Winter House

Chapter 9

THE FRONT ROOM FLOODED WITH LIGHT FROM THE Chandelier. Lionel ran past her to the front door. Nedda had forgotten to turn off the alarm. She murmured apologies to her brother as he madly tapped the button pad on the foyer wall, entering the code that would prevent it from going off.

Crisis over.

And now that they were spared another visit from the NYPD, he said, „Neddy, we couldn’t reach Dr. Butler. We thought you might’ve gone back to the police station – possibly under arrest. We couldn’t get anything out of Bitty.“

Arrest? For which of her crimes? Did he mean the stabbing death of a man in this same room or the other man she had planned to kill in the park? Or was her brother alluding to the mass murder of their family members?

She turned to the sound of more footsteps. Cleo entered the front room, followed closely by her ex-husband. Sheldon was no doubt here by design; her brother and sister had no wish to be alone with her tonight. She was wondering where her niece might be hiding when a weak voice called down from the staircase, „Here. Up here.“

Four heads were turning, lifting to the sight of Bitty dragging herself to the edge of the stairs. In a childish gesture, one small hand raised slowly, as if to wave bye bye, and then she laid her head down on the floor and closed her eyes. Nedda was the first to reach her. None of them could wake her.

Charles was holding a rather mediocre hand of cards when he answered the knock at his door. His unexpected visitor was a stout woman from a more Luddite-friendly century. An old-fashioned carpetbag sat on the floor at her feet.

O pioneer.

She had the well-muscled arms of a woman who labored hard for her living, and the iron gray hair was bound in braids. Her walking shoes were sturdy, and the blue dress had great integrity, so plain and serviceable. He half expected her to produce a pitchfork or some other farm implement. She stared him down with great sensible brown eyes, then extended a hand to greet him, albeit somewhat reluctantly. The calluses on her palms fitted so well with the social slot he had created for her.

Later, he would learn that the hobby of her retirement years was rock climbing, hence the good muscle tone and calluses; that she hailed from a large city in the state of Maine, so much for the farm life; that she held advanced degrees in library science and was a denizen of cyberspace.

„Susan McReedy,“ she began, not one for unnecessary pronouns and verbs of introduction. „I don’t take you for a sneak, Mr. Butler, and I’ll tell you why. When I asked you blunt questions on the phone, you didn’t lie to me. You wouldn’t tell me the truth, Lord knows, but you wouldn’t lie. And I suspect that goes against the grain with you. So tell me straight out. Is she still alive?“

After escorting their new interview subject into Charles Butler’s private office, Riker sat down in an armchair beside the librarian from Maine.

Mallory regretted agreeing to second chair in this interview. Out in the hallway, her partner had argued that little old ladies were his forte, that they loved him on sight. This might well be true, but Susan McReedy was not little, nor did she look all that old, and she could probably take Riker down in two falls out of three.

Riker began with small talk and offers of coffee or tea. The woman from Maine tapped one shoe, barely tolerating this waste of her time. Off his game today, he had missed the other signs of her fidgeting fingers and lips pressed tight. He compounded his error by pausing a beat too long to allow her the full impact of his widest smile. Miss McReedy did not respond in kind. Her mouth dipped down on one side, and now both shoes tapped the floor with irritation. This baffled him. He must wonder what foot he had put wrong.

So obvious.

„You’re sure I can’t get you a cup of coffee?“

The woman only glared at him, finding him suspicious because of his engaging grin – too quick and easy, too professionally charming.

Mallory had a cure for excess charm.

She rose from the couch and moved into that narrow area between their chairs, too close to allow this woman any personal space – and closer. She put her hands on the arms of Miss McReedy’s chair and bent low until their eyes were level. Closer. „So your father was a cop? Was he a lousy cop? Didn’t he raise you right?“ Every inflection dropped out of her tone, and each word had equal weight when she said, „I – am – the – law. I don’t have time to mess with you. Start talking.“

Though Susan McReedy never twitched or blinked, she did smile in approval. „You want the whole story, or just the salient points?“

Riker stood up, conceding his chair to the new champion of senior-citizen interviews, and Mallory sat down, saying, „I want everything you’ve got on the red-haired girl. Don’t leave anything out.“

