The Chalk Girl

THIRTY-FOUR

The hall is crowded when a hand comes over my shoulder and into my shirt pocket. Then I feel another hand in the back pocket of my pants – and another one. Later, in the school garden, behind a tree, I pull out the three notes. They all say the same thing, ‘Soon!’

—Ernest Nadler

Their ears would lift up if they were only dogs. That was Jack Coffey’s thought when every man in the squad room turned toward the sound of clicking high heels. But this was no sweet young thing coming their way, and the detectives returned to their work – all except Riker. Like a gawker watching a slow train wreck in the making, the detective’s eyes followed the society matron as she walked down the aisle of desks. A boxcar line of lawyers and the companion Hoffman trailed behind her.

Lieutenant Coffey could have predicted this visit within an hour of the motion filed to freeze the probate of Humphrey Bledsoe’s estate. With a slight nod of acknowledgment, Grace Driscol-Bledsoe sailed past him and through the door to his private office, where her followers filled the space to standing room only. Coffey signaled for Riker to join the party.

The detective took his own time, gathering papers from his desk, and he made a call to Mallory, letting her know that all the lawyers had turned out in force. Silence prevailed in Coffey’s office until Riker walked in and announced, ‘My partner loves money motives.’ He handed the lady a transcript of her son’s school records. ‘Your kid wasn’t too bright. Mallory thinks busting the trust fund wasn’t Humphrey’s own idea. Did you give him a hand with that?’

‘As you already know, Detective, I detested my son. Why would I help him?’

Good point. As mother material, this woman rivaled Medea.

Riker grinned. ‘Humphrey’s millions – that’s a motive. You had no way to get at it, not while your kid was locked up in that asylum. And we gotta wonder where all that money came from.’

‘I told you. My late husband funded Humphrey’s—’

‘Yeah, yeah. He was a political consultant. A lobbyist, right? There’s a lot of cash in peddling influence. We think his racket was tied to the Driscol Institute. And that’s where you come in, lady.’

The lawyers spoke over one another’s threats until Coffey yelled, ‘Hey! You’re in my house now! Shut the hell up!’ He turned a smile on Mrs Driscol-Bledsoe. In a more civil tone, he asked, ‘So . . . how dirty was your husband’s money?’

The lady smiled, enjoying this. ‘Is it relevant to my son’s murder?’

‘You bet,’ said Riker. ‘If your husband saw an audit coming his way, the kid’s trust fund was a great holding pen for the whole fortune. But the guy didn’t count on dying young – or his son busting that trust. Then Humphrey gets murdered, and all those millions come back to you – washed clean. Killing your own kid is an original method of laundering money. We’ve never seen it done that way before.’

Still smiling, she said, ‘And you think I’m capable of that.’

‘Oh, yeah,’ said Riker, ‘but it’s not my job to flatter you. So you don’t wanna help us close this case? Fine by me. If nobody stands trial for your son’s murder, we can freeze Humphrey’s millions for the next hundred years. Or not. It’s our call.’

Jack Coffey was watching the expressions of the attorneys. They all worried in silence. And now he knew the bluff was going to pan out. The lady’s face was not so easy to read.

But then she asked, ‘How may I help you?’

Dead Ernest was only the flotsam of scattered thoughts today. Phoebe Bledsoe sat alone at the table – so very thirsty – waiting for a waitress to notice her, but they kept passing her by – a typical day at the top of the lunch-hour rush, though she went unnoticed in every crowd at any hour.

When Toby Wilder walked into the restaurant, he did not see her, either – except as an appendage of her usual table. If she were not here, he might only notice that a piece of the furniture was missing. But now, as the young man settled in a chair by the window, his eyes fixed on a new arrival, and he could not look away.

Phoebe turned to see the detective, the insane one, standing just inside the open door. The heads of other diners were also turning to look at this tall, pretty blonde. Invisible Phoebe held her breath as Mallory’s searching gaze settled on Toby Wilder, and the woman showed a flash of recognition.

