The Man Who Cast Two Shadows

by Carol O'Connell

  And each time that moment of helpless fear and panic passed on, he was left to exhausted humiliation and anger. Now his hands balled into fists so tight, his nails left red indentations on his palms. One of those indents was filling with blood.

  He looked down at the bleeding flesh. She had reached out and done this to him. She had drawn first blood, and she would be sorry.

  A fat gray bird strutted along the ledge by his open window. It was still there when he returned from the kitchen with the bread. He crumbled a slice in his hand and slowly reached through the window to lay a line of crumbs for the bird.

  It jerked and started and cocked its head to look at him with one eye only. It was a city pigeon and unafraid of humans, who had failed in all their pathetic attempts to annihilate its entire species as a defecating public nuisance. Contemptuous of the hand only inches away, the bird concentrated on the meal of bread crumbs which brought it ever closer to its death.

  A young woman stood at the desk in the lobby. Something was concealed behind her back, and concealed quickly at first sight of the couple being pointed out to her by the man behind the desk.

  Formal introductions were made to Cora by her new friend, the man with the foolish smile, and now the small party moved up through the floors of the tall building to the spacious apartment which did not fit the personality of the young woman called Mallory.

  “Mallory, you were right,” said the man whom Cora now called Charles.

  He was well mannered in the way he kept his face toward her so that she should not miss any part of his conversation with the young woman.

  “Amanda was meeting him in the park that day. It was a spontaneous act, as you said. And the murder occurred at seven forty-five. We have a witness. Mrs. Daily, may I introduce my partner, Mallory? Mallory, this is Cora Daily who likes to take long walks through the park in bad weather.”

  “How do you do,” said Cora. The child before her was so lovely, but there was an aspect to the girl that was inhuman. Eyes like a cat she had. Well, that was all right; in fact, that was fine. In seventy-eight years, Cora had outlived many cats and had no fear of Mallory.

  “What did you see?” asked the young woman, who was also quick to pick up on the lip-reading. She brought her face low and close. “Did you see the murder?”

  “No, I’m afraid not.”

  “Did you see him strike her? The first blow?”

  “No. But I did see the meeting between them.”

  “So you can identify the killer?”

  “No, you see I wasn’t wearing my glasses. But I know he was a tall man.”

  And now Cora could tell this was not news to the girl. She felt she had let down the charming Mr. Butler. “I saw the red wound to the side of her head after he struck her. There was an umbrella in the way when the blow must have been struck. But he was holding on to her before and after the wound appeared. Is that helpful to you?”

  “Tell me more about the perp.”

  “Excuse me? The—”

  “The perpetrator—you said he was tall. How tall?”

  “He was taller than the woman.”

  “How much taller?”

  “Hard to say. The umbrella was an impediment most of the time. And I suppose the way he held it made him very tall, but—”

  “Do you think I’m very tall?”

  “Oh, my, yes.”

  “Are you even sure it was a man? Or did you assume that because you thought they were lovers?”

  “You’re quite right, of course. I shouldn’t have assumed that. I haven’t been very helpful, have I?”

  “Of course you have,” said the young man, gallantly jumping into a breach of uncomfortable silence. He looked up and exchanged expressions with the young woman. His face said, Play nicely. And her face said, Why the hell not. And now the young woman smiled.

  “You were better than most. I have nightmares that any case will hang on an eyewitness. Eyewitnesses are never any good. Their testimony is the worst evidence you can bring into a courtroom. But you confirmed the scene of the crime. That’s useful. You placed the time of the murder—that’s helpful. You saw the first blood. I like that. All in all, a good job.”

  And now the smile evaporated, and Cora could read nothing in the young woman’s face anymore.

  Charles leaned forward, still careful to include Cora in the conversation by not averting his lips as he spoke. “Mallory, do any of the suspects have dogs?”

  “Everyone in the building has a dog. Why?”

  “Cora tells me there was a dog running through the park that morning. He was dragging a leash. Maybe one of your suspects walked the dog that morning and then lost track of the animal while he was doing a bit of murder.”

  Mallory turned to Cora. “You saw the dog?”

  Cora nodded.

  “What was the breed?”

  “I’m afraid I couldn’t say. My glasses—”

  “What size was it?”

  “Oh, a standard size, not awfully big or very small. I’m sorry, I can’t—”

  “What color was it?”

  “I don’t remember, but I think it might have been dark—but not black, not that dark—Maybe a brown dog.”

  “Maybe?”

  She had no answer for that. She had underestimated the young woman, and now she was wondering if there had been a dog at all, or a pair of lovers. Could they have both been women? Might the dog have been—

  “Well now,” said Charles, lurching once more into the silence. “You place a dog on the scene, and you’ve ruled out toy poodles and Great Danes.”

  The young woman nodded. This was useful to her, which seemed to please Charles very much. Any fool could see he was in love with the girl. Well, at least he was happy. Good job. She had come to like this man.

  When she rose, announcing that she must take her leave of them, he escorted her down in the elevator and handed her into a cab. He insisted on paying her fare to the driver. As she shook hands with him, she said, “You were born in the wrong century, my dear.”

