The Chalk Girl km-10

by Carol O'Connell

  Lieutenant Coffey settled into the chair behind his desk. He had concluded his telephone call from City Hall, and now he gave the cleaning lady his best political smile. ‘The mayor loves you, Mrs Ortega.’

  The city’s top politician was indeed her biggest fan, so happy that a civilian – not a cop – had broken the pedophile’s bones in full view of a dozen witnesses, most of them under the age of six. The mayor also suffered from the delusion that Mrs Ortega’s heroism might balance out the bad press of rats eating a park visitor.

  What a fool.

  ‘The mayor tells me his limo driver was supposed to take you to City Hall – not Brooklyn. You’re overdue for a photo op and a press conference.’

  ‘I told you,’ she said, ‘I had to go home and get my fairy.’

  ‘Of course, and thank you for that.’ Jack Coffey stared at the winged figurine perched on the corner of his desk, and he picked his next words with care, electing not to tell her that the missing pixie would have to murder three or more people before Special Crimes took an interest. With great diplomacy, he splayed his hands, a New Yorker’s gesture to show that he held no animosity and no weapons. ‘The limousine is downstairs waiting for you . . . and the mayor’s waiting . . . and the television cameras.’

  ‘No way,’ said Mrs Ortega. ‘I’m not leaving here till you—’

  ‘I’ll tell the park precinct there’s still one kid missing.’ Coffey picked up the figurine. ‘And I’ll send them a picture of this thing, okay?’

  ‘Sure you will.’ The little woman sat well back in her chair to let him know that she planned to stay awhile. Screw the mayor.

  The lieutenant had only turned his head for a moment, and Detective Mallory appeared beside him, as if she had simply materialized from some other planet. Coffey knew that she did this trick to stop his heart, and he was about to point the way back to her desk when she smiled – never a good sign.

  ‘I wonder,’ said Mallory, in the offhand manner of opining on the time of day, ‘how bad does the mayor want to see Mrs Ortega?’

  Jack Coffey could only stare at her, fascinated, though he knew what would happen next. The game was blackmail. The young detective wanted out of her cage. And she was entirely too confident of her second psych evaluation.

  ‘The little girl is disabled,’ said Mallory. ‘She has Williams syndrome.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Mrs Ortega. ‘Charles Butler says she’ll never find her own way home. You can’t let her wander around the—’

  ‘Just a damn minute,’ said Coffey. ‘Charles saw her, too?’

  ‘No,’ said Mrs Ortega, ‘I called him on the way to Brooklyn. He diagnosed her over the phone – the mayor’s car phone.’

  The lieutenant smelled collusion.

  ‘You might want to find that little girl.’ Mallory was oh, so casual. ‘Pedophiles love Central Park. If the kid gets raped, it might wreck the mayor’s whole day.’ It was unnecessary to mention that, via Mrs Ortega, this detective now had the mayor’s ear. And the word payback also remained unspoken.

  In the darkest region of Jack Coffey’s brain, a hobgoblin jumped up and down, screaming, ‘Shoot Mallory! Shoot her now!’ But instead, the lieutenant turned back to the cleaning lady and forced a smile. ‘Okay, this is my best offer. I’ll get the park precinct to spot you ten cops to find that lost kid. Deal?’

  Mrs Ortega rose to her feet and leaned over his desk. One thumb gestured back toward the detectives behind her. ‘You throw in those two, and we got a deal.’

  Mallory sat down in the chair next to Riker’s and stretched out her long legs. She opened her pocket watch, an antique handed down to her from the late, great cop Lou Markowitz. She usually trotted out this prop to advertise the generations of police in her foster father’s lineage – and to call in favors owed to that good old man. On the day of her return, she had laid the watch on her desk as a plea and a dare to take her back. But today she held it up as an illustration of time passing. The mayor would be waiting, fuming, only moments from imploding.

  Jack Coffey shrugged, and this was akin to waving a white flag of surrender. Sometimes losing was a good idea. Failure could be so restful. His tension headache was gone even before his two detectives had been dispatched uptown to Central Park. Mrs Ortega was sent downtown to City Hall – a problem solved – and, by the scales of wins and losses, this might be a break-even day.

