It Happens in the Dark - M11

by Caroll O'Connell

  —The Brass Bed, Act III

  Charles Butler flipped through the pages of the play. “Seriously? You’ve never read it?”

  “Just the highlighted parts,” said Riker, “the lines that match up with the massacre.” The detective faced the cork wall, where more layers of paper had been added, more data than ten cops could read. And so it was catch-up time for Charles, the human wall that could talk to them. “Lots of updates. Only one for Axel Clayborne.” Riker tapped a line of Mallory’s personal notes.

  “Money problems?” The psychologist pointed to an old newspaper article that he had committed to eidetic memory days ago. “According to this, he was one of the highest paid Hollywood stars. Even if he hasn’t made a recent film—”

  “Well, he doesn’t have my money problems.” Riker’s bank account was chronically overdrawn. “Mallory says he’s good for a million in liquid assets. Maybe a little more.” In New York City, home to billionaires, that would not make the actor a wealthy man, not even a rich one by this town’s standards. “The guy lost most of his money in the meltdown. Too many risky ventures—like his condo. If he sold it in this market, he’d still owe a seven-figure bundle on the mortgage.” And so, though a stretch it might be, a man with a million dollars in his pocket had turned up on Mallory’s radar for her best-loved motive—money.

  “But Clayborne must be making a fortune on Broadway.”

  “That’s where the million came from,” said Riker. “That’s what they paid him up front. I’ll tell you what’s not on this wall—Dickie Wyatt’s autopsy.” And damn the chief medical examiner for spilling his results at the poker game. “I’ll show you a copy, but you can’t tell anybody you saw it—sure as hell not Dr. Slope.” Mallory’s version of the autopsy was an early draft, hacker’s goods, and Slope should never find out that she had been illicitly looking over his shoulder.

  Riker left Charles to his work on the cork wall. When the detective entered the squad room, he found that his desk chair was occupied. The lieutenant sat there, arms folded, patiently waiting in ambush.

  “I’m getting calls from the media,” said Jack Coffey. “They tell me Midtown North’s got a runner, a person of interest in our case.” He raised his eyebrows to ask, What a surprise, huh? “They got no name, no description. No idea how the guy skipped out. So . . . just in case they call back, you got any thoughts on that?”

  “Nope.” And did the boss believe that? Nope.

  “Good enough.” Coffey stood up and walked away, probably wondering where Mallory was when the lockdown alarm had sounded. And where had she stashed Bugsy? But answers to those questions could only make him sorry for asking. Over one shoulder, the lieutenant said, “The press calls were forwarded to your phone.”

  What foresight—a punishment detail for a predictable lie.

  Every button on the desk telephone was blinking red with calls on hold. Once upon a time in New York City, the NYPD had employed twenty-eight people to deal with the media, and they had done a first-rate job, supplying actual news. But a previous mayor had gutted that department and turned it into a PR machine with sanitized press releases. Now reporters, the best of them, banged on station-house doors and choked the phone lines with the idea that if they badgered the cops long enough, they might get to the truth.

  Like that ever worked.

  Riker sat down to field questions from broadcast news and print reporters, expressing surprise that there was a person of interest in their case. “First I’ve heard of it,” he said to the guy from The New York Times, “and I’m workin’ that case.” Four calls down the line, “Naw,” he said to the CNN lady, “no idea. You’d have to ask Captain Halston. It’s his precinct.” And now he learned that the captain was unavailable for comment. And to a network newsman, he said, “Seriously? An escape from Midtown North?” What a shock. He yawned and glanced at the clock on the wall.

  Time’s up. Ready or not.

  Riker rose from his chair, leaving half a bank of blinking lights for reporters left on hold as he walked down the hall to the incident room. There he found Charles Butler standing before pinned-up photographs of the theater chalkboard, riveted by the ghostwriter’s messages to Mallory. The psychologist held the tightly rolled play manuscript, and he slammed it into the palm of one hand, over and over—just a hint that he had found it disturbing.

