The Chalk Girl (24 page)

When the detective looked up from his reading and said, ‘Shit,’ the lieutenant smiled.

Charles Butler’s four-page defense of Mallory’s sanity mentioned the department psychologist’s evaluation, but Charles’s rebuttal had been written – and
dated
– a full week before Dr Kane’s findings were submitted to the NYPD. Riker stared at one document and then the other, uncomprehending. ‘How could this—’

‘You
know
what happened. She couldn’t wait for the official psych report. It was taking too long. So she hacked into the shrink’s personal computer. She knew what was in Dr Kane’s report long before it landed on the chief’s desk – and mine.’

Riker shook his head. ‘Mallory doesn’t make mistakes like this.’

‘Kane’s evaluation might’ve had a different date on it – when Mallory broke into his computer. His report should’ve gone out weeks ago. Your partner probably thought I was sitting on it all this time – just to torture her with more desk duty. Computer hacking couldn’t tell her that Dr Kane had the flu. I got that from his secretary. And that’s why his report was delayed.’ The lieutenant slipped the two evaluations back into his drawer – and slammed it. ‘It’s like Mallory took out a billboard ad to say she broke the law.’

‘What’re you gonna do?’

‘Me? Nothing. She doesn’t need my help to crash and burn. But it’s gonna take her a while to shop for another shrink . . . so she can make a
legal
challenge.’ The lieutenant’s meaning was clear. Charles Butler was officially out of the loop; the man could not simply alter the date of his rebuttal. ‘So, Riker . . . here’s your other problem. I think Chief Goddard
likes
Dr Kane’s report. He didn’t even reprimand me for putting a psycho cop on the street. He
wants
Mallory on this case. The chief might sit on that lousy psych report for years – or take her badge tomorrow if she gets out of line. That’s his style.’

Riker nodded his understanding of
style
. Joe Goddard’s motives were pure – and delusional. The chief of D’s wanted to reshape the NYPD in his own image. Toward that end, he collected dirt on people from ranks above and below his own. If they could not be remolded to his liking, he
removed
them. If Mallory failed to bring in the goods on Rolland Mann, she was gone. That was the message in Goddard’s phone call to the lieutenant.

‘Give the chief what he wants,’ said Coffey. ‘And for God’s sake – don’t give Mallory a heads-up. That’s your only real shot at damage control.’

By the time she saw Goddard coming for her, it would be way too late. But Jack Coffey was right. Riker knew his partner would never go quietly. And if she had advance warning? He summoned up the biblical passage of the Pale Rider, placing Mallory in the saddle of Death’s horse –
and hell followed after
. ‘I won’t tell her.’

Coco reached under her pillow to pull out the one-button cell phone so she could say good night to Mallory. The connection was made, and now she covered the mouthpiece and looked up at Charles Butler. ‘She wants to know if you got the package.’

‘Yes, tell her it just arrived.’

This was conveyed to the detective on the cell phone. And then, in response to some question of Mallory’s, Coco said, ‘I don’t remember.’ The little girl’s eyes shut tight, and her head turtled into her pajama top. ‘I don’t think he said any—’

And, on this note of stress, the interrogation was ended. Charles took the phone and said, ‘Good
night
, Mallory.’

He remained with the little girl, distracting her from anxiety with a chapter from Dickens’s
The Old Curiosity Shop
, evidently not a
thriller among youngsters. After only a few pages, Coco drifted off to sleep.

On his way down the hall, he rehearsed his next conversation with Mallory, a hard lecture on rules for dealing with fragile children. Stopping by the glove table, he picked up the box from the NYPD and opened it to find a videocassette. This would explain the earlier delivery of an old-model television set with a slot below the screen that would neatly fit this tape. The mechanism was so simple that this gift failed to include Mallory’s standard operating instructions for Luddites.

He sat down with a glass of red wine and played the fifteen-year-old film of schoolboy Toby Wilder and former detective Rolland Mann. He saw all the signs of trauma in the bone-weary child, whose head moved slowly, side to side – not in a gesture of defiance but one of bafflement. The boy never spoke, never voiced his only question, but asked with glassy eyes,
How could this be happening?

A heightened sense of empathy had kept Charles Butler out of private practice, working one-on-one with patients. There were limits to what he could endure via other people’s pain, and now he felt helpless and hopeless, free-floating in a child’s angst. The psychologist had no trouble lip-reading Toby’s silent punctuation to every utterance by the detective in the final minutes of the tape. Over and over, Charles, in perfect unison with the boy, mouthed the word
Mom
.

And then the tape ended – too soon.

The telephone rang, and that would be Mallory. He picked up the receiver. There were no salutations. Before she could utter a single word to startle and amaze him with her prescient timing, he said, ‘You’re right, and you’re wrong. The tape wasn’t edited, but the interview did end abruptly . . . at a very odd moment. Rolland Mann was taking his cue from someone off-camera. You can see it in the lift of his head, a sudden break in eye contact with the boy.
And you’re right about the time factor. The interrogation probably went on for hours before they started taping. The boy shows signs of fatigue to the point of exhaustion. But this is the odd part.’ Charles had no doubt that the child, heart and mind, was at the point of giving up and giving in. ‘Toby was broken. He was about to confess.’

If the city had a heart, and Riker doubted that, it would not be in this neighborhood of river views and promenades, where dogs were walked by handlers so that the wealthiest residents could live their whole lives up in the clouds of Penthouse Land.

Riker strolled down the sidewalk with Charles Butler, the only rich man he ever liked. Behind them, Mallory walked hand in hand with Coco, who was followed by the uniformed officer assigned to guard the material witness. The little girl sported a brand-new pair of designer eyeglasses with nifty red frames – a present from Mallory to replace the less stylish ones that Charles had bought.
Coco scrutinized each face in the long procession that slowly moved toward the funeral home. In this single-file line that extended around the block, there were politicians that even Riker, an impolitic cop, could recognize.

