Blind Sight

by Carol O'Connell

  And all was right with the world of His Honor Andrew Polk.

  The phone pulsed again. This call could only be from his nitwit aide. It was predictable that Tuck would grovel for being late to the lawyer’s office and— No, not Tuck.

  He stared at the image on his cell-phone screen—a picture of young Jonah Quill holding a newspaper and posed against the backdrop of a cloudless blue sky. The companion text was short, only three words, proof of life.

  Well, this was different. The previous ransom demands had come by snail mail of more expansive text accompanied by printed photographs. Each stamped postal date had preceded one for packaged proof of a murder. This electronic dispatch indicated urgency of lost patience and imminent death for a little boy. Yet the mayor only contemplated his list of those with access to this cell-phone number—a short list—which made this new demand rather risky.

  And exciting.

  The kidnapper was obviously coming undone and rushing his play. Or maybe—even better—this guy knew that Gracie Mansion was full of investigators from the Crime Scene Unit, some of them only a few feet away.

  So delicious—like going naked in public.

  Given only television ideas of police procedure, Andrew Polk was certain that this cell-phone communication could be traced, and the child could be brought home safe with his heart still beating inside him.

  It was an exquisite moment, one to be savored.

  And then—click, click—the photograph and the text were deleted.

  11

  They should not call it a bell. It did not ring—it shrieked like an alarm for a house afire.

  Charles Butler stood at the epicenter of Jonah Quill’s milieu. Pandemonium! He pressed his back to the guidance counselor’s door as children poured out of classrooms to jostle one another, jockeying for the fast track along the hallway, their shouts and conversations all around him. Up and down this corridor, the metal doors of lockers opened and slammed shut. There was a jailbreak energy in the air.

  He imagined Jonah in this swarm, tensing, anticipating the last bell and flight into summer vacation. Freedom. At this day’s end, they would all hightail it out of here and into the sunlight. Places to go. An endless afternoon, and they could not use it up fast enough.

  Reverie broken, a door opened behind him, and a little red-haired girl left the guidance counselor’s office. Oh, so many freckles. And tears.

  Dr. Eunice Purcell invited Charles in—and out of the fray.

  This morning’s interview had been scheduled at the behest of Detective Janos, who believed that this woman might be more forthcoming if a fellow psychologist asked the questions. Thus Charles, a man with a boxcar line of Ph.D.s, shook hands with Dr. Purcell, thin and gray in her sixtieth year. Her dress was conservative, her posture ruler-straight, and her face was stern—until he smiled. And then, confronted with the tall frog-eyed man who grinned like a halfwit, she smiled, too, albeit against her will, for the lady was on the defensive once they were seated at opposite sides of her desk.

  “I did cooperate with the police. I answered all their questions . . . twice.” She handed him a thick manila folder. “I only refused to give them a copy of Jonah’s file. Feel free to leaf through it, but I can’t allow you to take it with you.”

  Charles was already pilfering the file, committing each line of text to eidetic memory. Only pages in, he knew the boy was intelligent, not a genius IQ, but most children had a genius for something or other. They were all brilliant liars. However, there was not enough here to make an assessment of survival skills. Most important was Jonah’s behavior under stress, and there was no clue to that, either. Perhaps the most intimate things were not written down. “Dr. Purcell, his uncle is the only one listed under family contacts. Did he ever speak to you about—”

  “The nun? Before Jonah disappeared, I didn’t know his aunt existed.”

  The boy’s file logged numerous visits to this guidance counselor, but he never confided in her? Or was this woman protecting a child’s privacy? Trolling for his answer, he asked, “Did Jonah ever come to you with serious problems?”

  Correctly inferring an insult, she put some ice in her voice. “He’s seriously in love with Lucinda Wells. The girl who just left. I give him tips for staying on her good side. It’s a bad day for Jonah when they have a falling-out.”

  The boy was clearly a favorite of Dr. Purcell’s, and yet, “Here it says he’s spent a lot of time in detention.”

