Mallory's Oracle

CHAPTER 11

Charles dropped the duffle bag, spilling out Mallory's toothbrush, hairbrush, robe and slippers onto the hall carpet. He wore the slack-jaw expression of a man who had just seen a ghost. And he had.

He walked through the open doorway into the den and met Louis Markowitz. The man inhabited this room as surely as if Charles could see him in the body. Louis was at work all over the back wall, and he was as messy as he had been in life.

Charles's memory recreated one section of the den's cork wall as it had appeared in Louis's office before he was murdered. The mental photograph agreed with half of this wall. The second half of the wall was also pure Louis Markowitz in style, but the man had been two days dead when the first of these photographs had been taken.

He pulled aside an overlay of paper on the right side of the cork. Photos and papers were more neatly aligned on the next layer. On the bottom layer, every bit of paper was machine-precision straight. Layer by layer, the beautiful machine had gone awry until she had captured her father's method of order passing for chaos.

On Mallory's side of the wall, an early layer of clutter held the background check on Margot Siddon. She had rejected Margot in favor of the medium on the next layer. Henry Cathery and Jonathan Gaynor were off to one side in separate categories. He pulled the photographs of Redwing off the board, eliminating the clutter of the red herring.

"Louis, talk to me," he whispered to the other side of the wall.

The bulletin board began to speak. A handwritten note jumped out at him, and credit reports, early 1980s stock transactions, and bank records. This was all Louis had to work with when he tailed the murderer to the scene of Pearl Whitman's death in the East Village. Was it the murderer he was trailing? Why had they all assumed that?

Mallory's side of the board had more financial data on the top layer, including the US Attorney's probe of Edith Candle and Mallory's probe of Edith's computer. Financial statements dominated both sides of the wall with the money motive. Father and daughter were holding to the same portrait of a killer: sane but evil.

At horrific speed, he read Mallory's neatly typed and incredibly detailed surveillance notes. The medical examiner's reports he took no time with, ripping them from both sides. He accidentally knocked loose the pin which held a plastic bag to Markowitz's section. It drifted to the floor to cover the pile of rejects. The beads from Anne Cathery's necklace were also sent to floor.

Now, with all the extraneous clutter gone, he knew why and how, but not who. Pearl Whitman tantalized him, as she must have done to Markowitz before him. But it was Samantha Siddon who finally gave up the killer's name.

Riker was the first thing Mallory saw when she opened her eyes. In her estimation, he was not a pretty sight. She thought his eyes were redder if that was possible.

His gray, unshaven face collapsed into a smile of relief.

"Hi, kid. How're you doin'?"

"Mallory to you. I feel like I've got a hangover."

"You know, this reminds me of the time you had appendicitis. You were just a little squirt."

"Riker, what's – "

"I went down to the hospital to sweat out your operation with Lou and Helen. Lou said I'd missed the best part. When the emergency-room nurse pressed down on your appendix, you kicked her in the gut, he said. I laughed till I cried."

"What's going on, Riker?"

"You remember anything about last night?"

"Redwing." She sat up quickly, too quickly. "Oh Christ, my head hurts. You got her?"

"We got her for assault and five or ten other counts. Coffey adds on a new one every time something occurs to him. The last thing I saw on his list was "No dog tags". He's on a damn mission."

"Where's the boy?" She pulled off the bandage which covered the needle dripping fluid into her arm.

"He's in Juvenile Hall. Don't mess with that needle or I'll call the nurse. You won't like that. She's bigger than you and meaner."

"I have to get out of here." She pulled out the needle and rubbed the hole in her arm. "Where's my stuff?"

"Not so fast, kid. You don't go anywhere, you got that? Don't give me any grief, Kathy."

"Mallory."

"This is personal, kid, not business. But I can make it business. You stay put, or I book you."

"What charge?"

"A stolen Xerox machine."

"Okay, you win."

"Naw. That was too easy, kid. You forget who you're talking to."

"I only want to go home."

"You stay here for the duration."

"I'll stay home for the duration. I'll go nuts if I have to stay here. At least at home I've got my computer."

"And Lou's bulletin board."

"That too."

"You're too weak to go anywhere."

She threw back the covers and swung her bare feet over the edge of the high hospital bed. She landed on the floor, sitting unceremoniously on her backside with a new pain to contend with.

"I told you so," said Riker.

Three women had chimed the warning bells, but they had charitably overestimated him. Bells or no bells, the village idiot was always the last to know his house was on fire.

There had been a warning of sorts toward the end of his mother's life. "You must never break Edith's seclusion, Charles. Remember that." And then his mother was gone. And later, when her remains were going to the ground, he was handed a telegram at the graveside, a message of condolence and an invitation to tea. His mother had said nothing about invitations to tea.

Then Mallory had tried to warn him, and how he had thanked her for that. Henrietta had not even tried, wise woman, but tripped the alarm in trying to work around him. One day, if he was to survive this life, to pick up on all the warning bells, he must get a woman of his own, and maybe a white cane and a seeing-eye dog as well.

Raindrops pocked the windows of the cab. Forked lightning lit up the streets and lifted the gloom of overcast for an instant before menacing the earth with a clap of thunder. The cabby was driving through the rain with laudable caution and no speed at all, not realizing that the house was on fire.

