Dead Famous

by Carol O'Connell

  “So now it begins,” she said.

  How he hated the sound of that. Charles faced the paper storm on her cork wall. “Riker finished this about an hour ago. I don’t think he’d been to bed yet.”

  “Good,” said Mallory. “I’ve got him hooked.”

  On any other day, Charles would have done headstands for the pleasure of her smile. However, this morning, he could only wish that she would stop, drop it, and not relish this mad game so much. He walked up behind her in the role of conscience and softly said, “You know this isn’t wise. A psychotic shot Riker, and now you throw him in the path of a serial killer, another lunatic.”

  “That’s what makes it so perfect. Another jury of idiots.” She stepped back to take in the entire sprawl of Riker’s mess on the cork wall. “This case looks a lot like the horse that threw him.”

  Indeed, there was a clear parallel of jury verdicts and violence. If a teenage killer had not been found innocent, despite a plethora of incriminating evidence, then Riker, the prosecution’s star witness, would not have been ambushed in his own home. And now another jury had come to an equally insane verdict in the Zachary trial, but, this time, the result had been a mass slaughter.

  “However,” said Charles, “this murderer is a bit more organized, more dangerous than the boy who shot Riker.” He tapped the crime-scene photograph of a dead FBI agent, another parallel, for the Reaper also had a law-enforcement victim. In this case, it was an interesting departure from the juror killings. “What happens when this maniac recognizes Riker as a player? Given any thought to that?” Though he faced the wall, he was aware of Mallory’s eyes on him, perhaps calculating that her only mistake was bringing him into the game.

  One hand went to her hip as a warning. “You have a better way to fix Riker?”

  “No.” Sadly, he did not. Though one of his Ph.D.s was in psychology, he only applied it to assessing the stability of gifted clients, the better to find the right niches for them. He had never treated anyone as a patient, never even thought of opening that sort of practice. But Mallory, with no such background, was attempting shock therapy on a trauma victim in a very fragile state of mind. Charles made his own appraisal of the wall and pronounced it horrific. “You said you were going to feed him this case a piece at a time.” A teaspoon of murder as medicine—that had been her stated intention. “This is too much.”

  “I know that,” said Mallory. “But I didn’t know about Dr.

  Apollo’s stash, not until we tossed her hotel room. So what’s the damage? Is there anything in her papers that would give Riker the whole picture?”

  “Well, obviously he knows about the relationship with Agent Kidd. But there’s nothing here to tell him precisely how Dr. Apollo fits into the game.”

  “And I don’t see that woman making any confessions.” Mallory sat down at a workstation topped by a glowing monitor.

  He watched as she downloaded photographs from a camera to a computer. The array of images appeared on the screen. Sometimes he wondered why she made so many portraits of Johanna Apollo. In most of them, the woman’s deformity was covered by long tresses of dark hair and only mildly apparent in the forward curve of her upper body. His favorite was a close-up of the doctor’s face. A man could make friends with those warm brown eyes. The most recent picture was a full-body shot. The wind had ripped aside the sheltering curtain of hair to reveal the hump. Somehow he knew that this would be Mallory’s last portrait of Dr. Apollo. She had finally achieved the full exposure of vulnerability. And Charles felt suddenly protective of this woman he had yet to meet.

  “You don’t like her, do you, Mallory? Please tell me she’s not a suspect.”

  “The only players I don’t suspect are the dead ones.”

  “You never did tell me how you got caught up in this business. When did you first—”

  “The day I met Riker’s hunchback,” she said. “I ran a background check on her alias, and the documentation was just too perfect, too neat. That’s always a good marker for the FBI’s witness protection program.” Mallory was looking past him now and suddenly distracted. She rose from her chair and stepped close to the cork wall, honing in on the only sample of Riker’s messy handwriting. She read this margin note aloud. “ ‘Jo’s wine.’ What’s that about?” A more careful perusal of the board offered her no enlightenment. “Damn Riker. He’s holding out on me.”

