Crime School

CHAPTER 18

Mallory stood in the office kitchen and poured another cup of coffee. Her eyes were closing. When had she slept last?

Old pictures were breaking into her thoughts again, wreaking havoc with her concentration. The rats were coming for the whore. Greedy vermin. Not content with the blood and meat of Frankie Delight, they wanted Sparrow too.

Mallory turned on the faucet, then leaned over the sink and splashed her face with cold water. She sat down at the kitchen table. Her coffee cooled in the cup. Her eyes closed, and down came the curtain between waking and sleeping dreams. Though she had never had the smoker’s habit, one hand went up to her mouth as she lit a cigarette that was not there. She was ten years old again. Sparrow was bleeding, saying, ‘Don’t cry, baby.’

But Kathy could not stop crying. The frantic child shook Sparrow to keep her from drifting into sleep and death. ‘I’ll get help!’

‘Don’t leave me,’ said Sparrow. ‘Not yet.’ The prostitute nodded toward the shadows where the rats were fighting over the corpse of Frankie Delight. ‘Keep ‘em off me – till it’s over.’

‘You can’t die.’

Sparrow gently touched the child’s face. ‘Baby, I’m always telling you stories. Read me a story – that’s all I hear from you. Suppose you tell me one. But mind you, don’t make it a long story.’ Sparrow’s eyes were closing as she smiled at her own little joke.

‘You need a doctor!’ Kathy shook Sparrow until the blue eyes opened. The child put her hands over the open wound, trying to keep the prostitute’s blood from leaking out.

‘Don’t leave me for the rats,’ said Sparrow. ‘Tell me, how did that book end? The Longest Road, yeah, that one. The Wichita Kid decided he was goin’ home. Did he ever say why?’

‘It ends when he’s on the trail.’ Kathy emptied Sparrow’s purse on the floor, straining to see by the daylight streaming in from the street door. ‘Wichita stops his horse in front of the sign for Franktown.’ The room was growing darker; the day was ending; Sparrow was dying. The child found a handkerchief. ‘He just stares at that sign for a while.’ She used the square of white linen to cover the stab wound. The cloth was soaked with blood the moment she pressed it to Sparrow’s side. ‘Then there’s these lines near the end. But I don’t – ’ Though the little girl knew all the books by heart, her panic was overwhelming her. Sparrow could not die.

‘What lines, baby?’

Kathy bit her lip until it bled into her mouth. She needed this pain to concentrate, and now the passage came into her mind, clear as the spoken word, and she recited, ‘ „It was more than the call of home. He was riding toward his redemption.“ ‘

‘You know what that means, baby?’

‘No.’ And she did not care. Kathy undipped a long strap from Sparrow’s purse and used it to hold the red handkerchief in place. ‘I’m going for help. I’ll come right back.’

‘No, baby. Stay with me.’ Sparrow’s next word was hardly more than a whisper, a sigh. ‘Redemption.’ Her voice was stronger when she said, ‘How can I put that so a little thief can understand?’

The rats were coming. The child stamped one foot and screamed at them, ‘You stay away! She’s not dead! She’s not!’

‘That’s right, baby. You tell ‘em.’ Sparrow’s voice was failing. ‘Redemption – that’s when you buy back all your bad karma – so you can steal heaven.’

What was karma?

The prostitute closed her eyes again, and this time Kathy could not wake her. The child’s head snapped toward the shadows and the sound of a rat’s feet. She waved her arms, but the creatures had no fear of her anymore. The lure of blood was strong. And now another rat appeared at the edge of the failing light from the street door.

‘Stay away!’ Kathy pulled out her pellet gun and fired on the rat, missing her mark. She was crying, vision blurring, yelling, ‘She’s not dead! Not yet!'

The child reached down to the debris from the prostitute’s purse and found something hard, a missile to throw. It was a silver lighter she had stolen for Sparrow. She held it tight, then picked up one of the cigarettes that had spilled on the floor alongside a can of hair-spray. Kathy hunkered down beside the purse, smiling – inspired.

Once, Sparrow had nearly set her hair on fire, smoking a cigarette while waving the hairspray can.

Kathy lit the cigarette, puffing and coughing until it burned. She stared at the glowing ember and waited, fighting down the panic until the rat was close to her feet. She pointed the aerosol can at the animal, then pressed down on the nozzle, wetting the rat through and through. It squealed with the pain of hairspray in its eyes. The child dropped the cigarette on its fur and stood back as the animal burst into flames and screamed.

