The Chalk Girl

SEVEN

On the way to the dining hall, we have to pass through the creepy gallery of alumni portraits, and the eyes of the paintings follow us. I know some of the family names on the plaques below the picture frames. They come down from the robber barons of Wall Street – honored psychos of yesteryear. One of them is Phoebe’s ancestor. He has a cruel mouth that says, ‘Come here, little boy.’

—Ernest Nadler

Jack Coffey wadded up his copy of the morning Times and bounced it off the rim of his wastebasket. That grand old lady of New York newspapers was behaving like a tabloid slut. After beating every other rag to the story of a double homicide in Central Park, the Times had won the right to name a killer with the town’s first literary moniker: the Hunger Artist – shades of Kafka.

Riker slumped against the back wall of the lieutenant’s office. This was the detective’s firing-squad posture. Mallory had not yet clocked in, leaving her partner to explain why the front-page story mentioned information that their boss did not have.

And the head of Crime Scene Unit had not been privy to these details, either. Heller sat in a chair beside the desk, holding his own mangled copy of the newspaper. ‘I can bring your detectives up on charges – or you can tell me why I don’t have this crime-scene evidence.’ He looked down to consult the small print of the Times. ‘I’m missing a few burlap bags and some ropes. Oh, yeah . . . and a couple of trees.’

Jack Coffey was inspired now, on his feet and feigning his own bad attitude. ‘Your guys were at both of those scenes yesterday.’

‘Yeah,’ said Heller, ‘eventually. Mallory sent them to the hospital first. Two hours later, she remembers the location of the crime scenes. Then they go to the park, but nobody told them about any trees or—’

‘That’s when one of them heard about the bags and the ropes . . . and that bastard leaked the details to the press.’ Coffey looked up at his slouching detective, a cue that it was this man’s turn to jump in.

Riker stepped forward. ‘I know the park cops didn’t leak anything. They wouldn’t give up shit for a reporter. When I threaten uniforms, they stay threatened.’ He leaned down to tap Heller’s newspaper. ‘Their own sergeant didn’t get those details. But they would’ve answered questions from one of your guys.’

‘No way.’ Heller was never rattled. His demeanor was always dead calm. And so the man’s slow rise from the chair was tantamount to a psychotic break. He held up his crumpled newspaper. ‘Nobody in my department did this.’

‘Yeah, right,’ said Riker, possibly overplaying his role. ‘It wasn’t the boys with the meat wagon. They only saw the body – nothing else. I suppose you’re gonna blame Mallory for the leak? Give me a break. It’s her case.’ He turned to his boss to see if this last part might be true.

‘Damn straight,’ said the lieutenant. ‘So that leaves your team, Heller. And I don’t wanna hear one more threat against my people.’ More magnanimous now, the commander of Special Crimes smiled. ‘Or, if you like, we can have a department hearing – a hanging party. And I’ll have Detective Mallory explain why she didn’t trust your people with evidence.’ He leaned forward, palms flat on his desk, still smiling. ‘Because you know someone’s gonna ask. And you’re wondering about that yourself, aren’t you?’

The point was won, but not the game.

Without another word said, the head of CSU managed to convey that this was not over yet. He left the private office and ambled down the aisle between the desks in the squad room, turning heads with the sound of heavy footsteps. When the staircase door had closed behind Heller, the lieutenant retrieved his newspaper from the floor. He sat down to read it – slowly – while Detective Riker hovered, uncertain, somewhere between a clean getaway and a beat down.

Jack Coffey set the paper to one side, put his feet up on the desk and clasped his hands behind his head. ‘You better hope Heller never calls the desk sergeant at Central Park.’ The lieutenant’s smile was genuine. It gladdened his heart to see the worried look on Riker’s face. ‘Those park cops gossip like crazy. That’s how I know there was a reporter on both of those crime scenes. I hear he was Mallory’s pet.’

Riker shook his head. ‘That guy was just a stringer, a freelance photographer.’

‘And today he’s the newest hire at the Times – a reporter.’ The lieutenant wadded up his newspaper again, and this time his shot hit the wastebasket. He looked up at his detective. ‘Anything else you forgot to mention?’

Riker appeared to be searching for just the right words, not the truth of course, but something that might work.

‘Never mind.’ Coffey waved him toward the door. ‘I don’t wanna know.’