  The lieutenant allowed half an hour before he turned on the volume of the television set. It was tuned to the cable channel for city coverage, and he expected to see the cleaning lady and the mayor in a press conference. Instead, he saw a picture of Columbus Circle, and around it ran a river of vehicles flowing from the tributaries of broad avenues. The camera narrowed its field and shifted to the sun-washed plaza of Merchants’ Gate, the southwest entrance to Central Park. The lens zoomed in on a monument, and atop this high pylon stood the golden statue of Columbia Triumphant riding her chariot drawn by three sea horses. The camera panned down to the tight shot of a little boy with many microphones framing his face.

  And the lieutenant heard the second fairy sighting of the day.

  The boy on camera invoked a celebrity pixie of storybook fame to describe a child who was still at large in the park. ‘But she wasn’t blond like Tinker Bell. This girl had red hair.’ The boy’s smile became sly. With special glee and a touch of the ghoul, saving the best for last, he announced, ‘She was covered with blood!’

  Oh, great. Just great.

  ‘I bet you’re wondering how I know you’re lying.’ Mallory did not say this unkindly, but her partner thought she did stare at the boy in the way a cat might gaze at its food – no eye contact. Riker wondered if she saw the child as all of one piece, like a slab of meat that wore a little baseball cap.

  The young day camper was slow to realize that he was no longer safe in the company of smiling, solicitous reporters. This tall blonde was an altogether different sort of creature – and he was in deep trouble. His mouth hung open when he looked up at her, as if she outsized the golden statue that was merely larger than life.

  Mallory grabbed the little boy’s hand and marched him around to the back of the monument that marked the entrance to Central Park. Riker followed close behind them to shield this kidnap from cameras on the other side of the plaza, where reporters interviewed the rest of the Jersey children, and where street musicians cranked up the music to compete with the honking horns of crazed drivers. Cars were frozen in a massive gridlock around Columbus Circle, and uniformed officers ran along the curb of the plaza, waving ticket pads at news vans insane enough to double-park. A civilian audience lined up to watch this circus, and food vendors appeared out of nowhere to cater the party.

  No one noticed the child snatched by the detectives.

  ‘That girl did have blood on her.’ The six-year-old’s voice was whiny now, but he did not cry, and Riker gave him points for that. The little boy looked down at his shoes, a sure sign of guilt.

  ‘Last chance,’ said Mallory, as if the authority to send him to hell was hers alone. ‘Tell me what—’

  ‘He lied.’ A second tiny camper, a girl with a ponytail, stepped out of Riker’s shadow and crept up to Mallory, saying, ‘That girl wasn’t covered in blood.’ The child cupped her hands around her mouth and whispered confidentially, ‘It was just a little blood.’ She pointed to her own T-shirt and described the small red stains as they appeared on the missing girl’s shoulder and one sleeve. ‘Here, and here, too. Oh, and her name is Coco.’

  Riker opened his notebook. ‘Coco, huh?’ After jotting this down, his pen hovered over the page. ‘So . . . about this blood. Did you see a wound or a cut?’

  ‘No, she was just spotty, and she looked like this.’ The little girl put two fingers into her mouth and stretched it into a wide Halloween grin with gaps of missing baby teeth.

  ‘Well, that sort of fits.’ Riker held up a photograph of Mrs Ortega’s fairy figurine, and he showed it to this more reliable witness.
‘Did Coco look something like—’

  ‘That’s her!’ The little girl squealed as she jumped up and down, so excited she could hardly stand it. ‘I forgot about the wings!’

  Riker sighed.

  And the little boy, the confirmed liar, nodded. ‘Yup, she had wings, all right.’ Small hands jammed into his pockets, he looked up at the sky with newfound nonchalance. ‘She’s probably in Mexico by now.’

  Mallory hunkered down, her face a bare inch from the boy’s. No escape, no mercy. And Riker winced.

  ‘Tell me something,’ she said. ‘About those stains on Coco’s T-shirt – did you see that blood before the rats ate Mrs Lanyard?’

  The little boy’s body jerked to attention, eyes gone wide with the shock of a popped balloon. Evidently, this runaway camper had never looked back to see the rat attack. And the reporters – those jackals – had been too sensitive to tell him that the old lady was dead. All of this was apparent with the child’s tears, big ones and so many of them.

