The Chalk Girl

THIRTY-SIX

Tonight, I listen from the hallway while my parents sit at the kitchen table with Detective Mann. He tells them I made the whole thing up, and the autopsy proves it – kids didn’t murder the wino. He says I only ratted out my classmates to get even with them for bullying me at school.

My father nods. He’s seen the evidence of bullies – the marks they left on my body. He believes the detective. Mom cries. She believes him, too.

I have lost everything.

—Ernest Nadler

Elderly Mrs Buford bent down to fetch her morning Times, eager to read the next episode of the Ramble murders. The saga of the Hunger Artist had become her new soap opera.

The door across the hall opened, and she braced herself. The neighbor woman’s husband had done morning paper duty for the past few days. Such a creepy fellow, he had interfered with the digestion of her breakfast. But now – oh, thank God – she saw Annie standing on the threshold.

What a relief. Rolland Mann had apparently not done away with his wife after all.

Well, now they could resume their old morning ritual, cordial exchanges of hellos and comments on the weather. Or maybe not. Mrs Buford noticed the suitcase. ‘Going somewhere?’

Escaping, perhaps?

Annie nodded.

‘Have a lovely time.’ The old woman closed the door only to open it a minute later at the sound of weeping. Annie Mann had traveled only a few steps from her own door before she crumpled to the floor beside her luggage. She sat huddled against the wall.

Mrs Buford belted her robe and bustled across the hallway with the shush of fuzzy pink slippers. Bending creaky knees, she knelt down beside her fallen neighbor and took the woman’s hands in hers, rubbing the cold, clammy flesh till it warmed, till Annie’s breathing was less of a struggle, and the sweat of her brow ceased to roll into her eyes. The younger woman fumbled with the catch on her purse and spilled a dozen pharmacy bottles across the carpet.

‘I’ll get you some water so you can take a pill.’ Mrs Buford had no sooner entered her own apartment than she heard the ping that announced the arrival of the elevator. When she looked out the door, it was a great surprise to see two uniformed policemen in the hall – a greater surprise for Annie Mann, who slumped over in a dead faint. And perhaps that was for the best. Poor woman. She never could have left the building fully conscious. One officer picked up Annie’s wallet from the spilled contents of her purse. He nodded to the second man, who carried her limp body to the elevator, leaving the suitcase behind. A young blonde knelt on the carpet, scooping the pill bottles back into the fallen purse. How odd.

Well, in any case, Annie had made her escape.

Of course, Mrs Buford had imagined this scene a hundred times, but she had always envisioned the husband in police custody – not the wife. She was about to close her door when a voice called out, ‘Wait!’ She poked her head into the hall once more and saw the long-legged blonde coming toward her – closer, closer. Oh, my, what strange green eyes.

The young woman showed her a gold badge and a police identification card that made her a detective. A detective! How exciting. As the blonde restored the badge to a back pocket of her jeans, her blazer fell open on one side, and now a very large gun was on display in a shoulder holster.

Oh, this was simply marvelous. Mrs Buford was fairly giddy when she said, ‘Tell me it’s murder.’

‘Yes. Yes, it is.’

The old woman rose up on her toes, all atingle with anticipation, and when the young woman asked, ‘Wanna play?’ Mrs Buford replied, ‘Could I?’

Coco perched on a desk near the stairwell door and lectured Detective Gonzales on the terrible importance of toilet-seat locks. ‘The rats can get in that way. They swim up through the water in the toilet bowl. But if the seats are locked down, they just swim round and round till they drown.’

The lieutenant stood with Mallory and Riker on the squad-room side of the window, watching the action in the next room through the blinds. Via an open intercom, the three of them eavesdropped on a conversation between the people inside the not-so-private office, where the two civilians were on a first-name basis now, Annie and Charles.

The lady was not what Jack Coffey had expected, not the pretty trophy wife of a political up-and-comer. She looked so ordinary – if he discounted the fact that she was terrified.

Annie Mann held tight to the arms of her chair, so afraid that she might lift off into space. Despite the fear, she smiled when Charles Butler did. This new expression transformed her. No longer plain, she was all warmth and charm personified. Magnetic. It was almost a magic act. But the illusion was short-lived, and she shifted back into panic mode, eyes darting everywhere, on the lookout for danger in the corners of the room. And now she panted like a dog.

Charles perused the pharmacy stash from the woman’s purse, then selected a bottle and handed her a single pill. She popped it in her mouth and chomped it like a candy. When she was calm, he left her alone to join the covert observers on the other side of the office window.

