“I tried to stop her—to turn her around before she could see. ‘Don’t go in there,’ I said. She misunderstood. We’d left a message to say it was an emergency. She thought something had happened to her uncle. I couldn’t stop her. She ran into the room. And then she stopped, frozen. Koozeman was just turning around, naked and holding the head of Peter Ariel in his hands. Aubry turned to run. Emma Sue screamed, ‘Stop her!’ I did stop her, I was even trying to explain when Dean Starr dragged her back into the room. Emma Sue was already running across the floor. She brought the axe down on Aubry.
“No one had expected that to happen. Emma Sue did it again, and again. The others stood back, and I turned away. Aubry was screaming to me to help her. I’d known her since she was a little girl. We were friends, you see. And now she was bleeding, dying, and she was asking me for help. I turned my back. Then, all I could hear was the gurgling. I closed my eyes. It went on for a long time.”
And now he put his hands over his eyes as if it were all happening again. “She would not die. I listened to the sounds of the axe, the scrabbling on the floor. She was crawling back toward the door. Her hand was within an inch of me when I turned to see Emma Sue strike the final blow to the back of her skull.” His hands fell away from his eyes. “That ended it.”
He turned to Sabra. “Then the others made the pact. They were all involved now and there was no way out. They each took the axe and made a cut in her body. And then they came for me. They forced me to take the axe. Starr pressed my hands around it and dragged it across her throat.
“They sent me back to the window. Quinn was due, but Koozeman, that crazy man, he was intent on his work of art. Starr and Emma Sue left the gallery. I stayed by the window, crying, waiting for it to be over. When Koozeman was done with them, he forced me to look at what he had done with the bodies.”
Andrew looked at Sabra. “Well, you saw what he did. You were there. When Koozeman had cleaned himself up and put on his clothes, he dragged me through the door in the wall. You and your brother were just coming in as we were leaving.”
He bowed his head. “I remember you wore that fabulous multicolored coat. I saw you as the door was closing. You looked so much like Aubry. Koozeman watched you and your brother through the pinhole. He couldn’t resist. He wanted to see how his work would be received. You were to be his first critics. I left by the back door. I ran all the way home.”
When the story was done, Sabra rose and walked to the back of the terrace where the fire escape ladder cropped up from the low wall. She reached out to the curled rail of the ladder.
Mallory lifted her gun. “I can’t let you go.”
“I don’t think I’ll get far, but I don’t want to end here.” Sabra lifted her head. “You understand?”
Mallory nodded. “But I can’t-”
Sabra walked back to her. She brought her face close to Mallory’s and kissed her cheek. “Yes, yes you can.” Then Sabra returned to the low wall at the edge of the terrace and lowered herself over the side and down the rungs of the fire escape.
Mallory walked to the ladder and watched the descent. Sabra climbed down slowly; blood smeared the handholds and dripped to the rungs below her feet. She slipped and lost one foothold and then the other. She hung there for a moment, and then she was falling, screaming out as she fell past all the dark windows. She landed on a large metal trash bin parked below. She lay spread-eagled among the garbage, her head twisted at an unnatural angle.
An ambulance was parked outside the apartment building. The screaming sirens of two police units pulled up alongside of Riker’s car, all their spinning cherry lights flashing codes of fear and urgency to all the civilians hanging from open windows and clustering on the sidewalk. The young uniformed officers moved quickly out of their cars and into the building, guns drawn. As Riker left his own car, he heard the scream. It came from the alley to one side of the building.
He ran into the narrow breach between the brick walls. An old woman was spread out on the trash, which was piled high and overflowing the large metal bin. He didn’t need to reach out and touch her to know that she was dead. He stepped back and looked up to see Mallory leaning far out over the ledge of a terrace.
“No!” she yelled, as though ordering him to undo this death.
He held his breath as she swung her long legs over the side of the building and hung for a moment in the air, trying to gain a foothold on the slippery ladder, descending now to the fire escape. She skimmed the stairs with her running shoes, moving with fluid speed down the zigzag of the ironwork. When she was level with the trash bin she jumped from the fire escape and landed on her feet beside the body of the old woman.
“She’s gone, kid,” said Riker, as she knelt down beside the corpse. “I’ll put in a call for the meatwagon.”
Mallory eased herself off the trash bin, her running shoes slapping hard against the cement. She reached over the rim of the bin and tugged at the body.
“Hold it, Mallory. The meatwagon will take her.”
“No! Not like this.” She pulled Sabra’s body into a slide, passing it down the rubble of ripped plastic bags, eggshells and coffee grounds. She received the dead woman into her arms, and stood there for a moment, holding this ragged burden as though it weighed nothing. Then, slowly, so gently, Mallory laid the body down, taking great care in settling the corpse to the ground, as though afraid of causing the dead woman any more pain.
The alley was protected from the flashing lights, the noise and energy of the street. No wind blew here, no dust stirred as Mallory arranged the body in the pose of sleep.
“I’m sorry,” she said to the dead woman, as her hand moved across the face to close Sabra’s eyes. She folded the rag doll arms across the breast. “I’m sorry.”
