The Chalk Girl

THIRTY-FIVE

In civics class, I read aloud from my essay on the rules of comportment during a homicide investigation. It’s the only class I share with all of them, Humphrey, Willy and Aggy the Biter. While I talk, they never move a hair. They forget how to breathe. I scare them shitless.

It’s my best day ever.

—Ernest Nadler

Riker entered the tony restaurant of the Wall Street crowd. It was all done up in velvet curtains and wood paneling, real silver on the tables and money on the hoof. He pegged the maître d’ for an ex-convict. There were no visible prison tats, but the man gave himself away when he did not immediately sneer at the detective’s bad suit and scuffed shoes, foreplay to hustling an unwanted customer out the door. Instead, the maître d’ saw cop in those hooded eyes.

Even as a child, Riker had always seemed on the verge of arresting everyone he met. ‘The deputy police commissioner is expecting me.’

With great relief on the part of the man in the better suit, the detective was shown to a table, where a solitary dinner was in progress.

Rolland Mann had found a new way to establish his dominance: divide and humiliate. Riker had been told to come by himself, and now he was commanded, by an offhand gesture, to sit down and watch his superior eat a juicy steak.

The acting police commissioner noticed the turning heads of nearby diners, one man nudging another, and appreciative smiles. He looked up to see Riker’s partner framed in a window close to his table. Fortunately, covert surveillance was not Mallory’s job tonight. From the other side of the glass, she stared at Rolland Mann in the same way that he had regarded his steak. Laying down his knife and fork, he deigned to speak to the other cop, the silent one at his table. ‘You were told to come alone.’

Ignoring this, Riker fished in his pockets for a notebook. ‘We opened a new homicide case for Ernie Nadler. Turns out he was murdered in his hospital bed. We interviewed the cop posted outside the kid’s room. He remembers you hanging around.’

‘I was a detective in those days. I had a—’

‘So we got parents, doctors, nurses.’ Riker flipped a notebook page. ‘And you. The cop on guard duty says you visited the kid’s room a lot in that last week.’

And that was a lie. When interviewed, that guard had recalled nothing of the kind. His month of hospital duty had blended into a single memory of boredom only broken by the wail of Mrs Nadler when she found her son dead. But there was no contradiction from Rolland Mann.

‘We’ve been over this, Riker. You saw the damn tape. You know why I had an interest in that little boy.’

The detective closed his notebook, a signal to his partner out on the sidewalk. ‘If you got anything useful on the kid’s murder, now’s the time to tell me. When did you get to the hospital that night? Was it before or after the kid was murdered?’

‘When I left Ernie Nadler’s room that morning, he was still alive.’

Riker jotted down a few words. So Mann had been present on the day of the boy’s death. ‘The cop on duty remembers you dropping by in the evening,’ he lied, ‘around dinnertime.’

‘Well, he’s wrong! Or maybe he’s—’

The conversation stopped abruptly when the maître d’ stepped up to the table and laid down a pad of lined yellow paper, the kind favored for witness statements. ‘Compliments of the lady,’ he said.

Rolland Mann turned to the window, but the lady was gone.

Riker pointed to the half-eaten steak. ‘Take that away.’ The maître d’ almost saluted before he hastily cleared the plate from the table – without even a nod to the high-ranking politician who was paying the tab.

The detective pushed the yellow pad in front of the deputy police commissioner. ‘You know the drill. Just write it all down, everything you remember about the kid’s last day.’ Riker held out the pen, and Rolland Mann took it – automatic reflex. When this move was done right, when the timing was perfect, the interview subject would always take the pen, and then there was nothing left to do but use it.

When the page was filled by half, only two short paragraphs, the acting commissioner laid down the pen and reread his words. He had not yet noticed Mallory quietly standing behind his chair. This was her gift. No one ever heard her coming. Now she bent down close to his ear and said, ‘Sign it!’

The wine went flying as the glass was knocked to the floor by the unwitting hand of a rattled Rocket Mann, but he would not acknowledge the young woman behind him. After a moment for fist-clenched composure, he picked up the pen – as if it were his own idea – and signed his name.

The detectives took their leave with no farewell. Their hit-and-run victim continued to sit at the table, looking down at the place where his steak had been, and then, blindly reaching for the glass that was no longer there, clutching air.

Chief Medical Examiner Edward Slope entered the squad room bearing a gift. At this late hour, only one desk lamp was lit, and Kathy Mallory sat facing her laptop screen. He paused for a rare opportunity to watch her while she was unaware. He felt pangs of regret for every recent argument, though she was always clearly in the wrong.

But she had such a genius for shifting guilt – or creating it from scratch – like now. She turned around in her chair to catch him standing there, holding his peace offering, his present, sans ribbons and wrapping paper.

The doctor crossed the room to lay his heavy brown envelope on her desk. ‘My people put this together for you. It’s everything you need to nail the hospital administrator and his pathologist. And, as you know, I make an excellent witness in court.’

Never even glancing at his present, she turned back to her computer. ‘I had to cut them loose.’

‘What? Those two conspired to cover up the murder of a child.’ He slapped his envelope. ‘It’s all there. I proved it. There’s no way in hell they bungled that autopsy by negligence or ignorance. They had to know what they were doing.’

‘The administrator took directions from that assistant DA. And Carlyle’s done worse, but I had to let him go, too.’

Slope folded his arms. ‘Well, I won’t go along with it.’

