—
YES, FATHER DUPONT would very much like another drink to top off the second one. Charles Butler refilled the priest’s glass and waited for the real conversation to begin.
“I should’ve spoken to you the other night at the restaurant.”
Ah, finally. “But I was talking to Detective Mallory,” said Charles. “I can see how that could’ve been awkward. I gather she made you rather uncomfortable.”
“Understatement,” said DuPont. “I ran into her once before . . . at Gracie Mansion. Maybe she mentioned it? I take it she’s a friend of yours.”
“I’ve known her for years.” And he had no intention of sharing any business of hers. He knew how to keep a confidence as well as the clergy. Shuttling the priest to another track, he said, “I’ve been to Gracie Mansion for a few charity events, but that was a long time ago. Never met Mayor Polk. What’s your impression of him?”
“He’s a flimflam man.”
“Like your father.”
“Two of a kind—except for the obvious things.” One would have to discount the fact that the priest’s father had never lived in a mansion, and he had died in a prison cell. “That makes Andrew Polk the perfect politician. Me, too. I guess it’s in my genes, and maybe it shows. I don’t think your friend, the detective, believed a word I said the other night.” He smiled, as if this meant nothing to him.
Yes, there was definitely a touch of paternal genes. The priest was charming. People would like him on two minutes’ acquaintance, and they would open up to this man. In respect to Mallory’s distrust, DuPont was obviously expecting a confirmation or a denial. And now Charles had his own trust issues.
He glanced at the priest’s glass, nearly drained of whiskey. He recalled his first meeting with this man. On that long-ago night, the priest had nursed his drink, only one, but this evening he was bolting down the liquor. Was he self-medicating his recent angst? Or had he become an alcoholic?
“I’m not a therapist anymore,” said DuPont. “I quit the profession. You may remember giving me that . . . suggestion.”
During the ensuing silence, Charles gathered that this man did not plan to tell him how many years had passed before following that good advice.
The priest’s dilemma, as Charles had seen it then, was not one of keeping his oath as a psychologist. That had been violated, though Father DuPont had sworn to him that he had never touched the girl. On that long-ago night, the priest had given a very different version of his confession to Mallory. The Chicago recital had been sugared with poetry and irony when DuPont had told him that Angie Quill could only have sex for money or favors, never for love, and the priest could not bed her for any sort of currency—because he loved her.
Certainly favors had been granted to the girl, and Mallory had rightly called that currency. However, on no account could he see this man through her eyes. DuPont was surely no molester of children, though now Charles was less certain about the priest’s position on vulnerable girls nearer the age of consent. “I make excellent coffee. You know what goes nicely with that?”
And, yes, Father DuPont thought a cigar would sit quite well with him tonight.
Charles walked down the hall to his kitchen, a place of high tin-ceiling charm and warm ochre walls racked with copper-bottom pots and spices. While the old-fashioned percolator on the stove brewed a custom blend of coffee, he turned to see Father DuPont standing in the doorway. “Come in. Sit down.” Most of his guests eventually gravitated to this room. Mallory had once told him that she favored kitchens over station-house interrogations. Understandable. People were less guarded here in this place of perfect peace, chairs padded for comfort and a table to accommodate elbows.
The priest did seem more relaxed. And planning to stay awhile? Yes, he sensed that DuPont was not done with the expedition into Mallory’s affairs, though this might be only a show of concern for the missing boy. But there was another possibility.
When the two men faced one another across the table, and praise had been lavished on the coffee, they were enveloped in a pleasing cloud of cigar smoke, an opportune moment for a bomb to go off. “You have to tell the police what you know,” said Charles, “for the boy’s sake.”
“I can’t.” DuPont fumbled with his cup, spilling a bit of coffee as he set it down. “And there’s not much point to it. The newspapers say all four of the murders were random. Reporters couldn’t find any connections between those people—not ties to each other or anyone else. You see? Angie wasn’t killed by someone from her past. That’s just too far-fetched.”
