Blind Sight
Page 3
Given more than a nodding acquaintance with Crazy, Mallory had to ask how this woman fancied chances for the survival of Sister Michael and Jonah. “Are they dead or alive?”
“Dead!” This firm vote revealed no guilt, but perhaps the opinion that a nun and a little boy could deserve to lose their lives. Then Mrs. Quill added, “Dead and gone to God,” a slightly better outcome, though offered up with less enthusiasm.
—
THE WALLS WERE BRICK. The door was metal. The grown-ups were dead.
Jonah had stepped on their flung-out arms and legs while mapping this chilly room that was fifteen steps square. A queasy horror. And now the stink of them was dulled by clogs of snot brought on by the boy’s crying. He had found his aunt among the corpses.
By touch, he had recognized a long robe and veil, but he knew it was Aunt Angie by the smallest finger of her right hand, broken in her childhood and crooked out at the knuckle. Jonah had held this hand so many times. He could never mistake it for any other.
She had gone away when he was seven years old. For five years, he had waited for her in the fantasy of She Comes Back—and here she was.
He kissed her crooked finger.
High on the wall and beyond his reach, the loud motor started up again with the death rattle of an old machine, its parts clacking, broken or breaking down, but still churning out more blasts of cold air. Shivering, Jonah laid his body down beside his aunt. She gave him comfort—and warmth. Her wide robe was generous enough to cover him, too. “Thank you.”
Pieces of a day were missing. Or was it two days? His internal clock was broken. There was a rumble in his stomach, but the thought of food made him want to puke. Was his brain busted, too? Dumbed down? Only now he thought to wonder what had happened to him—to her.
How could she be dead?
Aunt Angie knew how to fight. On her way out of his life, she had taught him that fingernails could draw blood, thumbs could gouge out eyes, and a kick to the balls could put a man in a world of hurt. And then she had walked out the door to catch a bus to God’s house.
Had she known then what was coming—who was coming?
Her killer would never suspect him until it was too late. He could walk right up to that sick bastard and play helpless—just a kid, right?—and then nail him. Kill him? Yes! Beneath the blanket of the shared robe, Jonah’s fists made one-two punches. No fear. Aunt Angie was with him, keeping him warm, teaching him how to draw blood and bring on pain. His aunt’s side of this conversation was made up from saved-away memories of her, the sound of her, but all the words had the ring of true things. He knew what she would say to every—
The air conditioner shut down. Now a new sound. Metal on metal. A squeak to a door hinge. And the dead woman’s voice inside his head screamed, That’s him!
The boy shook off the robe and sat up.
Footsteps. Heavy ones. Aunt Angie sang out, Get ready!
Jonah was shaking and shot through with freaking cold, heart-a-banging panic.
The footsteps stopped a few paces into the room. Jonah rocked his body like a toddler with a wooden horse between his legs. The hard-soled shoes were crossing the floor, coming for him. They were here! Now the smell of cigarette breath. So close. Puffs of stinky air on his face.
Close enough! yelled Aunt Angie.
A man’s deeper voice, a real one, said, “You can’t see.”
Jonah, get him!
Sorry, so sorry, but he could not do that. He was crazy scared. A small bottle of sloshing liquid was pressed into his hands—a reward for getting the rules right in a world where twelve-year-old boys were always outmatched by grown men. Sorry.
The bottled water tasted odd. No matter. So thirsty. Jonah drank it, gulped it down. All gone now. His rocking slowed—and stopped. His fear ebbed away, dulling down to nothing. Sleep was creeping up on him.
Behind him was the man’s hard-sole step. Stepping over the other bodies? Light plops. Dull scrapes. A quick shuffle of shoes. The door opened and closed, shoes leaving and coming back again—and again. More steps and shuffles, rustles and—what?
No! Jonah shook his head, shaking off a mind-muddling fog.
