any more, and yet he kept on lying.
‘Amanda made the decision to have an abortion,’ he said.
Butchery, Mallory silently translated.
‘It’s unreasonable to blame me.’
She was going to tell your wife.
‘Eventually, Amanda saw it my way.’
Stunned with a rock, and bleeding.
‘I loved Amanda. I love all women.’
To death.
And here, Mallory interrupted him. ‘Your blood type is B positive.’
Kipling tightened all the muscles of his face.
‘You killed her by the water, and then you ran away. You came back later and smashed up her hands. You took some time with that.’
‘I suppose you were there when this fantasy supposedly happened?’
Mallory smiled.
At a dead run, Charles took the stairs leading down below the level of the sidewalk. He was half falling down them, as others were shouldering up the narrow stairway. At the booth, he made a frantic exchange of coins for tokens. The man behind the bulletproof window busied himself with some bit of paperwork and then began slowly to count out a packet of dollar bills. He never looked up, never responded to the crazed knocking on the glass, which sounded the panic of the oncoming train that Charles would miss without the token. The train pulled in as the clerk was pushing a token under the partition.
Charles turned into the crush of disembarking straphangers, to plant his token in the slot and hurry through. He ran at the train. The doors were closing, and he put his hand inside and pressed them open again with the aid of an electronic eye which had not kicked in until Charles felt real pain. He squeezed in among the press of other passengers, who looked up at him as though his size was something he was guilty of.
Now the train was in motion and the public address system was making an announcement to the passengers. He couldn’t make out the individual words among the garble of mechanics and the garble of a man who was eating his lunch as he addressed the riders over the loudspeaker in what was obviously his second, and recently acquired language.
‘What is he saying?’ Charles asked a woman who had the bored look of having been this route many times. The woman only shrugged.
It was Amanda, by his side, who answered his worst fears. ‘He’s saying what they always say. No matter where you’re going, you can’t get there from here.’
When the train did stop again, he discovered the local had turned into an express. Judging by the lynch mob attitude of other passengers, who were far more irritated than the shrugging woman, this change of route was a whim of the engineer. When he saw the light of day and the first street sign, he knew he was miles out of his way, and he began to run.
‘You were standing down by the water when she nailed you on the lie. She was going to give your wife all the evidence she needed to divorce you for cause. You panicked and grabbed her by the arm. First you stunned her, and then you killed her. Then you ran away… like the dog.’
‘My dog – ’
‘You were walking the dog that morning. That was your excuse for going out to meet her in the park. The dog was running loose. While you fought with Amanda, he got his leash caught in the bushes when he was heading north over the rise. You’re probably wondering how I know that. So you found the dog and took it home. Then, about thirty minutes later, you came back to drag Amanda’s body into the woods – ’
‘You couldn’t – ’
‘ – and you smashed up her hands, her fingerprints. You made so many stupid mistakes, Harry.’
He moved toward her and away from the knife. Good. Now she was circling around him. The way to the door was almost clear. His hands were rising now, the hands which had snapped a woman’s neck. It was panic time again for Harry Kipling. He was rushing toward her. She reached out to grab his outstretched hand, struck one long leg across his path and pulled hard on his hand to guide all of his weight to the floor.
Big he might be, but not terribly graceful.
He was looking for his large feet when she kicked him in the groin to double him into a fetal position. Then she rolled him on his stomach and pulled one arm up behind his back until he screamed.
‘You’re going to break it!’
‘Then hold still!’
With her free hand she reached for the heavy drapery cord and yanked on it, bringing down drapes and curtain rod.
His running was hampered by the dense crowd of people on the sidewalk. It wasn’t fair, the streets should be deserted. Couldn’t all these people have waited one blessed day before racing out to return their Christmas gifts and exchange them for the right sizes?
Charles dropped the gun, and an old woman kicked it out of her way. He wondered if she could not see it over her packages, or did she think it was commonplace sidewalk debris for this part of town? He leaned down and picked it up. He began to make better time now, suddenly not bothered by the crowd any more. In fact, people were hurrying to get out of his way.
Well, this was more like it.
And now it occurred to him that this sudden show of public courtesy might have something to do with the naked gun in his hand. Well, of course they were all being polite.
Fool.
Harry Kipling was hogtied. Hands tied behind him and roped to one leg, he was pulled back in a bizarre bow. He looked ridiculous; he was ridiculous, a pathetic bastard who had struck out in childish fear, in anger, and then tried to clean up his mess, the death of a human being named Amanda.
He was so disappointing, an unworthy opponent who made so small a noise in the world, he had failed to wake the cat.
The camera was rolling on to the music of cat snores and Kipling sobs. With a critical eye, Mallory looked at both her hogtied trophy and her weak criminal case. An assault on a police officer was not hard evidence for murder. There were loose ends to be tied, better evidence to be got, something with more weight for a DA who chickened on every case with less than a complete set of prints and a smoking gun in evidence.
Whatever she might have to do, Kipling wasn’t going to get away with this.
‘Stop crying. It’s not like I really hurt you. What did you do with my gun?’
But he would not stop crying, and she was not taking much satisfaction in this.
She lifted her head and turned toward the door with the first sound of metal on metal. The door was being unlocked. Charles? No, it couldn’t be.
It wasn’t.