Charles nodded, but not in agreement. So the priest had someone in mind for the murder of Angie Quill—if not for the complication of three other killings. “Go to Mallory. You don’t want her coming after you one more time.” Charles took a sip from his cup. And another. Then he ceased to wait for a response from the other side of the table. “It is far-fetched. I’m sure you’re right. Once you talk to her, she’ll see that. Mallory’s nothing if not logical.”
“I know what she is. . . . So do you.”
“I won’t discuss any personal issues of hers.” Nor would he force Mallory into the neat cookie-cutter framework of a sociopath. He placed her in a realm all her own, and inside its borders, he had fashioned a ruthless government—no mercy, no compassion—and every night was poker night, as she figured the odds and took down the players.
In any contest with her, this priest was surely toast.
“Charles, when you talked to her in the restaurant, did you mention that you knew me?”
“I was surprised that she knew you,” and this was the truth. There had been no warning, no name mentioned beforehand. “No, our meeting in Chicago—that never came up in conversation. That would’ve been . . . inappropriate.” Charles pushed his empty cup to one side. “I believe, at core, you’re a man of good conscience. Otherwise, you’d never have asked for my counsel the first time we—”
“I can’t tell Mallory anything. It’s not that I don’t want to.”
“Seal of the Confessional?” Perhaps he had underrated Father DuPont. The therapist’s oath was blown to hell, but a priest’s vows might be left intact—and at stake.
—
MALLORY STEPPED into the shadow of a doorway. The cobblestones of this SoHo street wore a wet shine, though it had yet to rain. Drops of water hung in the air as fine mist.
Hours had passed and the priest was still here? That would explain the lack of a phone call.
A few drops fell as Father DuPont stepped out on the sidewalk, caught with no umbrella and looking skyward, maybe wondering if he could beat the rain to a taxi. He hurried away.
The detective stayed to watch the lights of the fourth-floor apartment—waiting for her cell phone to ring, giving Charles a last chance to confess. But his windows went dark one by one. He had no plans to tell her about this covert meeting.
The priest had reached the end of the street, where cabs were more plentiful, but Mallory had no further interest in his travels tonight.
She turned her eyes back to Charles Butler’s darkened windows.
What have you done?
And now the rain came down—hard-driving, punishing rain.
—
THE REPORTERS held umbrellas as they kept vigil on the sidewalk.
The mayor stood by the corner window in the Susan B. Wagner Wing. He waved to the press corps. That always excited them. They were so hungry for any activity, and this was his version of feeding pigeons.
He turned around to speak with the two men in shirtsleeves and shoulder holsters. “Why don’t you guys take a break? Give us a few minutes.” He nodded toward Samuel Tucker, indicating the need for some privacy with him. When the bodyguards had withdrawn from the room, he said, “Tuck, about those four packages. How many people saw them before you did?”
“Sir, you told me not to—”
>
“Well, now I need to know.” Deniability was hardly an option anymore.
“Postal workers, I suppose,” said Samuel Tucker. “It wasn’t an outfit like UPS or FedEx. . . . You saw the—”
“Who gave them to you?”
“The kid who comes around with the mail cart.”
“Good.” That teenager was a stoner, half his brain cells gone to drugs. Those very special deliveries could have been given to the mail boy as still-beating hearts in the hand, and that kid would remember nothing useful to the police.
Tucker was straightening a bow tie that was not crooked. Nervous? Had this fool screwed up somehow?
“Go home. Tomorrow you work downtown, the desk in the lobby. If another package gets dropped off, call me.” No chance of that. Deliveries would be intercepted by cops before they got through the door to City Hall, but this chore of busywork would solve one problem. “Good night, Tuck.” He could not get this idiot off the premises fast enough.
The aide left the room, leaving Andrew Polk alone for the first time all day. The damn protection detail, recently turned zealous, would sleep with him if he allowed it.