  The detectives had an answer of sorts, and they moved on to enter Central Park.

  If asked, Coco would say she had walked two hundred and eighty-three miles in the past hour to cross a span of parkland equal to four city blocks. In her reckoning, time and space were arbitrary things, though she did strive to be precise with her numbers.

  The child followed four steps behind a woman whose face she had yet to see. Coco planned to ask if this stranger would please hold her hand. She badly needed to hold on to someone, anyone. It was a flyaway day with no anchors to a solid world, and tears were a near thing from moment to moment. But now her attention strayed to a man with a blue shirt and gray pants just like Uncle Red’s clothing. But this could not be him.

  Uncle Red had lately turned himself into a tree.

  The lady ahead of her stopped and looked up. During Coco’s travels through the park from nights into days, she had noticed that other visitors never looked up – only this woman. Maybe the stranger had heard a tree crying. Trees did that sometimes. But not this one. Oh, and now the red rain came down here, too, but only a few drops, and they landed on the back of the lady’s dress.

  ‘You’re spotted,’ said Coco. ‘You’ve got red spots – like mine.’

  The woman whirled around, and a rat fell from the tree to land on her head. The lady screamed and batted at it, but the rat was tangled in her long hair, and now it was also screaming. Trembling, Coco rose up on her toes, poised for flight, and then she was off, feet touching lightly to ground as she ran, outrunning sound, chasing it out of her brain. Now there were footfalls behind her – too heavy for rodent steps, even if all the rats in the world stood on one another’s backs. But she never looked over her shoulder to see what was behind her. After a long time, forever and ever, she found herself safe among the lions.

  THREE

  I’m two grades ahead of my age group. So I have classes with all three of them. In History, Aggy the Biter sits next to me, clicking her teeth. Every now and then, she reaches across the aisle to pinch me. Testing the meat?

  —Ernest Nadler

  Riding shotgun with his partner would have been more exciting in a real car. Mallory rarely used a siren, preferring to frighten other motorists with close encounters that threatened their paint jobs and taillights. But today she was limited to the top speed of this small park vehicle, a glorified golf cart with a peanut-size engine.

  Riker played navigator, consulting a map of narrow roads, meandering trails and the highways of Central Park. As they traveled north, he drew an X over a brand-new city landmark, the spot where the rats had eaten an out-of-towner. They were drawing close to the playground near 68th Street, where Mrs Ortega had seen the missing child. He looked at his watch. Hours had passed since the rat attack in the meadow on the other side of West Drive. ‘We’ll never find her around here. Kids make good time on the run.’ He despaired of locating one little girl in parkland that was miles long, half a mile wide and filled with a million trees to hide her. And yet his partner aimed the cart with confidence and sure direction. ‘So what do you know that I don’t know?’

  ‘Coco’s not hiding,’ said Mallory. ‘She’s trying to connect with people. She’ll stick to this road.’

  His partner had the inside track on lost children. She used to be one – if it could be said that she was ever a real child. She had arrived at the Markowitz household with a full skill set for survival at the age of ten or eleven. Her foster parents, Lou and Helen, had never been certain of her age because the child-size Kathy Mallory had also shown a genius for deception. But stealing was where Riker thought the kid really shined in her puppy days.

  Eliciting fear was a talent she had later grown into.

  After passing the park exit for 77th Street, Mallory pressed the gas pedal to the floor and jumped the curb to aim the cart at two boys with skateboards in hand. They wore kneepads and wrist guards and helmets, all the cushions that parents could provide to keep their young alive in New York City. True, these youngsters were teenagers, but someone loved them. When the cart braked to a sudden stop, the front wheels were inches from their kneecaps – and the boys laughed. No shock, no awe, for this was a toy car. And then the fun was over. They had locked eyes with Mallory.

  Oh, shit.

  Words were unnecessary. She only nodded to say, Yes, I’m a cop. Yes, I carry a gun – a big one. She tilted her head to one side and smiled, silently asking if they might have a bit of weed in their pockets that would interest her.

  Teenagers were so easy.