Mallory looked through the blinds, staring at the woman as she spoke to the psychologist. ‘Is she crazy?’

‘No,’ said Charles. ‘Not at all.’

‘So she’s faking,’ said Riker.

‘Oh, no. I agree with Mrs Buford’s diagnosis. Annie’s genuinely phobic. She tells me she’s always been prone to panic attacks in social situations.’

The lieutenant and his detectives feigned interest in this, as if they had not been privy to every word. And now, with the mistaken idea that they were actually interested, Charles continued. ‘Well, that’s how agoraphobia begins. In the early stages, Annie was quite functional. Hospitals were her primary safety zones – areas of competence and confidence for a nurse.’

‘She hasn’t worked for fifteen years,’ said Jack Coffey, in a game attempt to speed this along.

‘And during that time,’ said the man with no short answers, ‘the rest of her safety zones also dwindled. She’s afraid of having panic attacks in public areas. Over the years, she’s avoided a growing list of such places. And finally, she had nowhere to go. Then there’s the additional reinforcement of long-term confinement. She hasn’t left her apartment since they moved in.’

‘We saw you give her that pill.’ Mallory said this as if accusing him of drug trafficking.

‘A very mild sedative,’ said Charles. ‘She was badly frightened – about a minute away from meltdown. I assume you want her coherent?’

‘Legally coherent,’ said Coffey. ‘Is that woman stoned?’

‘No, I’d say she’s more clearheaded now.’

‘That’s all we need to know.’ The lieutenant signaled Detective Janos, who entered the office and led Annie Mann outside to the squad room and down the hall to a place for less genteel conversation.

‘Rats have agoraphobia, too,’ said a small voice closer to the floor.

Four people looked down to see that Coco had ditched her babysitting detective, and she was not smiling anymore.

‘Rats don’t feel safe in open spaces.’ Coco’s solemn eyes followed the woman being led away. ‘That’s why they keep close to the walls.’

And now all of them watched Annie Mann’s body grazing the wall as she was escorted down the hallway.

Her shoulders hunched. Her eyes were wide.

The interrogation room with its puke-green walls and blood-leaching fluorescent lights was too alien for this agoraphobic – but not scary enough. Riker wondered how edgy the woman might have been without the damn sedative.

‘You changed your name,’ said Mallory.

‘I got married,’ said Annie Mann.

‘She means your first name,’ said Riker. ‘You used to be Margaret – now it’s Annie.’

There was no hesitation when the woman said, ‘I was always Annie to my friends.’

‘You gave us the wrong Social Security number,’ said Mallory.

‘I changed it. I was worried about identity theft.’

This was the first stumble. Thus far, Mrs Mann’s responses had been too quick, and they had the tone of a memorized script, but now the detectives had what they were waiting for. This was the hook, the first bungled lie.

‘Fifteen years ago,’ said Riker, ‘nobody worried about identity theft. I don’t think we even had a name for it.’

‘My wallet was stolen – my license, credit cards—’

‘You never filed a police report, never checked your credit report.’ Mallory tapped keys on her laptop computer. ‘And you didn’t replace the driver’s license. It says here, your license expired. So did your charge cards. I can’t find any paper on you for the past fifteen years.’ She turned the computer around so that Annie Mann could see the document on-screen. ‘Look at this. Your name isn’t even on the deed for your condo.’

Annie leaned closer to the screen, as if that might clarify the line of type that declared her husband the solitary owner. ‘This can’t be right.’

‘You didn’t know? Your neighbor, Mrs Buford, thinks you’re married, but she’s the only one in the building who’s ever seen you.’

‘I’m married!’

Riker leaned forward. ‘We pulled all the phone records. You never called your husband at the office – not once. His secretary tells us he’s single.’

Mallory raised more documents on the screen. ‘You’re not a beneficiary on his pension plan. You’re not even listed as a dependent on his health insurance.’

‘But, hey,’ said Riker, ‘you don’t need health insurance. You’re low risk. According to the neighbor, you never leave that apartment.’

‘Rolland Mann files as a single taxpayer,’ said Mallory. ‘No dependents. So you lied when you said you were—’

‘We’re married. We were married in Canada.’

Riker smiled. ‘I’d like to believe you. But there’s no record of a marriage registered in this country. There’s no trace of you anywhere, Annie. It’s like he wiped you out of existence fifteen years ago. You know how we found you? My partner stopped by to find out why Rolland made a three-minute phone call to his empty apartment.’

‘If he killed you today,’ said Mallory, ‘the only one who’d miss you is the old lady across the hall.’

