The Chalk Girl

FORTY-ONE

I sit in the garden and tell my story to Mr Polanski, the school handyman. ‘I think the dead wino is being erased,’ I say. ‘Like Poor Allison, the jumper.’

I look down at that place on the flagstones where the chalk girl appears on the first day of spring, and I ask him, ‘After I’m dead, do you think one day you’ll hose me away, too?’

The handyman shakes his head and puts up both hands. He doesn’t want to hear anymore. But I need to talk to somebody. I tell him, ‘I love my mom and dad. How do you say goodbye to people when they don’t believe you’re going anywhere?’

Mr Polanski doesn’t walk away from me. He runs.

—Ernest Nadler

Chief of Detectives Goddard stood by the mayor’s side during the televised press conference. The split-screen image also showed the baby-tossing video, now the most popular film clip with audiences everywhere. And though the town’s top politician had just announced the capture and confession of the offending baby-tosser, one reporter had the temerity to bring up the Hunger Artist’s unsolved murders. When the mayor’s tongue tangled, Joe Goddard leaned into the microphone to say, ‘You bastards know the drill. That’s an ongoing investigation.’

The mayor cringed at the chief’s wording, but he gamely went on to announce the death of Rolland Mann in an unfortunate traffic accident.

With a flick of the remote, Jack Coffey turned off the television set in his office and faced the flesh-and-blood version of the chief of D’s, who had appropriated his desk. The lieutenant did not sit down in one of the vacant chairs. He preferred to stand alongside his detectives, Mallory and Riker.

‘Now,’ said Joe Goddard, ‘about the funeral arrangements for Rocket Mann. Either he gets the twenty-one-gun salute with bagpipes – or we shove him in a pine box as an embarrassment to the department. The widow’s leaving it up to us. Annie Mann really doesn’t care, as long as she never has to leave her apartment again. My concern is blowback. What are the odds?’

‘He murdered Ernie Nadler,’ said Riker.

‘Then the bastard got what was coming to him,’ said the chief. ‘Case closed.’

‘No, it’s not,’ said Riker. ‘What if we can prove that Mann was hired to kill that kid? How’s that for blowback?’

The chief swiveled the desk chair left and right as he considered the intractable detective. He turned to the man’s commander. ‘Jack, concentrate on the Hunger Artist. I want that case wrapped up fast. So maybe somebody pays and somebody skates. Don’t get too precious, okay? And please tell me Rocket Mann wasn’t on the shortlist for that one.’

‘No,’ said Mallory, ‘not his style. He favored crimes of opportunity, like trying to push Willy in front of a bus . . . like smothering a little boy in his hospital bed.’

Was she baiting Goddard?

‘Mallory?’ Coffey tapped her shoulder. ‘Shut up!’ And to the chief of D’s he said, ‘We don’t see Rocket Mann spending years collecting a murder kit. And we don’t see him out in the woods with a winch and a drill. He’d never put that much effort into a murder . . . but he was a killer. A real cold—’

‘I guess we got three votes for the pine box,’ said the chief. ‘But this ain’t a democracy. So Rocket Mann gets the fallen hero’s funeral. Nothing comes back to bite the department.’ This was couched as an order to leave that mess buried. ‘Now back to the Hunger Artist. Where’d you stash that junkie, Toby Wilder?’

‘He’s in the hospital,’ said Mallory, ‘getting his stomach pumped.’

‘He stays there under guard till I say otherwise.’ Onto the next order of business, the chief held up the detectives’ request for a search warrant. ‘The DA squashed it. Heller and Slope won’t sign off on the chloroform angle. The CSU test was inconclusive, and the ME’s tissue samples got backed up in the lab. All the rest of the stuff on your list is too vague. Any old winch and drill won’t do. The DA says you need to be more specific to get in the door.’

‘I guess nobody wants to piss off the wrong people,’ said Mallory.

She was the city’s hero cop today, the golden girl of the NYPD, and, following her coup at One Police Plaza – Hubris, thy name is Mallory – she believed she could get away with mouthing off to the chief of D’s in front of witnesses. She could not. Coffey could tell that much by the change in the atmosphere – the dead silence of a room with too many guns in it.

‘I know how to make the warrant less vague.’ Riker now commanded the chief’s attention. And once more, Lieutenant Coffey had to wonder what kind of power this detective had over Goddard.

‘We got an expert witness,’ said Riker. ‘She’s like a little catalogue of sounds. Coco can identify the brand of a vacuum cleaner if she only hears the motor. I’ve seen her do that trick. And she was in the Ramble the night Humphrey Bledsoe was strung up. Suppose we let her listen to the sample winches and drills CSU collected?’

Jack Coffey shot a glance at Mallory, who seemed to share his own surprise. Either Riker was lying to distract the chief from demolishing his partner – or he had been holding out on her.

Joe Goddard was not impressed. ‘Your expert witness is an eight-year-old kid?’

‘A kid genius,’ said Riker. ‘She’s got a gift for this stuff. And it gets better. We can document it. We got Charles Butler, an authority on gifted people. He’ll sign off on this.’