He reached for Aunt Angie’s hand. No, no, no—she was sliding away, leaving him. Her body was dragged across the floor faster than he could crawl after her. Not fair! He rose up on his knees, as much of a stand as he could manage, and his hands balled into fists. “Give her back!”
The door went BANG!
And the boy fell, toppling to one side. Sleep came on so fast. He never felt the pain of hard ground rushing up to meet him with a knock to the head that said, Good night!
2
The trees of Carl Schurz Park gave cover to Gracie Mansion, the official residence of the mayor. In the small hours of the morning, an alarm had sounded, and now this eighteenth-century landmark and its adjoining wing were surrounded by sheets of plastic tied off on ten-foot poles. Above this curtain, only the upper half of the extension building could be seen by civilians on East End Avenue. They saw nothing of the more secluded yellow mansion that overlooked the channel waters of Hell Gate—and the corpses stacked up on the lawn.
Members of the hazmat team were visible through the cloudy plastic as they moved about in helmets and bulky white suits that were sealed to protect them against deadly gasses and flesh-eating viruses or come what may.
On the broad sidewalk across the street, their audience was sporting Sunday-best T-shirts, shorts and summer dresses. The atmosphere turned festive as the crowd applauded the first sighting of bright-colored umbrellas attached to rolling carts. Food vendors had turned out to cater this new threat to public health and safety. Men in aprons hawked their wares along the roadbed, first servicing the front lines. Then hungry buyers at the rear sent their money forward, hand-to-hand, and bags of bagels and coffee were handed back to them.
Men and women in dark suits held up the IDs of Homeland Security, and they yelled at the civilians, ordering them to move on. Predictably, these federal agents were ignored. The menace implied by moon suits had scared off out-of-towners, but not blasé natives who always formed a crowd for the prospect of sudden death in New York City. And, damn it, it was time for brunch.
Behind the backs of the shouting agents, a cadre of uniformed police officers stood in a line down the center of the avenue, and they all wore smirks of We told you so, you stupid bastards. The NYPD knew how to do crowd control. And, clearly, the federal government did not.
Some civilians with curbside views sat on canvas camp stools sold from a cart with merchandise that included paper fans and sun visors. Most of the crowd remained standing, growing restless as they watched the slow, blurry movements of the hazmat team. New York attitude was in the air, and it demanded, Hey, let’s get on with the show!
—
TWO DETECTIVES STOOD behind the gawkers. One wore an out-of-date suit that spoke well of him as a civil servant who lived within his means, though, truth be told, Riker hated shopping and had let it slide for years.
He gave his partner a gallant wave that said, Ladies first, so he could use tall Mallory as a wedge to move through this tightly packed mob. People tended to get out of her way, and not because they respected the badge or her tailored threads—or the running shoes that cost more than Riker’s entire closet, shoes thrown in. The whole package said that she was somebody, but the Mallory effect on crowds was more than that. When she wanted to jangle a civilian—like right now—she dropped every pretense of being human and walked toward the poor bastard, as if she meant to walk right through him, and this was all that was needed to inspire that man’s wary backwards dance.
Just a hint of crazy got a world of respect in this town, though there were detectives in the Special Crimes Unit who suspected that Kathy Mallory was not hinting. She might be the real deal. Riker believed she knew this and encouraged it in the same way th
at the clothes on her back flaunted the idea of a cop who might be dirty.
She liked her games. She played them well.
When they reached the street, Riker ignored the government suits—so as not to lose face with the cops on the line. He spoke to the uniform with the sergeant’s stripe, “What’s up, Murray? You got a body count?”
“Yeah, I seen four of ’em in there.” The sergeant glanced at officers to his left and right, indicating that this was not a good time to thank him for a tip on a dead nun. “The security cameras are useless—blacked out with paintballs. But I know the perp was wearing NYPD blue last night. On the other side of the park, we found a cop knocked out cold and stripped down to his skivvies.”