"Look here," Charles said to the driver I'll pay you ten dollars for every red light you go through."

"Oh, you crazy Americans," said the driver, whose name was made up entirely of consonants.

Charles pushed a twenty-dollar bill through the slot in the bulletproof glass.

"I love this country," said the cabby.

She sat across the kitchen table from Riker while the coffee-maker gurgled between them. Her head throbbed, and it crossed her mind that the doctors had packed her brain case with cotton batting.

"Why didn't Charles come back to the hospital with my stuff and my keys?"

"Maybe he did," said Riker. "You didn't hang around very long."

Mallory shook her head. Charles had already been here, so the doorman said, and left in a hurry. She got up from the table.

"Where are you going, kid?"

"Well, not out the front door." Even the Shadow could not pass through solid oak.

After the doorman had let them in with a master key, they had reached a mistrustful stand-off when Riker locked the front door deadbolt from the inside and pocketed the spare key from the ring in the kitchen. Next, he had gone to the bedroom window's burglar guard leading out to the fire escape. He had found the key to the padlock and secured that exit, too.

Now she had drunk as much coffee as she could stand, and Riker had matched her cup for cup. Her mind had cleared only a little, and he was showing no signs of the lost night's sleep. If anything, he was jazzed with caffeine, and for the first time, capable of thinking rings around her, anticipating every ploy.

Maybe.

When he was safely lost in the sports section of the morning paper, she walked into her den and pulled the door shut behind her. She dragged a chair from its position at the computer to the center of the room and sat before the board, scanning the whole of the cork wall as one unit, one mind at work. Despite the mess of papers at the baseboard, she was slow to focus, to realize there had been an intrusion here, another mind at work on the board.

Charles.

He had torn off layers of paper and rearranged the photos and printouts. Samantha Siddon had come to prominence in a centered and solitary position. Anne Cathery, Estelle Gaynor and Pearl Whitman were grouped together and off to the side, lined up in the order of their deaths. The financial data came next in Charles's own hierarchy of paper-shuffling.

She was staring at the small white beads, Anne Cathery's, torn from her neck on the day of the murder in Gramercy Park. They lay scattered all over the pile of papers and the plastic bag. The ground had been soaked in blood, strewn with beads. In the slide show inside her head, the Cathery murder scene was blending with Markowitz's. She could see herself lining up the blood pools of Markowitz's face. "Line 'em up flat with the floor," Dr Slope had told her then.

She walked to the baseboard and knelt down by the pile of Charles's rejects and the plastic bag. Something was missing. What had Charles taken away with him? Her drugged brain would not move quickly enough. She turned to the faster brain of her computer and called up the files to match the missing sequence numbers. And now she could see all that Charles had seen.

There was writing on the wall, and there was writing on the wall.

Charles hammered on the door.

No response.

He tried the knob. The door was unlocked. He entered slowly. The front room was curtain-drawn dark. Down the hall, a rectangle of light reflected off one wall opposite the door to the library. When he rounded the wall and stood in the open doorway, he faced a dark shape in an armchair pulled out to the center of the room and back-lit by the bright light of a table lamp.

"Oh, it's you," said Edith's voice.

His eyes were slow to sort out the details of the gun's barrel and bullet chambers as she lowered it to her lap.

Edith smiled. "I suppose you think I'm a foolish old woman to be so frightened."

"Oh, no. I don't take you for a fool. And you left your door unlocked – that doesn't argue well for fear. Herbert's gun, I presume? How did you convince him to part with it? Ah, but wait. I forget. You're the one who talked him into getting it. And you were the one who sent one of the seance ladies that threatening letter. That was for Mallory's benefit, wasn't it? To send her after Redwing. Whom else have you been sending notes to?"

"What are you saying?"

"This isn't a case of second sight." The wave of his hand took in the gun, and the lamp. "It's a sure thing. You're expecting an invited guest. Did you telephone or write?"

"You believe that I would deliberately use myself as bait? I'm not so brave."

"I'd say it was more like an ambush. Oh, Mallory is alive. That must be a great disappointment to you."

"Charles, how can you – "

"You knew who the murderer was. The last thing you wanted was to have the monster caught by Mallory. You were going to do that job yourself. What a coup. You protect yourself from prison and make a career comeback in one shot."

"If your mother could hear the things you're say – "

"My mother knew what you were," said Charles. "You've branched out a bit, though, added on a few more enterprises. I might have worked this out sooner, but it was so out of character for you to let a mark in on the action. Now there are forty of them, all in on it. Getting a bit out of hand, isn't it?. Were you craving a little excitement? All those people involved in the scam. Did you enjoy the thrill to the threat of discovery? A young chess-player tried to explain that special joy to me the other day. You look frightened, Edith. I think the killer has the same fears."

"I don't know what you mean."

