Mallory's Oracle (34 page)

“Boo!” the child yelled at Riker who obliged him by putting up his hands and yelling, “Don't hurt me!” The children laughed, and the bodyguards herded them on as Riker headed south toward the precinct.

Oh, kid, he said to himself, you don't know what scary is.

 

“ ‘The paladin will die!' That's Mallory, isn't it? Isn't it, Edith!”

The scrawl was faint red and overlaid with scouring powder. Charles had not been breathing as he read it, and he had to make a conscious effort to resume. Edith Candle was twisting a tissue into shreds, leaving the kitchen.

He followed her down the hall, stopping at the door to Max's library. His eye for the thing out of place drew his attention to the clutter on the octagonal table. He could see the heavy scrollwork of an ornate silver frame which lay beneath a newspaper, exposed only by one corner. His eye went to the mantelpiece where the set of three frames sat intact. This one on the table would be a match.

Edith was pulling on his sleeve. “I'm very upset just now, Charles. I'm really not up to having any company today.”

Ignoring her, he walked into the library and stood by the table. Within inches of the silver frame was a large manila envelope bearing the return address of a New York clipping service. It lay on top of hastily concealed scraps of paper. As he lifted the newspaper off the frame, he uncovered a photograph of Mallory, a close-up taken at Louis Markowitz's funeral. Her beautiful face was trapped behind the glass of the silver frame. Charles crossed the room in two strides and grasped Edith by the shoulders.

“Who is going to kill Mallory, Edith? Who?”

“I can't tell. My gift is not that strong.”

“Screw the gift. You set her up. Who's going to kill her?”

“You don't know what you're saying.”

He went to the mantel and picked out the portrait of the young bride-to-be. “Her fiance lived in this building. His name was George Farmer. George Farmer killed his fiancée the night before the wedding, and then he turned the gun on himself. He's a vegetable now, isn't he? Lying in a private hospital, staring at the ceiling. I'm told he drools a bit now and then. But he wasn't the one who died, so he didn't merit a silver frame. That's how it works, isn't it?”

“My gift carries a terrible burden, Charles. I tried to avert that tragedy. But I failed.”

“Hardly a failure, Edith. By your obscene standards, it was a roaring success. And Cousin Max? You killed his concentration, didn't you? You were the last person he wanted to see that night. That's why my parents stopped bringing me by for visits with you. They knew you manipulated his death. And now you've set Mallory up to die. You worked the damn thing out, didn't you? Of course, the old women, the seances, who would have better insider information than you? Who's going to kill her, Edith?”

“I can't believe you're saying these things.”

“Originally you were planning to orchestrate an accident with Herbert and his gun. Martin was going to be the victim this time. Just a little something to keep your hand in, right? Herbert's a rather twisty, frightened little man, isn't he? Probably wasn't much of a challenge for you.”

“Charles, you're distraught. You don't—”

“But then along came Mallory with all her violence, all her hate, all that beautiful young energy waiting to be fired like a bullet. And you changed your plans. Do I have it right? Where has she gone?”

“I don't know. I only know that she's in danger.”

“That much I believe.”

He touched the edge of the silver-framed portrait on the desk. “Kathleen Mallory is not your trophy.” He brought down his fist to break the glass and free her image. The blood streamed from the tear in his hand. He left a red palm print on the door as he quit the apartment with the wadded photograph of Mallory in the closed fist of his good hand.

 

Mallory took stock of the VCR, the color television, and the most expensive stereo known to audiophiles and burglars. It didn't fit with the peeling wallpaper and the threadbare carpet. The air was ripe with spaghetti sauce, and the stronger smell of garbage wafted up from the air shaft window, which had been opened against the heat from the clanking radiator.

A Doberman puppy padded into the room, eyes blind to his surroundings, dazed and favoring a foreleg as he walked. The little boy sat on the floor in front of the television.

The boy looked up at her as though from a great distance and not the few feet that separated them. His yellow eyes rolled after her as she followed Redwing into the next room.

