Crime School

by Carol O'Connell

  “You couldn’t reach her up there on the rope.” Mallory could see him as a small shivering boy, crying to his mother, no clue that she was dead. “How could you leave her—if she was still alive?”

  He dropped his gun and never noticed its loss. On the next roof, the pigeon lady stared at the sky, arms fluttering in her own attempt at flight.

  “After two days—the bugs and the heat—you couldn’t take anymore. You left your mother all alone in the dark. You knew what the insects were doing to her when you closed that door and walked away.”

  His bad leg buckled, and he folded to the ground like a piece of collapsible lawn furniture. And there he made a stand of sorts, on his knees, as though his legs had been cut to stumps. Mallory stepped closer to kick his gun, sending it flying to the far side of the roof.

  He was helpless. Both eyes were open now and looking in on some interior hell. She knelt down before him, facing him in the position of prayer. He raised his head a bare inch. Later, she would remember his eyes with an imagined film of dust, as though he had already been dead for some time—for years and years. It would have been a kindness to put a bullet in his skull—an act of mercy.

  Resurrection time.

  In the absence of kindness and mercy, she planned to rebuild him as her only witness to the murder of Natalie Homer. “I know it was a cop who killed your mother. And you’re going to help me nail that bastard. It’s revenge you want, and I can get that for you.”

  No, that was not what he wanted, never what he wanted. Mallory could see her error now, a very bad mistake.

  Natalie’s son was waiting for his bullet, staring at the revolver with a great hunger. He had foreseen this moment long ago as a little boy in the heat of August, waiting so patiently to be punished. And he had laid this out so clearly in the mad restaging of a crime that he believed was his alone. Three hangings, one endless shriek, Catch me! Kill me! He had even warned his victims and sent them into the arms of the police as his messengers, extensions of a scream.

  Mallory could see all the way to the bottom of his madness, the rest of the damage done to a small child. “You thought your father sent you away—because he blamed you.”

  No response. The scarecrow was shutting down what remained of his mind. Mallory tried to touch him, and he shrank back, a reflex that she understood too well. Her hand froze, suspended in the forbidden act of reaching out. She was always clutching air—touching no one. Yet she tried again, gently grazing his battered face with the tips of her fingers.

  A shadow blocked the sun. She heard the sick sound of the bat cracking his skull, breaking it open. There was time to catch him in her arms, and they fell together.

  Ronald Deluthe stood over them, listing to one side. The baseball bat dangled from his right hand as he sank to the ground, where he sat bolt upright, legs splayed out, his eyes slowly closing.

  The scarecrow’s weight was on top of Mallory. His blood was on her face and in her hair. As she lay beneath the corpse, only her eyes were moving, slowly turning to Ronald Deluthe. She watched as his upper body pitched forward and his head hit the dusty tar paper between his spread legs.

  Mallory had lost her weapon. Her gun hand absently stroked the scarecrow’s hair, then came away with bits of red bone and flesh. But how could this be? She had yet to tell him how his mother had really died—that there was nothing he could have done to save her.

  Charles Butler’s Mercedes pulled up in front of the apartment building and double-parked alongside a row of police units and their spinning red lights. An ambulance was at the curb, where two men in hospital whites stood beside an empty gurney.

  Riker was the first one out of the car, yelling, “What happened? Where’s the wounded cop?”

  “It’s my fault!” An unnerved civilian rushed up to him, arms waving, as if this might help to gather his thoughts. “I’m sorry. I thought he was unconscious. I just took my eyes off the poor man for a minute. My wife was feeling a bit queasy, and I thought she was going to faint. You see, she saw the body in the closet. And when I looked back—well, the man was gone.”

  Riker barreled through the shed door, gun drawn, eyes going everywhere. He saw the little redheaded man rolling in wet sheets and moaning. On the neighboring roof, a confused old woman was staring up at the sky where her lost birds had gone.

  He found Deluthe beside the shed, slumped over and holding a baseball bat in a one-handed death grip. Mallory lay a few feet away—underneath a corpse.