Riker watched Mallory at her ministrations, gentle as a mother with a child. Deep inside of him, permanent damage was being done as the roles reversed again, and he watched the child bending down to the mother to kiss her brow and say good night.
When Mallory stood up and moved toward him, there was no emotion in her face, and that frightened him. He reached out to catch her arm as she stalked past him. She shook him off and continued down the alley toward the street. He watched her retreat for a moment, then looked back to the corpse on the ground. Caught in that sad middleground between the living and the dead, he didn’t know his own place in the world anymore, but thought he might have overstayed his life.
The first thing Riker noticed about his apartment was the smell of fresh air which had displaced the stale odors of garbage and ashtrays filled to overflowing.
He turned on the light and blinked twice. He had forgotten the color of the braided area rug in the living room. Gone was the litter of pizza boxes and old newspapers which had once protected it from dust. And he could see city lights beyond the window glass for the first time in the ten years he had lived in this apartment. The two-years-dead houseplant had been replaced with a live one.
He moved on to the bathroom. Everything was in order, every fixture sparkled and the porcelain gleamed. He pulled back the shower curtain. The garden of fungus no longer grew on the tiles of the stall.
Oddly enough, she had not made good on her threat to toss out the plastic Jesus night-light. She had only cleaned it, and now it glowed even brighter. Perhaps she thought he might need guidance in the dark hours when his drunk’s bladder awakened him.
It was predictable that the kitchen would be spotless, but inside the refrigerator all his beer bottles were upright glass soldiers, standing in formation. He pulled out one cold bottle and wandered into the bedroom.
He opened the drawer by his bed to see each thing perfectly aligned and all debris cleared away. In the back of the drawer was the small yellowed envelope with his wedding ring and the rainy day bullet with his name on it. He picked up the envelope, hefted it in one hand and found it was light by a few ounces. He crushed the paper in a tight fist and felt only the hard substance of the ring.
; Mallory. She had stolen the bullet.
He sat down on the bed, popped the cap off his beer bottle, lit a cigarette and decided to live.
“When will you people ever learn to lock your doors? This is New York City.”
Charles looked up as Mallory cleared the foyer of Henrietta’s apartment and entered the front room.
Oh, God, no.
There was blood on her face and the front of her T-shirt, and smears on the arms of her blazer. He was rising from his chair when she raised one hand to stay him. “Charles, it’s not my blood. Sit down.” He did as he was told.
Mallory in bloodstains and blue jeans was so at odds with delicate flowers in crystal vases, small pieces of sculpture and rose-colored afghans—all the ultrafeminine trappings of Henrietta’s front room. Mallory slung the fencing bag on the floor and knelt beside it to remove the antique sabers. He had not missed them all day.
“Thanks for the loan, Charles.”
The loan? You stole them.
“Mallory!” Henrietta was standing in the hallway, her face in shock.
“It’s not my blood,” said Mallory, weary of having to explain this simple fact to everyone.
Henrietta came into the room as the swords were pulled from the long leather bag. “Well, that explains a lot.” She walked over to the couch where Quinn lay in his bandages, a blanket and a deep sleep.
“Quinn didn’t tell you about the fencing match?”
“No. I did ask him about the cuts while I was stitching him up, but he wouldn’t talk. I told him he was going to have some scars, and he didn’t seem to mind that at all. I think he was almost pleased with them. Men,” said Henrietta, as though that word encompassed the explanation for every flaw of his gender.
Charles wondered what word she might choose to explain Mallory. No doubt it would be a long word with a psychiatric subtext.
Henrietta was holding Quinn’s wrist and looking at her watch, timing the pulse.
“Will he be all right?” Mallory might have been asking if Henrietta thought it would rain.
“He’s lost a lot of blood,” said Henrietta, “but he’ll be fine in the morning. I pumped him up with antibiotics and gave him a strong sedative. He’ll sleep for at least another six hours. I’ll take good care of him.” Henrietta handed Mallory a wet cloth which had been intended for Quinn’s brow.
“Thanks.” Mallory rose to her feet, and now Charles could see the day had taken a toll on her. She was tired, and moving sluggishly as she wiped the blood from her face.
“I have to change clothes, and then I’ve still got lots to do before the night is over. When Quinn comes to, tell him I was there when Sabra died. Tell him she finally got what she wanted. That’ll be important to him.”
“Oh, no,” said Henrietta, sinking down to the armchair beside the couch. Charles covered his eyes with one hand.
“Don’t worry,” said Mallory. “Quinn will take it very well. He’s been expecting it.” She walked over to Charles’s chair and lightly touched his hand to bring it down so she could see his face. “I know how much you cared about Sabra. But the only thing that was keeping her alive was unfinished business—she saw it through, and then she died. It wasn’t the worst death.”
“Why don’t you rest awhile? I’ll get us some coffee.” Henrietta took the bloody cloth from Mallory’s hand and turned toward the kitchen.
“Nothing for me, thanks,” Mallory called after her. “I have to go.”
No, don’t leave.
Mallory was moving into the foyer, and then she stopped, seeming to hover there with an afterthought. She turned to catch Charles staring at her.
Stay. Please stay.