"Read my mind – if the prospect doesn't frighten you. The Whitman merger wasn't your first or last bit of larceny. It wasn't sufficient to account for the amounts in your stock portfolio. You see these?" He pulled a wad of computer printouts from his pocket. "Mallory knew, but I wouldn't listen to her. She backtracked the increases in your fortune and tallied them with details of insider trading. The forty partners told you everything – a new product that led to an increase in stock value, a pending merger, a sale, a takeover. They even allowed you to set the dates of their transactions, just as Pearl Whitman did when her company went into merger. Then somebody started killing off your partners. The police started investigating commonalities among the victims. Exposure was a threat."

"Stop this, Charles, before you – "

"You and the murderer had so much in common. First, killing for the money, then learning to love it. You were soul mates, twins, and the two of you were bound together by the same racket."

"This is ludicrous. You can't hold me responsible for – "

"I see your hand in everything, Edith. You primed Redwing and baited Mallory. You set Mallory up to die. That's your forte, isn't it? First you predict the death and then you make it happen. She was bright enough to expose you. That would have meant the loss of your fortune and freedom. Hers would have been a challenging death and so functional too. How neat. But you're not orchestrating things anymore. When the killer walks in. I'll be here. Not you. Now get out of here. Go across the hall to Henrietta's apartment."

"I assure you, I'm capable of – "

"Get out!"

Mallory closed out the file raided from the last financial house on her list and pushed her chair away from the computer. Well, Edith had told her, straight out, you can get away with a lot when you're old.

She slipped by the open kitchen door. Riker was still immersed in the sports section. She walked through her bedroom and into the bathroom to turn on the shower. She left the shower running as she opened the top dresser drawer and pulled out the old.38 Long Colt which had belonged to Markowitz and his father before him. Riker had thoughtfully confiscated her Smith & Wesson, but this would do. The holes would not be so big, but the bullets would travel as far and nearly as fast. The shower was steaming the bathroom mirror as she strapped on her shoulder holster.

Edith had no police protection. They had covered the other seance connections, but they hadn't known about Edith. Mallory thought to call Coffey, and then thought better of it. The evidence was so slender, it was better to catch the perp in the act. Coffey would never let her use Candle.

If she didn't act now she'd lose the only leverage she might ever have. The seance investors were being rounded up. It was all coming undone, and it was only one newspaper edition from common knowledge. Time, she had none to spare. SEC investigators would be working the data, running the matches. If Charles had gone to Coffey with her printouts, they'd be knocking on Edith's door within the hour.

What if Charles had gone to Edith first? What was she going to do with Charles? Maybe say, "Excuse me, would you mind turning your back while I hang old Edith out in the breeze?"

She went to the bedroom closet for her blazer. Her hand was on the door when she thought of Helen. Helen wouldn't like it if she knew her Kathy had used a little old lady to cheese the trap. That would've made Helen cry.

Well, a lot of things made Helen cry.

The first night Helen had tucked her in, Mallory had smelled clean sheets for the first time in her child's memory. And there had been clean clothes to wear that next morning. The clothes smelled of fabric-softener, and so did Helen on laundry day. On other days, Helen smelled of pine-scented disinfectant, scouring powder and floor wax. She opened the door, and Helen came out of the closet in scents of sachets and mothballs. Mallory slammed the door on Helen.

Riker knocked softly on the bedroom door. No response.

"Hey, Kathy?"

She had been moving slow and dragging, even after all the coffee she'd put away. She could be taking a nap, but he couldn't shake the feeling that he was alone in these rooms. He wandered into the den and looked at the mess of the back wall which had undergone a change of clutter style. The square computer eye was glowing blue with white type. She had left her computer running.

While she took a nap?

In a heartbeat, he was back at the bedroom door, forcing the lock and putting his shoulder to it. He was half-fallen into the empty room when he heard the sound of the shower running. He knocked on the bathroom door. "Kathy, you in there?"

The burglar guard was still padlocked. The bathroom door lock was standard apartment flimsy. He kicked the door at the midsection and it gave way. The shower stall was empty and the window was open. He put his head out into the drizzling rain. It was a fourteen-foot drop to an overhang below the window. Then she would only have to walk along that overhang to gain access to the fire escape.

Not a big believer in invisible murderers, Charles had angled the lampshade to spotlight the door. Edith's ambush preparations told him he would not have long to wait.

Markowitz had been right. The evidence was so slight, there was no other way but this to end it.

He never heard the steps approaching.

A mass of energy burst through the door, with no face, no identifiable shape to the colors and materials in the rush of flying, sprawling bulk. The lamp crashed to the floor. Its naked light bulb burned like a sun in the peripheral corner of his sight. And then all was still and quiet, and his attention was focussed on the point of the knife one inch from his left eyeball. When he could look beyond the knife, he was staring into the eyes of a serial killer.

The lamplight from the level of the floor made the body into a giant, casting its shadow up beyond the wall, which was too small to contain it, and across the ceiling. The shape blurred as he focussed again on the point of the knife, light dancing on the sharp tip, calling his attention to the matter at hand. Any movement would cost him an eye. By great effort of will, he dismissed the knife, refusing to see it anymore, looking back to the eyes of his assailant.

"What part are you playing now, Gaynor? Jack the Ripper?" Charles smiled.

The knife pulled back only a little, a fraction of an inch. Jonathan Gaynor's eyes did the wide-then-narrow dance of what's going on here? The knife came closer, all but touching Charles's eye. "Where is Edith Candle?"