Oh, no, not him.

And then Detective Mallory’s green eyes moved on – slowly – like gun sights, seeking, seeking. Gotcha.

Phoebe flinched.

The detective stepped up to the table and pulled out a chair. ‘Mind if I sit with you for a few minutes?’ Her voice seemed so normal today, words rising and falling with human inflections.

‘I’m not supposed to talk to you, Detective – not without an attorney present.’

‘Right now, the lawyers are all tied up with your mother. Call me Mallory.’ She remained standing as she looked around the room, then zeroed in on a passing waitress and, with only one raised hand, stopped that frazzled woman in her tracks. Apparently, Mallory had superpowers, for now the waitress came to her, smiling, eagerly offering up a menu – only one menu – because Phoebe was invisible.

A hand went to Mallory’s hip, and the waitress was at a loss to understand what had displeased her. The detective pointed to Phoebe and said, ‘I’m with her.’

The invisible woman was promptly promoted to a very important person. Now Phoebe listened to a recital of the day’s specials and was asked for her preference in salad dressings. A busboy was flagged down, and his tray was raided for a basket of breadsticks and buns, silverware – and an icy glass of water.

So thirsty. Thank you, thank you.

When the waitress had departed with the luncheon order, Mallory settled into a chair on the other side of the table. Her face was not unfriendly, and there was nothing crazy about her eyes today; they were merely unsettling. ‘I’m curious about the family finances. When your father set up Humphrey’s trust fund, was that like a bribe so your brother wouldn’t leave the asylum?’

‘A bribe? No, that trust couldn’t be revoked. So it’s not like Daddy could threaten to take the money back. And the trust income wasn’t paid to Humphrey. It went to his custodian, the asylum.’

‘So your brother was a cash cow . . . and the doctors were never going to let him go.’

‘Ironically, that was the argument his lawyers used to break the trust fund and get him released.’

‘And what about you, Phoebe? You got nothing when your father died. He didn’t care about you at all. Did that make you angry?’

‘He loved me.’ There was no defensiveness in Phoebe’s tone. This was more like a schoolgirl delivery of incontrovertible fact. The earth revolves around the sun, and Daddy loved me.

Nodding, the detective appeared to have no quarrel with this. There was only curiosity in her voice when she said, ‘But he didn’t leave you a dime.’

‘Daddy didn’t have a dime. He died broke.’ Phoebe offered up more factoids. ‘After he left my mother, he lived in hotels for ten years. That costs a lot of money. And he spent the time drinking himself to death. It surprised him that it took so long to die that way. He worked very hard at it.’ And now, with great pride, she said, ‘I paid Daddy’s last bar bill.’

In the child’s fashion of measuring things, she might describe her own smile as six feet wide. And this made Charles Butler smile, too.

‘He could’ve been a lady,’ said Coco, uncertain as she spoke to Mallory on the one-button cell phone. ‘I wasn’t wearing my glasses.’

The little girl gave up one more remembered thing. ‘A baseball cap pulled down low . . . No, he didn’t say anything . . . Well, he did, but he talked with his hands.’ The fingers of her free hand curled to hold an imaginary pencil, and she made a scribbling motion on the air. ‘Like he wanted something to write with . . . And then? . . . Uncle Red turned around . . . I don’t know.’ Her legs drew up. Her smile was gone. Anxious now, Coco raised one arm, as if to ward off a blow. The detective on the other end of this conversation was obviously breaking the rules again with leading questions.

‘I don’t know!’

Charles took the phone from her hand and killed the connection to Mallory with no word of goodbye.

When Riker walked in, the geek room was humming with electronics, and every monitor was aglow.

Mallory laid down her cell phone. ‘Coco’s remembering more details. Our perp wore sunglasses – at night.’

‘Well, that explains the holes.’ Previously, the little girl had alluded to great dark holes in the blurry face of Uncle Red’s killer.

