Dead Famous

by Carol O'Connell

  No light.

  The door was slammed shut, but not by his hand, and Riker only had time to track the sound of an intruder’s quick shuffling footsteps in the dark. The gunshots were four explosions in rapid fire, and he did not stiffen this time. He folded to the floorboards, hitting with both knees and feeling no pain. Kneeling now, he faced a wall of blackness and never saw the light from the hall when the shooter opened the door behind him. Riker closed the door himself as his body completed its fall to the floor, toppling backward and slamming into the wood. Dust motes drifted down to settle on the lenses of his open eyes.

  He never blinked.

  15

  MRS. ORTEGA’S ROLLING WIRE ARSENAL WAS ARMED with liquids, powders, pastes and every tool of her trade. Intent on braving a cleaning woman’s vision of purgatory, she walked toward Riker’s apartment with grim resolve and squeaking cart wheels. Her apron pockets jingled with quarters for the laundry machines on the floor below, wagering that Riker’s sheets had not been changed in months. She planned to root him out in this early morning hour, while he was half asleep and helpless to prevent her from completing her mission. The real beauty of her strategy was Riker’s heavy drinking. All she had to do was fire up the vacuum cleaner and jack up the pain of his hangover to drive him out so she could get on with her job. This was going to happen.

  Her attitude abruptly changed.

  Riker’s door was not quite closed, and this was enough to set off a siren in the breast of every New Yorker. In this town, locking up was such a primal instinct that dogs would do it if they only could. A sage voice inside her head screamed, No, don’t go in there! Yet she put out one tentative hand and pushed the knob inward by a few inches before meeting resistance from an obstacle blocking the door. She could see a revolver lying at the center of the rug, and now she knew what the obstacle was. Using all her slight weight, she pushed hard against the sturdy oak door, then slammed herself into the wood, again and again. Riker’s inert body slowly, grudgingly moved inch by inch. Dead or alive, he would yield to Mrs. Ortega’s great will.

  When the telephone rang in Johanna Apollo’s hotel suite, it was Mallory who answered. First she heard the voice of the excited cleaning woman. Then Charles Butler was on the line, and he was only marginally calmer.

  “Listen to me,” said Mallory. “Mrs. Ortega is absolutely right. Don’t touch his body. Don’t do anything till I get there. I’m only a few minutes away.” After hanging up the phone in the middle of Charles’s protest, she rapped on the bathroom door, shouting to be heard above the sound of running water, “Doctor, we have to leave! Now!”

  Mallory stood before the open closet, reaching for her coat, then suddenly turned to see the small animal just released from the master bathroom, where he had spent the night. He had been softly creeping up behind her when a tiny squeak of excitement gave him away. Now he paused as their eyes met, and they mutually agreed that she could kill him any time she liked.

  Mugs, wise cat, retreated to his basket pillow.

  “She said not to touch anything,” said Mrs. Ortega, “and that includes him.”

  “Mallory says a lot of things.” Charles could no longer bear to see Riker lying there, eyes wide and staring, seeing nothing. He lifted the man’s body in his arms, then laid him down on the couch. “I can’t think why I let you talk me out of calling—”

  “No phone calls.” Mrs. Ortega came running from the bedroom with a blanket to cover Riker. “Trust me on this one. He wouldn’t want anybody to see him like this.” Her only betrayal of emotion was the way she tucked the blanket around the still body, then smoothed out all the folds in the material. If she could not mend him, she could at least neaten him up a bit.

  Charles glanced at his watch. Just as he was thinking that Mallory should be here by now, given the reckless way she drove a car, the detective came striding through the open doorway.

  “I told you not to move him.” Mallory only glanced at Riker, then turned her back on him, as if he were a piece of evidence at a crime scene instead of the more obvious victim of a life gone terribly awry. She drew her gun, opened the doors to the closet and the bathroom, then disappeared down the hall to the bedroom. Reappearing a moment later, gun holstered, she said, “Tell me you didn’t call anyone else.”

  “No,” said Charles. “But I should have. He needs a doctor.”