„All right. The girl’s hair wasn’t red the first time I saw her. It was shoe-polish black – dyed and cut real short.“ Miss McReedy had lost her edge, almost mellowing as she described the night, fifty-eight years ago, when two local boys had seen the yellow stalks of headlights beaming up beyond the rim of a bottomless quarry pool. „The car was hung up on an outcrop of rocks twenty feet below the rim, just hanging there, smashed to bits, all turned around and ready to fall another fifty feet to the water. When Dad and the neighbors got to the lip of the quarry, it looked like it was going down any second. There were six flashlights altogether, all aiming straight down through a broken windshield, and they could see the girl plain as day. So much blood. The twisted metal pinned her down on the passenger side. It was a sheer drop between the edge of the rock face and that car.“

Riker interrupted her, leaning in, asking, „How did your dad read the scene that night? Did he take it for an accident?“

Susan McReedy turned to Mallory with a raised eyebrow to ask if this interruption was necessary. Mallory only stared at her in silence, and the woman took this for an affirmative.

„My father had two different theories, two years apart. That night, he figured it for an accident. The quarry pool was a good place to lose a car – a body, too – but leaving the headlights on would defeat that purpose, wouldn’t it? Now the door on the driver side hung open and angled down toward the water. So he figured the driver – Dad was guessing a teenage boy – ten wrecks out of ten were teenagers – well, he thought the driver must’ve dropped into the pool and drowned. That was assuming the crash didn’t kill him first. You could expect a corpse to bloat up with gas and rise to the surface after a while, but that one never did.“

Mallory made a rolling motion with one hand to move the story back on track.

„Well, a sheer drop like that one, you’d need a rope to get down to where the car was. Dad and my uncle were rock-climbing fools. They had all the gear in the trunks of their cars, and pretty soon, both of them were rappelling down that rock wall by the light of the neighbors’ flashlights. They worked for hours to free the girl from that car. One wrong move, the car would drop and the girl would be lost. Nothing has ever come out of that pool – except bloated dead bodies, animals mostly, and a few suicide jumpers.“

„All the while they worked, they did a balancing act to keep the car from teetering off that outcrop of rock. Hooked their own lifelines onto the metal. They could’ve died that night. They didn’t care. They were going to carry that girl out if it killed them both to do it.“

„So the ambulance crew lowered the stretcher, then Dad and Uncle Henry strapped her in. After they hauled her up, the ambulance driver took one look at that poor broken girl and told my dad she’d never make it. Well, Dad climbed into that ambulance and rode with her to the hospital, talking to her all the while, demanding that she survive. And she did. But it was a few years before she was mended. It was one operation after another. She was real brave – all that pain – years of it.“

Riker asked, „What about the car?“

„It fell into the quarry pool. Dad and his brother were on the way up when the car went down. It was that close.“

„So your dad never traced the car?“

„No need. He knew whose car it was while he was still up on the rim. It was stolen from my uncle’s parking lot. Uncle Henry had a little restaurant, the only one for miles around.“

Riker exchanged looks with Mallory.

„I know what you’re thinking,“ said Miss McReedy, „but you’re getting ahead of the story. You said every detail, right? Well, Dad figured the girl was at least eighteen if not older, full grown. She was a tall one. So that’s what he put in his report. If the doctors thought different they never said, or maybe they just couldn’t tell. She was so smashed up, poor thing. No part of her was whole. And she could never tell Dad anything helpful, not her name or who the driver was, nothing at all. The hospital called her Jane Doe. We called her our Jane. She lived at our house between hospital stays. Dad could never quite let go of that girl until the day he died, and his brother felt the same way. The three of them were forever tied together in a way that wasn’t quite like family. In some ways, it was a closer bond. I know that sounds odd.“

„I understand it,“ said Riker.

Mallory knew she had missed something important here, but she let it slide away, for it had nothing to do with her case.

Susan McReedy was less annoyed with Riker when he asked about her father’s second theory. „I’m getting to that,“ she said. „The poor girl had gone through four operations before she was off the crutches for good. Then she wanted to earn her own keep. Two years had gone by. We thought she was at least twenty years old by then.“

The woman reached down and pulled a paperback book from the carpetbag at her feet. „But I guess we all know better now. She was only twelve when we found her. Isn’t that right?“ Miss McReedy turned from Mallory to Riker. Her expression was almost a challenge to contradict her. She was satisfied by their silence and continued. „So she was just fourteen years old when my uncle gave her that little apartment over the restaurant. I wish that we had known she was just a little girl.“

The woman stared at her shoes, overcome by sadness. Mallory and Riker kept their silence.