  “Yes, our new headmaster is humorless, and Jonah writes a humor column for the school newspaper—so they’re natural enemies. But here’s where the boy gets into trouble. He doesn’t think Mr. Keller’s smart enough to pick up on a twelve-year-old’s idea of double entendre. Half the time, he’s right about that. And the other half—Jonah does detention.”

  “When you say they’re enemies—”

  “Well, no one likes the headmaster. He’s an authoritarian ass. I think most of the children would like to get rid of him—if they could only get a gun past the metal detector.”

  Dr. Purcell was nothing if not candid—in some respects. However, in regard to what he needed from her, she was a vault.

  Charles closed the file and set it on her desk. “I don’t suppose you’d care to tell me why Lucinda Wells was crying?” When the woman shook her head, he knew the little girl had not wept for the obvious reason—missing Jonah. On to the next most obvious thing, he said, “If she’s keeping secrets, holding something back, something the police would—” Yes, he had gotten that right. Dr. Purcell made no response as she rose from her desk.

  He was being dismissed.

  —

  AH, A FUGITIVE.

  The little redhead was perched on the middle step between the school’s front door and the sidewalk below, perhaps trapped there by indecision. Should she stay till the final bell of the day—or run like mad?

  “Miss Wells?” Charles smiled, but the girl never saw this, his most winning trick. Her head bowed with some great weight as he sat down beside her to offer his card. It identified him as a police consultant to the NYPD.

  “It should say you’re Dr. Butler.” She pointed to the line of academic credentials following his name.

  “I never cared much for titles. Call me Charles.” And then he learned that, like himself, she had no nickname. Just as he had never been a Chuck or a Charlie, she was neither Luce, nor Lucy, but always Lucinda, and this was followed by a comparison of notes on the downsides and upsides of being two of a kind—outsiders.

  He plucked a bit of data from Dr. Purcell’s memorized file. “I understand you’re Jonah’s designated walker.”

  She nodded. “But he doesn’t need anyone to get him to classes. He had the whole school mapped out when he was nine years old. . . . You know, there’s a lot more to it than counting steps. His maps aren’t like yours and mine. They’re three-dimensional. Everything has height, length, width. All the rooms in his life are stored in 3-D memory—three dimensions he can’t see.”

  Charles already knew how the blind repurposed the brain’s visual cortex for sense perception and spatial relationships, and it was fascinating, but so was Lucinda. She was a rare one. Few people could grasp that paradox as she did, and it added to his understanding of her bond with Jonah. “You’re still listed as his designated walker. So . . . sometimes you find that useful?” It would allow the two children to spend more time with each other. He could see them holding hands in the halls, their desks always side-by-side in class, two heads leaning close together in a covert exchange of whispers.

  “I use it to do detention with Jonah.”

  Charles now learned that this forced attendance on Saturday mornings could be very tedious without a friend along for company. And still, she would have him know that the hours passed like years. Phones and tablets were confiscated at the door by the headmaster, who personally, joyfully presided ov
er these gatherings of at least ten children doing penance for the smallest infractions of rules. And one boy was condemned to do more time in this hell of boredom than any other student.

  “I think Mr. Keller had a real hate on for Jonah. But detention petered out after the thing with the spider.” She raised her face to his. “Did Dr. Purcell tell you about the tarantula?”

  “No, she didn’t.” There were probably many things Dr. Purcell had failed to mention. “I rather like spiders myself.”

  “So does Jonah. Well, he likes old Aggy. She lives in the science lab. She’s really very sweet. In spider years, Aggy’s in her nineties. Slow. Harmless. But the headmaster’s new. He didn’t know that. So, when Jonah walked into detention . . . with the tarantula on his head, Mr. Keller was petrified.” Lucinda slapped a concrete step to the beat of “He—could—not—move.” The little girl was smiling now, reliving a particularly happy moment. “When that big hairy spider crawled down Jonah’s face, the headmaster wet his pants.” And apparently she had so enjoyed that great dark stain spreading on Mr. Keller’s crotch. “Detention ended early that day.”

