The Chalk Girl

FIFTEEN

Phoebe wants to be a teacher when she grows up. I can’t believe it when she tells me this. Teachers don’t see bruises or blood. They don’t hear the screams. Why, Phoebe, why? And her answer? She says, ‘That’s why.’

—Ernest Nadler

The muggy air was thick, and the sky was still light in this evening hour. Detective Mallory cut the engine on the small park vehicle, saying, ‘This is the best spot. Lots of bugs here.’

Coco wore new eyeglasses, and she was looking upward, grinning. ‘I can see the leaves on the trees!’ Previously all the greenery had melded into a solid color for the nearsighted child. She climbed off Charles Butler’s lap to step out on the path. At the sight of tiny flying lights, the little girl ran off down the trail to chase the lightning bugs. She grabbed the air and missed and reached out again.

‘I don’t think she’ll catch one.’ Charles smiled as he unfolded his tall body to stand by the cart. ‘She’s never done this before. But it was a wonderful idea for refining motor skills.’ Though he knew that Mallory had suggested it only to lure the child back to the scene of three hideous crimes, claiming that the Ramble was the best place in the world to hunt these insects. On the predictable upside, the child did not know one wooded area from another.

Mallory rounded the cart to stand beside him and watch Coco’s failed attempts to snatch bugs from the air. ‘I say the kid catches one. She’s stubborn.’

‘Indeed.’ And so was his cleaning lady, the taskmaster of buttons. One day Coco would also learn to tie shoelaces, but probably not anytime soon. And bug-catching might also be a bit beyond her abilities just now.

Charles and Mallory followed the child down a path of lush green shadows. Here and there were lamps reminiscent of the gaslight age, but they had not yet been turned on. The way was lit only by insects with magical taillights that blinked on and off. Coco ran ahead of them, hands outstretched to reach a firefly on the wing. Failing in this, she veered off in pursuit of another one lower to the ground. A slow-flying lightning bug hung in the air, and she clapped her hands together.

Oh. A dead bug.

Undaunted, she wiped her hands on her jeans and went on to the next one.

Mindful of the little girl’s remarkable hearing, Charles spoke softly. ‘I met with a colleague of mine, a psychologist who treats children with special needs. He has connections in Coco’s home state, and he’s going to help me locate a family for—’

‘Foster care? No way,’ said Mallory. ‘She won’t survive in the system.’

He put up both hands in surrender. She was absolutely right on that score, though her own foster parents had been stellar exceptions. Most children would be passed from home to home like mythical small birds of paradise, forever in flight for lack of feet to land on any solid ground. And, no, Coco would not survive that.

‘I have something more permanent in mind,’ said Charles. ‘I finished her evaluation. Apart from the blind spots of Williams syndrome, she’s gifted – intellectually as well as musically. That’s a huge attraction for adoptive parents. And there are lists of people pre-qualified to adopt special-needs children. Oh, and there’s one more thing in her favor – Coco’s grandmother left an estate that will pay for a very good education.’

‘And the adoptive parents inherit if anything happens to Coco. No kid should be worth more dead than alive. I’ll have to think about it for a while.’

‘Mallory, it’s not your call. She’s my responsibility.’

‘She’s my material witness, and I’ve got all the paperwork that says it damn well is my call. She’s not going anywhere.’

Charles’s eyes were on the child as she crept up on a blinking insect. ‘I picture her in a little house on a road with lots of shade trees . . . two loving parents . . . a backyard chock-full of bugs. You see, my standards are very high. Coco’s are not. She thinks if she can make you love her, you’ll make her breakfast every morning. And if she wakes up in the dark after a nightmare, you’ll always be there. That’s her little dream. She doesn’t know your interest ends when the case is solved.’ He fell silent as the tiny girl came running toward them, hands cupped, so happy – more than that – triumphant.

Coco held her prize up to Mallory. ‘Will you hold my bug? I want to get another one.’