Another rat came out of the shadows, drawn by the smell of live cooking meat. Hunched over, Kathy crept forward to meet the creature. Holding the cigarette lighter low to the ground, she pressed the nozzle of the hairspray, aiming it at the tiny flame, and the chemical spray became a blowtorch. The second rat was burning, running in circles, streaking fire round and round. It was crying in a human way and drawing cannibals from the corpse of Frankie Delight.

Kathy was numb, too stunned to care what the rats were doing to one another. Working by slow inches, the child struggled with her burden, dragging Sparrow out of the dark building and into the waning daylight where more rats awaited them, scrabbling out from between the garbage cans on the sidewalk.

In the kitchen of Butler and Company, Mallory lurched to one side. Chair and woman crashed to the floor. Her face was pressed to the tiles, and she lay there for a few seconds of absolute stillness, quietly seeking her true place in time and space. Then she rose to her feet and gripped the edge of the counter for support. Her hands were shaking when she splashed more water on her face. If she could not stay awake, Stella Small would die.

‘It’ll never work.’ Riker turned his back on Mallory’s computers. ‘There’s gotta be ten million people in Wisconsin.’

‘Closer to four and a half.’ Charles could quote the atlas statistic to the last individual, but that would be showboating. ‘And we’re only looking at one small county where the boy went into foster care.’

Riker shook his head. ‘We’re running out of time. Stella Small could be hanging by her neck right now – still alive.’

Mallory looked up from her monitor. ‘What do you want me to do, Riker? Go door to door with those worthless cartoons?’ She nodded toward the cork wall where he had pinned up the hooker sketches.

Indeed, Charles thought the images were more of a guide to what the man did not look like. He was not thin or fat, not African or Asian descent, and his hair was neither long nor short.

Mallory turned back to her computer monitor. She was also showing signs of strain. ‘I’m checking every newspaper with a database. If anything jumps out – ’

‘It’ll take forever,’ said Riker.

‘And thank you for your support,’ said Mallory.

Charles watched the screen over her shoulder, scanning text as fast as she could scroll down the columns of newspaper archives, and in another compartment of his brain, he addressed Riker’s concerns. ‘You have two possibilities. Some recent event triggered these hangings, or the scarecrow started acting out antisocial behavior with early juvenile offenses.’

‘Then we’re still screwed,’ said Riker. ‘The criminal records of juveniles are sealed.’

‘But not newspaper archives. The county is mostly small towns. Any sort of stand-out behavior would be worth a mention in a local newspaper.’ Charles could see that Riker was unconvinced. The man was looking at his watch, a reminder that Stella Small was running out of time, and now he left the room. A moment later, the door to the reception area slammed shut.

Mallory handed a cell phone to Charles. ‘I’ve got a Wisconsin detective on the line. She works in Juvenile. Can you give her a profile for the scarecrow?’

The small phone all but disappeared into Charles’s larger hand as he described a tortured child to the caller, explaining that the boy had lost everything, his parents, his home. He was sent away to live with strangers, and they were also taken from him. Then police custody, foster care, more changes and strangers to deal with. ‘Too many traumas in quick succession. I’d look for a history of petty criminal acts and small-scale violence.

Sociopathic behavior could’ve started as early as nine or ten years old. Or even – ’

Charles watched Mallory’s eyes close. Her fingers ceased to tap; her hands were suspended over the keyboard. And he wished he was dead. He had just created a general profile for her as well.

He quickly added one qualification never mentioned in Kathy Mallory’s own childhood history and said to the caller, ‘You might find incidents of torturing and killing small animals.’

Stella Small listened to the public-address system. A small fire had broken out on an upper floor, and all customers were urged to make an orderly evacuation of the store.

What fabulous timing. The new suit was paid for, and she was wearing it. However, she had not yet replaced her snagged pantyhose with the new ones, and a saleswoman was barring her way to the changing room. Stella shrugged. There was time enough to go home and change hosiery before the evening audition in Tribeca. She joined a stream of shoppers moving toward the escalator with great resolve despite the protests of store employees who tried in vain to turn the herd toward the fire doors and a stairwell.

There was one motionless stand-out among the onward-marching shoppers and the arm-waving clerks. A man was waiting near the bottom of the escalator. Though he wore dark glasses, Stella recognized him from her last shopping expedition. This was the soap-opera fan who had stood behind her in the mirror of the discount store. Yes, it was the same baseball cap and stiff posture. She was sure of it now. He was the vandal, the stalker, the giver of gift certificates. And the gray bag, she had seen that before too, but where? She stared at him, wondering, How crazy are you?

He climbed up the steps of the down escalator, unhampered by all the people who blocked his way. He passed through the press of bodies, crushing them into the sides of the escalator as he closed the distance to Stella while the mechanical steps sought to take them both down. He came abreast of her and slapped a note on the lapel of her new suit jacket. The man never looked into her eyes. He might as well have taped his message to a kiosk instead of a living woman. She ripped the note off her jacket and read the words, I can touch you any time I want.