‘We’re trying to help you, Annie.’ Riker reached across the table and covered her cold hands with his. ‘So . . . you and Rolland, you met at the hospital – when you were watching the Nadlers’ kid. Nurses and cops, that’s a natural combination.’

‘No. Rolland was my boyfriend before that. He’s the one who got me the job with the –’ Annie Mann pulled her hands back and covered her mouth. And now in the posture of I give up, her shoulders slumped and she bowed her head. ‘It was just a few hours a night, but the Nadlers paid me for whole shifts. Real nice people. They’d been cooped up in that hospital for a solid month. They only wanted to step outside for a regular meal together . . . like normal people . . . just a few hours. Their kid was supposed to be stable.’

‘You were on duty when Ernie Nadler died,’ said Mallory. ‘You were the last person to see him alive. And that looks bad for you, Annie. The parents did everything they could to keep Ernie safe, but their little boy was murdered on your watch.’

‘No. He died from the injuries – or maybe infection from—’

‘You know it was murder,’ said Mallory. ‘You were in that hospital room when he was killed, smothered to death with a pillow.’

‘Oh, my God. It wasn’t me. I wasn’t even there when he died. I went out for a smoke on the fire escape. I swear I was only gone a few minutes. When I came back, the boy was dead. Rolland – he was a detective then – he was in the room. He can tell you.’

‘You should worry about what he already told us.’ Mallory pushed a sheet of paper across the table. ‘That’s his witness statement. You recognize the handwriting? He says he was at the hospital in the morning, not the evening – not when the kid was murdered.’

‘I’d like to help you, Annie,’ said Riker. ‘But I need to hear your side of it.’

‘He was there! When I got back to the kid’s room, Rolland was standing by the bed. He asked me where I’d been. I was so freaked out. ‘Don’t worry,’ he says. He won’t tell anybody I wasn’t there when the kid died. He told me to wait fifteen minutes and then call a doctor. He saved me from a negligence charge. And then Rolland married me to save my ass. He said a husband can’t testify against his wife.’

‘He lied,’ said Mallory. ‘A husband can’t testify to spousal conversation, but he can testify to events. That’s why he kept you around for fifteen years. You’re a bone he can throw to the cops if everything goes sour. When the doctor came in to pronounce the boy dead, you told him you were there the whole time. Isn’t that what happened? Isn’t that what Rolland told you to say?’

‘Rolland loves me.’

‘The guy really planned ahead,’ said Mallory. ‘So he was the last one to see the kid alive. But guess who’s getting hung out to dry, Annie. It’s all on you now. You – the crazy lady who can’t even leave her apartment. The nutcase with a pharmacy of drugs in her purse and a—’

‘No! I’d never—’

‘A nurse who kills her patients,’ said Mallory. ‘That’s how it’ll play out in court. You felt bad for a little kid with amputated hands. You wanted to spare Ernie all that horror – when he woke up from the coma. So you took a pillow, and you—’

‘No! I wasn’t even there when the Nadlers’ son died!’

‘It’s gonna be okay, Annie.’ Riker pushed a yellow pad across the table. ‘I’ll help you. Just write down what happened that night. Your side of the story.’ He handed her the pen.

She took it.

There were only two watchers in the dark on the other side of the glass, and they remained there while the woman in the interview room wrote out her statement. Lieutenant Coffey locked the door. Now that privacy and secrecy were assured, he turned to the chief of detectives. ‘We’re still building the case. I don’t wanna rush it.’

‘What’ve you got for motive, Jack?’

‘We think the Nadler kid was a witness to a wino’s murder. If he ever came out of the coma, the boy could’ve blown up Mann’s case against Toby Wilder. Mann would’ve done jail time for witness tampering, withholding evidence, obstruction.’ Coffey held back on Mallory’s alternate theory. Not everyone shared her love of profit motives, and she had given him no solid proof for that idea – nothing beyond a series of promotions for a mediocre cop’s rise to the top of the NYPD food chain.

‘Okay,’ said Chief Goddard. ‘So far, so good. Rocket Mann marries the nurse for insurance. If things go sour, she takes the fall. I call that long-range planning – like the Hunger Artist. But first you gotta nail him for killing the Nadler kid.’

‘Yeah,’ said Jack Coffey. ‘Just one problem. Why smother the boy? Mann was a detective. He had to know the forensics would point to murder. Even a drunken hospital pathologist noticed hemorrhaging in the kid’s eyes.’