The kitchen, which was also the bathroom, had the same proportions as the front room. A purple shower curtain hid the tub, all but its lion's-paw feet. A dirty gold drape of black orchid print concealed the toilet, but not the smell of the plumbing backup.

“Sit, sit,” commanded Redwing, smiling with all her teeth.

Mallory sat down at a broad table littered with the crumbs and morsels and crusted sauce of the evening meal.

“We will have tea now,” said Redwing, moving slowly to a countertop lined with glass jars of unlabeled dry leaves and powders. Redwing opened a cupboard and brought out two teacups which did not match.

“None for me, thanks,” said Mallory, staring at the countertop, watching the progress of a roach climbing the toaster, which held all the fingerprints laid on it since the day it was purchased. Each thing was in its proper place, but each place was coated with whatever had been spilled there—yesterday, last month. She leaned down and flicked a roach from her shoe as though she were long accustomed to doing this.

“You must drink the tea.”

“Why?”

“The customs of my craft. You cops, you have your tools. I have mine. You want information, you must let me spin my craft, yes?”

Mallory nodded. The boy was standing just inside the door. He seemed to have appeared there. She looked down to his stocking feet. So quiet he was. She had never heard him speak. His eyes fixed upon Mallory and would not let go of her. Redwing spoke to him in French. He climbed a chair to fetch a tin canister from the cupboard, moving in a sleepwalk. More words were fired at him, and now he found the honey jar for Redwing, moving with no will of his own, pulled here and there by her words.

Mallory followed the boy's every move. How much damage had Redwing done to him? He was dressed like any other kid, in good jeans and a T-shirt, but all normalcy ended there. He walked slowly to Mallory, stopping at her chair and setting the honey jar on the table with automaton deliberation.

While Redwing's back was turned on them, Mallory reached out and touched the boy's face. The gentleness of her touch startled both of them. The gauze of dullness lifted from his eyes to give her a sudden window on something quick and bright which lived in there. Mallory smiled at the boy. The boy smiled back, faltering a little. ‘I'm coming back for you,' her eyes said as her hand caressed his smooth young face and released it. The boy's eyes rounded, and then a curtain dropped and they were dulled again, two filmy yellow circles, nothing more, no one home.

The clock on the wall was ticking loud. The teakettle whistled and shrieked. The radiator made all the noises of tired metal being overworked, pouring out more heat than the room could hold. Redwing closed the window, the only source of air that was not sweating and stained with odors. The boy retreated to the doorway and hovered there, a tentative, small body without ballast or substance.

Redwing delicately placed the teacups on the table.

“Drink.”

A black fly circled Mallory's cup. She waved it off. As she raised the cup to her lips, a wisp of Helen resurrected to notice the lipstick stain on the rim, and then the specter evaporated in the heat. Mallory sipped her tea. It was good, and sweet enough without the honey Redwing was spooning into her own cup.

“So you're curious about Pearl Whitman? This was the woman your father died with, was she not?”

Mallory nodded and sipped her tea.

“I once offered my services to the police,” said Redwing. “Did you know that? No? They sent me away. No thank you, they said. Then last night, Lieutenant Coffey comes to ask me for information. I told him nothing. Screw the police. But you are not police anymore. With you it is personal. You I will help.”

The boy appeared behind the woman's chair. As Redwing smiled broadly, the boy's eyes rolled back and his hands curled up into angry fists.

“Drink it all, and then we look into the dregs of your cup, your life.”

 

“Just promise me you won't tell anyone I made a house call.” Henrietta smiled as she snipped the last of the sutures. “Fortunately, most people forget that a psychiatrist is also an M.D. If you rat on me to the tenants, I'll be spending all my free time listening to their aches and pains.”

“Not a word,” said Charles.

Either she was a wildly gifted stitcher, or he was simply beyond pain. Shock could do that, he supposed.

“It's been a long time since I worked on flesh and blood.” She applied the gauze and then the adhesive over the stitches in his hand.

“So, what do you think of our resident medium?”

