The Chalk Girl

EIGHT

The rule is clear. No running in the halls. But no teacher ever reprimands me. I think they all know that I’m running from a beating, a biting or a toilet-bowl drowning, whatever the day will bring.

—Ernest Nadler

Summer-school children poured out of yellow buses, their screams and laughter chiming in with the babble of other tourists waiting for the doors to open.

Coco’s shoulders hunched. Both hands covered her ears, and her eyes shut tight, shutting out the noise and the bustle of the crowd. The two detectives and the little girl retreated to the high ground above the fray. The path sloped upward to a bench in the small park of flowers and trees that surrounded the Museum of Natural History. The trio sat down and faced a gigantic square box of glass and steel that was home to an entire solar system. The majestic structure rose seven stories above the ground floor of the museum’s planetarium.

‘I know it looks different in daylight,’ said Mallory. The child beside her had seen this landmark only once, just a fleeting glance on a scary night, and her memory of it was somewhat flawed. ‘Is that what you saw from Uncle Red’s window?’

The little girl nodded. Upon closer inspection in the morning light, Coco had been crushed to learn that it was not the moon that filled out this immense glass box, but only a pale white replica of the sun. In perfect scale, it dwarfed planets that were made of smaller balls suspended by wires to hang in frozen orbits. And that monster-size sun did not even float; it was securely anchored to the floor.

Riker patted Coco’s hand. ‘What a gyp, huh?’

Mallory rose from the bench and turned around to face West 81st Street and a lineup of boxes on a grander scale, enormous buildings made of gray stones, brown bricks and, farther down, red ones, some with elaborate façades. This was Money Country, a land of liveried doormen and awnings to shelter the tenants on short walks to the curb and waiting limousines. Hundreds of windows faced the planetarium, and one of those apartments belonged to her comatose crime victim from the Ramble.

Evidently Charles Butler had not yet returned from Brooklyn to find a note slipped under his door by a SoHo patrolman, a polite request to report for shrink duty uptown. Riker turned to his partner. ‘We should get him a cell phone.’

Mallory’s mouth dipped down on one side. ‘Yeah, right.’

Riker envied the technologically retarded psychologist, who had an answering machine – a gift from Mallory – but never turned it on. The man strolled through an average day with no disturbing messages or any urgent summons. As an alien in a television nation, he was never made anxious by manic broadcasters with red alerts and terrorist forecasts, for he preferred to read newspapers, which told him only what had actually happened. Nor was he troubled by the jarring street noise of the hustling millions; it rarely penetrated the rolled-up windows of his Mercedes. And so Charles Butler smoothly navigated the most nerve-jangling town on earth.

‘Here they come.’ Mallory pointed toward the patrol car double-parking near the corner of 81st Street and Central Park West. The uniforms stepped out of the vehicle. ‘There’s only three of them.’

‘That’s all the West Side could spare,’ said Riker. ‘They’re helping the park precinct comb the trees for more victims.’

And now the assembled officers were told to conduct a block-long search of sixteen-story buildings to find the apartment of a man with no name. ‘And these pictures won’t help,’ said Mallory, as she handed each of them a photograph of the comatose crime victim. ‘None of the doormen knew who he was. His hair color’s different.’ Starvation and dehydration had also worked changes on Uncle Red. ‘So the neighbors might not recognize him, either.’

‘You gotta be kidding.’ The senior patrolman folded his arms. ‘How the hell are we supposed to know when we got the right place? Half these apartments are empty – people out to lunch, off to work.’

‘Not a problem,’ said Riker. He was counting on the likelihood that Coco had been the last one to leave Uncle Red’s place. ‘You’re looking for the only unlocked front door in New York City.’

Bless the rampant paranoia of a three-dead-bolt town.

Except for the monkey, all the appointments were white – the couch, the rugs and curtains. The victim’s clothing lay in a loose pile on the floor near the entrance. According to wallet ID pulled from a pants pocket, this was the home of Humphrey Bledsoe, a.k.a. Uncle Red, and Coco confirmed it by the only lamp in the sparsely furnished living room. Its base was a ceramic blue monkey. ‘This light was on.’ She ran one small hand over the animal’s face. ‘I remember this.’