‘Petechial hemorrhaging wasn’t in Rocket Mann’s vocabulary back then. I remember him in those days. He didn’t know shit about forensics, and he couldn’t bother to learn a damn thing. Never attended an autopsy, never cracked a book. And the guy couldn’t keep a partner for more than a week. Nobody wants to work with the screwup cop. That’s why he was riding solo when he was still a probie. I was the captain who assigned him to the wino murder.’

‘I know that,’ said Coffey. ‘My detectives are very thorough. They also tell me you started your vacation that same day . . . sir.’

‘And you wondered why I never volunteered that information.’ Joe Goddard waved one hand toward the window on the next room, where Annie Mann was still writing out her statement. ‘So this was staged for my benefit. I heard you guys do suspect interviews on both sides of the glass.’ He laughed, not a scoff – a belly laugh.

Jack Coffey would never have predicted that response. ‘Why did you assign a homicide to a white shield with no partner, no oversight?’

‘The wino murder was busywork, a case nobody cared about. If Mann screwed up – and I knew he would – no harm done. Then I could bust him back to a beat cop. I was on a fishing trip in Oregon when he pinned that murder on the Wilder kid. I could smell the stink all the way across the country. By the time I got back, strings had been pulled to get Mann transferred out of my precinct. And that little fuckup was sporting a gold shield. That’s when I knew he was dirty.’

‘How much did you know about Ernest Nadler? When he went missing, the parents—’

‘When I got back, I only knew a kid got lost, and he was found alive. That bastard Mann worked the assault off the books. No paperwork. I always knew he didn’t have the makings of a cop, and I was right about that . . . but I didn’t give him credit for brains. That was my mistake. I never knew what happened to that little boy, not until your detectives dug up the old ViCAP questionnaire. Satisfied, Jack?’

‘Yes, sir.’ No, sir. Lieutenant Coffey knew this was a lie, but his only proof was the chief’s relief when this story went unchallenged.

‘Your guys better make a strong case, Jack. I don’t want Rocket Mann getting off ’cause the public watches too many cops shows on TV. If you had a problem with the forensics, so will the damn jury. And I don’t want your case blowing up on a technicality of spousal privilege. Find out if he’s legally married to the nurse.’

‘He is. The marriage was registered in Toronto, Canada. My detectives knew that before they walked into the interview. And Mallory’s right about spousal privilege. It won’t apply to what Annie Mann saw, and she saw Rolland Mann in that hospital room with the dead boy.’

‘Then it’s his word against hers. You need more to charge him on the kid’s murder. And I wanna see some evidence for the murders of Humphrey Bledsoe and Aggy Sutton.’

‘We’ve got no connection between Mann and the Hunger Artist.’

‘Make one. Dump the wife in Witness Protection. I don’t want word getting out she was ever here. Don’t let her go home to pack a bag. Take her straight to a safe house.’

Coffey nodded to say he was following this. ‘So Rocket Mann goes home tonight. No wife, no missing suitcase. All her clothes are still in the closet.’

Goddard grinned. ‘What’s he gonna do? Everybody thinks he’s single. He let that game go on too long. And now he can’t even file a report on a missing wife, not without explaining why he erased her on paper. He’ll wonder where she is – and who’s she talking to? He’ll come unglued.’

Jack Coffey’s detectives were already busy rattling Rolland Mann, and they needed no help from Joe Goddard. But it would be impolitic to tell the chief of D’s that his plan was already in the works. Mallory and Riker had unpacked Annie Mann’s suitcase and then enlisted the aid of the neighbor across the hall. Mrs Buford was thrilled by the whole idea of becoming an agent for the police, and her silence was guaranteed, should Rolland Mann come to her door.

Joe Goddard had never been inclined to micromanage any homicide investigation. So why the change of style? Did Goddard miss the chase of a street-level cop? No, not likely. Jack Coffey decided that the chief of D’s had something to hide – and keep hidden.

The two detectives sat at their facing desks, doing paperwork on the most recent interview. Riker pushed aside the conflicting statements of Rolland and Annie Mann. ‘Are we missing something here? When Rocket Mann took Annie to Canada – you think he had a plan to kill her and dump the body up there? Maybe he chickened out? Killing isn’t his best thing. He bungled the forensics on Ernie’s murder.’

‘I think Annie was right,’ said Mallory. ‘He wanted to save her.’

‘So . . . you don’t think he smothered Ernie?’

‘Oh, yeah. He did it, all right. The bastard’s a stone killer. He’s just not real good at it. That’s what bothers you.’

‘I have a headache,’ said Riker.