  The detective joined him at the wall and asked, “So . . . how’s it goin’?” Though he could see for himself. Charles had peeled back three layers of paper to find the blackboard photo with the threat to decapitate Mallory. He had obviously never seen this one before, and the clue was in his frog eyes; they popped and then shut tight.

  “I knew it! It fits with the—”

  “Never mind that,” said Riker. “The bastard’s only messin’ with her.”

  “What? He wrote her into his play so he could knock off her head.” He ripped the photo of the blackboard from the wall. “Between this message and the actual performance, I count two threats on her life!”

  “The play doesn’t count. That was a mannikin head. You were there. You saw it.” Riker took the photograph from his hand. “Forget this. Just a bad joke.”

  Charles held up the manuscript. “You should read this play.”

  “I told you. I did. The body count, the crime-scene details—”

  “But the play’s backstory, the massacre—it’s all about killing women. The love of killing women. And now the playwright has his sights on Mallory.”

  “I got twenty bucks that says she gets him first.”

  Apparently Charles saw no humor in that, and more’s the pity, nor did he care to place a bet. To placate the man, Riker pulled out his cell phone to check in with his partner.

  • • •

  The detective laid her cell phone on the makeup table and pulled out her gun.

  She must have heard it, too.

  Bugsy turned to the open doorway, listening to the sound of someone crying out there. He was quick to get out of the cop’s way as she moved through the door. Zap, she was gone.

  What now?

  Well, the beer was getting warm, and the pizza was getting cold. He was about to chomp down on a slice when her abandoned cell phone rang. He answered it. He had to answer it. This was one of his jobs in life. “Hello?”

  And a man’s deep voice said, “Where is she?”

  “Detective Mallory? She just stepped out. Can I take a message?” Bugsy rummaged in the drawer of the makeup table and pulled out an ancient lipstick tube. When he uncapped it, the red stick was dry and crumbly. He made a test mark on the cracked mirror. Good to go. “Who’s callin’?”

  “One word,” said the voice with a Midwest twang. “Massacre. She’ll know what that’s—”

  “Oh, the massacre? I know that story.”

  • • •

  Damn boots.

  The high heels made too much noise. Mallory slipped them off and walked the stage in stocking feet.

  Animals could make sounds that were almost human. Had to be a cat. And cats scared rats. Two mysteries were solved—the sound of crying and the silent walls that were curiously vermin-free. She holstered her gun and, boots in hand, climbed the stairs to the warren of dressing rooms. Near the end of the loft platform, she could hear Bugsy talking. There was no fear in his voice, but she pulled out her weapon, tread lightly to the door and cracked it open by an inch.

  The little man was sitting on the floor, holding her cell phone to his ear and saying, “No the twins don’t have no jughandle ears. . . . Yeah, the ears are the only thing about those guys that is normal.”

  Mallory shot into the room to snatch the phone from the gopher’s hand, and he jumped, badly frightened. With the click of a button, she killed the connection and stared at the word printed on the mirror in thick red lines, MASSACRE. She clicked through her phone menu for the list of recent calls, and there was Sheriff Harper’s cell-phone number.

  “Did I do wrong?” Bugsy had gotten over his fright,
but now he looked worried.

  “No, you did good.” She looked down at the crumbling lipstick in his hand. “You told the sheriff about the play?”

  “I never said nothin’ about a play.” Bugsy pointed to the word on the mirror. “That was the message he left. So I tell him I know that story.”

  “And you told him the story,” she said. “And then?”

  “I was just a little bit into the massacre when he gets real excited. Well, excited for him. The guy’s about as low key as it gets. But when I mention the twins—real quick, he asks if I seen ’em. And I say, yeah, sure, every day. Then he asks about their ears.”

  “Jughandle ears.” Mallory’s phone was ringing in her hand. The sheriff’s number was on the small screen, and she let it ring through to voice mail. “Does this theater have a mouser?”

  “A cat? No, I never seen one. No litter box, nothin’ like that.” He turned toward the door. “Oh, the cryin’? Sometimes I hear Alma cryin’ in her dressin’ room, but that don’t sound nothin’ like what we just heard.” And now he cried like a woman, muffling the sound with one hand, as Alma must have done.

