Bitty was always looking up at people, and suddenly she tired of this. She fixed her eyes on a middle ground, and her voice was insistent when she said, “I didn’t break any laws. I never—”
“Your plan was too complicated.” Mallory hunkered down to Bitty’s eye-level. “That’s why so many things went wrong. You had to improvise too much. But, in every new game plan, Nedda was meant to die. Your mother and your uncle would take the blame. You supplied them with a motive. Their uncle James planted the idea, but you’re the one who convinced them that Nedda murdered their family.”
As Bitty formed the idea that Mallory was using pure guesswork, the detective was shaking her head, saying, “I know how you poisoned them against Nedda. So you planned a revenge motive for Cleo and Lionel. They do everything together, don’t they? Get one, you get two. With them in prison, you’d control all the money.” Mallory held a sheet of paper within an inch of the other woman’s face. “Now you get nothing.”
Pulling back, Bitty recognized the page torn from a book on New York State law. The underscored passage mandated that felons could not profit from a crime. She watched the paper drift to the floor. In one fluid motion, Mallory was risen, then gone, and Bitty was left to stare at the fallen page washed in bright light. “I didn’t commit any felonies. There’s no proof of—”
“Let’s start with Willy Roy Boyd, the scum you hired to kill Nedda.” The detective ripped a newspaper clipping from the wall and held it up for Bitty to see. The headline recounted the capture of a serial killer. “This was your idea of the help-wanted pages. It cost you a lot of money to get him out on bail with that new hearing. He’d need lots more to keep his pricey lawyer. He would’ve killed a battalion of women for you.” She let go of the clipping, and it drifted to the floor.
Bitty turned away. “You can’t seriously—”
“I’m dead serious.” Mallory’s voice came from behind, and Bitty could feel the breath on her neck. “I talked to Boyd’s lawyer.” Another piece of paper rattled close by Bitty’s ear. “I have the letter you sent with the payoff money.”
Bitty raised her head with new hope. “In my handwriting? I don’t think so.” The letter had been typed on a computer.
“Don’t even try to run a bluff on me.” Mallory’s face appeared in front of her, blotting out everything else in the world. “Your bedroom was the only one with locks, two heavy-duty bolts—recently installed. You were afraid that Boyd might get carried away and kill you, too. He never knew that you were the one who hired him.”
“No, there was an attempted break-in the previous week. You know that.”
“Right. I always wondered if that one inspired the second try, or did you arrange both of them? Was Boyd your fallback plan? Heavy guns, Bitty—a serial killer. But at least he was a proven commodity. He’d already killed three women. Must’ve been a shock when Nedda brought him down with an ice pick. You never imagined that, did you? Well, some plans only work on paper.” Mallory stood up, suddenly impatient, and walked back to the wall. “Willy Roy Boyd died during the commission of a felony. You hired him to kill your aunt. By law, his death belongs to you.”
“That’s absurd.”
“Oh, really? Did you sleep through every class on criminal law? The next charge is conspiracy in attempted murder for hire. Pecuniary gain raises the ante on the penalty. Look it up.”
Bitty rallied and lifted her head, feeling braver when speaking to the younger woman’s back. “You have nothing to link me with that man.”
“You’re right.” Mallory’s smile was a chilling piece of work. “In your original plan, Nedda would die and Boyd would survive. So you’d never give him anything that would lead the police back to you. But I’m sure you fed him enough detail to implicate your aunt and uncle.”
“Supposition.”
“Yes, it’s a very weak case. Lucky I have you for multiple murders.”
“No,” said Bitty, head slowly shaking from side to side. “What are you—”
“Every death by arson is murder. I only have to prove one and the jury will throw in all the rest for free—including Willy Roy Boyd.” The detective padded toward the scaffolding and knelt down by the open suitcase and its spilled contents. She picked up one of the diaries and flipped through the pages until she found an entry that she liked. “Listen to this. It begins, ‘Love me again.’ She means Cleo and Lionel. All Nedda wanted was a reconciliation with her brother and sister.” The detective turned ahead a few pages. “For a while, she was making progress. Then it went sour after Nedda stabbed Boyd. That was your work, Bitty.” She held up the book. “It’s all here. Oh, one more thing—I know what you did with the videotape, the one that went missing that night.”