  Riker held up his badge and waved them over to his side of the cart. He reached into his pocket for the photograph of Mrs Ortega’s fairy figurine. ‘Okay, guys, this is how it works. One smartass remark and my partner shoots you. We’re hunting for a lost kid. The girl looks something like this.’ He showed them the photo and read one boy’s mind when he saw the smirk. ‘Forget you saw the wings.’ He nodded toward Mallory. ‘She will hurt you.’

  ‘Yeah, we saw the kid,’ said the taller boy. ‘Well, you’re headed in the right direction.’ He pointed back the way he had come with his friend. ‘Take the first path on the right. She was running east.’

  ‘She went into the Ramble?’ Riker shaded his eyes to look toward that area of dense woods, once notorious as a haven for addicts and muggers with knives and guns, and for bob-and-drop rapists with rocks. In more recent times, the wildwood had been invaded by bird-watchers, joggers and grandmothers. ‘How long ago?’

  ‘Maybe an hour – half an hour.’

  ‘Talk to me.’ Mallory zeroed in on the other boy’s guilty face. ‘What else happened?’

  This teenager looked down at the grass and then up to the sky. ‘She asked me for a hug.’

  ‘But she was dirty.’ Mallory stepped out of the cart. ‘Probably a homeless kid.’ Her voice was a monotone. ‘You thought you might catch something – bedbugs or lice.’ She circled around the boy, snatched his skateboard and tossed it under the wheels of the cart. And still, he would not look at her. ‘That little girl had blood on her T-shirt, and she was scared, wasn’t she? But you had plans for the day, places to go – no time to call the cops.’ Mallory held up her open hand and showed the boy his own pricey cell phone. He stared at it in disbelief as he patted the empty back pocket of his jeans.

  ‘You think I can hit the water from here?’ She glanced at the long finger of lake water bordered with an orange construction fence, and she hefted his phone as if weighing it. ‘Talk to me.’

  The teenager turned his worried eyes to Riker, who only shrugged to say I warned you about her.

  It was the other boy who spoke first, maybe in fear for his own cell phone. ‘The girl was a little strange . . . I thought she was gonna cry when—’

  ‘When your friend blew her off?’ With only the prompt of Mallory folding her arms, both of them were talking at once, and now they remembered – suddenly and conveniently – that Coco had run toward another park visitor.

  ‘We figured he’
d call the cops.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Riker, ‘sure you did.’ Pissant liar.

  The teenager gave him a snarky so-what smile – no respect.

  Smug lies to cops should have consequences, but rather than shake the little bastard until his perfect teeth came loose, Riker turned away and climbed into the cart. Behind him, he heard a splash followed by the boy’s ‘Oh, shit! My phone!’ Then Mallory was back in the driver’s seat, and the cart lurched forward with the satisfying crunch of a skateboard under one wheel.

  The detectives traveled down a narrow road and into the woods at the reckless top speed of hardly any miles per hour. The Ramble was a sprawl of thirty-eight acres, thick with trees and lush foliage, beautiful and disheartening. On Riker’s map, this area was a daunting maze of winding paths. ‘We’ll never find her in here.’

  ‘Sure we will. The kid’s running scared. She’ll make all the easy choices.’ Mallory passed every turnoff, staying on the widest path and only slowing down for a closer look at a low, flimsy, wire fence. And now a full stop. One section of the fence had been pulled down to the ground. Old lessons of the late Lou Markowitz – she would always stop to look at every odd thing. And then she drove on.

  As they rolled out of the Ramble and onto open ground down near the Boathouse Café on the east side of the lake, Riker answered his cell phone. ‘Yeah?’ He turned to his partner. ‘We’re headed the right way. We got a fairy sighting on the mall.’

  Beyond the lake of rowboats and ducks, past Bethesda Terrace, they drove onto the park mall and into the mellow tones of a saxophone near the old band shell. Four people were coming toward them, frightened and running faster than the cart could go. The detectives traveled past them and down the wide pedestrian boulevard lined with giant trees, benches and street lamps from the gaslight era. High above them was a canopy of leafy branches, and up ahead was the sound of a Dixieland band, which seemed to orchestrate the civilian scramble for park exits. The music stopped when Riker flashed his badge.