She walked slowly back to him and stood before his chair, and closer now to stand between his parted legs. She leaned down, placing one white hand on each arm of the chair. Closer. He could feel her breath on his skin, and the delicate feathering touch of her hair, which smelled of some exotic flower that never grew in New York City. Closer now, her eyes growing larger, flooding his field of vision and coloring it green. She pressed her mouth to his, gently, softly, her lips opening to him as she fed him a paralyzing current of electricity and flooded his body with heat and butterflies. And now, pressing into him, she was waking the last of his senses—he could taste her.
She pulled back, startled. In the flicker and widening of her eyes—a flash of discovery—Mallory had finally been taken by surprise.
And then she was going away from him again, moving swiftly to the door, saying, “Goodbye, Charles.”
He sat very still, listening to the sound of the door closing behind her.
Goodbye? Not good night?
She was precise with her words, not liking to waste them.
Goodbye?
He left his chair and walked to the window. He parted the curtains and watched the dark street below until she appeared there, crossing the paving stones, making a long shadow by lamplight. He leaned his forehead against the cool glass as he watched her enter the small tan car and drive off down the street. Behind his back, he heard slippered footsteps and the sound of a cup settling to the coffee table. Without turning, he said to Henrietta, “She won’t be back. It’s over.”
“What’s over, Charles? You never told her what was going on.”
“Well, how could I? She thinks of me as an old friend of the family. It would put her in an awkward situation. Don’t you see? It would be an imposition.”
“That’s not a word in Mallory’s vocabulary. I wouldn’t worry about good manners, Charles.”
“I can’t. I’m afraid she’d—”
“Now there’s the key word. That young woman walks around in bloodstains, and look at you—you’re afraid of an imposition. I think civilized behavior is overrated.”
The only one to see her enter the church was a cat which had crept in with another parishioner and hidden itself away in the alcove, resting on the vaulted relic of a saint. Now the cat, in haste to hide itself a little better, knocked over a candlestick and startled a man in the pews.
His lined, pale face, roused from prayers, turned round. The old priest rose from the pew and stood in silence by a column, covertly watching a young woman with lustrous golden hair and a dark stain on her hand. She lit a candle to the patron saint of lost causes.
The lamb had come back.
With a shuffle of slippers on stone, he walked around the column and into the light. “Kathy?”
“Father, you’re up late.” She never turned away from the candles, lighting one after another.
“There’s something I have to know. About your mother—”
“I made it up.” She raised her eyes to the statue above the flames.
“I don’t believe you.” He reached out and touched her shoulder.
Now she did turn to face him, to shake off his hand. “It was another woman who was murdered. So what? It was a beautiful mass. My compliments, Father.”
“You lied?” He shook his head in disbelief. “You could lie about a thing like that? So your own mother—”
“Who knows? I don’t remember her.”
She averted her eyes and moved away from him. He walked toward her, and quickly, to close the space between them. “Are you lying to me now?”
Mallory turned her cold eyes on the priest, and then turned her back. As she was walking toward the great doors and the night, the old man called after her, “Where are you going?”
“I’m going home.”
“Did you pay for those candles?” One white, gnarled hand emerged from the folds of his black woolen shawl and pointed at Mallory’s retreating back. “You haven’t forgotten the poor box, have you, Kathy?”
“That’s Mallory to you.” She kept walking, saying, “And no, I didn’t forget to pay the poor box. Now I suppose you’ll want to check the serial numbers on my bills.” With that, she was gone through the studded oak doors, her form fading into shadow, all but the gleam of bright hair, and then that gleam winked out in the dar
k.
Father Brenner’s hand hung in the air for a moment, and then quickly delved back into the folds of his shawl as though he were pocketing a soul.
Charles cased Mallory’s apartment house with the eye of a burglar-in-training. He approached the doorman with a twenty-dollar bill and a story about leaving an envelope under her door. He rode the elevator to the roof and exited by the fire door, coming out onto a clear night of shimmering city lights and the moon-bright slick of the Hudson River. He could smell the salt air, and he felt exhilarated.
The wind was on his face as he crossed over to the roof of the adjacent building and climbed down a fire escape ladder, a remnant from the old days before Mallory’s building had been joined with this wall to create a common air shaft.
Now he was level with a window on the opposite wall and looking into Mallory’s front room. Her apartment was a fortress. Only this window was not barred, the only portal inaccessible from the outside of the building by fire escape or terrace. It was a great expanse of glass from ceiling to floor.
He pulled a chunk of concrete from the depths of his coat pocket and hurled it at the window with all his strength. The plate glass broke into a million tiny pieces. When the violence of shattering glass had dissipated into a tinkling rain, he was staring at an enormous, jagged hole—and he was quite proud of it. His eyes adjusted to the dark beyond the window frame. He could see his missile lying amid the wreckage of a glass coffee table.
Better and better.
The alarm went off in a shriek of outrage.
Better still.
And it shrieked after him as he ascended the ladder to the roof door and made his escape.
She would find his message among the shards of glass when she returned home. The rock had a bit of paper wrapped round it and tied securely with a shoelace. His note bore that simple timeworn thing which he had found no way to improve upon: I love you.
Killing Critics Page 36
