The Chalk Girl km-10

by Carol O'Connell

  Unannounced visitors to the squad room interrupted his grousing. Charles Butler came through the stairwell door with Coco, and behind them was Robin Duffy, Mallory’s biggest fan. And so it was difficult to say who was happiest to see her. Coco won for the widest grin as she ran down the aisle of desks, her arms spread wide, and she handily beat the old lawyer in this footrace to hug their favorite detective. Then Duffy’s arms reached out in heavy-duty-embrace mode, and he squeezed her tight. Across the room, two detectives raised their heads to watch the spectacle of people who liked Mallory well enough to risk this.

  Charles took Coco’s hand and led her toward the lunchroom, the home of a giant, twelve-tier candy machine. ‘This will be fun,’ he said, jingling the change in his pockets. ‘We’re going to practice your motor skills with coin slots.’ And when the child hung back, reluctant to leave Mallory’s side, he said, ‘Just for a few minutes.’

  As they disappeared down the hall, Robin Duffy laid his briefcase on a desk and opened it. ‘Kathy, I need you to sign some paperwork.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘I have to catch a plane to Chicago. The executor for the grandmother’s estate wants Coco returned to Illinois.’

  ‘Sure he does,’ said Riker. ‘Easier to rob the kid if he’s got custody.’

  ‘Coco isn’t going anywhere,’ said Mallory.

  ‘That’s what Charles said.’ Robin held up an affidavit with the psychologist’s signature. ‘This says she can’t be relocated until he finds her a permanent home. I’ve got a hearing before a Chicago judge.’ The old man handed her another sheet of paper. ‘I took the liberty of drawing up your statement, Kathy. In effect, it says Coco isn’t going anywhere. Just sign it, give me a copy of the material witness warrant, and I’m off to the airport.’

  When the paperwork was done, Charles Butler reappeared with a chocolate-covered child. Mallory knelt down with a tissue to clean the little girl’s face and hands. This was pure reflex; she cleaned everything. Coco gifted the detective with a candy bar and another hug that smeared Mallory’s silk T-shirt, normally a hanging offense. But Coco got clean away with this, and down the stairs she went, hand in hand with Charles, the elf and the giant.

  Riker answered his phone on the first ring, saying, ‘Yeah?’ He listened to the desk sergeant for a moment and then said to his partner, ‘The mole man’s downstairs.’

  The middle-aged visitor to the SoHo station house had a sweet smile and an odor of homelessness about him, though he was clean-shaven and wearing freshly laundered clothes. For many years, Mr Alpert had managed a soup kitchen to feed the poorest of the poor, and now he smelled like them. A man of faith, he handed Detective Mallory a religious pamphlet, having determined, almost immediately, that she had not yet found the Lord.

  He followed her up the stairs to the squad room, saying, ‘I thought I’d have to make the identification at the morgue.’

  ‘That won’t be necessary,’ said Mallory. Only one missing-person report had mentioned the giveaway detail of a mole with cat’s whiskers.

  They passed through the staircase door and into the squad room of tall windows, empty desks and one man standing. ‘Hey, there.’ Detective Riker extended his hand. ‘Thanks for coming in. We’ll have you outta here real soon.’

  ‘I’d appreciate that,’ said Mr Albert. ‘We’re shorthanded at the mission.’ He sat down in a chair beside Mallory’s desk. ‘How did Aggy die? Was it an accident?’

  ‘We won’t have the autopsy report till next week,’ said Mallory – and not to spare this gentle soul the details of a death with drawn-out suffering, but to forestall the questions that always followed a finding of murder.

  Riker opened his notebook. ‘You don’t have any idea what Aggy’s last name was? She never mentioned any relatives?’

  ‘No, sorry. She didn’t talk very much. I can tell you she had mental problems. Poor woman. Some sort of compulsive disorder. There was this thing she did with her teeth.’ Mr Alpert turned his head from side to side as he clicked his teeth, biting the air like a dog snapping at flies. ‘Like that.’

  Riker broke off the tip of his pencil. ‘Okay, a mental case. You were helping her.’

  ‘Oh, no. Aggy was helping me. She worked in the mission kitchen six days a week. Never late, not once in almost two years. When she didn’t show up one day, I got worried. The next day, I filed a report with the police.’