Thanks to the news media, everyone in the city knew he was a virtual prisoner in Gracie Mansion. The next package would surely come here. The Post Office would be too risky. Would the killer make a personal appearance? The patrol on the surrounding parkland had been doubled, and this time there would be no opportunity to blind security cameras with paint balls. How would the delivery be managed?
No matter. It was going to happen.
Anticipation gave him an adrenaline rush that he could not buy. No drug could do this for him. He was flying high, smiling broadly, as he faced the window to see that the rain had stopped. He watched the street of reporters.
And the street watched him—while he waited for his heart.
—
IGGY CONROY turned off his windshield wipers as he made a left turn into his driveway. The van’s headlights illuminated the muddy roadbed through woods. Despite the curves, he could drive it in his sleep with no fear of hitting a tree. A temptation to close his eyes was—
His right foot slammed the brake pedal. Full stop.
The twin beams were trained on one of Ma’s garden gnomes where he had never seen one before. Its ugly face peered out of the foliage. That last time out with the machete, he must have gotten carried away and, eyes blind with sweat, he had cut back ferns that had hidden this one for all the years since his mother’s death.
Thank you, Ma, for this nasty little surprise.
He drove on to the garage at the top of the road, and there it was again. The same little man, but this one had always crouched in plain sight. It was the first one Ma had bought. Others were hiding in the woods, and one in back of the house had the cover of rosebushes grown up around it.
Even in her last years of oncoming dementia, Ma had continued to order them from the garden shop. Sometimes he would come home from a trip and the see the track of a new one, the rut left behind after she had dragged it across the lawn to hide it among the trees and thick undergrowth. How many were there? He had never understood her love for the trolls. Child catchers, she called them. Ma never did like other people’s kids much, most of them damn kids to her. How many of her little men were out there? An army?
On this so tired night, he could almost believe that there was only one. This one on the lawn. In the woods. Down the driveway. And sometimes among the roses.
14
Good Dog knew only one trick, a fast game of fetch. By taps of a keyboard and a double click, Mallory sent her software creature through a back door, a pet flap of sorts, and into the databank of the Securities and Exchange Commission, a vast circuitry of twisty electronic halls, silver chambers of chips and deep pits covered over with the twigs and branches of burglar alarms. Through this labyrinth of data, mega-billions of bytes, the Good Dog virus followed her command to bring home any bone attached to a case-reference number for Andrew Polk.
The dog ran merrily through the federal network, easily skirting familiar firewalls and making great leaps over known trip wires, crawling under others, and then—out of nowhere—a zap laid him low. Oh, the pain! One leg gone and dripping blood from the stump, loyal Good Dog came limping back to his mistress with no bones in his teeth, only scraps of data. The case itself had been deep-sixed in the basement vault of a sealed computer sector.
So the feds had a new hiding place. Fancier weaponry, too.
Well, this was how her dog learned.
The Queen of Good Housekeeping gathered her electronic buckets and mops to clean up the bloody paw prints so the feds could not follow her dog’s tracks home.
Bless the feds for hobbling their field agents with triplicate paperwork. Sets of reports had survived the sweep to bury interviews with some of the mayor’s victims from his Wall Street brokerage days. Other bits of the case lived in private email chains of Andrew Polk’s former clients, angry outcries of foul play. These civilians had flimsy firewalls, safeguards that a ten-year-old child would spit on, and a nondisclosure agreement had surfaced in the open book that was one investor’s home computer.
She so loved the fools in their glass houses.
Her intercom buzzer announced an expected visitor. Compulsively punctual Mallory would be late for work this morning.
—
IN CHARLES BUTLER’S ESTIMATION, living room was a misnomer here. Mallory’s environs of stark white paint, black leather, glass and steel had the feel of a domicile forever stalled in transition, each bare wall and clear surface either anticipating the mementos of personality—or suddenly bereft of them, and the furniture only awaiting the moving men.