  More sirens were coming, and she listened to them, as if from a great distance of miles and miles. The scarecrow’s flesh was deceptively warm, and so was his blood. It dripped from the broken skull to soak her and stain her.

  Riker rolled the heavy weight off her body and met with some resistance, for Mallory’s hands were pressed to the dead man’s face—still trying to make human contact.

  22

  Civilian conversations blended with the static of radio calls from police units, and yellow tape cordoned off the sidewalk in front of the apartment building. An ambulance and a meat wagon were parked at the curb, side by side, doors hanging open, awaiting the living and the dead. The man from the medical examiner’s office zipped up the body bag on his gurney. A cigarette dangled from his mouth as he accepted a light from the homicide detective. “Dr. Slope’s standing by to crack the old man open. So what’s the story on the other corpse?”

  “There’s only one dead body,” Riker corrected him. “This one.” He looked down at the remains of George Neederland, the missing department-store watchman.

  The ME’s man looked up to the sky and a departing police helicopter. “Your guys just took another body off the roof. What’s the—”

  “Repeat after me, pal. There’s only one dead body at this crime scene.” Riker turned to see another reporter approaching the police barricade. Nearby, a news van was unloading pole lights and camera equipment. He turned back to face down the meat-wagon man. “One body. If the press hears a different story, Dr. Slope’s gonna fire your ass. I’ll make sure he does.”

  In a less threatening mode, Riker turned to thank Alice White for the wet washcloth she pressed into his hand. He grabbed Mallory by the arm and forced her to stand still while he cleaned the red smears from her face. Then he stepped back to appraise the rest of her stains. “Damn, you look worse than Deluthe. You’re sure none of that blood belongs to you?”

  Mallory turned away from him and walked toward a crime-scene technician, calling out, “You! Stop!”

  Riker strolled back to the ambulance crew. “You’re right, guys. No wounds on Mallory.” He turned to watch his partner issuing orders and signing the evidence bags for her crime scene, unaware that her bloody clothes and hair were making the civilian onlookers sick.

  A paramedic hovering over Deluthe said, “He’s coming around again.”

  There was no need to shield the youngster from the reporters and their cameras. His own mother would not recognize that swollen bandaged face. More bandages covered his scalp. He was being stabilized with injections and portable machines to keep him out of the danger zone of deep shock.

  Riker waited until Deluthe’s eyes flickered open, then continued the lecture where he had left off ten minutes ago. “When you found Natalie’s address in the watchman’s file, you should’ve come to me. Never go after a perp without backup. And that door. That was a major screwup, kid. When you saw the open door, you should’ve known the scarecrow was still in the building.”

  The young cop was coughing. It was a fight to get the words out. “Is this your way of telling me I’m fired?” The lame smile made his lip bleed again.

  “Naw,” said Riker. “I wouldn’t waste time teaching you how to stay alive—not if you were on the way out.”

  The medic unhooked the monitor. “Okay, he’s stable.”

  “Give us a minute,” said Riker. When the two paramedics had walked around to the other side of the ambulance, he said, “One more thing, kid. We’re promoting you to a
stone killer—just for a little while.” He pointed at the uniformed officers seated inside the ambulance, both men he trusted. “Waller’s got your ID and your badge. He’ll field all the questions at the hospital. Just keep your mouth shut.” He turned around to look at his partner in her bloodstains. “Oh, and Mallory’s taking the credit for beating the crap out of you. But we’ll clear that up tomorrow, okay?”

  Before the ambulance doors had closed on the baffled Deluthe, Charles Butler joined Riker on the sidewalk. “Shouldn’t Mallory see a doctor?”

  “Right,” said the detective. “You talk to her.”

  “There’s something—not quite right with her.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Riker turned to watch her moving about the scene like an automaton. “How can you tell?”