Someone else was standing in the foyer, alone but for the long shadow extending back into the outer corridor.
Now this was more like it. This was walking death.
She was staring into mirrors of her own eyes above the barrel of her stolen.357 revolver. ‘Murder is the best game, isn’t it?’
‘Yes it is,’ said Justin Riccalo, leveling the gun at her head. Now he pulled the barrel up slightly. ‘Oh, that’s wrong, isn’t it? You’re supposed to aim for the widest part of the body.’ And now the barrel dropped to the level of her chest, her heart.
Perversely, she smiled. He didn’t like that. She knew he wouldn’t.
‘Kill the bitch!’ yelled Kipling, not sobbing any more but frantic in the eyes.
‘All women are bitches,’ said the boy in the monotone of a litany.
‘Yes, yes, they are, all of them,’ said Kipling with the fervour of a television evangelist playing the crowd. ‘Kill her now!’
‘Lighten up, you idiot,’ said Mallory to the man at her feet. ‘He’s going to kill you next. I thought you understood that.’
Kipling’s mouth hung open, and no more words came out.
All the words she heard were toward the back of her mind where Markowitz lived with Helen. Get him to talk to you, kid, said a memory with a Brooklyn accent.
‘Tell me, Justin, what kind of bird did you kill to make the bloody X on my door?’
‘It was a pigeon,’ said Justin with a hint of a query at the end of his words.
‘I love all the little details,’ said Mallory. ‘How did you rig the glass of water in the kitchen?’
Prime the pump. get him talking, and he won’t be able to stop.
Justin smiled. ‘I set the glass near the edge of the table, and then I put pennies under the back legs to make it slant, but only a little. The glass was leveled on a sliver of ice. When the ice melted, the glass crashed and the evidence was gone.’
He looked up at her with the expectation of being petted and admired for this.
‘Nice job, Justin. Same thing with the vase?’
‘Yes, it had to be something with water to explain away the slick of the melted ice.’
‘I thought your best trick was the knife in the target. You even fooled Charles, and that’s not easy. I’m betting you rigged the spring load.’
‘Yes. I was surprised to see that old carnival prop in the basement. As you may have guessed, I have a passing interest in magic. The spring was easy. It was old. You could see the rust, even in bad light. After I pulled the spring over the edge of a gear, I only had to keep Mr Butler talking until it broke and released the fake knife.’
‘Then later, you went back to the cellar and pushed the fake blade back into the target compartment, right? Then you stuck one of the real knives into the face of the target.’
Justin nodded.
‘How could you count on getting back to the building in time to change the prop for the real knife?’
‘It was easy. He goes everywhere in cabs. I’ve watched him from the street. I gather he doesn’t like subways and probably has so much money, it never occurs to him to take one. I took the subway back to Soho after he walked into the park. I had all the time in the world to change the knives.’
The gun was heavy in the child’s hands. He corrected the dip of the barrel which aimed at her heart.
‘Don’t you have any questions for me, Justin?’
‘You weren’t surprised to see me, were you?’
‘No.’
‘When did you begin to suspect me?’
‘From the first. Violence was coming, I knew that. You’d gone to a lot of trouble to set it up. You were the brightest one in the family. I always knew you’d be the last one standing.’
Justin moved the gun to point at Harry. ‘If you like, as a last request, I’ll kill him first.’
‘He is annoying, isn’t he?’
‘No! I can help you,’ he said to the boy.
‘You’re trussed up like a hog,’ said Justin. ‘You can’t even help yourself. Do you have any idea how silly you look? They’re going to find your body that way. Does that disturb you?’
‘Listen to me, boy. I can help you. I have an idea. It’s foolproof. I’ll back you up if the cops get on to it. She wants to arrest me for killing a woman, a bitch. You need me, and now you have something on me. I can’t tell on you, can I?’
Justin looked at Mallory. ‘Did he really kill someone?’
‘No. I don’t believe he’d have the nerve. Do you?’
‘Why did you tie me up, then? Explain that one to the kid.’
The boy looked to Mallory for his answer.
‘I tied him up because the twit pissed me off, and the Civilian Review Board won’t let me shoot him.’
She made a mental note to edit that out of the video tape.
‘You heard about the unidentified woman who died in the park?’ Kipling raised his head and yelled, ‘Well, I killed her!’
Mallory shook her head. ‘We call this a confession under duress. It’s worthless.’ And now she turned her eyes down to Kipling. ‘I don’t think Justin’s buying it either. You’re a documented liar, Harry. Now this kid is smart. He’s probably going to make it look like he was trying to defend me against you.’ She turned back to the boy. ‘Right, Justin?’
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.
But it was not the cold-blooded murder that good cases could be built around. It had been a crime of passion just as surely as if he had caught her in bed with another man and shot her dead. There were moments in everyone’s life when they should not have a gun in their hands. She had understood the moment of the kill. Eric Franz had been presented with two thousand pounds of speeding metal. And for lack of a warning, Annie Franz had died.
Mallory watched the faux blind man walk away with his dog. She would always wonder what it was like to live in that charade of darkness, unable to leave it for an unguarded hour. It had crossed her mind to finesse him into a breakdown, but what would be the point? What fresh hell could she have added? And what for? The man was doing his own version of hard time.
Markowitz would have let Franz walk away. She wasn’t sure how she knew that, but she knew.