The psychologist sipped his coffee in tense silence and with the tacit understanding that he was sitting in the open jaws of a trap. The recent strain in their friendship had not dissipated any; he had known this the moment she trotted out the good china cups. More generous ceramic mugs were reserved to her friends, the trusted few. Not him. Not anymore.
Cups emptied, he followed her down a short hallway and into another room, one with not even the pretense of hearth and home. This was where the machines lived, and the offending warmth of hardwood floors was covered by a rug of battleship gray. Electronic equipment sat on steel tables, and more was stacked on shelves. A far cry from the claustrophobic geek room at the station house, here her mechanical slaves could stretch out, reach farther and steal more.
A good portion of one upper wall was aglow with a gigantic computer monitor, her best-loved toy, and onscreen were small pictures of file holders. As she touched one of these icons, it responded to her body heat and opened in a flurry of cartoon documents flying across the screen’s surface to line up in a row of perfect symmetry. Judging by the labels, some of this information once resided in government computers and those of financial institutions in the private sector. Her stolen goods on open display might show a new level of trust in him—or disdain for his honesty. It was a coin toss.
Mallory touched the first image in the lineup. “This one has dirt on the mayor’s old brokerage house. Lots of questionable transactions, but one scam stands out. He gutted his own clients to pull it off.” She tapped an arrow in the margin, and the page changed to a long roster of Polk’s former investors. “My suspects.”
Great financial losses might work as a motive, though it strained credulity to place money at the core of four insane murders. But her world was all cause and effect with no tolerance for random acts of unhinged minds. Money motives had neat figures, and she was good at math—not so good with the chaos of madness. There must always be logic in the State of Mallory, and she would even make it up to make it so.
“The mayor’s scam was a variation on a pump-and-dump,” she said. “He hyped a drug company that was going public. The whole thing hinged on a lie about a vaccine for Alzheimer’s. Polk’s lie—fobbe
d off as insider information. That’s why his clients believed a mediocre stock offering was the deal of the century.”
“I remember that old rumor. It was years ago.” He could recall the exact date of the stock’s dazzling rise and more spectacular fall, but that would be showboating. What he could not recall was any link to Andrew Polk. “That story spread like a virus. Why do you think Polk was the epicenter?”
“I know he was. The feds know it, too.” Mallory turned to her list of names. “Ten of these people started a stampede of investors up and down Wall Street. The public was lining up to buy in on a bad deal.” She pointed to another document on her screen. “This is Banter Capital. They placed casino bets with every big brokerage house in town. Foreign markets, too.”
“Stock futures?”
“For the performance of one stock—on one day. They bet it would tank on the first day of trading. It did. The bets paid off in long-shot odds when Polk’s rumor was killed on the trading floor.”
“And the stock was downgraded.”
“It was in the toilet,” said Mallory, more succinctly. “Polk lost money, too. That kept him off the feds’ radar for a while. He got a job at Banter Capital, and a year later, he left with a severance package worth five hundred million dollars. His golden parachute.”
“That was his cut on the betting?”
“No, more like extortion—go-away money. Banter Capital needed to sever ties to him when the SEC opened an investigation. I think Polk deliberately triggered the feds’ interest so he could jack up the fear—and his parachute money.”
Charles could follow her logic, but he would rather not. That way lay a massive headache. But rather than point out that this was maniacal beyond belief, he only said, “Seems a bit risky.”
“But Polk likes risk. The criminal case hung on what he told clients before they invested. Insider trading, even for bogus information—that’s jail time. Polk’s ex-clients wanted him dead, but they wouldn’t help the SEC investigators. I figure he promised them hush money, maybe some payback on losses. That’s the only way he could’ve gotten all ten of them to sign nondisclosure agreements. Idiots. They risked prison when they lied to federal agents, but Polk’s agreements locked them into a criminal conspiracy. There’s no way out for them now. They’re stuck.”
Blind Sight Page 18