Charles blinked slowly, and his smile widened into a lunatic grin. "You didn't think I'd endanger an elderly woman, did you?"

"How did you put it together?"

"You're wondering if the police could figure it out as easily as I did? They have. It was hardly challenging."

"I think you're running a bluff." The knife wavered back and forth, mimicking, in smaller degrees, the slow shake of Gaynor's head. "You never called the police. You're on your own, aren't you? You sent the note, and signed the old lady's name, right?"

"Believe what you like."

"Tell me how you worked it out."

"No, if you're going to kill me, I don't mind annoying you by taking the list of your stupid mistakes with me."

"It doesn't matter," said Gaynor, drawing the blade back an inch, hefting the weight of the hilt in his hand. "They could only have a circumstantial case. The same evidence could argue for Margot or Henry."

"Oh, sorry. I just had a chat with the police department a few minutes ago. Margot Siddon is in jail. Henry's down there now, trying to make bail for her. Not that they'll let her out. Seems she was having a bad day. She tried to kill an off-duty NYPD detective."

"You're lying, Charles."

"For the next hour or so, they'll have a score of policemen for alibis. So what now?"

"We could while away some time till Henry gets home. Or you could die in the rather boring murder of an interrupted burglary. This is New York City – unsensational corpses get stacked up like cordwood."

Never taking his eyes from Charles, Gaynor reached out one blind hand to pick up the telephone on the table next to the chair. "Dial the numbers as I call them." When the connection was made, he took the receiver and held it to his ear, waiting out the time of six rings. He put the receiver back on its cradle.

"'No answer at Henry's apartment. But then, I take it you'd rather not wait on Henry?"

"I've changed my mind," said Charles as the knife came closer. "I'll tell you how I figured it out. And maybe you could clear up a few small details for me. Deal?" as Mallory would say.

"Deal."

"Your choice of victims wasn't very clever. You might as well have signed Samantha Siddon's corpse."

"She wasn't even – "

"Now, Louis Markowitz's key was your aunt. Louis loved money motives. Of course, you knew your aunt was mentioned in an investigator's report on the Whitman Chemicals merger."

"How do you make the leap from a recent murder to a stock-market transaction in the Eighties?"

"A routine background check on your aunt footnoted an SEC investigation on the merger. All the heavy profiteers were investigated. The US Attorney's office elected not to prosecute. A few old women and a seance got lost in the bigger game of the junk bonds and broker swindles."

"What's the connection to me?"

"Your aunt tipped you off to the merger, didn't she? According to Mallory's reports, you made a modest gain that year, almost too modest. I found that interesting. But then, you could count on inheriting a fortune, couldn't you?"

"I never purchased any stock in Whitman Chemical."

"I'm guessing you exchanged the insider tip for a straight percentage of profit. Perhaps you learned that trick from your aunt. She was a rather small operator up to that point, only steering the marks to Edith and making use of the dates."

"Even if you could prove that, I couldn't be prosecuted. I'm past the seven-year statute of limitations."

"But your aunt wasn't. Mallory told me you quarreled with your aunt over the seances. I believe you did. It must have been a shock to discover her activities were ongoing and so extensive. Your aunt's fortune doubled after the merger Edith arranged. But subsequent deals with the cartel made it grow to ostentatious proportions. It was out of control, wasn't it? So many people in on the action. It was only a matter of time before the cartel was exposed. And the government people routinely take all the profits, don't they? Not to mention fines in the millions of dollars. But even the SEC can't seize a dead woman's estate once it's gone through probate. Mallory's first instincts were good. She liked money motives as much as Louis Markowitz did."

"Back to Samantha Siddon, if you don't mind. I don't see the connection to me."

"It was because Siddon followed Whitman. With a few reservations, I finally gave in to Mallory's fixation with money motives, the idea that, of the four murders, there was one main target. Pearl Whitman left no heirs, no one benefited by her death. The only motive for her murder could be the framing of Henry Cathery."

"One might take the view that Pearl had changed her mind about giving Henry a solid alibi for the time of his grandmother's death."

"I wouldn't. Four murders would be too complex for a young man who thrives on simplicity and lack of distraction. He wouldn't bother to go to all that trouble -certainly not for money. I gather you didn't know he was coming into a personal fortune of his own. You seemed surprised. That's a snag, isn't it?"

"You keep digressing. How does Samantha Siddon give me away?"

"Samantha Siddon was an interesting departure from the pattern. Everyone was so busy with patterns and common motives. And that place where Louis died with Pearl Whitman, that made another interesting departure. Then I realized it wasn't a departure at all. It was business as usual with an unexpected interruption."

"You're wandering off the path again, Charles."

"Sorry. Well, the order of the murders is important. You killed Anne Cathery first to put suspicion on Henry Cathery. He was perfect, wasn't he? A strange boy, reclusive. But even if he had been arrested, there were no witnesses, no physical evidence. All that Cathery money, what were the odds he couldn't make bail? So you didn't have to worry about his confinement while you were killing your aunt. You didn't count on Henry intimidating Pearl Whitman into an alibi after the police came around a second time. Then Miss Whitman was the third victim. That would have been predictable for Markowitz, once he sized Henry Cathery up for a frame. That would have occurred to him shortly after your aunt died. He was following the money motive."