Charles sprawled on the leather couch, one of few office furnishings that was not an antique, but custom-made to fit his longer-than-average legs. He was nearly done with the last batch of fax transmissions. Occasionally, he interrupted his reading to glance at the portable television set. Mallory had given it to him so he could keep track of local news bulletins. And now he was startled to see a familiar face on the screen. ‘Mallory!’ he yelled, to be heard in her office across the hall. ‘Riker’s on TV!’

No response. Well, she was busy.

Charles turned back to the screen to watch Detective Sergeant Riker being introduced to the viewers. Poor man. He looked so pale beside the healthy orange glow of the anchorman’s stage makeup. He held up a photograph of a fugitive witness, Natalie Homer’s sister.

Stella fought against the tide of the crowd spilling off the escalator. She saw another exit sign and ran toward it, only glancing back once to see the baseball cap bobbing above the heads of the shoppers. Everyone was being turned away from the bank of elevators. Store employees barred the doors, shouting that the elevators had been disabled. Others directed people to the fire doors where a line of people filed through to a stairwell.

First Stella caught a whiff of insecticide, and then a hand grazed her face. She turned to see the stalking man walking away from her, moving toward the line for the stairwell. He turned around to look in Stella’s general direction, never making eye contact, perhaps perceiving her as a store manikin. Was he waiting for her to join him in the line?

You think I’m crazy, too?

She turned around full circle, searching every wall for another red-lettered sign to show her a way out. The escalator was barred by three women with folded arms. Drunk with power, they turned shoppers back to the stairwell, shouting, ‘That’s the fire exit!’ And they were so unimpressed with Stella’s note from a madman. ‘Lady, look around. You see any cops? No.’ And once again, she was directed to the stairwell, the only approved exit, where her personal stalker stepped out of line to wait for her by the fire door. This was so unfair. She had obeyed all the rules regarding New York wildlife. She had never tried to pet the lunatics grazing on the city sidewalks, never fed them or looked them in the eye.

Now Stella saw another sign and ran toward it. After closing the restroom door behind her, she depressed the lock button on the brass knob, for it was unlikely that a lunatic would be put offby the ‘Ladies Only’ sign of sanctuary. All the stall doors were open, and there were no sounds but her own footsteps as she walked toward the line of sinks to lay her packages down on the long marble countertop. Stella never considered the possibility of burning alive in a blazing building. She had lived in this town too long to take any fire drill as seriously as the more immediate threat of a deranged stalker – or shopping – and she planned to wait it out until the store refilled with customers and clerks, a simple matter of killing time.

After stripping off her ruined pantyhose, she fumbled with the cellophane wrapper of the new pair. A clock on the wall gave her hours to make the late audition. She stared at the mirror, in love with the new suit. Her lipstick had been bitten off, but there was time for a complete overhaul of makeup, and she rifled her purse for cosmetics. Oh, wait. She should use the toilet before the fire drill ended. Stella gathered up her purse and packages from force of habit. No New Yorker would leave a possession unguarded.

She was sitting on the toilet when she heard the door open. Heavy steps, a man. He would have to be a store employee. Who else would have a key to the lock? The door closed again, and she sat very still, holding her breath and holding her water. After what seemed like forever, Stella knelt down on the floor and looked toward the stalls left and right.

No one there. And yet, after leaving the stall, she could not lose the feeling of being watched. And what was that sound? A fly? More than one?

‘This woman is wanted by the police.’ The newscaster held up the photograph of Susan Qualen. Though the woman was in her forties, Charles thought the family likeness was striking. The picture of Natalie’s sister was joined by a portrait of Stella Small.

‘If you’ve seen either of these women today,’ said the voice behind the photographs, ‘call the number on your screen. And now a few words from Detective Sergeant Riker.’

Riker leaned into the microphone. ‘Miss Qualen has information on the whereabouts of the missing actress. We have to find Stella tonight. She’s in a lot of trouble, and she needs your help.’

‘As we speak,’ said the anchorman, ‘our broadcast is also being shown on our sister station in Wisconsin.’ He turned to his guest. ‘So you believe Susan Qualen is hiding in the vicinity of Racine?’

‘Yeah, she could be enroute right now,’ said Riker. ‘But I’m hoping she’s still in the tristate area.’

‘If this woman has important information, why is she evading the police, Detective Riker?’

‘Because she doesn’t care if Stella Small lives or dies.’

Very impressive, Riker.

No one could have put the case more eloquently.

He knew how to jack up the speed of the human heart from a startled flutter to BAM, BAM, BAM! And how to slow it down. Or paralyze it.

