The Chalk Girl

EIGHTEEN

The mad Driscol lives in the old carriage house behind the school. Phoebe says her great-aunt lost most of her brain cells to a stroke. Years ago, the old lady ditched her nurse and ran naked into the garden when it was packed with students. All the girls were weirded out by the saggy breasts and belly of old age, says Phoebe. But from the boys’ point of view, a naked woman was a naked woman.

And now I understand one more school tradition.

In every classroom that overlooks the garden, the boys begin and end the hour lined up at the windows, hoping to catch sight of a naked mad Driscol.

—Ernest Nadler

‘Bagging the man was going a tad too far.’ It was Jack Coffey’s policy to discipline detectives in the privacy of his office.

Mallory opened her pocket watch, a silent reminder that she had more important business.

The lieutenant bypassed his line about the crucial importance of a good working relationship with CSU. Perhaps it was best to begin this lecture at gunpoint. ‘You only think I won’t suspend you.’

‘I found an old case of a hanging in the Ramble.’ She laid a ViCAP questionnaire on his desk.

Coffey scanned the lines of standard FBI questions, page after page of them. The filled-in responses told the story of a little boy strung up in a tree for three days. ‘When did this happen?’ He flipped back to the dated cover sheet. The incident had occurred fifteen years ago, back in his younger days as a rookie cop. ‘How come I’ve never heard about this case?’

‘There never was a case – no investigation, no paperwork.’ She reached out to tap the line for the petitioner’s name and rank. ‘He buried it.’

‘Shit!’ The former detective listed here was now in charge of the NYPD during Police Commissioner Beale’s hospital stay. Rolland Mann might be only hours away from absolute power. ‘So, Mallory . . . got any more bombs in your pocket?’

‘I know why they call him Rocket Mann. Fifteen years ago, he should’ve made his bones on a case like this, but that didn’t happen. Well, it did, but not in the usual way.’ One long, red fingernail pointed to the date. ‘Ten days after that, Mann got his gold shield. There’s nothing in his job jacket to explain it. Before the promotion, he was a brand-new white shield.’

‘A baby dick with training wheels.’ Coffey stared at the old questionnaire. ‘There had to be a case file. Maybe it was sealed or expunged. That works if the assailant was a juvenile.’ He looked to her for a nod of confirmation on this theory, or – even better – a shrug to say that she had not yet illegally unlocked every juvenile file for that year.

She shook her head. ‘Rocket Mann’s ViCAP search is the only proof that it ever happened.’

The date placed this mess in the early, dirty days of a decentralized NYPD, when no cop was allowed to know the crime rate in the precinct next door. Reporters had learned to get their new-and-improved crime stats from the mayor’s office. Despite the sensational aspects, it would have been easy to keep this old case out of the media – low risk of leaks, fewer cops to silence. Central Park was the only uninhabited precinct in Manhattan.

Mallory laid down a map of the Ramble. It was marked with the Hunger Artist’s crime scenes, all three of them clustered in one small patch of the acreage. The epicenter, Tupelo Meadow, was marked with an X. ‘That has to be the clearing in Mann’s ViCAP description. So that’s where the boy was found hanging. We want an interview with Rocket Mann.’

Did he feel a tension headache coming on? Jack Coffey gave himself up for dead and placed a call to One Police Plaza. Mallory’s request would go first to Chief of Detectives Joe Goddard. The chief would then carry her message up the chain of command – or wad it into a ball – his call. But payback was a certainty. Rocket Mann was next in line for the job of police commissioner, and he would not want a light shone on this old case – not after he had gone to the trouble of burying it.

His head was shaped like a bullet with a crew cut. All the detectives stared at the man whose shoulders nearly filled out the frame of the staircase door. As the chief of detectives crossed the squad room, every believer in his legend listened for the sound of knuckles dragging on the floor.

Joe Goddard, alias God, had come down from his aerie at One Police Plaza to pay them a personal visit, and this could never be a good thing. The man wore a silk suit, but he was no one’s idea of a politician. The chief of D’s was brutally straightforward, and every word out of his mouth gave him the pedigree of an education on city streets. He never smiled, never tried to hide the fact that he was dangerous. The chief walked by the desks of Mallory and Riker, saying to them in passing, ‘You’re with me.’

The detectives rose and followed him to the front of the room, where Jack Coffey emerged from his office to shake hands with the boss of bosses.

‘I need some privacy for a meeting,’ said the chief. And it was clear that the lieutenant’s company was not wanted when he said, ‘Jack, I’ve got no problem with you.’ He turned to glance at Mallory and Riker. ‘And these two aren’t in trouble . . . yet.’

Lieutenant Coffey nodded and stood to one side as the three of them passed him by. Then he closed the office door behind them and walked away.

Chief Goddard sat down at the desk. The detectives remained standing in the unwritten protocol for dealing with this man: Show respect or be pounded into the ground.

The big man held a fax sheet in his hand and waved it like a flag. ‘I bypassed the chief of the department and personally delivered your request to Rolland Mann. And I showed him your copy of his old ViCAP search. He’ll see you this afternoon in Commissioner Beale’s office. He moved all his stuff in there the other day – five minutes after they carted the old man off to the hospital. If Beale dies in surgery, then his first deputy won’t be just the acting commissioner. That’s what I hear from City Hall. A permanent appointment is in the bag . . . I can’t have that.’