Mallory was distracted by an argument half a block away. It looked to be one-sided, no fists in play yet, but getting there. Riker also watched this scene as a government agent, red in the face, rose off the balls of his feet, trying so hard to be taller. The fed was outsized by the man who set a Gladstone bag down on the sidewalk at his booted feet. Chief Medical Examiner Edward Slope ripped off his protective helmet and gloves. The doctor’s anger was more dignified—and more effective. The flat of one raised hand silenced the younger, shorter man from Homeland Security. Now it was Dr. Slope’s turn to vent, and the federal agent came down from his tiptoes.
“A scam.” Without hearing one clear word, Mallory had the gist of the ME’s complaint. “Those moon suits are just for show, right?”
“That’s my guess,” said Sergeant Murray. “What we got in there is weird, but it’s got shit to do with germs or poison gas. I figure the mayor wanted to keep people outta the park . . . on a Sunday. Well, forget that.” With a nod toward the plastic curtain, he said, “So one of those clowns in there called out the hazmat team. Figured that’d scare ’em off.” He turned back to the bagel-noshing sidewalk crowd. “Do they look scared to you?”
Since diplomacy was not his partner’s forte, Riker walked down the street to join the kiddie agent in charge of false alarms and circuses. The detective offered this youngster the carrot of being addressed as a grown-up. “Look, pal, I know you got jerked around today, but don’t go off on anybody else, okay? We need some leverage here. Just pack up the moon suits and go.”
“Somebody’s gotta pay for dragging out the whole damn—”
“Me and my partner, we can make that happen. We can make the pack of ’em wish they’d never screwed with you.” In the hierarchy of New York City, this was a fairy tale, but the young agent seemed to like the story.
—
EDWARD SLOPE’S shed hazmat suit was carried off by Homeland Security agents, and now the chief medical examiner wore only the uniform of a Sunday backyard barbecuer. Never mind loud—his Hawaiian shirt shrieked color. Even so, he was the most distinguished man on the scene. Silver-haired and tall, he had the posture and bark of a general as he issued orders to his minions, who had been waiting on the sidelines all this time. The ME had entered the red zone alone; he thought most of his people were idiots, but they were his idiots, and he would never put them in harm’s way. At the top of the short driveway, two of them pulled aside the plastic curtain, and a gurney stacked with body bags wheeled past them.
Dr. Slope lowered his voice to speak with Riker and Mallory. “A very egalitarian killer. The victims are different genders, races, ages. I’d call it pointedly random.”
The doctor marched into the tented area, and the detectives followed him past the gatehouse, beyond the extension building and along one side of the yellow mansion. At the turn of this corner, the plastic curtain was torn down to give them a view of the river beyond a wide circle of manicured grass.
Three corpses lay facedown in a careless pile at the foot of the stairs to the veranda and the mayor’s front door. An old woman’s stark white face was pressed to the brown hand of a young man’s body, and his head was pillowed on feet that stuck out from beneath him. Most notable among the dead was the fourth corpse, Sister Michael, also known as Angela Quill. This body had been rolled over and set apart from the rest.
Riker pulled out his notebook and pen. “Likely weapon?”
“A knife,” said Dr. Slope. “But when this was called in, I was told that a doctor on the scene had identified symptoms of sarin gas. In a pig’s eye. And that doctor turned out to be a press secretary. I want her charged with falsifying—”
“Okay,” said Riker. “We’ll talk to her.”
“Too late. I did the honors. You’ll find that little moron locked in a bathroom. She was crying—but still alive when I was done with her.”
“Yeah?” Riker suppressed a grin. Liar. A gentleman to the core, Dr. Slope would never make a woman cry. Though Mallory might make the doctor’s lie come true soon enough.
Most of the grassy land was enclosed by a tall fence of iron bars with pointed spikes, all but a section of redbrick wall that separated the mansion’s lawn from the public area of the park. This was the lowest and likeliest access. The detective reached out to snag the arm of a man he knew, a passing crime-scene investigator. “Hey, Rizzo. I know our perp didn’t toss the bodies over the wall. No crushed bushes, no drag marks on the grass. So what’s the deal here?”