Though he neither liked his work, nor disliked it.

Almost ready.

The man sat on the toilet seat, tailor fashion, so his feet would not show in the openings between the stall doors and the floor. He slowly unzipped the gray canvas bag on his lap and reached for the camera, ignoring the large glass jar beside it, for he had no interest in terror on a small scale.

The jar contained a black soup of flies. Some of the insects were still alive and moving slowly, drunk on insecticide. They animated the bodies of the dead, all in a panic, crushing and crawling over dry corpses, breaking wings and ripping off legs in a frightening struggle to reach the top of the jar, one inch of air – and life.

And then they struggled in the dark, for the man had closed the gym bag. With equal indifference, he aimed the camera lens at the opening between the stall door and its frame. He watched the blond actress through his viewfinder. The young woman stood by the sink, too wired to put her lipstick on straight. She picked up a tissue and made short, nervous dabs at her mouth. Turning her head to one side, she sniffed the air now scented with the insect spray that clung to his clothing. She batted at an imagined fly, created by the power of suggestion and the low buzz from the jar in his bag.

The ready light on the camera had been amber and now it was green. As if the woman had heard the change of colors, she dropped her lipstick, then jumped at the sound of the metal tube hitting the tiles and rolling across the floor.

She gathered up her shoes, her purse and packages, then left the ladies’ room, running barefoot.

Charles rose from the couch and stretched, then walked across the hall to the back office. Deluthe was nowhere in sight, and Mallory was facing a computer monitor, her hands resting on the keyboard and lightly tapping the keys.

‘Mallory?’ Charles bent down to retrieve another stack of paper from a printer bin. He had already scanned a thousand sheets of newspaper archives to no avail. ‘I haven’t found anything yet.’ During the scarecrow’s boyhood years, the children of Green County, Wisconsin, had been remarkably well behaved. ‘Perhaps this is a waste of time.’

She only tapped the keys, giving no sign that she was even aware of him. He approached her with some caution, not wanting to break her concentration. If she ignored him to some purpose -

Oh, God, what’s this?

Her eyes were closed in sleep, yet her fingers continued to type. Her repetitive movements produced only gibberish on the computer monitor, yet Charles could not rid himself of the illusion that the machines were now operating Mallory. He lifted her into his arms and held her tightly, regarding her sleeping face with enormous concern. He carried her back to his own office, where the machines could not get at her, and there he laid her down on the soft leather couch. Covering her hands with his own, he forced her fingers to stop typing across the air.

The store was empty and eerie. The customers and clerks should have returned by now, for there was no sign of a fire, no sirens and not a trace of smoke. Stella walked the vacant aisles alone – and not. Every manikin drew her startled eye. And now she was one of them, neither moving nor breathing. She could only stare at the gray canvas bag on the floor in front of the escalator.

Where was he now? Was he watching her? Her eyes searched the vast space with a thousand hiding places. She ran toward the bank of elevators and found a crude out-of-service sign posted above the dark call buttons. She tried the nearby stairwell door, but the knob would not turn. Another sign, this one merely an arrow, directed her away from the stairs and toward a freight elevator. It stood open, waiting for her. She stepped inside and pushed the button for the ground floor.

Stella was slipping her new shoes over naked feet when she looked up to see the man holding the doors to prevent them from closing. He appeared not to see her as he stepped inside and set his gray canvas bag on the floor. She could get around him if she acted right now – if she was fast. She willed her legs to carry her away.

The moment was missed, the elevator closed.

Stella watched the lighted numbers overhead. They were going down. The canvas bag on the floor was open, and she was staring at the razor tip of a box cutter. They descended in silence – except for the buzzing sound from his bag, low and ugly, insectile. The shrill high noise of her screaming was purely imagined.

When Mallory opened her eyes, her head was pillowed in Charles Butler’s lap. What time was it? She had no idea. Her internal clock had failed her.

Unaware that she was awake, Charles absently stroked her hair, and she listened to the soft shuffle of paper, then watched the white pages sail by on their way to the pile on the rug below. She should rise now – time was precious.

The hand lightly moving over her hair was intoxicating. The human touch was rare since she had lost the Markowitzes, first Helen, then Louis. During the years that followed his wife’s death, the old man had made a point of kissing his foster child twice at each encounter – a sorry effort to make up for her loss of a mother – and he had rarely missed an opportunity to capture her in a bear hug – hugging for two. And then he died.

She was always losing people.

Mallory closed her eyes and listened to footsteps in the hall. Now Riker’s voice called out, ‘It’s me. How’s it going?’

‘One possibility,’ said Charles, ‘though not what I had in mind. Here, take a look at this article.’