  Johanna Apollo slung her duffel bag over one shoulder, and this was Mugs’s cue to cry. There was a touch of betrayal about the cat’s eyes, for she was obviously abandoning him. She would not be there to defend him when the maid arrived with the water pistol. Johanna was in no position to complain about the hotel staff defending themselves from a mauling, though she gave them hazardous-duty pay in the form of lavish tips. Also, Mugs preferred open warfare to being confined to his pet carrier. Nothing could drive him quite as crazy as being locked up in that box. She bent low to pat him where there were no memories of damaged nerves to make him scratch her. He pressed his head into the cup of her palm and cried again. In this moment, he managed to communicate a desperation, a message that he was already having a bad day, and he would be lost if she left him behind.

  Upon entering the bathroom, she opened a box from her store of pet tranquilizers. She disliked drugging Mugs, though sometimes it was a mercy. If the maid arrived and found him docile and drowsing, it would not be necessary for the woman to shoot him with the water pistol in self-defense. After breaking open a capsule, Johanna poured half of it into his water bowl.

  Next, lest Marvin Argus return with his own search warrant, she unlocked the armoire, retrieved a packet of letters and folded them into the pocket of her denim jacket. And last, she counted up her wine bottles, a neurotic ritual worthy of Timothy Kidd.

  Mallory tidied up Riker’s careless pushpin style, moving sheets of paper to hang at exact right angles to the architecture. No, on second glance, Charles decided that she had actually improved upon that, for now he realized that the building had settled out of alignment over the past century. He put more trust in Mallory’s internal plumb line that ran infallibly to the center of the earth.

  “So you spent some time with Riker,” she said. “Notice any changes, anything odd?”

  “No, in most respects, he seems his old self. Quite relaxed I’d say, no tics or twitches that I was aware of. He does have a tendency to slam doors, a very un-Riker-like thing to do. But that’s been going on ever since the—”

  “He’s angry.”

  “No,” said Charles. “He was rather affable.”

  “He’s angry at me.” And the slow shake of her head said that she had no idea why—only that this was true.

  He understood her rationale. Underlying anger could explain Riker’s monkish behavior since his release from the hospital. “Perhaps it’s not you—not something quite so personal.” And here he had the good sense to stop, for she disliked being challenged. Her arms were folded against him, and her eyes narrowed, reminding him that—true or untrue—she was never wrong.

  “Why don’t I refer him to a psychiatrist?” said Charles. “Therapy is what he needs.”

  “A talking cure? I don’t have time for that.” She amended this pronouncement, adding, “Riker doesn’t have time. His apartment is a pit. Mrs. Ortega says it should be condemned.”

  “Well, that’s because she never saw his old apartment in Brooklyn. I’m sure it can’t be in worse shape.” Ah, he had made another error, finding a logical explanation that disagreed with her own. He turned his eyes away from hers, hoping to avoid another ocular argument.

  “The mess is twice as bad,” she said. “So you haven’t been down there yet?”

  “No.” He had not been invited. But now he gathered that Mallory had been visiting Riker’s apartment, and not by invitation. She passed through locked doors too easily, so adept at breaking and entering—invading. He wondered how to broach the subject of Riker’s need for privacy and security now more than ever. Empathy would
be the wrong approach. She had none.

  “I don’t see anything wrong with his reflexes,” she said. “You agree?”

  “I didn’t find any signs of physical disorder.” He rattled off the items noted in every covert examination of Riker. “Motor skills, eye movement, speech patterns, reasoning ability—everything spot on.” He knew it was frustrating her that there were no technical manuals on the subject of rebuilding Riker.

  “Then it’s the psych evaluation that has him freaked.”

  “Well, that makes my case for getting him to a therapist. The sooner we get him into treatment—”

  “No time,” she said, somewhat testy now, for she disliked repeating herself. “It’s budget-cutting season, and Commissioner Beale is cleaning house. The little bastard has the soul of a cost accountant. He’d love to get rid of a senior detective with Riker’s pay grade.” She turned back to the board, back to the game. “Dr. Apollo was on two murder scenes. She had insider information from Agent Kidd.”