  Her smile faded off. She looked down at her hands.

  Somber again.

  And so was Charles. He now had a portrait of a resourceful boy, a planner, a plotter and, worse luck, a—

  Lucinda stood up, eyes shiny, watery, and she stepped lightly down to the pavement, saying over one shoulder, “I hope Jonah’s behaving himself.” The little girl ran to the subway entrance at the end of the block and disappeared down the stairs below the sidewalk.

  Evidently, she foresaw the same grave problem of a child who would take on an adult opponent.

  —

  IGGY CONROY killed a little time in an East Village plaza bordered by traffic lanes and famed for a giant black cube that stood on point, attracting tourists and homegrown roller boarders. There were no police in sight, not that they would take any notice of him today, though he hardly blended in with this crowd.

  In a reversal of fashion sense, he had dressed up to visit the summer scene of T-shirts and sandals on St. Marks Place. He wore lace-up shoes, a white linen shirt and a tie. Dark glasses hid his eyes, his most striking feature. And so his old-fashioned straw boater would be the only stand-out memory of witnesses as he made his way along the first block, checking names posted by intercoms on the street doors. His outfit was almost cop-proof. The police were so busy looking for hiders lying low and acting shifty, he would have been invisible to them if he had worn a clown suit today.

  This was the neighborhood where Angie Quill had grown up, so said the boy. She had lied about bedding down in an Alphabet City squat, one she had claimed to share with her hooker buddies and the roaches. All her free time had gone to the kid, keeping close to home, keeping him safe from his fruitcake grandmother.

  Iggy climbed ten steps to stand on the stoop of a brownstone and read the names posted on a panel by the street door. He pretended to push a few buttons, and he mouthed words to no one on the silent intercoms. The bag of religious pamphlets slung over one shoulder gave him the perfect cover for this kind of reconnaissance. Few New Yorkers would buzz in a stranger peddling God off the street, and no one would find it odd if he never entered a single building. Four doors away, he found the buzzer labeled for Mrs. Quill, and his search was over. But then he went on to the next building, and the next, because there were cameras everywhere these days—and the cops might be watching.

  —

  DETECTIVE JANOS COULD ONLY LISTEN. His eyes were on the clock as he patiently heard out Charles Butler’s lengthy report on what he had learned at the school. It was not good news for Jonah Quill.

  Funny kid.

  Good as dead.

  Janos needed to end this conversation before his favorite shrink could ask any questions. He did not want to be the one to tell Charles that Mallory had locked him out of case details. “I gotta hang up. Thanks.”

  Oh, more trouble. Jonah Quill’s girlfriend was hovering on the threshold of the stairwell door. Lucinda, a paragon of perfect attendance, was ditching class on the last day of school. By the looks of her, she carried a world of worry into the squad room.

  The girl walked toward the only woman here, wrongly believing good things about that cop’s whole gender. And before Janos could sing out, No, don’t, Lucinda sat down in the chair by Mallory’s desk, announcing that she had come to make a confession. Janos hurried across the room to stand behind the schoolgirl, looming over her like a great hulking nanny.

  After Mallory had made a cool appraisal of the twelve-year-old’s watering eyes and fidgeting signs of guilt, she asked, “Do you like chocolate?”

  Yes, Lucinda did.

  Janos trailed the two of them down the hall to the lunchroom, home of the snack machine and every kind of chocolate bar known to God and the NYPD. Mallory and Lucinda sat down at a table—for two. And he was not slow to take this hint that his company was unwanted. However, with great discretion, he made repeated walks past the open doorway.

  Just checking in.

  Over time, candy wrappers accumulated on the tabletop, and the young visitor was showing no indication of stress. No tears.

  Janos went off to rethink Mallory for a while.