  Mallory sat down on the bedroll beside her informant, her all-access pass to the backstage lives of crew and cast. He was the best of observers, providing the tone and tenor of their words—even tears. “Exactly when did Alma start crying?”

  • • •

  Hot damn! He knew the twins had to surface one of these days.

  The sheriff’s jeep crawled down the Indiana road behind a snowplow. He could make better time running barefoot. At least the snow had stopped. And according to the radio, it was real sunny in New York City.

  Miles to go. States to cross. Better roads ahead.

  Last night, holed up in a motel, he had used the time to assign a special ring tone just for Detective Mallory, and now his cell phone played the opening bars to Cry Me a River. He held the phone to his ear and a silky voice said, “How old were your prime suspects when you lost them, Sheriff? Those boys with the jughandle ears.”

  “Witnesses—not suspects. They were twelve when they went into foster care.”

  “No family left to take them in? They killed them all?”

  Oh, what the hell. Why not prime the pump a bit. Yeah, keep her talking. “A family member did come to get ’em after a week or so. An aunt or a cousin, I forget which. That gal kept the boys long enough to sell their mother’s house and clean out the family bank account. Then I figure she dumped the kids somewhere out of state. I tracked her down to Memphis, and she told me they’d run off.”

  “But you knew she was lying,” said Mallory. “Maybe they weirded her out—or they tried to kill her, too. What about the older boy, the invalid?”

  That fella, Bugsy, had also known about the third survivor.

  “What happened to him, Sheriff? You didn’t say.”

  And he would not say now. Click.

  • • •

  If the boss was pissed off about snatching Bugsy from Midtown North, he had an odd way of showing it. The squeeze was over. Riker and his partner were no longer shorthanded. Every man on the squad had been allocated hours to track down leads, and the early contributions were branching out to a second cork wall.

  But their human data receptacle, Charles Butler, was leaving them, buttoning his overcoat as Mallory handed him a key. She caught Riker following this transaction and shot him a look and a shake of the head to say he would not want to know what this was about.

  So it had to be about Bugsy, and it would be ungracious to stomp on her gift of deniability. Riker turned back to the wall as the door closed behind the departing psychologist.

  “Nobody ever saw a wheelchair.” Detective Gonzales spoke with pins in his mouth as he tacked up notes. “I vote for bedridden.” By telephone, he and his partner had canvassed a stretch of road in a small Nebraska town, running traces in three states to locate people who had moved away over the past ten years. “The morning of the massacre, somebody left that house in an ambulance. No siren. So that was no emergency run.”

  Mallory stared at the wall, and Riker watched her struggle with the haphazard pinning style of Gonzales and Lonahan. God help them, their sheets of paper were not fixed to the cork at perfect right angles in ruler-straight rows. But she did not take their pins and papers away from them to do it up right. The little neat freak was tense but hanging tough.

  “No siren,” she said. “So the ambulance was only for transport.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I figure.” Detective Lonahan pinned up his last sheet.

  Only one pin—not one at each top corner. And the paper hung crooked enough to distract Mallory. Riker willed her not to touch it. He loved what these slobs had done, all the hours that had gone into this canvass.

  “So it looks like we got an invalid,” said Lonahan. “Just like the guy in the play, but he was no heavyweight, nothin’ like Axel Clayborne in that fat suit.”

  “You got a witness description?” Mallory turned away from the messy paperwork. All was forgiven.

  “Yeah,” said Gonzales. “The lady across the street saw the ambulance guys take him outta the house. But she’s got no idea who he was. A shut-in could’ve been livin’ there for years. Who’d know? The neighbors never set foot in that house. But the year before the massacre, they all heard the gunshot when Mrs. Chalmers’s husband offed himself. Everybody on that block figured the twins drove him to suicide. The two little girls seemed normal enough, but their brothers were really strange kids.”