Gaynor kicked the lamp, and the shifting light made his shadow smaller. "It couldn't have been that simple."

"Did it rattle you when he followed Pearl Whitman into the building? Yes, I suppose it did. You must have thought it was all over at that point. You left the plastic bag behind. Very sloppy. It was photographed at the site."

"Siddon," said Gaynor, bringing the knife close and then drawing it back. "Samantha Siddon."

"Right. The last one. It followed Markowitz's logic for the framing of the Cathery boy. You knew about that odd little symbiotic relationship between Henry and Margot. You'd lived in the square for several months by then. I expect you'd seen them together quite a few times. You would have been interested in every aspect of Henry's routine. You couldn't count on Henry not having an alibi for all the murders, so you implicated the only other human he had any ties to. It would destroy her credibility as an alibi and lead the police down the path of a conspiracy."

"I have an unbreakable alibi for the Siddon murder."

"Well, no you don't, not if you're counting on Mallory. I'm sure you noticed her staking out Gramercy Park and following you on campus. Her tragic flaw is beauty, or rather, the fact that she's unaware of it. She actually believes she can blend into her surroundings. So you were aware of her, and you made her your alibi."

"I was never out of her sight for more than twenty minutes."

"Nineteen minutes. She's obsessive about her notes. Do you know, she even has a note about the change in your physical characteristics during "the play? You do have a distinctively awkward body language, but you can lose it when you want to. On stage, you were even graceful."

"Nineteen minutes isn't enough time to go to Gramercy Park, kill the old woman and get back to the theater again."

"Oh, I don't believe any of them were killed in Gramercy Park. The university borders a seedy area with lots of places to do a murder unobserved."

"The police have no reason to believe she wasn't killed in the park."

"You mean because of the blood at the supposed crime sites? I liked the detail of the beads spread out all over creation. You arranged the bodies as they were when you killed the women. Once the bodies stiffened, it would have been easy to leave them in the same positions at another site, even working in the dark. Originally, the police believed the plastic bag was used to prevent the blood from splattering the killer. But the bags were used to retain all the blood necessary for a convincing crime scene. Excellent idea. The bag would keep it nice and moist so it would saturate the surroundings instead of lying caked on the surface. The bloody palm prints were another nice touch."

"They'll never prove it."

"No? But you've made so many errors. Shall I tell you what I believe tipped off Edith Candle? You mentioned the slashed breast from the seance. Blood and gore are not the mainstays of a medium's routine. Edith knew you'd filled the gaps in that performance from memory. You couldn't have seen it."

The knife had dropped away from his eye by a bare inch, and then another.

"It was more than money, wasn't it? I always thought that was a flaw in the police logic. You took an unnecessary risk planting the first body in the park. You craved the excitement, didn't you? How did it start?"

The lamp on the floor created the illusion of footlights and the drama of contrast. Gaynor's grin had a ghoulish aspect.

"It started with Anne Cathery's dog. He got away from her and led her out of the park. We were looking for him in the dustbins when I saw the monkey puzzle worked out for me."

"The monkey puzzle. That sounds familiar."

"When you were a schoolboy, did you have the paradigm of the monkey, the chair, the pole and the banana?"

"I think so. The banana is suspended from the ceiling by a thread?"

"Right," said Gaynor. "Just out of reach. And this very hungry monkey is given the tools to retrieve the banana – a chair and a pole. But the monkey doesn't know how to use them. So he paces back and forth until he gives up and sits in the corner, beaten. Suddenly, everything falls into line. From where he sits, he can see the pole leaning on the chair and pointing up to the banana. He grabs up the pole, leaps on the chair and swats the banana down."

"So it was spontaneous?"

"Yes. She was looking for the dog by a row of trash cans. Some building super had left half a box of large plastic bags by the cans. The garbage was bagged, just waiting to be put out on the street in the morning. There was a kitchen knife on the ground, someone had discarded it for a broken handle. The hilt of the knife was touching the box of trash bags and the blade was pointing at Anne Cathery. Beyond that silly woman, on the next street, was Henry Cathery, sitting in the park, playing chess with himself. I picked up one of the bags and punctured it with the knife. That gave me cover from the blood. I used another bag to put over her as soon as I'd put the knife in her throat. They were all small women. It wasn't difficult to bag her, so to speak. With the cover of a plastic bag around the body, I had all the leisure to make it look like the work of a lunatic."

"As if it wasn't."

"A profit of hundreds of millions of dollars is not the goal of the average lunatic."

"But you did like it, didn't you?"

Gaynor ignored this.

"Later, I came back for her. She was stiff by then. You were right, it was easy to arrange the body in the park so no one would know she'd been moved. Then I broke her beads and sent them flying everywhere."

Gaynor was smiling, and it was hardly an engaging smile. The man was enjoying his exposition. Of course, the downside of the perfect murder would be the lack of an appreciative audience.

"That was risky, even in the small hours of the morning," said Charles, hoping for the ring of appreciation in his own voice.