“All right, I burned it to protect Aunt Nedda. I thought she’d killed an unarmed burglar.”
“Nice touch, Bitty. Always a good idea to work a little truth into the lie. I believe you burned the tape, but that’s not what I meant. Your car service logged the trip to the summer house the next morning—a very early ride. You showed that videotape to Cleo and Lionel, didn’t you? You wanted them to see Nedda’s handiwork with an ice pick—the same kind of weapon that slaughtered their family. It must’ve destroyed them to watch that film. Too bad you don’t have the tape anymore. It might’ve come in handy at your trial. The state will say you burned incriminating evidence. Boyd was dead before the lights came on, but maybe the tape showed you pulling out the ice pick and driving a pair of shears into his corpse.”
“I didn’t do that.”
“Bitty, I never thought you could do it. But will the jury believe you? Now—just take it a little further. The autopsy proves two strikes and two different weapons—maybe two killers. Maybe Boyd wasn’t quite dead when he was stabbed the second time. The prosecutor might argue that you were afraid Boyd could identify you as the one who hired him.”
“That’s not true.”
Mallory arched one eyebrow. “So?” She looked down at the journals in her hands. “When the jury reads these diaries—Nedda’s little dream—they’re going to hate you, Bitty. They’re going to kill you, too. On the night before the fire, Nedda called you from SoHo. She was planning another attempt to reconcile with her brother and sister. That would’ve ruined all your hard work shoring up the revenge motive. So, you staged a suicide, and you cut it close, but then you expected Nedda home for dinner hours earlier. Charles Butler’s fault. He invited her to a poker game.”
The detective busied herself with picking up all the spilled diaries and putting them back into the suitcase. “Let’s see. More crimes. Oh, right—the night of the fire? You turned out the lights at the basement fuse box. There was an old flashlight kept on that box. The arson investigator found it in your closet. Did you think you’d have time to plant the flashlight in someone else’s room after your aunt died?”
“The fire was accidental.”
“I know. So what were you planning for Nedda that night? A fall down the stairs? No, too uncertain. Most people survive that sort of tumble. You were the one who pointed that out on the night of the dinner party.” Mallory reached back into the suitcase and pulled out a diary. “It’s all here. Your aunt was a great one for detail. You planned to push Nedda over the banister, right? According to you, that’s the way Edwina Winter died, a tried-and-true method.” She opened the diary and turned the pages. “Here it is. Nedda describes you rushing Charles Butler at the banister. For a minute there, she thought he’d go over the rail. That was your dress rehearsal, Bitty. For the real thing, you had to pull the fuses—turn off every light. It’s the only way you could do a murder—behind the back and in the dark. The prime suspects would be Cleo and Lionel. But now that they’re dead, you inherit everything. Good motive for arson.”
“But you know it was an accident.”
“The fire was where it all went wrong, wasn’t it? The smoke and flames. You panicked. You ran up the stairs instead of down. Yes, I believe it was an accident. You’d never take t
hat kind of risk. But, once again, Bitty, will the jury believe you?”
Mallory paced the floor, snapping her fingers. “Stay with me, Bitty. Do the math. Willy Roy Boyd counts as the first murder charge. When the arson investigation is finished, the body count will stand at five.” She ripped a sheet from the wall. “This is the autopsy report on your father. It links the trauma of the fire to a fatal heart attack. Every death by arson is murder.”
“It was an accident!”
The detective smiled, and Bitty grasped the irony before it was voiced.