‘Sure.’ Mallory took the insect from her hands, and now the pulsing light leaked through her own closed fingers. When the child was safely out of earshot, she said, ‘Coco stays in New York till I get a lineup of suspects.’

‘You know she can’t identify the Hunger Artist.’

‘But my killer doesn’t know that. And Coco knows more than you think. It’s just a matter of asking the right questions.’

‘There won’t be any interrogation. Mallory, you agreed to the rules. You can only take what she gives you.’

‘I know she followed a killer into the Ramble the night Humphrey Bledsoe was strung up.’ Her eyes were on the child, who had stopped on the path to talk with a small family. ‘Look at that. She’ll walk right up to strangers, anyone at all. But you know she never tried to make contact with the Hunger Artist. She had him in sight, but she knew he was dangerous.’

‘I’m sure she was terrified.’

‘You’re missing the point, Charles. She knew exactly what was going on that night.’

‘And then she filtered the violence through a fairy tale. That was the only way she could deal with the emotional trauma.’ He turned to face Mallory. ‘I won’t let you expose her to a lineup with a murderer. Let’s be very clear about that.’

The detective studied his naked tell-all face, looking there for fault lines, and, judging by a telling flash of disappointment in her eyes, she had found none. Mallory looked down at the closed hand that held a fragile bug. ‘Without glasses, Coco’s vision is good for what? Eight or ten feet? Suppose she got a close-up look at this guy?’

‘But would she have seen him clearly . . . in the dark?’

‘The moon was full.’

Charles waved his hand upward toward the thick canopy of leafy branches that blocked out the sky. ‘So much for moonlight.’

Mallory countered his gesture by touching the pole of a lamp at the very moment when all the path lights were turned on – as if she had timed it. And now he realized that she had done exactly that – leading his conversation, anticipating his every response and stunning him with a magic act, this staging of a child’s nightmare timed to an increment of a second by some infernal clockwork in her brain.

It could have been worse. He was merely speechless for the moment and a bit off balance. She could truly cripple him when she wanted to.

‘So . . . let’s say the kid got a good look at the killer,’ said Mallory. ‘Coco could describe him for a sketch artist.’

‘No, she couldn’t,’ said Charles. ‘The artist would have to ask leading questions. In Coco’s description, your killer might be three feet tall or as big as a house. Other characteristics would be just as unreliable. The man may have three eyes. She’s already given him two red tails.’

Mallory smiled. ‘Those were battery cables. The perp was probably carrying his winch in a knapsack. The cables must have been trailing.’

‘And voilà – a monster with two red tails.’

‘So Coco’s remembering more details about that night.’

‘In fact, she is.’ Charles pulled a sheet of paper from his pocket. ‘She drew this today. It’s her concept of the delivery man’s dolly.’ He unfolded a cryptic drawing of disconnected elements. In one corner was a circle within a circle, and a wheel was an easy call for that image. Isolated on the opposite edge of the page was an elongated U shape. ‘That has to be the handle.’ And in the center of the child’s drawing was a free-floating square solidly filled in with black pencil. ‘I’m guessing that’s the dolly’s platform for carrying things.’ Was it necessary to add that Coco had difficulty with spatial relationships? ‘So here you have free-floating pieces of the dolly, but if you didn’t know what it was – Oh, my.’

The young huntress had returned with another lightning bug in hand. Charles accepted this one for safekeeping. Mallory pointed to the drawing in his free hand. ‘Coco, can I have that?’

‘Yes! Do you really like it?’

‘Very much. This is my favorite part.’ Mallory pointed to the solidly filled-in square.

‘That’s the black box.’ And now Coco was off again, on the run, with only a backwards glance that said, Bye. Sorry. Bugs to catch.

When it was time to go, Charles and Mallory had run out of fists to hold the trophy fireflies. In a deft sleight of hand, without losing a single insect, he confined them all to a knotted handkerchief, which now glowed like a linen lightbulb. Charles asked how many bugs she had caught tonight, and the five fireflies in the handkerchief became a legion of a hundred and six.