  ‘So she’s been missing for a week,’ said Mallory. ‘Did you go to her apartment? You didn’t give her address in your report.’

  ‘I had no idea where she lived, but I know she wasn’t homeless. Her clothes were always clean, and she had spending money.’ He pulled a snapshot from his back pocket. ‘This was taken at our last Christmas party. She’s the one in the middle.’

  Riker studied the image of Aggy, so busty before Dr Slope deflated her by removing the breast implants. ‘Do you know who her friends are?’

  ‘I’m her friend.’ Mr Albert shrugged to say he couldn’t name another one. ‘She’s a bit off-putting – incessant praying and that odd thing she does with her teeth. But she knows a lot of homeless people. When she’s not working in the soup kitchen, she carries around baskets of sandwiches and gives them out to panhandlers. Some of the street people call her Saint Aggy.’

  The two partners were late to join the rest of the squad assembled in the incident room, where every wall was lined with cork from baseboard to ceiling molding. The front wall was covered with Riker’s messy mosaic of autopsy pictures and crime-scene shots. On the floor was the carton of lists to track down items of the murder kit, but this CSU box remained sealed, and now it was kicked into a far corner by the angry commander of Special Crimes, who called it ‘Useless crap!’

  The energy in the room was climbing. Detectives filled half the folding chairs, notebooks out, pencils ready, waiting for the boss to get on with the show. Other men milled around, and some gathered by the pinned-up array of maps and diagrams for the Ramble. That patch of the cork wall was Mallory’s work. Each paper was equidistant from the ones surrounding it; her thumbtack style had machine precision. She sat at the back of the room, alone.

  Jack Coffey took his place behind the lectern. ‘Listen up!’

  Most of the men took seats, but some remained standing, and Mallory was still alone, flanked by empty chairs – as if she had picked up some contagious disease on the road during her lost time.

  ‘This wasn’t a spree attack,’ said the lieutenant. ‘We got space between each one of the Ramble hangings – three to four days.’ He pointed to the carton at the back wall. ‘Don’t waste time chasing down Heller’s crappy leads. If we get a suspect who keeps pulleys and winches around the house – great. Otherwise, screw it. CSU’s a dead end. We concentrate on the victims.’

  And now it was Riker’s turn to address the squad. His back was still turned to them as he pinned up pictures of the Hunger Artist’s surviving victims, Humphrey Bledsoe and Wilhelmina Fallon. Last, he added the mission photo of the dead woman, known only as Aggy. ‘Okay, guys.’ Every head turned his way. ‘This is what we got so far. A comatose pedophile, a bitch socialite, and a dead saint with a boob job. Theories? Any?’

  FOURTEEN

  Twice a week, when Humphrey’s in therapy, I go over to Phoebe’s house after school. If her mother’s not there, we bounce off beds and couch cushions, flying high – like freaking superheroes.

  When Phoebe’s mother is home, we tiptoe everywhere. We are mice.

  —Ernest Nadler

  Comatose Humphrey Bledsoe’s organs were failing, one by one.

  The patient was in a delicate limbo, tubes running in and out of him, machinery breathing for him, and the next twenty-four hours would be a critical period. This was the medical opinion of the young policeman in charge. Officer Wycoff continued to screen everyone approaching the pink privacy curtain around the hospital bed. Three people stood before him now, seeking an audience.

  They had come to the intensive care ward with the blessing of the
mayor, or so said the mayor’s aide, a slight, nervous man who did not figure into the police chain of command. And so the young officer was unimpressed. One member of the visiting trio was a sour-faced woman with sturdy, ugly shoes and a severe black suit to match her close-cropped hair.

  The mayor’s aide gestured toward the other woman, the tall redhead who reeked of money with her pearls and silk and very high heels. She appeared to be only ten years older than his patient, but the man from the mayor’s office insisted, ‘This is Mr Bledsoe’s mother.’

  Hands on hips, the young policeman barred her way, saying, ‘Prove it, lady.’

  She seemed to find this amusing and cheerfully handed over her wallet, hardly the picture of an anxious family member. Wycoff narrowed his eyes. Could this woman be more suspicious? According to her driver’s license, she was fifty-two years old, and only half her surname matched the patient’s.