“After years of planning and scheming, you’ll get tripped up by something you didn’t do. But you did pull out the fuses and hide the spares. You lit the candles that set the house on fire—and those people died. Do you think I care if you only planned to kill one of them?” Mallory’s voice was calm and all one note, almost bored as she walked along the wall, tearing off more sheets in quick succession. “So now I’ve got you for patricide, matricide, the murders of your aunt and uncle and Willy Roy Boyd. Too bad you couldn’t commit mass murder in another borough. Now the Queens DA won’t kill anybody, not even cop killers. But the Manhattan DA loves the death penalty.”
The wave of Mallory’s hand encompassed all the chaos of the wall and the suitcase of diaries. “Now you might remember this from a law class you didn’t sleep through. The DA calls it a preponderance of evidence. The sheer weight of it is enough to crush you to death. And there’s more. Juries love things they can hold in their hands, like the fuses and the spares you hid by the garden door. That’s what really sealed the arson finding. Then there’s the pack of diaries.”
“Aunt Nedda was insane. She had a history of—”
“No, according to Dr. Butler, all those diaries were written by a perfectly sane woman. So—things the jury can hold on to. There’s the flashlight—and the fire ax with your fingerprints on it.”
“You know why my prints are on the ax. I used it to—”
“Yeah, right. Little Sally Winter’s bones. That was another nice touch, Bitty. Some malicious slander to paint Cleo and Lionel as the kind of people who could murder a child. Why not Nedda? What you don’t know is that your mother was on the phone with my partner before the fire broke out. She was making plans to surrender the trunk to the coroner’s office in the morning. Cleo and Lionel only wanted to know how long it would be before the family could bury that little girl’s remains. That was all they cared about. Finally—a proper burial for Sally Winter.”
“You know I used that ax to get Sally’s trunk out of the closet.”
“Right, that’s what you said in your statement, but we only have your word on that. Your mother never mentioned you. So the DA will argue that you used that ax to keep those frightened people from escaping a burning house.”
“No, there was a witness who saw Nedda carry me out. I was unconscious. I couldn’t have stopped anyone from leaving if—”
“A witness? You mean the homeless man who called in the fire? The arson team went looking for him. Turns out someone bought him a train ticket to a warmer climate. Now where was I? Oh, right—the prosecutor’s closing remarks. He’ll paint a picture of you swinging that ax, scaring those poor people, driving them up the stairs and then setting the fire to trap them there. When he’s done with the jury, they’ll want to climb out of their box and kill you with their hands.”
“Is that what you’d like to do?”
“No.” Mallory shrugged. “It’s all the same to me—nothing personal, just a job.” She handed Bitty a small white card. “This has your Miranda rights. You’re under arrest. Read the card fast, Bitty. We have to go.”
“I know what you’re doing, Detective. So transparent. You want to scare me into a plea bargain—a guaranteed conviction instead of risking a lost trial.”
“No, I’ve never known a lawyer to confess to anything. And I’m counting on that. So is the district attorney.”
“You expect me to believe that all this—this spectacle—and what you did to my bird, nailing him to a wall—that was just fun for you?”
“Yes,” said Mallory, “that’s exactly what it was.”
Bitty wished that this young woman would not smile. It was so unsettling. And those eyes. It crossed her mind that the detective might be seriously disturbed. Or was this calculated—just another part of the show?
“Now,” said Mallory, “I’ll tell you what’s going to happen to you, and that’ll be fun, too. The courts might unfreeze just enough money for a reasonable criminal defense. They will not give you millions of dollars to buy legal talent. When your cut-rate attorney sees the trial going sour, he’ll try to plead you out on the weaker case, the murder for hire, one death—Willy Roy Boyd. You’d be Nedda’s age when you got out of prison, but you’d be alive. Here’s the snag. Once the trial has started and all the facts are out, the DA can’t accept a plea on a lesser charge. He’s a political animal—it’s an election year—the voters would crucify him. You see the beauty of it, Bitty? You won’t plea-bargain until your case is sinking. But the DA can’t settle for less than mass murder and the death penalty, not if he’s winning. And—he—can’t—lose.”
The detective slung a coat over one arm, then picked up the suitcase of diaries. “We have to go now.” She consulted a pocket watch. “You’ll be arraigned tonight. What’s your plea?”