„Everyone admired our Jane for working in the restaurant – so public and all. Customers tended to stare at her in all the wounded places that showed, but she soldiered on. Looked them all right in the eye as if her face were normal, good as theirs. That’s when we came to believe she was really on the mend.“

Mallory stared at the cover illustration of the book in the woman’s hand. It was a reproduction of the Red Winter painting. A store receipt stood for a bookmark. This woman had only recently worked it all out.

„I guess,“ said Susan McReedy, „I can put one thing and another together pretty well. First that New York author calls me a few years back. And then Mr. Butler – the same questions.“ The librarian held up the book when she said, „I’m sure you guessed – our Jane didn’t look anything like this on the night of the accident – or anytime after that. Her face was broken, nose, cheekbones, her jaw – and that child’s legs. Oh, Lord. They rebuilt her with steel pins and sewing needles.“

Susan McReedy paused, but not to any dramatic effect. She was having difficulty going on with her story, and she had not yet come to the most important part. Riker was leaning forward to interrupt one more time. Mallory glared at him to warn him off.

„So one day, all of us were going up to Bangor to see my grandma. But Jane wanted to stay behind. Well, my uncle closed the restaurant that weekend, and he guessed the girl wanted to spend her free time reading. Always had her nose in a book, that one – a habit she picked up in the hospital, I guess.“

„Two days later, we came home and found her in that little apartment over the restaurant. She was sitting on her bedroom floor beside a dead body – a man with an ice pick in his chest. Flies everywhere, but our Jane didn’t seem to notice them – or him, either. She ‘d gone all the way crazy. Just rocking back and forth. I don’t think she could hear us when we spoke to her.“

It was all too clear that Miss McReedy was seeing that tableau again, fresh as yesterday’s blood and blowflies.

„And your dad,“ said Riker, „how did he read that crime scene?“

„It was obvious. The man she’d killed – he’d broken into her place. No doubt about it. He broke down the bedroom door to get at her. It was off its damn hinge. She must’ve been so frightened.“

„And,“ said Mallory, „she just happened to keep an ice pick in her bedroom.“

„Yes, and that was the saddest part. That nearly killed my father. And that’s how he put the whole thing together.“ She fell silent for a moment.

„So that’s when he worked out his second theory,“ said Riker, gently prompting her.

Susan McReedy nodded. „It was an old ice pick he found in the dead man’s chest. The painted handle was flaking. It used to be in Uncle Henry’s restaurant. He told Dad he tossed it out just after our Jane moved in upstairs. The girl must have found it in the trash and kept it all that time. Dad saw flakes of that same color paint on the underside of her pillowcase. And that’s how he knew, for all that time, she’d gone to sleep every night with that pick underneath her pillow. All that time she’d been waiting for that man, the one who’d left her for dead at the quarry. She’d been waiting for him to come back and finish her off.“

The retired librarian looked down at her hands as she folded the paperback book into a fat cylinder. „And then came the second theory of what happened at the quarry pool. Dad figured our Jane was the only one in the car when it went over the rim that night. So that was no accident. It was attempted murder. Dad didn’t see the driver as a local man, nobody who lived in walking distance. He’d stolen that car because he’d be needing his own car to make a getaway. So he was a stranger, just like our Jane.“

„After she killed that man with the ice pick – if Dad had only known – how young she was. Well, if he’d known, then I don’t think he would’ve let them take her to the hospital that day or any other day. From there she went to a state asylum. That made Dad and my uncle so crazy. They tried, time after time, to get her out of there and bring her home. But every time they got a new sanity hearing, she’d do something to mess it up. Once she slashed her wrists. Another time it was her throat. Finally, Dad had to let go of her. He came to understand – “ Susan McReedy’s hands were clasped tightly around her paperback and squeezing it. „This really hurt him – but he realized that our Jane felt safer in that place than home with us. He didn’t protect her when she needed him most. My father went to visit her every weekend until he died. Then the asylum was closed down for Medicare fraud, and the patients were scattered all over creation. Years later, I tracked one Jane Doe to a nursing home north of Auburn – but it wasn’t our Jane.“

„All right,“ said Mallory, moving on, „your father must’ve traced the dead man’s fingerprints.“

„Yes, he did. It took a while. No national data base in those days. The dead man had a record in three southern states, con games and stealing. Never killed anybody that we knew of. He was jailed under a slew of names, but never for any great length of time.“

„What about Humboldt,“ said Riker, „remember that one?“

„And all his other names.“ She bent down to the carpetbag at her feet and pulled out a thick envelope. Opening it, she emptied the file folders onto the coffee table.