At the door to the station house, the two detectives parted company with a plan to meet up later at Charles Butler’s apartment. Riker had winches and drills to collect, but a little old lady was blocking his way.

‘So it was murder,’ said Rolland Mann’s elderly neighbor. ‘I saw it on TV.’ Mrs Buford turned her head from side to side, cagey now and mindful of officers passing by. She dropped her voice to a hoarse whisper. ‘I’m sure he had it coming to him.’

Oh, no – a snag, a little gray-haired loose end.

If just one reporter had the brains to canvas Rocket Mann’s building – if this neighbor was questioned – everything could come unraveled. Riker gave her his widest smile. ‘Naw, it was a traffic accident.’

‘Detective Mallory said murder. She said that the first time we met. And that was before Rolland Mann got hit by the bus. Very prescient, wouldn’t you say?’

Damn.

‘My partner was talking about a different murder,’ said Riker, ‘an old one. And we appreciate your—’

‘The TV reporter interviewed a Danish tourist who saw the whole thing. He said Rolland Mann was struggling with a woman when that bus came along. Was it Detective Mallory? I do hope she’s not in any trouble.’

In Mrs Buford’s mind, his partner was either clairvoyant or a killer cop. Fortunately, the old woman actually liked Mallory. Twenty minutes later, over a cup of coffee in the lunchroom, Riker had convinced her that the sudden death of her neighbor was not a conspiracy of cops – or that was his thought, based upon much nodding and smiling on her part.

But then she winked, and with that slow, sly drop of an eyelid, she put a lie to everything. ‘I understand,’ she said. ‘I’m as silent as the Sphinx. I would never say anything that might get Detective Mallory in trouble. Such a sweet girl. So kind.’

‘Yeah, that’s my partner.’ Riker glanced at his watch. Right about now, his little angel would be busy torturing a blind man.

Anthony Queen was posturing, railing against the storm-trooper tactics of law enforcement.

On the other side of his desk sat Mallory – the law – quietly, calmly planning to cut the blind man at the knees to keep him away from reporters.

‘There’s a guard posted outside of Toby’s hospital room. The police are denying me access to my client. I have a right to—’

‘Toby has rights,’ said Mallory. ‘You don’t. And he’s better off without any more help from you. When he was a kid, you stood by while the Driscol School’s pricey lawyer bargained him right into Spofford. You always believed that boy was guilty.’

‘I never did.’

‘You still do. That day you showed up in court with Toby’s mother – that’s when the ADA told you where Toby laid down his flowers – the exact spot where the wino died. That’s when you knew the boy was a killer.’

‘No. I never—’

‘Liar. That’s why you let Carlyle lock him away in that hellhole. You could’ve stopped the plea bargain, but you knew Toby was guilty. You thought a four-year sentence was a good deal . . . for a killer.’

‘I always believed in him.’

‘Yeah, right. Here’s the kicker, old man. Toby didn’t do it. If the case had gone to trial, the defense would’ve been entitled to exculpatory evidence – a witness statement that would’ve cleared him. But that never came out because of the plea bargain. So Carlyle put an innocent kid away, and you helped him do it – as a favor to Toby’s mother.’

When he had fully absorbed his own part in the damage to Toby Wilder, the lawyer’s face was a study in pain. However, because he was a lawyer, Mallory waited for the light to go on behind his blind eyes – that telling spark, the evidence of machinations, plots and schemes.

And now he smiled – so sly when he said, ‘Then Carlyle knew the boy was innocent.’

‘Forget it, old man. There won’t be any lawsuit for wrongful imprisonment. If you try that, Toby gets put away for life. Fifteen years ago, all three of the Hunger Artist’s victims blamed Toby for the wino’s death . . . Does that sound like a revenge motive for anyone we know?’

Queen’s mouth opened wide – and closed. His store of words had failed him.

Shock was good, but Mallory toyed with the idea that she could make a lawyer cry. ‘I know what you did to Toby’s mother – your very good friend. I talked to people who worked with Susan Wilder. They tell me she was a one-man woman, and she loved Jess Wilder till the day she died. But she loved her son even more. So I wondered why she’d go along with the plea bargain. That bothered me. That was your work, wasn’t it? That woman trusted you. Toby was a minor child. Before a judge would let him plead out to murder – first you’d have to convince the mother that her son was guilty – that he murdered his own father.’

‘But Susan never knew who the wino was.’

‘She knew,’ said Mallory, ‘even before Toby’s arrest. And I can prove it.’

Anthony Queen’s expression could only be read as Please stop.

Not yet, but soon. Just now she was on a get-even roll. ‘Susan Wilder went to the morgue to view the wino’s body . . . with her fingertips. Stone blind, she knew that was her husband. I have a witness who tells me she cried . . . She loved that man. And thanks to you, Susan died believing that her son beat him to death . . . It’s like you poisoned all the time she had left.’

Tears. Perfect.

‘You think you’re sorry now? Don’t make me come back here, old man.’ She rose from her chair and walked toward the office door. ‘Stay the hell away from Toby Wilder.’