“You gotta see this, or you’ll think I’m lying.” Rizzo led him around the south corner of the mansion and pointed to a jog in the brick wall, where another CSI was photographing a narrow iron gate that joined the two sections. “It was secured with—”
“A damn padlock?” It lay on the ground at Riker’s feet—broken. Flimsy piece of crap.
“Yeah. Breaking in here—that’s three second’s work with the right tool. One of the guys on park patrol tells me this is the hooker entrance. The uniforms don’t go near it after dark. Mayor Polk thinks they might scare off his call girls.” CSI Rizzo pointed to the concrete stairwell leading down to the basement of the mansion’s wing, and no words were needed. This entry point could be seen by any visitor on the park side of the gate’s iron bars. It was an open invitation to any lunatic passing by.
“I see it—and I still don’t believe it,” said Riker. “Did the perp get inside last night?”
“Nope, no sign of entry anywhere but this gate. Your guy just dumped the bodies and left.” On their way back to the front lawn, the man from Crime Scene Unit said, “Here’s the real weak spot—no adults in charge of mansion security. The mayor’s protection detail answers to the commissioner, and—”
“And he answers to the mayor,” said Riker. “Got it.”
When the dead bodies were in sight, Rizzo stopped, and he had to ask, “What’s your partner doing?” As if it were not plain enough.
“She’s smelling corpses,” said Riker.
Mallory had finished with the nun, and now, as the ME’s team rolled the other bodies, she leaned down to sniff each one in turn. Done with that, she said, “So . . . not a spree killing.”
“No,” said the chief medical examiner. “All different stages of decomp. There’s signs of dehydration, too—except for the last kill. She’s the most disturbing one.” Dr. Slope looked down at the corpse in nun’s regalia. The young woman’s large gray eyes were open, and she wore a faint, sly smile. “I’m going to see that in my sleep for a long time.”
—
MALLORY AND HER PARTNER stood on the veranda of Gracie Mansion in a face-off with a lanky young man who wore a bow tie and a sneer.
The mayor’s aide, Samuel Tucker, was puffed up with all the importance of an entitled frat boy from some college of fastidious twits. He inspected their gold shields, squinting as if that might help him spot fakes—or germs. The aide then informed the detectives that they were not on the approved list for the meeting inside. He glanced at Riker’s suit with a moue of distaste. Clearly, that detective would not even make the cut for those allowed to enter by the front door on any occasion. He shrugged as if to say, Perhaps the back door? But not today.
Now that Tucker understood his true place in the world—not rising to the kneecap of a cockroach—he scrambled over the patterned floor, racing past the detectives to give the appearance of leading them into the library, a smaller room that might be misnamed, as it contained only a handful of books. It was a museum scheme of turquoise walls, white trim and period furnishings from the gaslight era. A dozen people milled around in a mix of suits and weekend wear. The aide walked through the low babble of conversations to approach one of the paired blue love seats in front of the fireplace, where he leaned down to whisper in the mayor’s ear.
His Honor Andrew Polk was nearly fifty, but his brown hair had not one strand of gray, and Mallory pronounced it an excellent dye job. He was reported to be five-feet-four, but that might be too generous a measure for this little man with the tiny shiny eyes of a rodent. He wore the casual clothes of a Sunday sailor, and his canvas shoes tapped out the beat of nerves on the fray—or maybe this was just a sign of irritation with the man bending over him. Hands clasped together, Polk nodded at something his aide had just said.
Seated beside the city’s top politician was a fair-haired man, a decade younger and miles better looking. He sported a suntan to match the mayor’s, though no one would peg him as a fellow yachtsman, not dressed in that suit, a very nice one—and expensive for a man of the cloth. This could only be the cardinal’s man, Father DuPont, another politician. And Mallory could put that suntan down to rounds of whacking balls on a golf green, the favored political venue of churchmen currying and bestowing favor. The priest’s expression was somber to fit the occasion of finding a dead nun on the doorstep.