Mallory leafed through the decades of yellowed documents, one man’s search for a red-haired girl’s past, an ongoing inquiry that had lasted another twenty years after Nedda had killed Stick Man. And now she was staring at the original cards bearing the dead man’s fingerprints.

„So,“ said Susan McReedy, regaining her poise, „you think that man, Humboldt, killed her family. You think that’s why our Jane took him down with an ice pick.“ She held tight to the paperback book with the painted image of a naked child, Red Winter, her Jane. „So she saw that – her family murdered. Twelve years old and she – “ Words had failed the woman from Maine.

„Yeah,“ said Riker. „If the reporters get hold of this story…“ He knew that he would not have to finish that thought for her.

The woman was nodding, saying, „I understand. We never talked, and I was never here.“ She turned to Mallory. „But could I see her – just a picture of her?“

Mallory held up one finger to tell the woman to remain where she was, then rose from her chair and left the room – taking the files of Jane Doe along with her. When she returned, she held out a crime-scene photo, and not the one that pictured Nedda Winter seated near a more recent corpse. It was a simple shot of the old woman standing before the grand staircase, majestic, her face and body no longer broken as they were in Miss McReedy’s memories. „Here, take it. Keep it.“

„Thank you.“ The woman stared at the image of her Jane grown old. „She looks good, doesn’t she? I never saw her face after – “ She looked up at Mallory, smiling at a sudden recollection. „My father paid for that, you know – after she was committed to the asylum. Three more operations with a plastic surgeon, and it cost the moon to do it. But Dad just had to finish putting her back together again.“ Miss McReedy became lost in the photograph once more. „Oh, what a pretty robe she’s wearing. And that looks like a real fine house.“

„Yeah,“ said Riker, „a mansion.“

The woman looked up from this treasure that marked the end of her own family quest. „This story doesn’t have a happy ending, does it?“

„No,“ said Mallory. „Don’t expect that.“

And now that Susan McReedy’s usefulness was over, the young detective turned her back and left the room and went to her own office, where she began to pin the contents of the Maine file to her cork wall. Fifteen minutes had passed, and she was not yet done marrying these pages to those in the file made by Riker’s grandfather when her partner sang out, „Hey, Mallory! You gotta hear this.“

She walked into the reception room to find Robin Duffy and Riker bent over the answering machine. They were playing back the messages from Bitty Smyth slurring her words more with each call and asking when her aunt was coming back home.

„Nedda’s gone,“ said Robin. „And so is Charles. A little while ago, Nedda called him on the phone in his apartment. He was off like a shot. Going to the hospital, he said. Something about an overdose of pills.“

Cleo Winter-Smyth, her brother and her ex-husband were seated in the hospital lounge, and all three heads were slowly turning to follow the progress of Charles Butler’s march from the street door to the front desk. A nurse assured him that, yes, he was on the restricted list of visitors.

He could feel three pairs of eyes on his back as he walked to the elevator. Apparently these family members had not made the cut. Curious.

Riker folded his cell phone. „They’re all at the hospital. The whole family came in together. Sheldon Smyth’s there, too.“

„Good.“ Mallory double-parked her car in front of Winter House. „Then there’s nobody home to mess with the crime scene.“

According to Riker’s source at the hospital, the only crime had been an attempted suicide, but his partner loosely translated this to an attempted murder that would give them free access to the house without the tedium of chasing down a warrant.

They climbed the short flight of stone steps to the front door. Mallory was unwrapping the small velvet pouch that held her favorite lock picks.

„Hold it.“ Riker turned the knob. The door opened. „I’d say that speaks well for the family.“ He entered the foyer and looked around. „Nobody home. They were in such a hurry to get Bitty to the hospital, they forgot to lock up.“

„Not quite. One of them stopped to set the alarm.“ She punched in the numbers and the glowing light went out.