  Charles certainly caught the sarcasm, but he was selectively deaf to detrimental remarks about Mallory. “Under normal circumstances, she’s compulsively neat. She’d never tolerate a smudge on one of her running shoes. Look at her now. She doesn’t even see the blood on her clothes and her—”

  “Yeah, she’s not quite the little fanatic today.” Riker smiled. “But that’s a good thing, isn’t it? Progress?”

  Charles sighed. He pointed to the rectangular bulge in Riker’s pocket. “Are you ever going to give her that book?”

  “I will—when the time is right.”

  Mallory was walking toward them. Charles made himself scarce before she could order him behind the crime-scene tape again.

  Riker grinned, so happy to see her alive and walking around in any condition. “You missed your chance to tell Deluthe how bad he screwed up today. I filled in for you.”

  “Did you tell him he killed an unarmed man—the only witness to Natalie Homer’s murder?”

  “No, kid, I saved that part for you. Wait’ll he gets out of the hospital. He won’t be expecting an ambush.” This was a joke, but she seemed to be considering it. “So, Mallory, I hear you reamed out Geldorf.”

  “He had it coming,” she said.

  “Sure. That’s why you told him the scarecrow was a cop. You’d need a pretty good reason to give up a detail like that. You figured the old man was on the perp’s kill list, right? So you warned him. That was your twisted good deed for the day.”

  He could see that she was not about to admit any such human frailty. Maybe it was all wishful thinking on his part, a fantasy of what he wanted her to be. He looked up at the clouds that threatened rain. “Not very satisfying this time, is it, Mallory?” No, he guessed not.

  She raised her face to his, and he saw his Kathy, only ten, all played out at the end of a bad day, and he wanted to kill somebody to make her world right again. His hate was growing, going out to the man who murdered Natalie Homer. That worthless bastard had done so much damage. Twenty years later, the dead could not be officially tallied until Sparrow was taken off life support. And then there was Mallory, altered in ways that worried him.

  Riker reached into his pocket and pulled out a brown paper bag containing a book. “Here, a consolation prize.” He handed her the final installment of the saga of Sheriff Peety and the Wichita Kid. “You might like the inscription.”

  He had marked the page with a matchbook so she would find the brief message from her biggest fan, a love letter written before Louis Markowitz and Kathy had been properly introduced.

  Riker walked away as she opened her present. He was heading for Mallory’s car, planning to sabotage it so she could not drive home by herself. Also, she would not forgive him if he saw her cry, and he did not want that additional burden. He was still paying for all his old crimes against the child she used to be.

  “Riker!” she called after him. “We’re not done yet!”

  So much for his grand idea that she could be moved to tears. Perhaps his fantasy life was getting out of hand.

  The decor of the Manhattan condo was expensive and Spartan, though the living room had the smell of Brooklyn ghosts, Louis and Helen Markowitz. Their old house had reeked of the same canned-pine-tree air freshener. Riker supposed this was Mallory’s idea of memento, for the room was bereft of family photographs or keepsakes. She must believe there was nothing here to give away any clue to her personality. Untrue. The white carpet had a low tolerance for dirt; chrome and glass gleamed from the toil of a cleaning fanatic; the dark leather chairs and the couch had severe right angles and hard straight lines. It was all black and white—no compromises—all Mallory.

  And so it was easy to spot the small item that did not belong here. Evidently, he had not been the only one to rob a crime scene, and Mallory had been careless with her stolen goods. He knelt down on the rug and reached under the glass cocktail table to retrieve a delicate ivory comb. It was memorable for the elaborate carving and the look of money. Sparrow had worn it in her hair each time they met. And he had always been curious about this precious comb, this favorite possession of a junkie that should have been sold for a drug buy long ago. When Sparrow finally died, would the comb become Mallory’s keepsake or her trophy?

  He turned to see his partner enter the room, towel drying her hair as she walked toward him in a long white robe. Mallory was resilient, and she cleaned up well.

  Riker folded a cell phone into his pocket. “Dr. Slope cracked the night watchman’s chest. The old guy’s been dead about two weeks. Natural causes. You figure the scarecrow planned his last murder that far in advance?”