‘Foster Care Fraud,’ said Riker. ‘Catchy headline.’

‘That foster child ran away when he was twelve years old, but the police were never notified.’

‘And these people kept collecting his support checks?’

‘Right,’ said Charles. ‘The boy was put in their care the same year Natalie’s son was taken from the Qualens.’

Another hand, Riker’s, rested on Mallory’s shoulder a moment, then gently brushed the hair from her face. ‘I’ve never seen her sleep,’ he said. ‘I always figured she just hung from the ceiling like a little bat. Damn, I hate to wake the kid up.’

‘Then don’t,’ said Charles.

‘But I got her a present – Susan Qualen. The woman turned herself in. Janos is walking her over here now – in handcuffs.’

‘Why here?’ asked Charles.

‘More privacy.’

Stella pressed her back to the wall of the elevator and watched the man open a metal panel with one of a gang of keys hanging from his belt loop. A janitor? ‘So you work here?’

No answer. He was not aware of her on any level, and this was hopeful. It could all be one ghastly coincidence. This man worked here; he belonged here. Of course, he would give her a gift certificate from this store. He probably got an employee discount. And now he was merely rounding up a stray shopper and escorting her to safety. Stella acted the part of a woman who could believe all of this, but she could not sustain the role for long.

When he closed the metal panel, the light for the ground floor was no longer glowing. They were on their way to the basement level. Her heart beat faster and adrenaline gorged every muscle for flight. When the doors opened, her legs ran away with her, flinging Stella headlong down a wide aisle of cardboard cartons. There were no hurried footsteps behind her. He had no worries that she would get away. Why should he? It would be so easy to follow her by the clack of high heels.

Idiot.

She slipped off her shoes and ran in barefoot silence down a corridor of boxes, running from the light, swallowed by the dark.

All the television stations ran hourly updates on the plight of Stella Small, showing photographs of her early years and reading excerpts from letters to her mother and grandmother, known to locals as the Abandoned Stellas. The written words of the youngest Stella were upbeat and hopeful, full of the dream: she was going to be somebody, and fame could only be minutes or hours away.

‘What was that?’ Riker turned off the volume, and now he could more clearly hear a knock on the door in the reception area. ‘That’s gotta be her.’

He answered the door and greeted Detective Janos with a smile. Natalie Homer’s sister needed no introduction. Riker’s face was grim when he turned to the woman in handcuffs, only inclining his head a bare inch to say, ‘Miss Qualen.’

Stella shrank into a small space behind a carton, playing the mouse, shaking and listening to the footsteps coming closer, stopping now. A nearby box was being moved. Eyes shut tight, her thoughts went out to the Abandoned Stellas. How sorry she was to let them down, yet she knew they would cope well with her dying, for that was their strength of purpose. They were younger than she was now when they had committed themselves to their own slow deaths at the roadside diner.

But wait. This was New York City – different rules: no cowards allowed.

An inspired Stella sat in the dark and prepared herself for something finer than slaughter by box cutter. Adjusting her chin to a determined angle, she created the role of a lifetime, imagining her own heart engorging and growing into the part, pounding harder, louder – stronger.

Can you hear it, you son of a bitch?

The box was moved aside. A hand reached out for her, and the greatest thing that ever came out of Ohio jumped to her feet. She raked his chest with five long fingernails that left red streaks on his T-shirt. He stopped, as if his batteries had suddenly run down, stunned that an object would fight back. And then she clawed his face.

Stella had drawn first blood, and now she ran for the light at the end of the box corridor, screaming, ‘I’m gonna live, you bastard!'

Janos leaned against the door to the back office, making it clear to the prisoner that she was not going anywhere. Mallory and Riker closed in on Susan Qualen. The woman backed into a computer station and slipped. Her handcuffs bound her wrists behind her, and she could not break the fall. She awkwardly managed a squat, then rose to a stand and revolved slowly, looking from face to face. ‘Why am I under arrest?’ She jangled the chain of her manacles. ‘I haven’t done anything.’

‘You got that part right,’ said Riker. ‘You wouldn’t help us. You ran away.’

The words were spoken in a monotone, but the woman behaved as if he had screamed at her. She bowed her head and stared at the floor. As a reward for this attitude of contrition, Janos removed the handcuffs, then stepped back.

Mallory kicked a chair toward the suspect. It fell over, and Riker commanded, ‘Pick it up!’

Susan Qualen did as she was told.

‘Sit down!’ said Janos.

‘That day you came around – ’ Qualen’s voice faltered and cracked. ‘I couldn’t help you. I didn’t – ’

‘You have to sign this.’ Riker held a small card that listed her rights under the constitution. ‘We’ll get you a lawyer if you want one. Do you understand your rights?’