  Mrs Grace Driscol-Bledsoe was allowed beyond the privacy curtain on a limited passport: Officer Wycoff would only permit a half-hour visit. She patted his arm as she passed him by, saying, ‘This won’t take a minute, my dear.’ True to her word, it took only seconds for her to bend over the hospital bed and speak a single word in the ear of her comatose son.

  ‘Die,’ she said.

  And, obediently, he did.

  As the society matron sailed off beyond the curtain, the monitors sounded alarms, and the officer yelled, ‘Code blue!’ A crew of nurses rushed a crash cart to the bedside, and there were charged paddles held high with repeated shouts of ‘Clear!’ before each electrical shock was administered, but the dead man could not be brought back.

  Moments later, the bad mother was arrested near the elevator and handcuffed by the young policeman. Nobody screwed with his patient. And why was she laughing? The officer reached into his shirt pocket and withdrew the card with a case detective’s cellphone number.

  ‘Wycoff is my new favorite cop,’ said Riker.

  The detectives stepped off the elevator and strolled down the hall. Outside the door to the intensive care ward, a young policeman awaited them with his prisoner. The smiling redhead in pearls and handcuffs fit Officer Wycoff’s description of the grieving mother. And the mayor’s aide had been aptly described as a yappy lapdog in a suit. But Mallory focused on the dark-haired woman, who would not stand out in any company – if not for the small, black-leather bag hanging from a shoulder strap. It was a miniature version of a doctor’s Gladstone.

  Officer Wycoff read Mallory’s mind and said, ‘That one never got near my patient.’ He consulted his notebook stats gleaned from driver’s licenses. ‘Alice Hoffman, forty-five years old – same address as my prisoner.’ He turned from the drab brunette to the elegant redhead. ‘And this is Grace Driscol-Bledsoe, age fifty-two.’

  The mother of their late crime victim was close to Riker’s age, but his skin was creased, and hers had been ironed by a first-rate plastic surgeon. And there were other indicators that she had buckets of money. Her eyebrows were perfectly defined arches that seemed to ask, If I knew who you were, would I care? And Riker flashed her a smile to say, You bet your ass, lady.

  ‘She’s not a suspect,’ said the mayor’s aide, scrunching up his face. ‘Oh, this is too much!’ He listed the lady’s good works as the director of the Driscol Institute, a charitable foundation, and then he demanded that her restraints be removed. ‘This instant!’ And when that failed, he went on to make the pompous determination that death by suggestion was not murder. ‘Hardly the crime of the century.’

  Though the aide was annoying, both detectives concurred with the amateur legal opinion, and the cuffs were removed. Grace Driscol-Bledsoe flicked one hand at the mayor’s man, and he backed up to the wall to stand beside the other minion, Miss Hoffman.

  Mallory stepped up to the mother to do the honors. It was her turn to say the customary words for moments like this. ‘We’re sorry for your loss.’

  The lady laughed, and Riker found that weirdly refreshing.

  ‘Your son kidnapped a little girl.’ Mallory waited a beat and then added, ‘But that doesn’t surprise you, does it?’

  ‘Actually . . . no.’ Mrs Driscol-Bledsoe opened her purse and pulled out a business card. ‘Just tell my lawyer where to send the money – whatever the child needs.’ Her tone was dismissive, and she held out the card with an air of Just take it and be on your way.

  Mallory did not accept the card. She never even glanced at it. The young detective’s left hand went to her hip, a move that drew back her blazer for a glimpse of the gun – just a subtle reminder of who was in charge of whom. ‘Is that how you usually handle your son’s victims? You just pay them off?’

  ‘Guilt doesn’t work on me, Detective.’ The door to the ICU opened, giving the woman a glimpse of the pink curtain around the bed of her dead son. ‘Monsters are begot by monsters.’ Her smile was gone when she turned her face to Mallory’s. ‘You might do well to remember that.’

  The mayor’s aide crept up behind the society matron, and he covertly nodded to the detectives, silently urging them to believe this.

  Charles Butler puffed out his cheeks to make a great show of holding his breath while Coco slowly buttoned her cotton shirt. This bright pink garment was no hand-me-down apparel. It was brand-new, a gift and a bribe from Mrs Ortega, the sworn enemy of Velcro fasteners. The cleaning lady stood behind the child and anxiously worked invisible buttons in the air with her own hands, as if to offer encouragement via black magic.