„How’d you know the code?“ He held up both hands. „Never mind, I never asked.“

A door was closing on the floor above them.

„There’s someone in the house.“ Mallory raced up the stairs and reached Bitty Smyth’s bedroom in time to hear the toilet flush and smell the vomit beneath a layer of cleaning solvent. The evidence was now swirling down the drain.

A woman in a shapeless dress, hired help by the looks of her, emerged from the private bathroom to see Mallory standing there, angry.

And the woman screamed.

„You cleaned up after Bitty Smyth,“ said Mallory, unperturbed by the high-pitched wailing. „Who told you to do that?“

„Police!“ the woman screamed. „Help! Police!“

Riker was in the doorway, panting and reaching into his back pocket for the badge that would shut this woman up. He could not yet speak. Heavy breathing was all that he could manage.

The woman screamed again, louder this time.

Bitty had been drifting in and out of consciousness. When she was fully awake, the hospital’s resident psychiatrist ordered the room cleared. The two visitors retreated, going off in search of the cafeteria.

Nedda relied on Charles to follow the signs and arrows that would lead them to hot coffee. He guided her into a brightly lit room of Formica tables, sparsely populated with people in street clothes, some sitting alone, others huddled in twos and threes. Only matters of life and death could account for the laymen gathered here at this late hour.

Charles seated his companion at a secluded island table close to the wall and far from eavesdroppers. When he returned with their coffee in paper cups, he picked up the conversation begun in the corridor. „So you’re quite sure it was a suicide attempt?“

She nodded. „Bitty’s not a strong person. I remember when I was drowning in despair. I know all the signs. My own suicide attempt took years. I used to swallow pills that other patients spit out on the floor.“

„But your niece has a prescription for sleeping pills. No chance of an accidental overdose?“

„None. Bitty also has a phobia. She can’t swallow tablets. They have to be crushed in water before she can get them down. You see how unlikely it is that she could lose track of them.“

„Did you mention that to – “

„The psychiatrist? Yes. Bitty gave my name as next of kin. I’m sure my sister didn’t appreciate that.“

And consequently this would not be the time for any family meeting with the object of reconciliation.

„What triggered the attempt? Any ideas?“

„My fault,“ said Nedda. „Looking at this through Bitty’s eyes, I blame myself. She worked so hard to do this wonderful thing for Cleo and Lionel. She found their lost sister. It should have been a magnificent present. Poor Bitty. She couldn’t know that I was the last person they would ever want to see.“

„Why such animosity?“

„Because of the murders – their parents, their brothers and sisters. Every time they look at me, it hurts them more than knives cutting into their eyes.“

When Charles and Nedda returned to Bitty’s hospital room, her attending physician was waiting for them, saying, „It’s all settled. She’ll be with us for a few days.“

„And there ‘11 be a cop posted on the door,“ said Mallory striding into the room. She glared at the tiny woman on the bed as if this attempt at suicide had been a ploy simply to annoy her.

Charles could tell that Bitty was only feigning sleep this time, but he said nothing to give her away.

Mallory turned her attention to Nedda. „You should’ve called the police first. Now it’s too late. All the evidence is gone. No one told those idiots in the emergency room to save the stomach contents.“

The doctor was about to take offense at this, for she was referring to his idiots. But now, thinking better of that, with perhaps a keen eye for disturbing personalities who carried guns, he was edging away from Mallory and toward the door, then gone.

„There’s no mystery about her stomach contents,“ said Nedda. „Prescription sleeping pills. My niece took an accidental overdose.“ She lied nearly as well as her opponent. „Calling the police never entered my mind.“

That much was certainly true.

Oh, no.

Mallory was leaning over Bitty for a closer look, saying, „She’s faking. She’s awake.“

„That’s enough,“ said Nedda. „My niece needs rest, and you need to leave this room.“

The young detective was squaring off against the older woman when Charles appeared at Nedda’s side, lending support to the idea that Mallory should leave, and right now. It was an unsettling moment. Charles looked into Mallory’s eyes and roughly guessed her thoughts. She was wondering if he would humiliate her, if he would physically move her out of this room, laying hands on her for the second time in one day. And, no, he would not have the heart for that. But she chose not to give him the benefit of that doubt in her mind. She turned and left the room.