  “No. He made friends with the old man years ago. He wanted to spend time in the building where his mother died. That place was his idea of home.” She accepted a glass of bourbon and soda from his hand.

  Riker had been surprised to find the makings in her kitchen cabinet, and he wondered if she drank alone. Of course she did. She would never drink in public and risk losing control in front of witnesses. “So that’s what triggered the hangings? The watchman’s death?”

  “We’ll never know—thanks to Deluthe.” Mallory stared at the pocket that hid his cell phone. “What did you hear from the hospital?”

  “If you mean Deluthe, he’ll live. Just busted up is all.” Riker watched her finish the medicinal whiskey and soda. “He’s got a broken nose, a hairline skull fracture and a dislocated shoulder. Oh, and he’s gonna have a wicked scar on his face, lots of stitches. But the doctor says he doesn’t seem to mind that. In fact, he seems real happy about it.” He picked up the remote control for the television set. “But if you mean Sparrow—the doctor says she’ll be gone before morning.” He could not tell if this made any impression on Mallory. At least she did not smile.

  “And now for the good news.” Riker switched on the television and killed the sound of the broadcast, preferring to give his own narrative. “We got a very confused press corps with an inaccurate body count. They think the scarecrow’s still alive, but badly wounded.” He pointed to the image of a teenage witness being attacked by microphones. “That’s all the girl could tell them.”

  Mallory nodded. “She was only on the roof for a few minutes.”

  And the young girl was still shaking on camera as Riker leaned closer to the set. “Here, watch this—her father’s gonna deck a reporter.” The punch was thrown. “Good job.” And now the picture changed to three small boys all talking at once. “Oh, but these kids—they were great!”

  “They didn’t see anything,” said Mallory. “Their mother took them off the roof before they could—”

  “Yeah, but, in their version, you shot the poor bastard’s legs off. Then you pistol-whipped him and shot him some more. But they knew he was still alive ’cause they saw him try to crawl away from you. Bless their lying little hearts.”

  “I need something to rattle a suspect.” Mallory stood before the rear wall of the incident room, pinning another array of photographs to the cork surface. “We have to wrap Natalie’s murder tonight.”

  Understandable. Come the morning, every fact of the scarecrow’s death would be public knowledge. “All right,” said Charles. “There were two stalkers. Only Nat
alie’s killer would know that.”

  She said nothing aloud, but he knew that smirk so well. Yeah, right.

  “It’s a matter of style,” he said, undaunted. “The first stalker was the ex-husband. I’m sure Lars was right about that. So perhaps he could be forgiven for—”

  No. One look at Mallory and he knew that forgiveness was never coming from that quarter. Charles unpinned one of the stalker notes and held up the aged yellow paper. “Erik Homer was a wife beater, short on patience. I don’t see him spending hours tracing individual letters of magazine script just to make this beautiful for Natalie. Rather artistic, isn’t it?” He read the words to her. “ ‘I touched you today.’ More like poetry than a threat. Not Erik Homer’s style. When he met his second wife, the stalking ended, and Natalie had no more use for the police. That explains the two-week gap in her complaints. It was the second stalker who left her these notes, who loved her—and killed her.”

  “All right, I’ll buy that.” Mallory stepped back from the wall to give him a clear view of her rogues gallery, five men as they had appeared twenty years ago. Lars Geldorf’s portrait came from a newspaper archive. Head shots of two other detectives and one patrolman were made from Mallory’s computer enhancements of the crime-scene Polaroids. And another patrolman’s picture was taken from a personnel file. “Next problem,” she said. “We know the perp was a cop, but which one?”

  “How can you be sure it was one of these men?”

  “Because one of the uniforms called in the hanging as a suicide—and three detectives showed up.”

  Apparently Mallory was picking up cryptic bad habits from Riker.

  “Just guessing,” said Charles. “You don’t usually send so many detectives out for a suicide call?” What was he missing here? He stared at the pictures of the men in suits. “So you’ve narrowed it down to these three because they all signed off on Natalie’s stalker complaints? Is that it?”