  The last button on Coco’s shirt was done, much applause followed, and the child looked up from her labors, quizzical. ‘Is this going to take forever every day?’

  ‘No,’ said Charles. ‘But fine motor skills will always be a bit of a problem.’

  ‘Because of my Williams syndrome.’ She had read all the literature that he could find on the subject, and he had answered her many questions, but the child’s conversations always ran back to rats, the staple of her interactions with everyone.

  ‘Your progress with buttons is amazing.’ He gave her his most foolish smile, a guarantee of a smile in return. Children loved clowns.

  ‘Next,’ said Mrs Ortega, ‘we do shoelaces.’

  Or maybe not.

  Coco fled to the music room. Apparently tying shoes was akin to a far mountain that could not be scaled today. Things to do. Songs to play. Sorry. A moment later, a delicate sonata wafted out to them.

  ‘I watch her little fingers flying over those piano keys,’ said Mrs Ortega, ‘and I just don’t get it.’ Tired and defeated, the cleaning lady flopped down in an armchair and turned her eyes to the adjoining room. ‘How can the kid do that – when she can’t tie shoelaces?’

  ‘Her brain is wired differently. It’s a mystery. Ask any neurologist. But I think you can blame her grandmother for the lack of bow-tying skills. I’m told the woman knew she was terminally ill. So the problems of buttons and laces were resolved with Velcro, and all the time she had left was invested in Coco’s strengths – music and reading.’ In Charles’s opinion, the grandmother had made an excellent choice.

  However, his cleaning lady was not so impressed.

  ‘Laces are important, too,’ she said, ‘when you’re eight years old.’

  ‘Right you are. But that’s a job for a physical therapist.’ Based on his evaluation of Coco’s motor skills, the problem of tying shoelaces could not be resolved in a few dedicated hours. It might take weeks or months to work through it. Or she might never learn.

  Charles failed to hear his front door open, and Mallory’s hello from the hall was all but lost below the ripple of piano keys. But Coco heard it. She came flying out of the music room, aiming her little body like a cannonball, and now the young woman was prisoner to the child as tiny arms locked tightly around her. The detective absently stroked the little girl’s hair in the manner of petting a dog.

  Mallory’s brain was also wired differently, also a mystery. And she always confounded him, as she did now when she lifted Coco high in
the air and said, ‘Buttons! Did you do them all by yourself?’

  ‘Yes!’ Grinning widely, the child sailed over the moon with joy; so happy was she to be with the one she loved best.

  Charles Butler could hear warning bells in Mallory’s gentled voice. Another thing that would cost him sleep was the way she smiled at this child. The homicide detective had a limited repertoire of such expressions: one smile said, I’ll get you for that, but this one was worse; it was the smile that said, I’ve got you now.

  Phoebe Bledsoe hurried through the school’s back garden and down the flagstone path to enter her cottage on the last ring of the telephone. She set her grocery bags on the desk as the answering machine picked up the message.

  And a woman’s voice said, ‘It’s Willy Fallon. Your mother won’t take my phone calls. You tell her I’ll be paying a visit real soon.’

  Phoebe reached out to the machine and erased the call. Her hand trembled with a shiver from the sudden exchange in her veins of ice water for blood. Willy had always had that effect on her as a child. In some respects, school days had never ended. Dead Ernest appeared – a companion to stress – but he could not speak; if she was sliding into shock, then so was he.

  Before both legs could fail her, Phoebe sat down in a chair facing the window that looked out across the garden. Had the shade trees grown taller? No. Those great oaks and elms were old when she was very young. Even the flowers remained unchanged, the same colors from one planting season to the next. Without the play of children or a wind to move the leaves and blooms, her view of the school and its garden had the frozen quality of a snapshot taken fifteen years ago.

  Of course, today there was no sign of Ernie Nadler’s blood on the wall. That was different.

  FIFTEEN

  Phoebe wants to be a teacher when she grows up. I can’t believe it when she tells me this. Teachers don’t see bruises or blood. They don’t hear the screams. Why, Phoebe, why? And her answer? She says, ‘That’s why.’