Mallory could commit any sort of bad act and depend upon him to feel the guilt.

How did she do that?

Riker sat with the family members in the reception area of the hospital. His pen moved across the page of his notebook, taking down their statements on Bitty’s overdose. „Any idea how many pills she took?“

„No, we never thought to ask,“ said Bitty’s mother. „It was quite a scene. Nedda was jamming her fingers down my daughter’s throat to induce vomiting. I was – “

„On the phone,“ said Lionel, finishing the sentence, „calling for an ambulance.“

Sheldon Smyth was being unusually quiet for a lawyer. Riker wanted to stick a knife in the old man by asking exactly when Cleo and Lionel had discovered that the law firm was ripping off their trust fund, but Mallory would shoot him for tipping their hand too soon.

He looked up to see his partner marching across the lobby, heading toward this little family with all the deadly resolution of a train on the way to a wreck. He turned back to Cleo, resident of a planet where people communicated via telepathy. The woman was staring at her brother. Something passed between them, and they were of one mind, Riker was sure of that, before their heads turned in unison to stare at Mallory.

These people were creeping him out.

This time, Bitty was not faking. She had fallen into a natural state of sleep, and there was no conversation between Charles and Nedda, neither of them wanting to disturb her rest.

But now the patient stirred, eyes opening to smile at her aunt. „I knew you’d come.“

„To the rescue?“ said Charles. „So you knew you were in trouble tonight.“

„I must have taken too many sleeping pills.“ All the signs of a lie were there, eyes shifting away from his, fingers fidgeting on the blanket, so uncomfortable in this falsehood.

„You’re not sure?“ He smiled to say never mind. „I heard your messages on my machine. It seems like you knew what was happening, but you waited for Nedda. Why not call an ambulance yourself?“

„I wasn’t thinking very clearly?“

Perhaps she had not believed that her family would have opened the door to an ambulance. That was one possibility, the one that Kathy Mallory would have liked best.

Mallory sat in the hospital lounge, facing Cleo and Lionel with the clear understanding that they were a unit. What they had suffered as children might have formed that weird bond. Or it might have developed while they were murdering their little sister, the only Winter child still unaccounted for. Bitty Smyth’s near death had expanded the possible scenarios for Sally Winter’s disappearance.

Where would two children hide a little corpse? Not in the hat closet that had so intrigued Mrs. Ortega. Children did not wall up bodies. They buried them as they buried family pets. The dead girl would have taken up no more ground than a good-size dog.

Child’s play.

Brother and sister sat together with the same body language, arms folded, eyes level and calm, meeting her gaze and awaiting the inevitable interrogation. She let them wait. Sheldon Smyth seemed sober now. The old lawyer was tensing, also bracing for an onslaught of questions. His brow was lightly filmed with sweat, though the hospital lounge was cool and dry.

This old man was going to be so easy to break.

She could watch the works of his brain churning behind his eyes, trying to anticipate her first question, heart racing. All three of them were waiting for her, wondering when she would begin the inquisition. The three of them were leaning slightly forward, expectant crows on a wire.

Mallory stood up and turned her back on the trio, then crossed the lobby in tandem with her partner – and without a single word spoken.

The documents raided from the Smyth firm gave Mallory’s private office at Butler and Company the look of a temporary warehouse, but one located in that other dimension where Chinese puzzle blocks were born.

She was stacking cartons of varied sizes to form an enormous cardboard cube at the center of the room.

While she explained that the outer shell was made with as-yet unread documents, Riker admired the walls of her structure from all sides. It was a maniacally efficient use of space, and very disturbing to a man who tossed discarded beer cartons into the corners of his apartment so he could readily discern the empties from the partially emptied.

Riker wrecked her perfect symmetry by dragging a carton out of formation.

An hour later, he was sitting on the floor, almost done, gently laying out the last of the brittle pieces of paper from the middle years of the previous century. These canceled checks bore the signature of the guardian, James Winter, and they were arranged in the order of their dates. „If Sally Winter didn’t die of natural causes, we can rule out Uncle James for the killer.“ He looked up at his partner. She was engrossed in Pinwitty’s book and paying no attention to him. „Aren’t you going to ask me why?“

„Hmm.“ Mallory turned another page.