“It all fits,” she said. “Other things have happened here over the years.”

“You mean the murder of Allison Warwick?”

Henrietta nodded. “I didn't know George Farmer very well. I'd just moved in. He was only a nodding acquaintance when we met in the halls. But you could see the progress of the paranoia even if you weren't looking for it. I watched him change over a period of about six weeks. By then, I'd come to know Edith very well. She told me about the automatic writing.”

“Don't tell me. George walked in one day and saw a message written on the wall.”

“Right. The tenants were in the habit of just walking in without knocking, a custom of the house. The writing was about Allison. Edith told me she had no memory of writing it. I'm guessing there'd been quite a bit of writing on the walls in that six weeks. Whatever he saw, it ate away at him.”

“It must have been something heinous.”

“Not necessarily. People in love are only one step away from psychosis, and you can quote me on that. It wouldn't have taken anything blatant. Edith had time enough to tear him down.”

“That was years ago. Has she done any more recent damage?”

“I've watched other things happen on a smaller scale, one tenant pitted against another. I have my suspicions about Herbert's divorce. I didn't tell you because Edith was part of your family. I'm sorry. Poor judgment on my part. Can you tell me any more about these people, these suspects? Do you have a sense that one might be more dangerous to Mallory than the rest?”

“It's a crapshoot,” said Charles. “Unless you want to rule out the women. People keep telling me it's not a woman's crime.”

“No, I wouldn't rule them out. Is Edith on familiar terms with any of them?”

“She's met Gaynor once, and Redwing the medium, but none of the others that I know of.”

“Then I'd go with the medium. Edith would work in her own territory, the surest ground, and Gaynor's probably a more stable personality. Do you have the woman's address?”

“Well, there's nothing in the telephone book under Redwing. Somehow I didn't think there would be. I have an idea Sergeant Riker might be able to get it for me.”

“Good. But let's try to suppress the white knight syndrome, okay? Better to just send the police. Think of Mallory. You want someone with a gun to get there first.”

“Right, and if she's not in trouble, the worst thing that can happen is that she wipes up the floor with me for interfering.”

He dialed the phone and listened to it ring at the police station. After the fourteenth ring, to discourage those who were not seriously robbed, beaten or raped, the phone was answered.

“Sergeant Riker, please.”

A recording advised him that all lines were busy, and would he please hold on.

Could he? It had been a long day, and no, he didn't think he could hold on any longer.

 

The cup was half empty when Redwing closed her eyes and began to sway back and forth. Mallory swayed with her, spilling a bit of tea in the motion. She sipped from her cup and listened to the heavy breathing. It seemed natural that the walls should move in and out as they breathed. She could feel the heartbeat of the house keeping time, beat for tick, with the clock on the wall.

Redwing crooned nonsense words. Mallory rocked with her in the same thick sea of boiling air.

The boy ceased his own swaying. Eyes rolled back to whites, he was going through the motions of making invisible tea, pouring the water into each cup, dipping each bag, unscrewing the cap of a bottle and pouring the contents into one cup but not the other.

Mallory ceased to sway. She slowly looked down at the dark liquid sloshing to the sides of her cup. A yellow residue made a ring above the rich sweet tea.

Drugged.

She smashed her cup to the floor. The linoleum rolled under her in waves. She fell twice before she stumble-walked through the kitchen door and into the front room where the television was pouring out the stink of sound and sight that seared her eyes and hurt her ears. She fell again and moved forward on all fours. Redwing walked placidly beside her as Mallory crawled along the dirty carpet to the door, dragging the carpet's store of matted hair and crumbs snagged in her broken fingernails. Redwing opened the door wide and smiled.

Mallory stumbled to her feet and fled into the hallway, running now for the stairs. The hall telescoped, elongating with every step. And then she was falling, head hitting hard corners of the stairs, then a shoulder, a leg, assaulted by the unforgiving stone steps. She smelled her own blood on her hands. It poured out of every wound and filled the narrow lobby, spilling into the street as she opened the door and swam through it, an ocean of blood.