He turned from one detective to the other, silently asking if he had made himself clear.

Oh, yes. Very clear. There was a war on in the Puzzle Palace. Riker and Mallory had just been drafted as foot soldiers.

‘When I said you guys wanted a meeting, that made him nervous. And the bastard agreed to it way too fast. It was like he knew you were coming for him. Your lieutenant isn’t invited to sit in on that meeting. Me neither. That’s how I know you guys have something on that little prick. He’s going down – with or without your help. The acting commissioner can’t promise you squat . . . I want you to remember that.’

So lines were being drawn and every soldier on Rocket Mann’s side was dead meat.

‘That bastard can’t make you guys bulletproof . . . but I can.’ Unsaid were all the other things that the chief of detectives could do to them.

Joe Goddard was not in line for Commissioner Beale’s job. He would first have to kill the chief of the department and maybe a few of the fourteen deputies serving one notch below Rolland Mann. And so Riker believed the chief of D’s when the man sat well back in the chair and said, ‘I like a nice clean house.’

Riker stole a quick look at his partner. If Goddard asked them for dirt on the deputy, they were both dead. The detectives had none to give him – not yet – but they would not be believed. No, they would be gutted. Any minute now.

Mallory wore the poker face of a world-class player when she said, ‘We need Rolland Mann to close our case. Then you can have him . . . and everything we’ve got on him.’

It was a good bluff and a worthy gamble, but her delivery showed no respect; it lacked a groveling tone. That much was easy to read in Goddard’s face. Could this man be more pissed off? Riker thought not.

‘You don’t set the terms. I do,’ said the chief. ‘I liked your old man, Mallory, but I never owed Lou Markowitz any favors. So now your partner’s wondering why you’re still standing.’ His angry eyes fixed on Riker, and there was ugly menace in his voice when he said, ‘I’m in a real good mood this morning. So the kid skates on insubordination.’ Turning back to Mallory, the offender, he said, ‘Detective, you’re young, and maybe you need this spelled out.’ He pounded the desk for punctuation. ‘Don’t ever fuck with me! First, you close out your case. If that takes more than seventy-two hours, you’re overpaid. Then you bring me Rolland Mann’s head.’

Outwardly, Riker was deadpan, though inwardly grinning. The chief had phrased this as his own idea, and now it was an order: They were going to do it Mallory’s way.

Chief Goddard pulled a wad of papers from his breast pocket. ‘You’ll need this.’ He handed Riker the fistful of small, yellowed pages filled with handwritten lines. ‘Those are personal notes from a retired cop. Officer Kayhill was on park patrol fifteen years ago.’

Riker scanned the sheets, straining to read them without his glasses. Damned if he would wear his bifocals in front of this man. After two pages, he turned to Mallory. ‘This backs up the ViCAP questionnaire. Kayhill was there when the kid was found hanging in a tree.’

‘Yeah,’ said the chief of D’s. ‘And I’m sure he filed an incident report, but that seems to have disappeared. If Rolland Mann should ask – tell him you got those notes at Kayhill’s nursing home this morning. The old guy’s senile. No worries about him backing you up. Kayhill’s notes say the victim was alive when he was cut down. But the boy couldn’t talk – no ID.’

And Riker, still squinting at the notebook pages, had just gotten to the part that explained why the boy was mute. ‘And then the kid was shipped off in an ambulance.’ He looked down at the desk blotter as Goddard laid out a document with a raised seal. The words Death Certificate were writ large.

‘This boy’s a good fit,’ said the chief. ‘He’s from the Upper West Side, and his parents reported him missing three days before the hanging in the Ramble. Has to be the same kid.’

For one scary moment, Riker thought his partner was going to challenge Goddard on this point; they had been through the Missing Persons reports for that period and come up dry. But Mallory only picked up the document. ‘This boy died a month after the hanging.’ She handed the death certificate to Riker. ‘Check out the date.’

He held it out at arm’s length and nodded. ‘The same day Rolland Mann made the ViCAP search.’ If this death had resulted from the park assault, then the acting police commissioner had buried a child’s murder.

The little boy who was not there waved both hands in wild protest and silently formed the words, No! and Don’t!

Against the good advice of Dead Ernest, Phoebe Bledsoe answered the telephone.

‘My condolences on Humphrey,’ said the voice of Willy Fallon. ‘I just heard the funeral announcement on TV. Very tacky. Most people place obituaries in the—’

‘I gave my mother your message.’ Phoebe turned to Dead Ernest, who mouthed the words, Hang up, hang up.

‘She still won’t take my calls,’ said Willy. ‘So try again. Try harder! Tell her the third victim is Aggy Sutton. That’s not on the news – not in the papers. But you already figured that out, right? . . . And when you talk to your mother, tell her you’re next.’

Phoebe shook her head.

And Willy laughed, as if she could see this gesture of denial through the telephone line. ‘You were there that day. Does your mother know that, Phoebe? Do you think that might get her attention? Will there be cops at the funeral tomorrow? I could talk to them.’