  “That fits the Rinaldi brothers.” Though Riker could never see them writing a play. Judging by the first act, the author had a sense of humor, and dark it might be, but the twins had none at all.

  “And then,” said Gonzales, “after the dad’s death, the grandmother came to live with the widow and her four kids. Later on, a sister moved in.”

  “And there was one more,” said Lonahan. “I talked to the lady who saw the ambulance pick up the invalid, an older kid. She didn’t recognize him.”

  “A kid,” said Mallory. “Did she say how old he was?”

  “She didn’t get a real good look at him. Took him for a teenager. But here’s the best part. The lady remembers a gym bag ridin’ with him on the gurney when they wheeled him out of the house. So she figures he wasn’t a visitor on his way home. He lived there.”

  “Because he packed a gym bag,” said Mallory. “Not a suitcase.”

  “A small bag for an overnight stay,” said Riker. “The invalid’s got the all-time perfect alibi. It’s so perfect, I’m startin’ to think maybe the twins didn’t do it.”

  SUSAN: A brass bed with wheels?

  ROLLO: As if a bed could take me anywhere. I’ll never leave this room. Neither will you.

  —The Brass Bed, Act III

  Jack Coffey clicked his remote control to surf the television channels. The local news on the escape from Midtown North was light, and the publicity-hungry commander of that precinct was not responding to calls from reporters. This was code for a man in hiding.

  And then the picture changed. There on camera was an NYPD media liaison hosting a press conference, and the room was packed. The woman smiled as she recited a lame story of faulty wiring that had accidentally set off the lockdown alarm. In response to a query on an escapee, she laughed. Oh, what a good joke that was. And so sorry, no, she had zero information on any person of interest to Captain Halston. Leaving her audience now, the lady turned her back on frustrated reporters and their shouted questions. Unsaid, but taken for granted, were her goodbye words, Thanks for playing.

  This could only mean that the new commander of Midtown North was downtown at One Police Plaza, explaining how he had botched this day. And so ended the meteoric rise of that thieving twit, Captain Halston.

  And where was Bugsy now? He did not want to know.

  • • •

  Who the hell was Bugsy? Another cop? A friendly New York cop?

  The sheriff put aside thoughts of the man wh
o had answered Mallory’s cell phone. A state trooper, walking down the lineup of cars, was approaching the jeep. The officer knocked on the glass, and James Harper rolled down his window to hear that all vehicles were being turned back. A six-car pileup on the bridge ahead had made this road impassable.

  The turnaround of traffic got off to a sluggish start, and an hour passed before he was heading in the wrong direction, traveling slow on ice-slick road. By the time he drove into the next town, he had lost twelve miles of ground.

  Though it was hours before dark, he found a motel room for the oncoming night, and there he spread his old crime-scene photographs across the quilt in a bloody patchwork of red shoe prints and human remains.

  The sheriff had decided that Bugsy was definitely not a detective. That man had sounded more like an overgrown kid with a campfire yarn.

  Good storyteller, though.

  And Bugsy’s story had fit in most particulars, though, here and there, the tale had gone awry. But, for damn sure, that man knew details that could only be gotten from a witness—or pieced together from shoes tracked through blood and the barefoot steps of the grandmother, who had been hustled from room to room, forced to visit the hacked and bludgeoned corpses of her nearest and dearest.

  No bloody footprints had gone near the room of the older youngster, the bedridden boy. Did Mallory know that? Did Bugsy? And who the hell was that guy?

  • • •

  “Oh, no, I couldn’t take your last slice,” said Charles Butler.

  And Bugsy, somewhat relieved, closed the lid of the pizza carton.

  The psychologist had finished both his beer and an evaluation of the theater company’s gopher. Now he experimentally stretched out one long leg. The other had gone to sleep while sitting cross-legged on the bedroll.

  When would Mallory arrive?

  His eyes kept drifting back to the cracked mirror, a perfect metaphor, even down to the missing pieces. He had found his host absolutely charming and positively insane, though the gopher would not fit the legal definition of insanity. The Bugsy persona was functional and in possession of a conscience, a clear understanding of right and wrong.