"I admit that part was exciting. But what were the odds of anyone watching at four in the morning? No one's very alert at that hour. I wore jeans and a baseball cap to pass as a maintenance man. I threw a bow-legged gait into the role. I was only carrying a large garbage bag. Nothing too sinister in that. Maintenance drones are invisible in that neighborhood. If it hadn't worked, if anyone had come forward with a description of a maintenance man with a garbage bag, it would never have come back on me. No motive. This was Henry's grandmother not mine."

"It never occurred to you that Henry would report his grandmother missing during the night?"

"The police won't take a missing-person report until forty-eight hours go by. I was hardly worried about Henry getting a posse together to beat the bushes for her. You've met him. I saw you in the park with him. It wasn't much of a risk. The worst thing that could have happened was that she'd be found somewhere else."

"Where did you kill your aunt?"

"I invited her to lunch and met her on a side street near the campus. She never mentioned the appointment to anyone. I had to volunteer the information to the police so they could verify my alibi for either side of the half-hour when I didn't have one. I told them she stood me up."

"I suppose that was quite understandable to them, since she was being murdered at that time. And Pearl Whitman? How did you get her into that East Village neighborhood?"

"I told her I was a broker with information to give the US Attorney's office about the cartel. She offered me a bribe. I told her she'd have to meet with me to work out the details. By public telephones, I led her from block to block, sort of eased her into the neighborhood by degrees."

"So, the fear of notoriety, prison and poverty overcame her fear of a bad neighborhood."

"Exactly. Samantha Siddon was only a little different. I had the impression she was looking forward to our meeting. I used a series of public phones to bring her to the theater by three different cabs. I had her walk the last few blocks and met her at the back of the building. I killed her behind a trash bin. That only took a few minutes. It took me longer to dress for the play rehearsal."

"How did you transport the body to Gramercy?"

"I usually go everywhere by cab. That day I hired a rental car for the occasion. I had to leave early, before Mallory's usual arrival time. I didn't want her to see the car."

The knife backed away another inch. He braced his arm on the arm of the chair. "But you still haven't delivered, Charles. You don't have anything that would stick, unless there's something else you've left out."

"Only this." Charles pushed the knife away and blinded Gaynor with Edith's unfurled shawl. He pulled the gun from the chair cushion and leveled it at Gaynor's head as the man ripped the shawl away from his face.

"Put down the knife. The police should be here any minute now. I expect they're on the way up in the elevator."

Gaynor smiled, and it was Charles's turn to play "What's going on here?" A child's game flashed through his brain.

Paper covers stone, scissors cut paper, stone breaks scissors.

A gun could not be outdone by a knife. So, why was Gaynor smiling?

"The police? No, I don't think so, Charles. You couldn't have known I would come – you only hoped I would. You're bluffing."

"I can't bluff. God knows I've tried. I just don't have the face for it."

The knife fell from Gaynor's hand and thudded to the carpet. "I believe you."

Well, that was more like it. Logic reigned.

Illogically, Gaynor lunged for the gun.

They were locked together, hands grappling for control of the weapon, limbs writhing, faces contorted. They were turning now, gun pointing to the ceiling, hands sweating and sliding over one another's flesh, legs kicking out, turning, turning into the dark hallway, knocking against the narrow walls and falling into the front room. They went to the floor and rolled, man over man, across the rug. The room was too dark to see the gun clearly. It was only a vague shape and cold metal, and the barrel was changing position, pointing lower. It was still in Charles's hands when it fired.

It was an explosion to crack the world. Charles reached for his side, his face all in agony. Gaynor rose to his feet, sole owner of the gun. He took a handkerchief from one pocket. A plastic bag from the same pocket fell to the floor.

"You couldn't have shot me, Charles. You're much too sane and civilized." He methodically wiped the gun's barrel and then its revolving chamber and handle. "It was predictable that you'd hesitate before you took a human life. That half-second has killed you." He bent down to retrieve the plastic bag from the floor and wrapped it around the handle of the gun. "And to answer your question honestly, yes I did love it. I do love it. I'm exhilarated."

Pain was giving way to shock as he watched Gaynor ease down on the back of his heels, well out of the stream of light from the open door which now shone on Charles's face. The better to see the fear? Was Gaynor waiting for that? Yes. No killing could be complete without it.

Charles could feel the blood on his hand. The barrel of the gun was pointing to his heart, and there was no doubt that death was coming. Fear was crowded out of his mind by the approach of death, its loud footfalls, its enormity. A moment stretched out for an eternity. He was at his mother's bedside again. She had not been frightened. She had heard it coming and succumbed to the wonder of it. She had died with an expression of amazement.

He smiled at Gaynor, and the man's face clouded up with anger. The gun barrel was pressed to Charles's heart.

Soon.

He heard the bell for the elevator. So Jack Coffey had come, but not in time. There was not the space of a second to call out. He heard the shot and felt the bone-shattering assault on his chest. His muscles jerked and then he lay motionless in the dark with only the light of the hall to show the outline of his body on the carpet. The higher orders of his beautiful brain were shutting down, memory was collapsing in on itself. The most primitive portion of his mind, where passion was seated, was the last repository of consciousness. The last thing in this world that his senses could reach was the voice of Henrietta Ramsharan, followed close by the sudden rush of Mallory's perfume.