  “I brought one.” Mallory nodded toward the front door.

  Johanna Apollo stood in the hallway, gladstone bag in hand. Her wide brown eyes were fixed upon the gun on the floor. “You didn’t say he’d been shot.”

  “Not a mark on him,” said Mrs. Ortega, suspiciously eyeing the medical bag in the hunchback’s grip. “You’re a doctor? ” Her tone implied fraud, quackery.

  Apparently, Johanna Apollo was not satisfied with a cleaning woman’s assessment of Riker’s bullet-free status. She ripped the blanket away, then shifted him onto his side and checked for overlooked bloody holes. Finding none, she rolled him on his back again.

  “He doesn’t blink much,” said Mrs. Ortega, “but he’s not dead.”

  Taking the cleaning woman’s arm, Mallory led her away from the couch, saying, “Show me where you found the body.”

  The body? Charles winced.

  “He was right there.” Mrs. Ortega’s pointing finger made the vague outline of a prone figure on the rug in front of the door.

  Mallory stared at the weapon on the floor. Beside it lay a round metal object ringed with deep bullet-size chambers. The cleaning woman had earlier identified it as a speedloader, this intelligence based on extensive television viewing.

  Johanna Apollo was bending over her patient, shining a light into Riker’s eyes and finding no one at home in there. “Profound shock.”

  Heedless of this, Mallory stood over the weapon on the floor and pulled on a pair of plastic gloves. “That’s not Riker’s gun.” She picked up the weapon, opened its cylinder and emptied two unspent bullets into the palm of her hand.

  Charles lacked his cleaning woman’s television expertise in weaponry, but he was quite sure that these were not normal bullets. They would be more accurately described as the bottom halves of bullets sealed with wax.

  “Blanks,” said Mallory, somewhat incredulous. “Someone broke in here and shot him with blanks.”

  Mrs. Ortega and Charles sighed in unison. So ended their only line of speculation, the theory of a suicide gone wrong.

  “So it was a robbery.” The cleaning woman was almost cheerful, much preferring this less personal crime. “Blanks. Go figure.” She returned to the couch and leaned down to pick up the cast-off blanket. “These criminal types get dumber every year. That’s what Riker always says.” She rearranged the blanket over the man’s body, saying to the doctor, “You have to keep him warm.”

  “You’re right. Thank you.” Johanna Apollo moved aside to allow the cleaning woman more room, then patiently waited out the manic tucking and smoothing of the blanket, as if Mrs. Ortega’s ministrations were more important. Charles was deeply grateful for this small act of grace. Johanna had rightly intuited that this little stranger with a Brooklyn accent was in a bit of trouble herself. Mrs. Ortega was tightly reining in emotions that would only humiliate her should they spill out.

  And now he studied Mallory, the only unaffected person in the room.

  She was utterly focused on the weapon in her gloved hand. “This has to be the revolver he took away from that idiot juror. Riker said the man emptied this gun in the parking garage. So the perp who broke in here took the ammo from MacPherson’s speedloader.” In Mallory’s other hand, she hefted the remaining truncated bullets, as if they might have real weight. “The shooter was already inside. He was standing here in the middle of the room. When Riker opened the door, the lights were off. He was facing the dark and backlit from the hall.” Her gun hand was rising, the muzzle pointing toward the door. “And the shooter fired exactly four blanks.”

  Charles closed his eyes for a moment. Her pi
cture of events was all too clear. Turning to the prone figure on the couch, a man twice proved to be unsafe in his own home, Charles hunkered down beside the doctor, who was sorting through bottles in her medical bag. “Johanna, you should know his history. A psychotic teenager shot him four times. All the wounds were to the torso, all life threatening. It happened in his old apartment back in Brooklyn.”

  “He nearly died,” said Mrs. Ortega.

  “He did die,” said Charles. “He was clinically dead for three minutes before the paramedics revived him.” And, in a sense, the man had died again, for the gunshots had obviously seemed quite real to him.

  “Four bullet wounds,” said the doctor. “And now four blanks. He must have thought the boy had come back to—”

  “No,” said Mallory. “The shooter’s dead.”