  Charles could see where this was going. “It might be a mistake to develop her as a suspect. Think about it. You say Riker hired her three months ago. Well, that’s when he started shaving again. Oh, and his first haircut since the shooting—same time frame. Granted, that’s not much to work with, but suppose he genuinely cares for this woman?”

  Oh, Mallory, if a cat could smile. What great satisfaction he saw in her eyes.

  “So he does have feelings for her. And you knew that.” Oh, of course she did. What was he thinking? Dr. Apollo was Mallory’s hostage. “So that’s how you got Riker to play the game. Tell me, Mallory, how did you set him up? Did you whisper something scary in his ear? What did you say? No, let me guess. Oh, incidentally, Riker, this woman, this one bright spot in your otherwise miserable existence, she’s in deep trouble. Maybe she’ll die. Something like that?” Suddenly very tired, he leaned back against the cork wall. “I know you didn’t tell him that Dr. Apollo was your favorite suspect. Then he’d have to choose up sides, wouldn’t he? And it might not be your side.”

  Annoyed, she turned her back on him, not liking his tone one bit.

  Well, tough.

  Disregarding two facts—that he loved his life and she carried a gun—he reached out, grabbed her by the shoulders and spun her around. Well, that opened her eyes a bit wider.

  “So I’m right,” he said. “You planted a threat in that poor man’s mind. You might as well have put a gun to Johanna Apollo’s head. What about the effect on Riker? Did you give that any thought at all?” He was angry, close to shouting. Oh, what the hell. He yelled at her, “Clearly, you don’t know what you’re doing!”

  Though—actually—she did.

  He could see that now. Her cat’s smile came stealing back, forcing him to admit that he had also been sucked into the game. And his own fears for Riker, hostage number two, would bind him to Mallory until it was played out. His hands fell away from her shoulders. His two-minute experiment with insurrection was over.

  Hostilities forgotten—as if she had ever taken him seriously—she leaned down to tap the keyboard of the nearest computer, saying, “If Riker’s afraid of the psych evaluation, he can fake it.” She brought up a file with a questionnaire. “The test is in two parts, written and oral.”

  Charles recognized the screen image as the cover page of a personality profile. Many other pages would follow. The lengthy test would repeat and reword questions as traps for false replies. Mallory split the screen to display another document with recommended responses.

  “All he has to do,” she said, “is memorize this one. The city’s too cheap to order new tests. This is going to be so easy. After a little coaching from you on the oral evaluation, he’ll be back at work.”

  “This won’t help him, Mallory. It’s not that simple.” He could read the look on her face. This was desertion from the ranks. “Getting his job back and getting him back on the job—that’s two separate problems.”

  “He’s already on the job,” said Mallory. “He took this stuff out of Apollo’s place so we wouldn’t lose it to the feds.”

  “No, he’s protecting his friend, Johanna—” Charles lost his train of thought. He was staring at the computer monitor and a dateline that corresponded to Mallory’s last psychiatric evaluation, a mandatory test following the shooting of a suspect. He had always wondered how she navigated these examinations, missing all the traps set to catch her own peculiar bent of mind. This electronic cheat sheet forever killed his idea of her as an innocent savage. She knew exactly what she was. And Mallory was now twice wounded in his eyes, for she must realize that she would never be quite—

  “Do you ever listen to the radio, Charles?”

  “If you mean Zachary’s program, no.” He preferred newspapers to television and radio accounts of the Reaper, and he believed his view was less biased for that.

  Mallory had moved on to another computer in the row of three terminals. She tapped the keyboard again, and the speakers announced the Ian Zachary show. “I have them all in my audio file. This is shock radio.”

  Charles was left alone to listen to the archived programs, and soon he had the gist of the game and the man who ran it—another sociopath.

  Johanna had returned from her last stint at cleaning up crime scenes, and Mugs was still drowsy from his long nap. He slowly followed her into the bathroom and sat down at her feet, not having the energy to rub up against her legs for a fresh spate of agony, love and slashes—a proper hello.