Charles identified other important faces, those from the social register of New York bluebloods. ‘These people came because Grace was born a Driscol. Her late husband, John Bledsoe, wasn’t well regarded. I understand he walked out on his family, and then he drank himself to death.’

Smiling, Riker looked back at the long line behind them. He wondered how many of these high-minded people knew they had turned out to pay their respects to a dead child molester. ‘How did Coco take it when you told her Uncle Red died?’

‘Very well. I think she was relieved.’

‘Did you tell her about Granny yet?’

‘No,’ said Charles. ‘Maybe we’ll talk about that tomorrow. Mallory’s right. This funeral is good preparation. Coco’s never been to one before. We’ll just sit in the back row. I don’t want her to view an open casket. She has no real experience with death.’

‘You’re kidding me.’ Riker jabbed a thumb back over one shoulder. ‘That little girl knows fifty ways to kill a rat.’

The small party stopped in front of Harrow and Sons Funeral Home, a building that might pass for a century-old bank. Coco shook her head and told Mallory that she had not recognized anyone. And Charles wore a wobbly smile that asked,
What? What just happened?

‘Oh, bloody hell!’ The man now realized that this procession of upscale mourners was actually a lineup of potential murderers. Child by the hand, the angry psychologist stalked off without another word. Coco waved back at the detectives until she and her guardian were around the corner and out of sight.

Mallory entered the building, and Riker stayed behind on the
sidewalk to check out the early shots taken by a police photographer. Assured that they would have a complete record of every visitor, he climbed the stairs to be met by a young man in funereal black, who led him down a hallway of dark-paneled wood and velvet couches, one of them occupied by Mrs Driscol-Bledsoe’s companion, Hoffman. Seated beside this woman were two men in expensive suits. Riker recognized one of the suits as the lawyer who had collected Phoebe Bledsoe at the station house.

The detective followed his guide into a large room that could hold a hundred people, but only two chairs had been set out, one for Humphrey Bledsoe’s mother and one for his sister. Phoebe was on good behavior today, no nail-biting and no conversations with invisible people.

Riker’s escort confided that the rest of the chairs had been removed to discourage people from remaining for long. ‘The mother declined a religious service.’ Mr Harrow seemed very young to be scandalized by this, but it made sense to Riker. Sending up prayers for a pedophile was like begging for seven plagues upon your house.

The air was thick with the perfume of floral offerings. They were extravagant, as if each sender of a basket or a wreath feared being outdone by another. Central Park did not have so many flowers. At their center was the coffin, a grand affair of ornately carved wood. Humphrey Bledsoe’s hair had been restored to its natural red color, and there was no sign of the autopsy damage. The face had a creepy lifelike quality – and it smiled. On Coco’s behalf, Riker was inclined to spend a bullet to mess up that smile. Instead, he took up a post behind the chairs of Mrs Driscol-Bledsoe and her daughter. And now he watched his partner moving from one flower arrangement to another, admiring the blooms – while stealing cards of sympathy, acquiring a list of those most anxious to curry favor with the pedophile’s mother.

For the next hour, the mourners entered the room single file and walked to the casket for the obligatory view of the dead pervert, and this was followed by condolences to the family. One by one, they were dispatched in polite society’s version of the bum’s rush. Riker admired the matriarch’s ability to keep the crowd in motion, quickly withdrawing her hand from one person to offer it to the next in line. Even the mayor was given short shrift. And then it was Rolland Mann’s turn. The acting police commissioner had an anxious look about him. He leaned close to Humphrey’s mother, but he had not gotten out three whispered words before he was dismissed.

The last of the mourners were three stragglers in the clothes of workaday people, a man, a woman and a teenage girl with red hair the same shade as Coco’s.

Phoebe leaned toward her mother, and Riker heard her whisper, ‘Who are those people?’

‘I think those are the Coles,’ said Mrs Driscol-Bledsoe. ‘I only met them once or twice, and the girl was much younger then.’

The three Coles queued up at the coffin and took turns spitting on the corpse.

‘That’s different,’ said Riker.

The pop-eyed funeral director was obviously another Harrow of Harrow and Sons, an older version of Riker’s escort. This distinguished gentleman sucked in his breath, and then, wits recovered, moved toward the desecrators. Mallory snagged him by one arm and pulled him back to the coffin, commanding the man as if he were a dog, saying, ‘Stay.’ Now she followed close behind the little family of vandals. Their leader was angry as he approached the dead man’s mother.

‘Mr Cole, thank you for coming.’ Grace Driscol-Bledsoe said this with surprisingly little sarcasm. The man expelled a huge glob of mucus, and it rolled down the front of the lady’s silk blouse.
Without missing a beat, she said, ‘Always a pleasure.’

Mallory and Riker followed the Cole family outside, and there on the sidewalk they learned that these people were residents of a small Connecticut town where Humphrey had attended prep school. The father then held his tongue until his wife and daughter were safely ensconced in a taxi. ‘He raped my child when she was six years old, but the town wouldn’t prosecute. They wouldn’t even
arrest
him. The parents and the politicians, they did this dirty backroom deal, and that little bastard was sent to a mental institution – more like a spa for rich people. So we sued the parents.’

Riker looked up from his notebook to ask, ‘What grounds?’

‘Negligence. They neglected to warn the town that their son was a monster.’ Mr Cole’s anger and pain seemed brand-new, as if the assault had happened only this morning and not years ago. ‘They
knew
what their kid was. They
always
knew. That’s why they settled out of court.’ The man climbed into the waiting taxi, and the damaged little family rolled away.