  When he returned to the apartment, it was difficult to miss the sharp knife lying on the coffee table next to the canvas duffel bag. As if she didn’t own enough weapons. First there was the very large gun bulging under the blazer. She removed this now and took it into a back room. Then there was the gun she ought to be carrying, the one the police department actually approved of. He supposed she kept that one at home. And last, there was Markowitz’s ancient Long Colt, which she kept in the desk of her office at Mallory and Butler, Ltd. He would never have pictured her with a knife.

  He picked it up and turned it in his hand. On the reverse side of the blade was the crest of Maximillian Candle.

  “It’s probably none of my business,” said Mallory, walking back into the room and nodding toward the knife, “but I wondered what was going on in the basement. I just came from there. The door was unlocked, and the partition for Max’s equipment was wide open.”

  “My fault—I left in rather a hurry. You didn’t by any chance pull that knife out of the target, did you?”

  She nodded.

  Charles stared down at the knife and forgot to ask what brought her to the basement, so great was his surprise. It was the wrong knife, of course. All the blades that came from the interior of the target were partial blades without points, and fixed to the mechanism. They could be pushed back into the compartments but not drawn out, and not with a full blade and a point.

  When he had explained it to Mallory, she asked, “Could anyone else have been in the basement with you and Justin?”

  “Well, it’s possible, but I doubt it.”

  “Did you tell the parents what happened in the basement?”

  “Yes, of course. I called them from the office. It took me forty minutes to track them down to a cocktail party. The child had been in trauma. They had a right to know he was upset.”

  “Well, you also left the basement door open. Has the boy had time to go back and change the knives, the
boy or one of the parents?”

  “But the front door of the building wasn’t unlocked. It’s self—”

  “And we both know that a kid can bypass that security. How tough do you think it would be for an adult?”

  “I just can’t picture one of them—”

  “Easier to picture that scenario than a knife flying through the air on its own. Someone has gone to some trouble here, and this is quite an escalation from flying pencils. This business has got to be cleaned up, and it’s up to you. I’ve got my hands full with a murderer.”

  “You truly believe someone in the Riccalo family is going to get hurt?”

  “Oh, sure. It’s coming. Count on it.”

  “There’s no supportable argument for that.”

  “So?”

  So, when did logic ever interfere with her train of thought? It was her method first to settle upon a target hypothesis and then to move toward it with great velocity, and let nothing get between her and it.

  An eye-blink ago, the space by Mallory’s feet had been empty, and now it was full of cat. Nose was picking up her bad habits.

  “Are you still planning to wrap up Amanda’s death by the twenty-sixth?”

  She nodded. “If I don’t move on it now, I’ll lose him. If I string him out too far, he might get to a lawyer before I can nail him.”

  “Lucky for you, all three suspects are spending the holidays in town.”

  “If one of them had left town, I would’ve crossed him off the list.”

  “But logically—”

  “Logic only works on paper.”

  “Jack Coffey seems to think—”

  “You talked to Coffey? You didn’t tell him about the novel, did you?”

  “No. Why didn’t you tell him? Why all the secrecy? You work with these people.” No, wait, fool. She doesn’t. She works alone.

  “A cop is leaking information. I’m not taking any more chances.”

  “But you’re taking terrible chances. Suppose you’ve underestimated the murderer. Coffey says you underestimate every—”

  Mallory’s posture was ramrod-straight. Her chin lifted only a little.

  “I know this man. He cleaned that apartment over and over again. He cleaned things he couldn’t have touched. He had to be absolutely sure he wouldn’t miss anything. And so he can never be sure he didn’t miss something. He’s the only one who can tie me to Amanda Bosch, because he’s the only one who knows she’s dead, and that I was mistaken for her. He wants to run, but he can’t. He figures I know something, but he doesn’t know how much. It’s driving him crazy, me being here. Every message I leave on the computer puts him closer to the edge. He can’t leave. He was my prisoner the day I moved into this condo. He’s waiting for me to come and get him. Every knock on his front door is the end for him. When he can’t stand it anymore, when he snaps, he’ll come to me. And I will pick that moment.”

  For the duration of her soliloquy, he could swear she never blinked her eyes. There was an edge to her voice. It was the sort of edge fools like himself were prone to falling off of, crashing as they fell, and proximity made him nervous.

  “Jack Coffey’s right, you know.”

  Nose locked eyes with him as though asking how he could have said such a thing out loud.

  “Coffey is?”

  “Well, yes, I think he is right about a few things.”

  The cat looked away, giving him up for dead.

  “And I’m wrong?”

  The measured weight of her words also carried the second question: Whose side are you on? For it would always be that way with her, this demand to choose up sides—her side versus the balance of the planet.

  “Mallory, if you string out all the facts, just the bare facts, they don’t amount to much of a portrait, certainly not what you’ve extrapolated. You can’t bet your life on it.”

  It was Nose who picked up the warning signs first, with an animal’s radar for the impending storm. He bristled and crept under the couch. And Charles was suddenly reminded of the old man in the park quoting from Revelations—warnings of earthquake, the dark of the sun.