‘I don’t need a damn lawyer. I didn’t do – ’

‘Then sign it!’ Riker was not play-acting. He was angry when he grabbed a clipboard from the desk, then attached the card and a pen. She accepted the board, fingers slowly closing around its edges, and quickly signed her name. Mallory tore the clipboard from the woman’s hands and threw it across the room. Qualen jumped as it skittered across the floor for the last few feet before hitting the wall.

‘And now,’ said Riker, ‘tell us that twisted freak didn’t look up his Aunt Susan the minute he got to town.’

‘It’s your fault!’ Qualen faced each of them in turn. ‘You lie to people. You don’t – ’

‘All those details in the papers,’ said Mallory. ‘You knew there was a link between the last hanging and – ’

‘And my sister? The police only told me Natalie was murdered. I read about her hanging in the newspapers – the fake suicide, a damn cover-up!’ Susan Qualen’s voice was in the high, wavering pitch of hysteria. ‘Nobody wanted to solve Natalie’s murder.’

‘Your nephew gave you all the details,’ said Mallory. ‘That’s how you knew. When you saw the story in the papers, it was Natalie’s murder all over again.’

‘Stop it! Junior didn’t tell me anything!' She was in tears. ‘That little boy could barely speak. He was almost catatonic’

‘So you sent him away. You conspired to hide the only witness who could’ve helped the police find your sister’s killer.’

‘Oh, that’s rich.’ Susan Qualen was not frightened anymore. She was angry. ‘Who do you call when a damn cop kills your sister – the cops?’ She wore a grim smile and took some satisfaction in their stunned faces.

Running toward the light at the end of the corridor, Stella turned a corner of boxes and saw a small office walled in glass. The door was ajar, and she pushed it wide open. At the point of slamming it behind her, she regained her sanity, then closed the door quietly and turned a knob to lock it. The desk offered the only cover in a room made of glass, and she crouched behind it, taking the telephone with her. She dialed 911, but the call would not go through. And now she listened to an automated recording that instructed her to dial another digit for an outside line.

He was coming.

She could hear him walking at a mechanical clip. Stella held her breath as the man tried the knob, and then she heard metal on metal – a key in the lock.

Oh, you stupid fool. He’s a damn janitor. He has all the keys.

Stella closed her eyes and covered her ears, blocking it out, wishing it away, this thing at the door. The lock came undone. The door opened, and that insect smell was in the room with her. She opened her eyes. Very slowly, deep in shock, she lifted her face. He was standing beside the desk, looking down at her, yet not really seeing her. And he said nothing; one did not converse with objects. She saw the sign behind him, the shield of the alarm company pasted to the glass wall encircled by metallic tape. If she could break the glass, that would trigger the burglar alarm and bring a watchman.

Susan Qualen was all but spitting the next words at them. ‘If I’d given him up, how long would that little boy have stayed alive? The only witness to a cop killing his mother. I lived in that neighborhood for years. Drug dealers bought the police for a song. And you guys always cover for your own.’ She put up one hand, sensing Riker’s intention to interrupt. ‘Don’t start with me. I did the right thing, and you know it!’

‘He ran away from the foster parents,’ said Mallory, ‘a pair of chiseling – ’

‘And he went back to my cousins. They took him to Nebraska. When he grew up, he had a lot of questions about his mother. They told him everything they knew. Then he came back.’

‘Back home,’ said Mallory. ‘To you.’

‘He only spent a few hours with me. That was a long time ago.’

‘You didn’t want to see him again.’ Riker folded his arms. ‘He scared you, didn’t he?’

‘No! He wasn’t some whacked psycho. He was as normal as I am.’

Janos pulled out his notebook. ‘Where’s your nephew now?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘What does he call himself these days?’

‘Junior, I guess. That’s what he always called himself ‘I want a straight answer.’ Janos moved closer. ‘Did you hear the question? What name is he – ’

‘I don’t know!’

‘Right,’ said Mallory. ‘You don’t know anything helpful. I keep forgetting that. So why did you run?’

Susan Qualen sank into the chair, trembling, not with fear but excess emotions, none of them good ones. Hate predominated overall.

‘Okay,’ said Riker. ‘Here’s an easier question. Why did you come back?’

Stella had no clue to the source of sudden strength in her arms. She picked up the heavy wooden desk chair and sent it hurtling through the glass wall, fracturing it into a hundred pieces. The man turned to a panel of buttons beside the door and cut off the alarm while it was merely a squeak and before the glass shower had ended. One long shard lingered in the frame, then toppled and shattered across the office floor. The broken pieces crunched under his shoes as he walked toward her, one hand rising, reaching out.