  “Extremely dead,” said Charles.

  “Yeah,” said Mrs. Ortega, “you wouldn’t believe how dead that kid is.” The cleaning woman turned to Mallory. “So let me get this straight. When Riker fell down, the freak left him for dead ’cause he didn’t see any holes in the body. And that’s how you know the lights were out. Yeah, that’s it. Poor guy. Didn’t even have time to reach for the wall switch.”

  It was Mallory’s mildest form of contempt, something bordering on courtesy, to simply ignore the cleaning woman’s observations, though Charles thought the logic was rather good. However, now he had time to notice that the wall switch was in the on position, but the lights were off. Perhaps crime detection was something the layperson should not try at home.

  “If the freak cased this apartment,” said Mallory, “he’d know the only other tenant on this floor was out of town. No risk.”

  “And thick walls,” said Charles. “No one would hear the gunfire and come running.”

  Mallory shook her head. “I don’t think he planned to make a lot of noise. He came here with something else in mind. Finding MacPherson’s gun in the apartment—that was a bonus.”

  “So Riker surprised a thief,” said Charles, having learned nothing from Mrs. Ortega’s last foray. “Well, that fits. I expect it would’ve taken an experienced burglar to get past the locks on Riker’s door.”

  “You never felt that draft?” The young detective nodded toward the bathroom she had checked upon her arrival.

  The door was slightly ajar. Charles opened it a bit wider, and now he was staring at the broken window overlooking the fire escape.

  “Not a pro,” said Mallory. “Only amateurs do that.”

  “But breaking that window should’ve set off the alarm. I had a security service install it before he moved in. They assured me the police would be notified the instant—”

  “No,” said Mallory. “That would only work if Riker bothered to pay the monthly service fee.” She was facing the open door to the kitchen, wherein lay a mountain of unopened mail. Mallory had recommended bars for the bathroom window and even offered to pay for them. But Riker had declined the bars, arguing that he had nothing to steal.

  Charles looked around the room of wall-to-wall debris. Yes, jewel thieves and the like so seldom broke into places like this. His gaze settled on Johanna Apollo as she tied a rubber tourniquet around Riker’s upper arm to plump up a vein. She was unaware of the younger woman stealing up behind her.

  Mallory bent low to Johanna’s ear, saying softly, “The Reaper likes to play with people, doesn’t he, Doctor?”

  Johanna froze, as if Mallory had screamed instead of whispered. The doctor quickly recovered her poise and, with a steady hand, filled a syringe from a thin bottle. “Yes, he does.” She shot a trial spurt of fluid into the air, then filled Riker’s vein with the rest of her chemicals. “I’m going to need a few more things from the pharmacy.”

  When Mrs. Ortega had quit the apartment with a handful of prescriptions to fill, Charles was given the task of putting Riker to bed, and Johanna was left alone with the young detective, whom she had come to regard as her jailor. At least there was no doubt about who was in charge.

  “How long will this take?” Mallory might as well have been asking when her dry cleaning would be done.

  “He’s in shock,” said Johanna. “I can bring him around in a few hours.”

  The younger woman advanced on her with a slow shake of the head to say, No, Doctor, that’s not what I mean, and you know it. “How long will it take to fix him.”

  “The state he’s in now—that’s only a symptom of his core problem.” Johanna sank down on the couch, taking her cues from animals in the wild, not wanting to give the appearance of challenging Mallory’s authority in this room. She did not regard this young woman as less than human, but somewhat more dangerous. “A cure could take years. Long-term therapy.”

  Judging by Mallory’s sudden anger, Johanna knew the detective had no clue to the extent of Riker’s infirmity. He would not have shared the entire experience in the underground parking garage. He would never have mentioned the paralysis brought on by gunfire, not to the police, and certainly not to this one.

  “You know what happened to him,” said Mallory. “It’s a simple—”

  “The problem goes beyond hearing those shots and thinking he’d been ambushed again.” That effect would have been temporary. Twice now, she had seen it pass off very quickly. “I interned at a city hospital. I’ve seen my share of trauma victims. There’s more to this than a single event.” Johanna found herself preaching to the walls.