Coco always strived to be exact about the wrong number.

The cart’s two passengers were dropped off near the 81st Street exit, where a police cruiser was waiting to escort Charles and Coco back home to SoHo. Then Mallory turned the small vehicle down a paved path winding south to The Yard, a park maintenance depot, where she had left her own car. As she drove around the perimeter of the depot’s woodsy acre, every shape of stored hose and pipe was visible from the road. And blades for snowplows were lined up alongside a small tractor and a midget steamroller. This equipment was only partially hidden by trees and shrubs, and it was protected by a short fence that a four-year-old could scale.

Zero security.

The detective rolled through the gate and into a parking lot in

front of the maintenance building. Here she spotted the man who had loaned her the cart. He had since changed his T-shirt and jeans for dark brown coveralls that would fit Coco’s description of the Hunger Artist. A full trash bag in hand, he strolled over to meet her.

‘You’re working late,’ said Mallory.

‘I’m a volunteer. I make my own hours.’ He set the trash bag down beside the cart. ‘And I favor cooler evenings for heavy work.’

‘Those coveralls don’t look like park issue.’

‘They’re not,’ he said. ‘A few years back, I got these from one of the plumbing contractors. I helped him with a bad leak in the park zoo. I wear ’em when I got a real dirty job, like today.’ He removed one of his gloves to take the vehicle’s keys from her hand.

Mallory looked toward the trees that sheltered machine parts and heavy equipment. ‘You have a dolly around here for moving light loads – something you’d keep outside at night?’

‘Smaller stuff like that gets locked up. If you’d asked me yesterday, I would’ve said no.’ He led her away from the building and up a path to higher ground, passing a forklift that was missing some of its parts. A pole light illuminated a small machine graveyard, a place where motors and rusted metal parts littered the ground.

A dolly leaned against a birch tree. It looked like Heller’s demonstration model, buckled straps and all, but with one additional feature. A bracket was welded to the metal struts of the long handle, and it held a car battery – Coco’s black box.

‘It’s not one of ours,’ said the park worker. ‘No idea how long it’s been here. I found it when I was cleaning up today.’ He pointed to an area of thick undergrowth and shrubs. ‘It was lying under those ferns over there.’ He kicked one of the two wheels. ‘These tires got some wear on ’em, but they’re still good.’

‘They’re inflatables,’ said Mallory.

‘Right you are.’

They looked like the tires on Heller’s dolly. And she knew the treads on this one would match impressions found at the first crime scene. She stared at the park worker’s heavy gloves. ‘Were you wearing those when you moved this thing?’

‘Oh, yeah.’ He looked down at the discarded machine parts at his feet, some of them with ragged, rusty edges. ‘This is tetanus country back here. I’d be a fool not to wear gloves.’

When Mallory called Crime Scene Unit to come and pick up the dolly, it was no surprise to find that Heller was also working late tonight. ‘I don’t think you’ll find any fingerprints,’ she said to him. ‘The metal’s too clean.’ Unlike everything else in this part of the depot. And then she took some pleasure in needling him with the news that she could also identify the manufacturer of the car battery – without touching his useless carton of lists. ‘Child’s play,’ she said.

‘No, she didn’t trip over it in the park,’ said Heller to the rising young star of his department. ‘Now go get that fucking dolly.’

CSI John Pollard was halfway to the office door when Heller thought it only fair to give the man a warning, but only one – because he favored trial by fire. ‘Develop all the evidence, John.’

‘Did I miss something, sir?’ Pollard was smug, entirely too confident that he had missed nothing.

However, there was a flaw in this young man’s work. He had fallen in love with a theory of the crime, departing from the science to play detective. And, yes, he had missed something. ‘If you screw up, Mallory will eat you alive.’

John Pollard laughed on his way out the door. Evidently he also had his own theories about long-legged blondes with guns. He probably thought Mallory was . . . cute.