‘There’s more,’ said Mallory. ‘Before Humphrey’s skull was cracked, the killer got him to turn around by asking for a pen – in sign language. The Hunger Artist played mute so his voice wouldn’t be recognized.’

Riker nodded. With these elements of disguise, they could rule out murder for hire. ‘And how goes the search for the Nadlers’ private nurse?’

‘She might be dead. She hasn’t paid income tax in fifteen years.’

‘We’ve got a visitor,’ said Riker. ‘Dr Slope sent her.’

The two detectives walked down the hall to the smallest interview room, the one used for private conversations that were neither taped nor covertly watched. One of the three chairs was occupied by Detective Janos, who dunked teabags with a gray-haired woman he introduced as ‘Dr Sills – a retired pathologist.’ Janos rose from the table. ‘She used to work in the Medical Examiner’s Office.’ He walked toward the door, saying, ‘She remembers our dead wino.’

Riker’s smile was broad as he pulled up a chair beside the woman. ‘Thanks for coming in, ma’am.’

‘Anything for Edward Slope. He said you were interested in people who came in to view the body of a derelict.’

Mallory sat down across the table from the doctor. ‘You brought paperwork on the wino’s ID?’

‘There’s no paperwork, dear. I brought my memory. Edward had to jog it a bit. He said that corpse was autopsied the same day a traffic fatality came in with a severed head. An unforgettable day. That’s when we found the derelict’s body. Someone had stored it in a locker that was supposed to be empty. No idea how long it was in there. But I’m sure Edward told you that.’

‘No,’ said Riker. ‘That must’ve slipped his mind.’ He would bet that a morgue attendant had pocketed a bribe for misplacing that body, another black mark for the Medical Examiner’s Office.

‘Well, that was odd,’ said Dr Sills. ‘And the paperwork was missing, too. I remember that because we had to call every precinct in Manhattan.’

Now the wino was so much more interesting.

‘But it doesn’t surprise me that Edward forgot the paperwork problems for that day.’

Riker nodded. Of course not. Why would Dr Slope give Mallory more ammunition for their next war? Sending in Dr Sills was probably the ME’s idea of remorse for not coming clean. Even a lie of omission would cost that dead-honest man a night’s sleep.

‘It was total chaos,’ said the retired pathologist. ‘A full house between a gang shoot-out and a ten-car pileup – so many corpses, all those poor family members coming in to identify remains. But only one was a child, maybe twelve or thirteen years old. A beautiful boy. He came in all by himself, looking for his father. He broke my heart.’

‘You remember his name?’

‘No, I’m sorry. This was so long ago.’

‘Does Toby Wilder sound familiar?’

She shook her head. ‘I did ask for his school ID. It was a private school, I remember that much. I had to call them for the mother’s home phone number. Then I had the boy fill out forms to keep him busy until she could get there. It upset him when his mother walked in. I gather he wanted to spare her the ordeal. And then I saw the white cane.’

‘His mother was blind,’ said Riker.

‘Yes. That’s the only reason I allowed her son to view the body. When I pulled back the sheet, the boy began to cry – so quietly, not a sound, only tears. Well, I thought this must be his father, but he said no. Then the blind woman said she wanted to see the body. She ran her fingertips over the dead man’s face, tracing all his features. And then she was crying, too – quietly, like the boy. She wiped her tears with a sleeve – hiding them from her son. That was my impression. Then the mother said it wasn’t her husband.’

‘We read the autopsy report,’ said Mallory. ‘The wino’s body was skin and bones. Malnutrition. He also had a broken nose, old damage, and a lot of teeth were missing.’

‘I understand what you’re saying, Detective. Yes, that would change a man’s features radically. But I assumed there had been some recent family contact – or how would the boy have known to go looking for his father in the morgue?’

‘Their reactions bothered you,’ said Mallory. ‘You knew there was something wrong. Who cries over a stranger?’

‘Yes, that was disturbing.’