Mallory shot out of Edith Candle's apartment and ran for the exit door which was closing on its slow hydraulic. She was murderous in the eyes and the grip of her gun. She stood on the stairwell landing.

Which way? Up or down?

The noise from below was faint. Breaking glass? She looked down through the winding metal stairs to the basement door which stood ajar. He could only be seconds through that door. But wait, something was off. Instinct kept her still. Breaking glass? The only window in the cellar was on the other side of the accordion partition where Max Candle's illusions were stored. Was Edith in the cellar? Had she opened that partition?

Now she stood in Markowitz's shoes. No backup, no time to call for help. She was going into the dark all alone.

She moved down the stairs with the silence of tennis shoes and the inherent stealth of a born thief. At each landing, she unscrewed the bulbs. When she put out the basement door's bulb, she was standing in the dark. She opened the cellar door and closed it quickly behind her. One blind hand reached up to the top of the fuse box and felt around for the flashlight.

It was gone.

The thunder made a dull sound in the basement. The glow from a streak of lightning bent its way down the sides of buildings to light up the garbage cans in the wide high window of the far wall. The window glass was broken, but not enough to allow a body to pass through the shards. He was still here.

She made her way by memory and touch, around a packing trunk, down the aisle of boxes and crates and into the wider area where Max Candle's illusions were stored, stepping softly towards the bad light from the back window. Lightning flashed and lit the guillotine, and then the thunder came crashing after it. An anticlimactic soft rain pinged off the garbage cans beyond the broken glass, and wind sheers drove stray droplets through the cracked window.

She tensed every muscle in her body, watching indistinct shadows, listening for footfalls. Her eyes hardened, blind to the flight of one raindrop. It touched the sleeve of her coat and disappeared on the rough tweed, without the substance to leave a wetness or any other sign that it had ever existed. Maliory focussed on the infinitely more subtle nuances in the shadows of black on black.

"The hell of Christianity is not eternal fire," Rabbi Kaplan had told her when she had become confused by the Christian Sunday school. (Helen had felt compelled to give the Christians equal time in Kathy's education.) "Hell is the absence of the beloved." The rabbi had this on the word of a Jesuit, he told her, and so it must be true. And so it was. The people she loved were killed. She wanted to kill back.

A dull globe light came on from behind the box she was rounding. She froze. Her eyes fixed on a single shadow sliding out from behind the Chinese screen, gliding just ahead of her and to the right. She raised her gun to the level of the head which would appear in her sights any second. She planned a head shot despite the training that taught her to shoot for the widest part of the body. She licked her lips as she waited for the shadow to emerge.

The rain was drumming now, harder, louder, and the wind was in a fury, sending the rain wide and far into the room.

There was a crunch of broken glass, and the head of another shadow appeared near the feet of her own. She could hear the rush of footsteps. She turned around to see the second shadow. And now the room filled with brilliant blinding light. The silhouette moving between her and the light was small and rounded, plump arms reaching out for her.

The wrong shadow.

And now Maliory heard the sound of the shadow behind her. She spun around, too slow in her reaction time. Yet, in the split of a second, there was time to note all the details of the man as she was still turning, as the gun was rising to point the barrel. Only a few feet away. Good shot or bad, she knew Gaynor was not likely to miss at this range.

Edith Candle watched on, dispassionately. Gaynor's finger jerked the trigger, and the blue-black muzzle flashed with the explosion. It was done in a moment. And while it was being done, the rain continued to fly through the cracked glass, but for the few drops which were sacrificed to the heat of the gun.

In the white light of the sun-bright room, Gaynor was a chimera in Mallory's adapting eye as the bullet tore its hole in the front of her shirt. Her gold hair was flying in the wet and chill October wind whipping through the window. She was falling, falling, eyes closing before she went to the ground.

She heard the soft shuffle of running footsteps and the slower heavy footfalls following after.

She was slow to open her eyes. Shielding her face from the spotlight at the top of the guillotine, she sat up with the idea that bulletproof vests were overrated. She wished she had died. Bones had been cracked by the concussion of the bullet. The vest had saved her from penetration but not from the force of the projectile fired at how many miles per second? She felt for and found the rib that was broken. Now her breath came in tears. Had she punctured a lung?

An overturned trunk lay by her side. The disembodied head of the Max Candle waxwork was lying just behind it. The resemblance to Charles was lying on its side and staring up at her.

The gun. Gaynor had taken her gun.

The rear window was still a mass of dangerous shards. He had not gone that way. And Edith – where had she gone? She must know a hundred hiding places in this cellar.

She stared up at the blazing sun atop the guillotine. Only Edith knew where the light was tripped.

There was a sharp pain in her chest as Mallory stood up. She turned off the switch for the globe lamp and then walked to the guillotine. The flashlight lay on the floor by the wooden hand locks. Edith's hands had been in the locks when the trick was done the first time. She knelt down and felt for the light switch. A small block of wood gave way under her exploring fingers. She pressed on the button, plunging the basement into the equalizer of darkness. Flashlight in hand and wax head under her arm, she went hunting.