  The blood of the last job had never touched her skin, yet she washed her hands. It was a fight not to wash them a second and third time, though the cat would be the only witness to her compulsive behavior. She could not say when this urge had begun. Perhaps when she had opened her mind to Timothy’s paranoia, a second neurosis, a hitchhiker sickness, had also entered in. She looked at herself in the mirror, then looked beyond her image to the shower curtain surrounding the bathtub. Though there was not even the shadow of an interloper, she pulled the curtain aside.

  No one there. Of course not. And no one in the closets. She checked them all.

  After changing into a suit, she wrapped her shoulders in a stylish shawl, then pulled it over her head to form a hood. The bulk of material hid the line of her deformity quite well. Mugs was slow to react to this signal that she was going out again. Thanks to the drug, there was no sign of panic in his eyes. He padded alongside her as she walked to the door, and he did not cry this time. There was only mild curiosity in his eyes as he watched her leaving him once more.

  8

  IT WOULD BE GENEROUS TO SAY THAT THE DINING area was eight feet wide and twelve deep. There were four tables, small as postage stamps, and Riker was the only patron who did not take his foil-wrapped food and run. He was hoping to avoid his meal for as long as possible. The counterman was back in the kitchen having a protracted discussion with the cook. The subject of their argument was the simulation of a cheeseburger from their store of strict vegetarian ingredients. Riker had no plans to eat their concoction. He had ordered lunch for the sole purpose of renting a view of the hotel across the street. Having given up any hope of coffee, he opened the beverage cabinet and passed over all the health food juices to select a bottle of water.

  He kept one eye on the front wall, all glass and neatly framing the Chelsea Hotel. When Jo had returned home from her last crime-scene cleanup, she had been followed by two men in suits. Federal shadows? In plain sight? This was not Riker’s idea of a covert surveillance detail. Neither would those two men fit the protocols for bodyguards, for they had followed Jo at the distance of half a block. And now Marvin Argus stepped out on the sidewalk. Nervous little bastard, his movements were jerky as his head snapped left and right. Finally the agent’s gaze settled on the restaurant window.

  Riker lifted his water bottle in a salute.

  Special Agent Argus crossed the street in an unseemly hurry, and pushed through the glass door to greet Riker with all the suspicion this encounter deserved. Tak
ing the only vacant chair at the table, the FBI man was forced to sit with his back to the window. “You just happened to be in the neighborhood?”

  “I knew I’d find you here.” And this was only half a lie. “I figured you’d stake out Jo’s hotel.”

  Argus smiled, so willing to believe that this visit was on his own account. “So you’ve given my offer some more thought.” He splayed both hands to say he was waiting for the decision. “And?”

  Riker had never been susceptible to prompting. He drank his water, dragging out the silence and listening to the fast nervous tap of Argus’s shoes under the table. He set the plastic bottle down very slowly. “Did Timothy Kidd ever give you a name for the Reaper? It’s not like I think you’ll tell me who the guy was. All I wanna know is—did Kidd give you a solid suspect before he died? Did he get that close?”

  Argus was startled. His eyes shifted to one side, a hint that he was preparing another fairy tale. In this moment, when Riker was not being watched, he glanced at the door to the Chelsea Hotel. The FBI man held his silence as the counterman appeared with a fake cheeseburger. Riker gave it the sniff test, and it failed. “Try again, pal. This isn’t even close.”

  The man walked away with his rejected offering, and another backroom discussion with the cook ensued, guaranteeing Riker at least fifteen minutes of privacy. He rapped his knuckles on the table to remind the fed that he was waiting for the next lie.

  “Timmy had a suspect.” Argus pretended interest in the beverage cabinet by the table. “But he named the wrong guy. Poor bastard. He was really past it by then, seeing things that weren’t there.” The agent turned back to Riker, watching his face in earnest now. “I could give you more details, but first I’d need a little something from you. Just a little—”