‘No,’ she said. ‘No!’ she yelled.

And now she realized that she was invisible to him. He walked past her and took a card from a rack on the wall, then fed it into the slot below the time clock. Because this was such a normal act for any employee beginning his shift, it unhinged Stella’s mind. The night watchman was never coming to her rescue. He was the watchman.

‘I came back to beg you not to kill Natalie’s son.’ Susan Qualen doubled over, as if they had kicked her. ‘Killing is what you do best, isn’t it?’ She was nearly spent. Anger was all that sustained her. ‘You gun-happy bastards kill people all the time. You made Junior what he is. A goddamn cop killed his mother. So I figure you owe him a life. You can’t just put him down like a sick animal.’

Riker could see that Janos was losing the heart for this. The man’s voice was too soft when he said, ‘Tell us where your nephew lives. If we have some control over the capture – ’

‘I don’t know!' She shook her head. ‘That’s the truth. I told you – I only saw him for a few hours. That was three years ago, and he asked all the questions.’

Mallory gripped the woman’s arm. ‘What did your relatives tell you? What was he doing for a living when he – ’

‘He was a cop!' Susan Qualen’s face was wet with tears. ‘Can you believe it?’ Her words came out in a stutter of sobs. ‘A cop… like you… so don’t… don’t kill him.’

Stella backed up to the wall, cutting her bare feet on broken glass and never feeling the pain. Her mouth was dry, and her eyes were on the box cutter in his hand. Involuntary responses came first, cold chemicals flooding her veins. Her palms were clammy, and her heart banged in a full-blown panic attack. There was nowhere to go but into the corner. She pressed up against the plaster, eyes wide, staring at the razor. Her sweaty hands spread out on the corner walls, and she climbed them, finding traction with the sticky flesh of palms and soles. Her feet were inches off the floor, toes curling over the baseboard – a human fly.

‘Please don’t.’ She was stripped down to the naked personality of the little girl from Ohio. ‘Please,’ she said. ‘Please,’ she whispered.

Jack Coffey looked up to see two visitors in his office. New Yorkers had come to know these women as the Abandoned Stellas of Ohio. They stood before his desk in sturdy, serviceable shoes and their best dresses. They had brought him their frightened eyes and wavering smiles, brave then not, and all the baggage of hope. First, they destroyed him, they broke his heart, and then they said hello and ‘Did you find our Stella?’

Another bag of delicatessen food sat on the floor at Ronald Deluthe’s feet. He was operating a laptop computer and scanning all the transcriptions of tip-line calls. The sightings of Stella Small spanned four states. Charles Butler sat beside him on the leather couch, rolling one hand to tell the younger man to scroll faster. ‘Stop. Highlight that one too.’

Mallory stood over them, saying, ‘What? Let me see.’

‘Here,’ said Charles. ‘Multiple sightings in department stores. Look at this last one. Stella was shopping rather late this evening.’

Deluthe shook his head. ‘This can’t be right. The discount store I can see, but where would she get the money to shop on Fifth Avenue?’

‘Hmm. Bergdorf s had a moonlight sale,’ said Mallory. ‘So did Lord and Taylor.’ She leaned over to look at another highlighted entry. ‘That designer outlet store checks out. That’s where she bought a suit this morning, and the bastard ruined it.’

‘Well, she’s not gonna find another one on Fifth Avenue,’ said Deluthe with absolute conviction. ‘You saw that place she lived in, all those unpaid bills. So the late sightings are bogus.’

Mallory glared at him briefly, a small threat to tell him that he must defer to her in all matters of police work and shopping. ‘Stella has good taste.’

Charles stared at the glowing screen. ‘This place was on the news tonight. There was a small fire on the top floor. The whole store was evacuated. Perhaps a – ’ He looked up to see the back of Mallory leaving the room. ‘Well, I guess it was worth checking out.’

‘Waste of time,’ said Deluthe. ‘The scarecrow always hangs them in their own apartments.’

‘Twice isn’t quite the same as always.’ Charles picked up the deli bag and searched among the sandwiches for his own dinner. ‘Oh, and he’s got the hang of setting fires now.’

Suddenly, Deluthe was also leaving him, feet slapping the wood in the hallway, making a dead run for the front door.

It had never occurred to Mrs Harmon Heath-Ellis that cabs might be scarce in the hours after all the bars had closed. She crossed the small park and passed the fountain, hoping to improve her chances of hailing a car on Fifth Avenue.

A group of six people had gathered in front of her favorite department store. Suppose someone recognized her? Her social stature was too secure to worry about being caught in town during the loser’s month of August. However, she did fear being discovered near her brother-in-law’s hotel.