Mallory looked up at the ceiling fixture, only a bare socket, and the bulb in the table lamp was low-wattage. So the room had been dimly lit when the stranger had come to take away Uncle Red bound and naked.

The child never ventured more than a few feet from Mallory’s side, dogging the detective down an interior hallway of seven doors in a cursory search of the apartment, a palace by New York standards. ‘Which room was yours?’

‘The dark one.’ Coco would not elaborate, and Mallory did not press for more detail.

Charles Butler had warned her not to challenge any responses, but only to take what was offered. The child was very fragile; he had mentioned that three times. And yet this damaged little girl had survived for days in Central Park. By the lack of a sunburn on such fair skin, Charles had deduced that Coco had most likely suffered a meltdown, and then curled up in a ball in the safest place she could find. Mallory concurred, informed by the feral years of her own childhood – and days like that.

The detective and her redheaded shadow joined Riker in the front room.

‘Smells like redecorating,’ he said.

Scents of plaster, paint and sawdust hung in the air. The couch and chair were new, still bearing plastic covers and store tags, and the hardwood floor had the look of a recent sanding. The large space was divided in half by two levels. A short flight of stairs led up to the raised section by the back wall.

‘The guy moved his furniture in a week ago.’ The officer who had found the apartment stood in the generous foyer, one hand on the doorknob. ‘Before that, there were contractors in here every day for months. Sawing, banging, tracking sawdust and crap everywhere. The neighbors on this floor never met the new owner, but they all hate his guts.’

When the officer had departed, Mallory looked down at the pile of clothes on the floor. ‘So Uncle Red and the other man were standing here.’ According to the child, the stranger who took her uncle away had worn coveralls; she called him the delivery man because he had brought a two-wheeler dolly – just like the one used by men who had delivered heavy boxes to her grandmother. ‘Coco, where were you standing when the delivery man tied up Uncle Red?’

‘I told you. I was behind the door. Uncle Red said I couldn’t come out. He said I shouldn’t make a sound.’

Mallory pointed to the arch that opened onto a hall’s blank wall – a doorway with no doors. ‘Were you standing here? Maybe hiding behind a wall?’

The child shook her head, mystified, for she had already answered this question.

Riker turned to face the foyer. ‘The front door’s the only one you can see from here. You know the kid wasn’t hiding behind that one.’

Mallory stared at the child. ‘Tell me the truth.’

Coco spun her hands as she shifted from one foot to the other in her little dance of stress. Then she wrapped her thin arms around the detective and held on tight. Her face lifted to show Mallory a smile forced wide. Her eyes were desperate, silently imploring love me, love me, love me . . . please, oh, please.

‘No more stories,’ said Mallory. ‘I need the truth.’

The child shook her head, uncomprehending, her eyes full of hurt, a prelude to tears.

‘I need to know where you were hiding,’ said Mallory. ‘This is important.’

‘That’s enough!’ said the voice of authority from the foyer. ‘Not one more word!’

Both detectives turned toward the front door, not recognizing this tone, not from the very civil Charles Butler, who was bearing down on them, crossing the room in long strides. He picked up the little girl and rocked her in his arms, the gentlest of giants now. He smiled with his clown’s face. And Coco smiled. All was well. She rested her head on Charles’s shoulder and never saw his eyes turn hard when he looked at Mallory.

He handed the child off to Riker and said, ‘Take her downstairs. I’ll collect her when I’m done here.’

And Riker, who took orders from no one, did as he was told – siding against his own partner, and Mallory planned to make him pay for that.

Charles sank his hands deep into his pockets, where they balled into fists, so politely hiding that single display of anger. And his voice dropped into the calm range of an offhand remark. ‘So what’s next for Coco? Waterboarding? Thumbscrews?’