This was the showdown or at least a countdown of sorts, for Bitty was tensing her body as Mallory tapped off the passing seconds with the toe of one shoe.
“Time’s up.”
The electric lights went out, leaving only the illumination from the skylight dome. Bright motes of dust swirled around Mallory, catching light and endowing her with a cylindrical aura. As the detective moved forward, Bitty backed out of the room, slowly retreating to the foyer, where the body of the dead bird was staked to the wall, but all she could see was the detective crossing the front room, coming closer and growing in height and mass with each footfall.
Oddly enough, a stone weight was rising from Bitty’s breast. Her nerves had calmed, and she could breathe more easily. She called out to Mallory, almost defiant, “You lied to me! This case was personal, wasn’t it?”
Mallory had been all too right about one thing: Bitty had no intention of pleading guilty to any charge. Done with hysterics, she was coolly plotting the destruction of the case against her, all circumstantial evidence. And, if she could not win at trial, she would win on appeal. If she confessed, all was lost. Her last thought was that the detective could read her mind and sense the rebirth of hope.
The suitcase dropped from Mallory’s hand to the floor.
Bitty knew this moment would be burned into memory until the day she died. Years from now, she might recall the angry young avenger standing there with a great sword in her right hand. And perhaps that peculiar fantasy would arise from a glint of gunmetal in the shoulder holster—that coupled with this stunning sight of Mallory with eyes burning bright and hair disheveled, as if she had just stepped from the whirlwind.
Only now, as the last few steps between them were closing, did Bitty understand that this case was indeed a personal matter to Mallory, that some great harm had been done to this young woman, deep damage beyond the evidence of her broken left hand. Oh, her eyes—that fixed stare, a cat’s dare for the mouse to move, even to twitch. And the gun in her right hand was on the rise.
BANG!
13
LIEUTENANT COFFEY SAT IN A COP BAR ON GREENE street, downing straight shots of bourbon with his senior detective. The mood was not celebratory, though Riker believed that Mallory would never be punished for what she had done.
The lieutenant lifted his head to pose a question, one that could only be asked at that point of inebriation where he had hopes of forgetting the answer by the time his hangover kicked in. “What the hell happened? The real story?”
“What’d Buchanan tell you?”
“I never asked for his version. I want yours.”
“Okay
.” Since the lieutenant was buying, Riker ordered another round. “That morning, we laid it all out for the district attorney, more evidence than he’s ever seen for one case—a ton of documentation. Buchanan didn’t care. He refused to prosecute Bitty Smyth. Little coward. He was actually afraid to risk losing the biggest case of his career—in an election year. Can you beat that? After all this work, what does he say to us? He says it’s all circumstantial.”
“He was right,” said Coffey.
Riker ignored this because it was true. “So Mallory says the whole package is enough to bury Bitty Smyth. Buchanan says no. He says juries are too stupid to follow her evidence. It would be a fight just to keep ’em awake long enough to present the case.”
“The man’s right again,” said Coffey.
“So Mallory asks him, point blank, ‘What’s it gonna take?’ Then Buchanan says, ‘Bring me a full confession. ’” Riker slammed the flat of his hand on the bar. “And that’s exactly what she did. That afternoon, we went to Winter House to wire the place for sound.”
“I don’t remember listening to any tapes, Riker.”
“Never got a chance to plant the mikes. Bitty showed up as soon as the last cop car pulled away from the house.” In other words, no tape was better than an edited tape. He did not hold with the idea of tampering with evidence.
After a go-around with Bitty Smyth, the detectives had returned to the DA’s office and handed the woman’s confession to Buchanan along with the terms of a plea bargain.
“And then,” said Riker, “Buchanan really pushed his luck. He told us he wouldn’t accept the confession. Said it was probably obtained under duress. That pompous little weasel never even talked to Bitty Smyth. He didn’t know squat.”
“Was he right?”
Winter House Page 32