The lightning lit the window again and she saw the silhouette of Gaynor flash into brilliant tabloid detail for an instant. The gun was wrapped in a wad of shiny plastic. It was a snub-nose revolver and not the Long Colt he was holding. How many bullets, she wondered? She had stopped in Edith's apartment long enough to count two bullets in Charles's body. And then there was the second gun, hers, with a full load of ammo. She set Max Candle's head on the top of a steamer trunk, pulled loose change from her pocket, and stepping back, she tossed the coins at the trunk. She pressed the button on the flashlight and aimed the beam at the wax face which so resembled Charles.

A shot cracked in the darkness. The flashlight clicked off. The bullet had gone wild of the head. So, Gaynor's reaction time was slow, and he was a poor shot at any distance. She dropped a coin to the floor and held the beam of the light to her own face. The light clicked off and a bullet fired into the air where she had been standing.

Her foot connected with something hard. She reached down to the floor and touched a length of pipe. She picked it up and felt the solid weight of the iron in her hand. She would have to get within swinging distance before he could switch to the second gun. Now, she was living intensely in the moment, excitement rising as though she were going to meet a lover and not to beat a man senseless, to let his blood, to drag out the pain, and lastly, to kill him. She walked on through the spray of rain.

She turned the flashlight on her face and clicked on the beam.

Gaynor leveled the gun and pulled the trigger. The gun only clicked with the sound of no bullet in the chamber. The second click was lost in the roar of a gunshot followed up by the flash of lightning. For a moment, Mallory could almost believe in magic. It seemed as though his bullet had doubled back and struck him, making a bloody hole in his body, Gaynor was turning and twisting as he fell backward with the force of the bullet in his shoulder, arms waving loose and disjointed. And the surprise on his face was the dumb look of the strawman twisting in a cornfield. The gun fell from his hand and skittered across the floor.

She turned off the flashlight and watched in silence as Edith approached Gaynor's body. The old woman was holding the Long Colt that was Mallory's own. Mallory pulled back behind the trunk which held Max's head.

Edith turned slowly, eyes searching, the gun barrel following the sights of her eyes. Mallory silently circled a stack of boxes and came up behind her, grabbing the old woman's wrist with enough force to leave prints on the flesh. She twisted the gun from Edith's hand with one swift motion.

Edith gasped, turning to face Mallory, her lined face illuminated by the poor light of the back window. The old woman smiled too quickly, too wide.

"Oh, Kathy, thank God. I thought you were dead. Oh, thank God."

"Yeah, right."

Mallory clicked on the flashlight and knelt down by Gaynor's body, wholly dissatisfied with the man's continued breathing. His head had struck the wall. He was unconscious but not dead, and the wound was not life-threatening.

And a gun was in her hand.

"Kill him," said Edith, standing over Gaynor. Kneeling down now, coming closer, her lips near to Mallory's ear, "Finish it," she whispered softly, her magnified blue eyes growing even wider. "No one will know."

"You'd like that, wouldn't you, Edith?"

Markowitz would not have liked that at all.

Mallory stared at Gaynor. Markowitz's killer was in her hands. The rain ran into her eyes as she turned to Edith. "I don't suppose I could trust you to go upstairs and call the ambulance… No, I suppose not." She picked up the fallen snub-nose revolver. Plastic still clung to the metal by a fusion of heat. Gaynor had not fired fast enough. There was one bullet left in the chamber. She pulled the plastic loose and handed the gun to Edith, using two fingers on the rough side grip of the handle. The old woman looked down on the weapon in her hand, eyes glistering.

Mallory checked Gaynor's pulse and then pulled back the lid of one eye. He showed no signs of coming around. "I'm going for the ambulance. I don't think you'll need to use the gun."

She wadded up the plastic bag which had fallen away from the gun, and slipped it under her jacket.

"I understand," said Edith, nodding slowly. "I do understand." She was smiling as Mallory turned her back and headed for the way out.

After passing through the cellar doorway, she reached up to turn the overhead light bulb in its socket. When she was standing in the light again, she thought to turn around, to go back and undo this thing. She lost this thought as she stared up the winding metal of the staircase and into the eyes of Jack Coffey standing on the level above her. Beyond Coffey, a uniformed officer was motioning Henrietta Ramsharan back into the hallway and closing the door.

"Mallory?" Coffey was staring from the blackened hole in her shirt to the gun which dangled from her hand. Now he looked into her eyes and one hand tightened on the railing and there it froze.

She continued to hold him, to pin him to the landing with her eyes. Only a second longer.

A gunshot exploded in the room behind her.

Jack Coffey and the uniformed officer were pounding down the staircase, guns drawn, pushing past her on the way through the cellar door.

Mallory slumped against the wall of the stairwell. Later, she would have trouble remembering how much of this she had planned.

Yeah, right.

She started up the steep stairs. First her mind stumbled and then her feet. Yet she did not pick her way more carefully as she continued up and up. She was in that moment when the guts flutter and rise, the heart pounds, the brain waffles between belief and disbelief, and she did not care if she fell, nor how far.