  Another half hour passed before cop and child reappeared in the squad room. Lucinda was walking taller, even smiling as the two of them approached the stairwell door, where a uniformed officer waited to take the little lady back to school.

  Mallory watched the girl and her escort descend the stairs, and when they were out of earshot, she said, “You wondered why the kids didn’t know about Jonah’s aunt? His uncle told him not to tell anyone, but never said why. The boy only knew it was a secret. . . . But Jonah tells that girl everything.”

  “The uncle’s holding out on us?” Well, this shored up the theory that Angie had known her killer. Who hides having a nun in the family—unless the nun is in hiding? Harold Quill had become a constant fixture in the squad room. Janos and other cops had shared meals with the man, sympathized with him, all but held his damn hand while that miserable little bastard— “Excuse me. I have to go shoot a guy.” The detective was on his way to the lieutenant’s office, where Quill was making himself at home, watching the news channel on the boss’s TV. No one had ever seen Janos lose his temper. That was not his way. But today, this minute—

  Mallory’s hand was on his arm, feather light but weight enough to restrain him. “Not now,” she said. “Let me pick your moment. We’ll do Uncle Harry up right. I know a way to carve out his guts and make him screaming crazy. . . . You’ll like it.”

  Janos inclined his head, almost a courtly bow to her, the squad’s undisputed champion of retaliation.

  —

  “YOU’RE RIGHT, KID. Girls don’t play fair.” Foot-long hotdogs sizzled on the barbecue grill, and Iggy rolled them for an even burn. “Makes a guy nuts when they won’t even say what you done wrong. But when she called you a jerk? Hey, that’s just another way of callin’ you a guy. It ain’t a bad thing. It’s the cold shoulder that bugs me.” Done with his condolences on the issue of girlfriends, Iggy moved on to the other woman in the boy’s life. “So, what about your aunt? She ever make you nuts with the silent treatment?”

  It took the kid a while to come up with an answer to that one. He hung his head, just like the dog, a sure sign of guilt when he said, “No, she always talked to me. . . . But I don’t remember her laughing much. Even after we left Granny’s place, she was never all that happy. I think it was my fault . . . because she had to take me with her.”

  For the first time, the boy did not seem anxious about silence. He only sat there with his thoughts, sad ones by the look of him. And then came a surprise to end that lag in the conversation. The kid was done with the subject of what girls want, and he was on to the next mystery of life—sudden death.

  “What’s it like t
o murder people?”

  —

  LIEUTENANT COFFEY stood at the center of the squad room, counting noses. Only one no-show. Damn Mallory. He had seen her in the building just a few minutes ago.

  “Okay, guys.” Such tired guys. Some of them held their heads up with both hands. “We started out with a sick freak and random kills. Now we got four hearts labeled proof of death—big, bold letters.” And those hearts had surely passed through the mayor’s hands before they hit the water. Down at One Police Plaza, another squad, the one that should handle every kidnap for ransom, was disputing the whole idea that proof of death might have been preceded by proof of life and a demand for cash. “Major Case bowed out after we tied the kid to the body dump at the mansion. No help there.”

  Candy-ass bastards. Those downtown dicks would never ruin a perfect record for bringing every kidnap-for-ransom victim back alive—their house specialty. No, four corpses would have marred their scorecard. Pricks.

  Some of his men leaned on walls or furniture, but most of them sat at their desks, the easier to lie down their tired heads if their commander would only shut up.

  “We’re still working the background check, boss.” Sanger was the only cop on the squad who wore diamonds. His earring and the pinkie ring were the bling of early years working undercover in Narcotics. And sometimes it seemed like this detective was competing with Mallory’s wardrobe, outshouting her expensive threads with loud colors like today’s war of a purple necktie and a green shirt.

  And his hair was longer than hers.

  “We still got zero connection between the victims,” said Sanger. “And none of them tie back to the mayor.”

  This must be why Mallory had failed to show up for the briefing. She would not want to answer the question left hanging in the air: Who pays ransom for strangers?