  The long red fingernails disappeared into the duffel bag on the coffee table and emerged again with a small bundle of printouts sectioned off with paper clips. She selected one clipped bundle of sheets and held it up to him.

  “Okay, Charles. Let’s take a look at your own little problem with the flying objects.” The light sheaf of papers hit the coffee table with real force. Her face was rigid.

  “These are the facts—my contribution to the partnership. Two women died. Two insurance companies paid off. A third woman is frightened, or at least she acts that way. The kid’s trust fund is down by a full third. The father is the executor of the trust. You might assume he just made bad investments, because his own portfolio and accounts are also depleted, but that would be supposition, and I’m sticking to the facts. The stepmother is a computer programmer with a financial background. She has a fax origin number, access to the executor’s signature and documents. She knew Robert Riccalo for ten years before she married him. Per your own notes, nothing flies unless the three of them are in the room. A pencil flew at the stepmother. Now it’s easiest to make the pencil fly to the person pulling the thread, but I made it fly to you, didn’t I?”

  Her voice was entirely too civilized, prompting the cat to stick its head out from under the couch.

  Where was all this background information coming from? As quickly as he framed that question, he filed it away among all the other unspoken, unanswered questions that were suspended from the rafters of his brain like bats sleeping in the dark. When she got information for him, he had ceased to ask where she got it, and he tried not to speculate on the source, setting his ethics adrift—becoming more like Markowitz.

  Another printout hit the coffee table with a hard slap. The cat was gone again.

  “The boy used to keep normal school hours. He had one after-school program to fill out the parents’ work-days,” she said. “Now his hours at the Tanner School are longer. He sometimes goes six days a week without eating a single meal at home. The new stepmother arranged that. And Justin was right about all the wives being copies of one another. They all favored extended after-school programs. None of them wanted the kid around. The kid’s trust fund is down, and Dad’s in a hole. The new stepmother is top-heavy with insurance from her job. The natural mother had a history of heart problems. The suicidal stepmother had a brief psychiatric history. These are facts.”

  “I suppose the one with the psychiatric history saw things flying through the air?”

  “No way to know. It’s a fact that a shrink was observing her for signs of paranoia during a brief hospital stay. She didn’t leave a suicide note. The ME investigator tried to do the workup for a postmortem psychological autopsy. He said the family never discussed flying objects with him. There’s the file on the woman’s death. There are personal notes in there about the kid. The word ‘spooky’ is mentioned twice. I’m only repeating the facts.”

  There was a restrained violence to the words, a force being held in check. Though her anger was increasing in pent-up energy, there were no signs in the cool mask of a face.

  “Well, the suicide rules out the insurance motive.”

  “No, Charles, in fact it doesn’t. Riccalo went to court to make them pay off. There was no suicide exclusion, and she had no psychiatric history at the time she took out the policy.”

  “And Robert Riccalo was the beneficiary.”

  “That’s a fact. The settlement was deposited into the boy’s trust.”

  “That sounds sinister.”

  “Let’s stick to the facts, Charles. The settlement barely covered the amount lost in bad investments the previous quarter. If that trust fund had dropped too low, it would have triggered a bank audit. He didn’t have much choice about depositing the money back into the trust. So, just at the right time, a heavily insured woman dies. I call that interesting.”

  �
�You have nothing to indicate foul play. As I understand it, there was no one in the house when it happened.”

  “That’s speculation. The department won’t check an alibi unless the case is written up as a homicide. If you stick to the facts, you have a logical case to fit any one of them. But, if instinct counts for nothing, how come I know the perp from the next victim, and you don’t?”

  The air between them was chill to dangerous. Even Malakhai in his debunking days would have found her quite unnatural in the world. All the good logic of his good brain excused itself and went off to keep the cat company under the couch. Too late, he had come to believe in her as others might believe in magic.

  “Which one of them is doing it?”

  “Too bad I can’t tell you. I didn’t figure it out with logic, so it doesn’t count, does it?”

  “Which one? Who do you think it is?”

  “Oh no, Charles. I’ve seen the light, I’ve got religion. I’m only a cop, a detective. You’re the genius, and now that you have it trimmed down to logic and solid facts, the rest should be easy for you. Let me know if you ever work it out.”

  “But there’s a case to fit any of them. Logic—”

  “Logic is your handicap, not mine. If logic is king, how come I know and you don’t? Have fun, Charles. Don’t forget to duck. Send postcards.”

  She began unpacking new boxes of disks from the duffel bag.

  “You make it sound like I won’t be seeing you for a while.”

  “I’ve got things to do.”

  He only turned his back for a moment, looking for something to say to her. When he turned back to face her, she was gone. The door to a back room was closing behind her, the cat was padding after her, and he was left to show himself out.

  “So, we’re still on for this evening, right?” he called to her through the door to the back room.

  Silence.

  As he walked to the front door, he had to examine another set of facts. She had been right about the manuscript being autobiographical, certainly to the extent of the pregnancy and the dancing cat. And right about the meeting, the spontaneity of the act. He had closed the door behind him and was standing at the elevator when he thought to go back, to pound on her door and demand to know which one of them made the pencils fly.