‘Yes, you will.’ This was not couched as an order. She said it softly with resignation. ‘Your old buddy Grace set you up. The day the hospital did that bogus autopsy on the Nadler kid, the Driscol Institute made its first donation to your rehab clinic – it was huge. And every year after that—’

‘Grace is hardly my buddy. And I met her after my clinic got that donation.’

‘I believe you. But on paper it looks bad. Let’s say I can prove Grace had a reason to want the boy’s murder kept quiet. The donation makes it look like you helped her bury that autopsy – like she paid you to look the other way. If Grace and her pet ADA go down for this – so do you.’ Mallory turned her screen around so that the doctor could see it. ‘You’re not the only one. I’m still following the money, but so far I’ve got a slew of politicians in key positions. They all had pet projects funded by the Driscol Institute. Some of them did favors for Grace’s friends – tax breaks, city contracts, political appointments. They’re sitting in traps like yours. It’s a kind of extortion that never ends. It’s all in the public record – where anyone can find it. I’m sure Grace will be happy to explain how it works if you make any trouble.’

‘You can’t let her get away with this – not because of me. I want this to come out. We’ll drag the whole mess into open court. I insist! I can’t fight these insinuations if you’re doing dark little backroom deals.’

Mallory’s voice was calmer than his when she said, ‘Rules of New York City. You can get away with murder here. Or you can live your whole life without putting one foot wrong . . . and lose everything. So the dirt stays buried. I’ll find another way to bring that woman down. Count on it.’

In a minute more, he would regret speaking without his wits about him, but he was angry when he said, ‘And I’m supposed to be grateful that you’re covering this up for me? You figure I’ll owe you for this?’

Kathy was so rarely startled.

She had given him the pure gift of her protection. And he had stepped on it. Of course she was right. There could be no insinuation of wrongdoing in the Chief Medical Examiner’s Office. Even if it were only a campaign of whispers, he would step down. He would lose everything, though he had done nothing wrong. She was saving him from a fight he could only lose – and how he had thanked her for that.

The young detective dropped his envelope of evidence into a deep desk drawer. He anticipated a slam, but she only closed the drawer and locked it. After turning out the lights of computer and lamp, she sat very still, her face in shadow, a silent invitation for him to leave her now.

He would have preferred that she had shot him. The doctor rose from his chair. ‘Kathy?’ His voice was hoarse, and what more could he say? He leaned down and kissed her hair, and then he took himself away.

Tonight Officer Chu carried field glasses on a strap around his neck. Key or no key? The big question was about to be answered as he followed Willy Fallon in her march toward the Driscol School’s iron gate, passing garbage bags and stacks of newspapers on the sidewalk. A sofa had also been put out for curbside pickup, and he trained his binoculars on it – no signs of wear. Trash night in New York City was a free flea market of amazing finds. In a pile for recycled metal was a bundle of perfectly good window blinds. Did rich people throw them away when the slats got dusty?

Willy Fallon stopped before the tall alley gate. Arthur Chu’s high-powered lenses could make out the clasp and even the stitches in the leather of her open purse. Would she pull out a key or lock picks? Oh, no. She stepped away from the gate. Something had spooked her. The woman flattened up against the wall of the building.

The shadow cop turned his lenses back to the gate, and now he noticed the padlock and chain. That was new. Two plump, white hands reached through the bars. The padlock was undone, the gate swung open, and a woman stood at the mouth of the alley. He recognized Phoebe Bledsoe from her picture on the wall of the incident room. She carried a plastic trash bag out to the curb.

Willy Fallon stepped away from the wall, hands outstretched and fingers curling into claws as she stole up behind the other woman.

Arthur Chu wanted to shout out a warning, but Detective Mallory would kill him for breaking cover. And so every civilized thing his mother had ever taught him was suppressed.

Phoebe Bledsoe was bending down with her bag of trash when Willy Fallon knocked her off balance with a shove. The falling woman crashed into the cans and knocked them over like dominoes, one hitting the other, and she let out a cry of surprise just before hitting the sidewalk. And there she lay sprawled in garbage.

The last can to fall was filled with metal window blinds. The clatter on the sidewalk was so like the clang of being slammed into lockers at school. Phoebe saw the back of a skinny woman and knew it was Willy before her assailant said, ‘You were there, too. You’re next.’ And the X was dragged out in a hiss.

Her old schoolmate walked away, transforming in comic-book fashion as she passed in and out of the lights of street lamps. Ernie’s world of monster mutants was more real than Phoebe knew – and now, in mind’s eye, she watched Willy quick-scrabble down the pavement on eight spider legs.

Limping on one sore ankle, Phoebe shut the gate behind her and secured it with the padlock. She made her way to the end of the alley just as the telephone rang in her cottage across the garden. The answering machine had been turned off after the last message from Willy, and the ringing continued. Upon entering the cottage, she stared at the telephone, as if waiting for it to explode. So many rings. Did the caller know she was home, just standing there – afraid? She picked up the receiver, but her mouth had gone dry, and she said nothing.

After a while, a man’s voice said, ‘Phoebe?’

It was Rolland Mann.

‘What do you want?’

‘I’m still concerned about your safety,’ he said, ‘and your . . . involvement. Did the detectives ask you about Ernie Nadler’s death? Do you think they know?’

‘Know what?’

‘Don’t you remember?’ he asked in his talking-to-idiots voice. ‘When that little boy was strung up and left to die in the woods, you waited three days before you told me where to find him.’