Riker had finished working backward in time to lay out the last check. „It looks like James skipped town before Sally died. All the signatures in this group were traced. Every one of them exactly the same. I guess the Smyth firm didn’t want to break in a new guardian so they kept him around on paper. But these forged checks are still making payouts for doctor’s visits and home nursing for the kid.“

„I never thought James Winter killed Sally.“ Mallory held her place, marking the page with one finger as she closed the book. „This text is unreadable, but the pictures are interesting. Were there any prints on Stick Man’s ice pick? There’s nothing about it in this book or your grandfather’s notes.“

„Who knows? I told you, all the evidence boxes were robbed, gutted for souvenirs. That ice pick disappeared fifty years ago.“

One long red fingernail tapped the book cover. „So how did Pinwitty get a photograph of the pick?“

„What? There aren’t any photographs in that book.“

„Then Charles’s copy must be a revised edition.“ Mallory opened the volume and showed him the clear picture of an ice pick in an evidence bag. „You can even read the detective’s signature on the label.“

Upon their second visit to Martin Pinwitty’s one-room apartment, the first thing the detectives noticed was an elaborate profusion of flowers, exotic blooms well beyond the author’s purse.

„It’s a sympathy bouquet. My mother died yesterday.“ Pinwitty rushed to the stove and began a lame attempt at hospitality, lighting a flame under his teakettle.

This time, the detectives did not feel obliged to eat stale pastries and drink cheap swill. Riker turned off the gas burner. „Just give us the ice pick, and we’ll go.“

Pinwitty’s lips parted as if to scream.

Riker was holding up the book, and it was opened to the picture of the murder weapon in an evidence bag. „This pick.“

„I bought that photograph. I never actually had the – “

„No,“ said Riker, „you don’t wanna lie to a cop.“ He flipped through the pages of the picture section. „You took all these shots yourself. Cheaper that way, right? Your publishers even gave you a photographer’s credit.“

„I don’t have the pick anymore.“

„Yeah, you do,“ said Riker. „The Winter House Massacre is your whole life. Once you had that pick, you’d never let it go.“

„My mother’s illness was very costly. I had to sell off a lot of things.“

Riker shook his head to let the man know that he was not buying this excuse. „You would’ve sold your mother for medical experiments before you sold that pick.“

Pinwitty was backing away, when he made eye contact with Mallory. He turned back to face Riker, finding him less threatening – a mistake – and now the author made a little stand of sorts. He straightened what passed for a spine and thrust out his chin, what there was of it. „The pick is mine. I bought and paid for it.“

„Well,“ said Riker, „that makes my job a lot easier. You just admitted to buying stolen goods. Give me the pick or we tack on a few more charges.“

„Statute of limitations,“ said the author. „I bought it more than seven years ago.“

„You got me there, pal. I can see that I just don’t watch enough cop shows on television. So I guess all we’ve got on you is concealing evidence in an ongoing case. No, wait a minute. If you broke the seal on the bag, we can add tampering with evidence. And then there’s my personal favorite, obstruction of a homicide investigation.“ He stepped toward Pinwitty, and the man fell back into a chair, startled to be suddenly sitting down and looking up at the detective’s angry face. Riker put his hands on the padded arms of the chair and leaned into the author’s face as he explained the worst of this man’s crimes. „And you’re pissing off my partner.“

Riker pointed to Mallory, who was seated in a chair next to the sympathy bouquet, idly ripping the heads off of flowers.

The chief of Forensics personally returned the ice pick to Mallory and Riker. More accurately, he dropped the pick on his desk blotter and threw the paperwork in Riker’s direction. The big man leaned forward, voice icy, saying, „You told my people this was a rush… for a fifty-eight-year-old homicide. You bastards. I’m up to my eyeballs in work, and you come in here with this crap.“

Riker was mentally digging himself a foxhole underneath his chair.

„So,“ said Mallory, so casually, as if she were not in deep trouble for lying to Heller’s staff, „you got a match on the fingerprints?“

And now it was her turn to receive a flying object – the small white card with Nedda Winter’s elimination prints from a more recent crime scene. It sailed across the desk and landed in her lap.