  “You’re wrong.” The detective was shaking her head. “I need him back on his feet by the end of the day, and fully functional. He’s on the Reaper’s radar now. Or did you really think that firing exactly four blanks was just a coincidence?”

  Johanna deferred to Mallory on the subject of psychological terrorism. She wondered if this young sociopath was what Timothy had in mind when he wrote the words, Only a monster can play this game. No case would ever be proven against the Reaper and no justice obtained for the dead, not by normal human means—but perhaps by Mallory’s. Johanna’s sidelong glance caught her own profile in the full-length mirror hanging on the open bathroom door. She studied the hump on her back without bias and fairly deemed herself the lesser monster in this room.

  “There’s no one I care about more than Riker,” said Johanna. “I would’ve died before I’d let this happen to him. But you—you pushed him into this confrontation. You might as well have shot him yourself. The game means more to you than he does.”

  Mallory sat down at the extreme edge of a chair, creating the nerve-jangling illusion of hovering there like a cat set to spring. “You like him so much? Good.” She brought one fist down on the coffee table with the force of a hammer. “Then fix him!”

  Much could be read into that small gesture of violence. It was no signal of a runaway temper, but deliberate and manipulative. The young detective had a freakish containment of emotion, and this control had come from long practice at trying to pass for normal.

  “A quick fix?” Johanna settled into a calm, absolute certainty that Mallory would not physically harm her, and, hence, had lost all power over her. “Riker’s not unconscious. I’m sure he’s aware of what’s going on around him.” She nodded toward the hallway that led to Riker’s bedroom. “Suppose you go in there, hold him very close and tell him you care if he lives or dies. Or you could shoot him with a real bullet. Either way, there might be a beneficial shock value.” And she wondered which of these alternatives Mallory would be most comfortable with. “But I still recommend therapy.”

  “Years of therapy.” The detective’s tone was not mere sarcasm but malice. She stood up suddenly, the better to look down on her opponent. “No time, Doctor.” Mallory pulled a velvet wallet from her back pocket and plucked out a thin piece of metal. She crossed the room to stand before a small desk. After diddling the lock on a drawer, she opened it and pulled out another weapon. “This is Riker’s gun. Six months ago, I cleaned it for him. He’s such a slob. He’d never do it himself.” She carried the revolver back to the couch and h
eld the muzzle close to the older woman’s face, close enough to see that all the exposed chambers held lethal bullets. Had the young police been hoping for a cringe or a tremor? Yes, there was a flicker of annoyance in those green eyes.

  “Breathe deep,” said Mallory. “Smell the oil? This gun’s been cleaned every day since he left the hospital. He’s got a new oil can under the sink and three empty ones in the trash—the trash he only takes out once a month.”

  Johanna wondered if Mallory had been systematically breaking into this apartment to check up on Riker. Of course she had. She passed through locks with such ease.

  The detective’s body slowly revolved, and her eyes wandered over the chaos of the front room. “So it didn’t take me years to figure out what was wrong with him. Look at the mess in this place. But what a nice, well-oiled, spotless weapon.” Her fingers curled tightly round the handle of the revolver. “It’s insane how many times he cleans his gun.” One white hand slowly drifted down to the back of an armchair, touching it lightly, almost a caress. “He sits here with his cigarettes, his bourbon and his gun. The next morning, the ashtray’s full, the bottle’s empty and the gun is perfectly clean. That’s how I know what he’s thinking about every night. He’s setting up habits, planning his own crime scene—staging it. That’s why the empty bottle and the gun oil are so important. They’re props. The night he finally decides to do it, I know there won’t be a note left behind. He’ll want me to believe it could’ve been an accident. Riker thinks that’ll make it easier for me to lose him.”

  Stunned, Johanna resolved never to underestimate this woman again. She would not be tempted one more time to find Mallory a convenient slot in the range of sociopathic behavior. This creature was standing alone in a category all her own. Whatever she was, she was one of a kind.