The socialite waved frantically, though the only cab, indeed, the only vehicle on the avenue, was stopped at a traffic light a block away. She glanced back at the people in front of the store, her store. They were wearing what must pass for evening clothes in that third-world country Middle America. The rubes were fixated on one window. Curiosity prevailed, and she walked toward the shabby little gathering. What was the harm? None of their social orbits could possibly intersect with hers.

The wealthy society matron looked over their shoulders and between their heads to see the lighted display. After all she had spent on haute couture, who was better qualified to critique the window-dresser’s art?

Well, this was different. And it was inevitable, she supposed. This must be the next big thing, the new wave beyond heroin chic – dead.

‘That’s no manikin,’ said the man directly in front of her.

Of course not. As any fool could see, this was a living woman playing the role of a department store dummy. It was an old idea with a new twist – literally. The model was slowly revolving at the end of a rope, allowing the public to view all sides of the blue suit and matching shoes.

‘She is rather good,’ said Mrs Harmon Heath-Ellis. ‘This one doesn’t blink.’ Well, certainly the girl must blink, but not until the rope twisted her face away from the window. The model was quite pretty in a low-rent way. Her hair had not been styled by any reputable salon. The short spikes standing out on the scalp were so passe. Longer strands of blond hair trailed from the model’s open mouth, and what sort of statement was that?

The window had been arranged with small kitchen appliances and utensils to create an interesting contrast with high fashion. Though somewhat nearsighted, the socialite recognized the designer by the cut of the light blue suit – quite respectable. Ah, but the rest – such tedious violence, no blood, no real drama.

An enormous woman in a muumuu – obviously an out-of-towner and Kmart shopper – was whimpering, saying, ‘Oh, God, she’s dead!’ A man joined in this opinion. ‘Hey, somebody call a cop!’

Mrs Harmon Heath-Ellis smiled benignly in the spirit of giving first aid to the ignorant and unwashed, the tourists. But now a man pointed to the glass, his mouth working in astonished dumbshow. The socialite stepped closer to the display window to see what she might have missed.

Her superior smile was frozen, and she was deaf to the oncoming screams of police sirens. Beneath the hanged model was a jar of dead flies encircled by flaming red candles. The woman looked up, and now she could not look away. What she had mistaken for a mole, a beauty mark, was a black fly crawling across the model’s face and moving toward one wide blue eye.

The socialite was trembling, interior screams outshouting the sirens. She jumped at the screech of brakes and spinning red lights. Police cars disgorged men in uniforms and men in suits. There was one woman among them, but this tall blonde was hardly a civil servant. She wore a linen blazer of all too marvelous cut and line, a thing to die for. And now this young paragon of fashion pulled an enormous revolver from a shoulder holster and beat on the plate glass with the butt end of the gun.

Of course, the glass was holding up well. It was made to withstand such vandalism, and Mrs Heath-Ellis was about to tell her as much, for she was privy to every detail of her favorite -

‘Hey, Mallory!’ Near the far corner of the block-long store, a policeman called out, ‘This door’s open!’

Either young Mallory did not hear this man, or she did not care, so enraged was she, quite mad actually, beating, hammering the glass, electric-green eyes full of rage. With one last mighty swing of the gun, the glass wall shattered, and the young blonde was climbing past the shards, tearing her fabulous threads to get at the twisting figure on the end of the rope.

The policewoman was slender, and yet she was able to lift the dead weight as if it were nothing. She cradled the other woman’s limp body like a babe in arms, then lifted it high until the rope slackened. She was fiercely concentrated on the model’s still white face. And every watcher knew she was willing the hanged woman to live.

There was a hinged panel at the rear of the display window, but rather than simply open this door, the entire back wall was ripped from its moorings by a large man. Oh, and that face – brutality incarnate.

‘Good job, Janos,’ said another man, a less imposing figure with a bad suit, who climbed up to the raised floor, then quickly untied the thick knot of the noose. The rope fell away, and Mallory laid her burden down. The largest policeman, the brutal one called Janos, leaned over the prone body to remove the gag of human hair. With surprising delicacy, he pinched the model’s nostrils closed and covered her mouth with his own. The young woman’s body shuddered back to life in convulsions. Her hands rolled into fists that punched the air, batting at some phantom from an interrupted nightmare, and her mouth opened wide in a shrill scream. The large policeman gently gathered her into his arms and rocked her slowly. His voice was incongruously soft as he said, ‘Hush now, Stella, it’s all over.’

The small crowd of watchers went wild, screaming, cheering, whistling. The socialite was surprised by her own helpless laughter as she was engulfed in a hug from the heavy-set woman in the muumuu. Her head fell upon this stranger’s generous breast, and she began to cry.