Riker regarded Finnegan’s Bar as the front room for his upstairs apartment. It saved him the trouble of picking up his dirty socks when company came calling. And now he greeted his first guest of the evening and waved the man to an empty bar stool reserved in his honor. „Hey, thanks for coming.“

Charles Butler had been to Finnegan’s before, but he still turned heads with the regulars, men and women with guns. He stood a head above the rest, broader in the shoulders and entirely too well dressed for this dive and this company of wall-to-wall police. „When will they release Nedda?“

„She’s not a prisoner.“ Riker held up one hand to flag down the bartender. Two fingers in the air netted him a nod and a promise of two beers. „She can walk out any time she likes. This wasn’t Mallory’s idea. Nedda wanted to do it. I’ll get a call when it’s over. You’re sure the lady doesn’t want police protection tonight?“

„No, she was adamant about that. She’s positive that her niece attempted suicide. And I agree with her. Maybe it was a cry for help, but not attempted murder.“

„So Nedda’s moving in with you?“

„For a few days.“ Charles accepted a beer from the bartender. „Maybe longer.“

„You didn’t discuss any of the evidence with her, did you? I mean the will, the trust fund.“

„No, it never came up in the conversation. And I don’t think she gives a damn about money. That’s Mallory’s fixation, not Nedda’s.“ Charles sipped his beer, not inclined to volunteer any more.

„So I’m guessing you and Mallory are at odds right now. I’m guessing ‘cause the kid never tells me anything.“

„I suppose I question her methods.“

„Yeah, she does things that you’d never do.“ Riker drained his glass. „And a few things I wouldn’t do, either. That’s what makes her a great cop. Now, if she was working for the opposition, I’d lose sleep at night. Did you have any time to look at my file?“

Charles laid the ancient folder on the bar. It contained more of Pinwitty’s collection, pictures recently acquired for the next revision of his book. The old crime-scene photographs showed all the dead bodies of the massacre, some large and some painfully small. „I agree with you. It fits better with a murder for hire. Not the work of a lunatic or someone with anger issues.“ He lowered his head and spoke to his glass. „You know what’s most disturbing about the massacre at Winter House? Oddly enough, it’s the lack of rage. Assembly-line carnage. How do you profile a killer like that? Someone sane who kills for the money?“

„Well, Charles, you don’t. You know why? These people don’t drop in from another planet. They don’t start out as psychos. They’re us.“ He could see that Charles was resisting this idea. „I can tell you how it’s done, how they’re made. You take a youngster out in the woods. The boy’s first kill is all set up for him. The victim is kneeling on the ground, hands tied behind his back. All the kid has to do is put the gun to the back of this man’s skull and squeeze the trigger. But the victim is begging for his life and crying. There’re maybe two, three other men watching the kid. They’re all junkyard dogs, but they wear silk suits. They drive nice cars. And the boy looks up to them. He can’t back down, can he? Naw, too humiliating. Plus, he’s scared shitless. He’s either one of them or he’s a liability. Hell of a choice he’s got. So he does it. It’s a small thing, they tell him. Just squeeze the trigger, kid, they say. And that’s what the kid does. He blows a human being away and gets sick all over his shoes. He’s crossed a line, and he can’t get back. The next time is easier. Soon it’s just his job. He wasn’t born to do this. I guess that’s why the mob would call him a made man. He’ll spend most of his life in prison, but the boy doesn’t know that yet. You can make a hitman out of almost anybody, but it’s better if you get ‘em young.“

Riker nodded toward the window. Beyond the glass, a twelve-year-old boy stood on the sidewalk talking to a girl, his flawless face growing pinker by the second. He was falling in love for the first time, his whole shining life ahead of him. „That kid would do.“

Charles turned his face to the window and the youngster on the sidewalk, so innocent, the raw makings of evil. „What about Mallory – when she was younger?“

„Naw. She wasn’t the best scratch material.“ Did that sound reassuring? Would Charles buy a lie? „When she was ten years old, she was a fullblown person.“ He smiled at this memory of a wildly talented street thief with the chilling eyes of a small stone killer. „And she hasn’t changed all that much.“

Charles seemed genuinely relieved. What a gift for denial. Poor bastard, he was always seeking evidence of a beating heart and a bit of a soul, never appreciating the true marvel of Mallory – that she functioned so well without them.