Detective Riker turned a corner onto a narrow street paved with cobblestones from SoHo’s first incarnation as a factory district. In more recent times, this neighborhood had been the haunt of boys and girls eking out a minimal existence in paint-stained jeans. They had decamped for cheaper quarters when money moved in with the Wall Street kids and the trust-fund babies. But now that crowd’s antiques stores and trendy boutiques were closing doors. New York City was a quick-change artist, and the good old days were always six minutes ago.

At the middle of the block was the apartment house owned by Charles Butler. Keys in hand, the man stood beside his Mercedes and waved to the detective moseying down the sidewalk.

‘Hey,’ said Riker. ‘Going somewhere?’

‘I’m driving Robin back to Brooklyn.’ Charles turned around at the sound of his front door opening behind him.

Coco stepped out on the sidewalk, holding Mallory’s hand. They were followed by gray-haired Robin Duffy, a semi-retired attorney and a player in the Louis Markowitz Floating Poker Game. Riker truly liked this short, bandy-legged man. Duffy always had a bright smile that gathered up his bulldog jowls and crinkled his eyes to tell everyone how happy he was to be here, wherever that might be.

When hellos and goodbyes had been said, the old man embraced Mallory, holding her close, as if afraid that he might never see her again. And this was not because she had dropped off the planet for three months of lost time; he always did this.

As the Mercedes rolled off down the street, Coco announced that Mr Duffy was her lawyer. Riker, long accustomed to hearing this news from felons, gave her a rueful smile and then turned to his partner. ‘Seriously? The kid lawyered up?’

‘Robin’s handling her custody issues.’ Mallory led the child down the sidewalk to an unmarked Crown Victoria parked at the curb.

When Coco had been strapped into a backseat safety belt, Riker climbed in on the passenger side, and he braced himself, though it was unnecessary this morning. His partner’s driving was oddly law-abiding on the trip uptown, perhaps in deference to their young passenger.

Mallory adjusted the rearview mirror to catch the little girl’s eye. ‘Coco, tell Riker what Granny did for a living.’

‘She killed rats!’

Riker smiled. That would explain a preoccupation with vermin trivia. ‘So Granny was in the pest-control business. Do we know where?’

Mallory nodded. ‘The company had a real catchy name – Chicago Killers.’

All the way uptown, Coco entertained them with a monologue on rodents. And so the detectives learned that rats were ticklish, they sneezed and they dreamed.

The Mercedes traveled south, heading for the Brooklyn Bridge, and Charles’s passenger said, ‘Kathy looks well.’ Robin Duffy was still allowed to call her Kathy, regarding her as the hand-me-down child of his best friend. He had lived across the street from her for all the years that she was growing up with the Markowitzes.

Robin stared at his friend for a while, finally prompting him. ‘Kathy looks very well.’

‘Yes, she does.’ Charles would only commit himself to a comment on mere appearance. He would not invite any speculation on her state of mind or her lost time. And Robin would ask no direct questions. The old lawyer also had a confidence to keep and constraints of professional ethics; he had represented the young detective in the matter of getting her job back.

On one absence from the NYPD, her destination had been deep in the Southland, and on another trip, she had followed Route 66, but this time was different. It worried Charles, and he was honor bound to worry all alone. Upon her return to New York City, information from Mallory had been couched in bare compass points, though she had agreed that Mount Rushmore was big, and the Mississippi River was indeed mighty. Only one thing was certain: She had been on a very long road trip to nowhere. Whenever he recalled her meandering route, the wide circles and ever-changing directions, he formed a picture of Mallory spiraling, tumbling – falling through America.

On the other side of the bridge, the car rolled through a Brooklyn neighborhood of single-family houses with driveways and dogs in the yards. And the silence had become awkward.

‘I thought Coco was absolutely charming,’ said Robin, in a safe change of topic. ‘She doesn’t have a little girl’s conversations.’

‘No, she has what’s called a cocktail-party personality,’ said Charles. ‘That kind of patter is a skill that Williams children develop to form relationships with people.’ The sad irony was in the superficial quality of Coco’s best trick – the very thing that prevented her from forming a meaningful relationship with anyone.

‘What will become of her if I can’t locate any family to take her in?’

‘Coco will go into foster care,’ said Charles. ‘If she survives that, she’ll grow up, get a job . . . and live alone.’ Did that sound like anyone else they both knew?

His passenger fell silent again, perhaps considering the commonalities of one broken child and another. Though, unlike Coco, Mallory never sought love or warmth from human contact; she only liked to hunt humans, and all her conversation revolved around death.

Charles glanced at the dashboard clock. By now the detectives would have found the runaway moon that, according to Coco, had gone to live in a box.