The Chalk Girl (35 page)

‘Right. And the feds have been tracking large cash flows for years. I know she’s got big money squirreled away – but she’s been selling off her jewelry.’ With one finger, Mallory dragged a parade of photographs across the screen. ‘These were taken after her husband sold the company and walked out on her. Count the jewels.’

Riker stepped up to the screen and looked at the first photo of the society diva all decked out in shiny gemstones. Years later, in the final shot, she was almost modest. ‘So the lady’s down to her last strand of pearls – and that silver medallion.’

‘Grace really
needs
Humphrey’s millions,’ said Mallory. ‘It’s the only money she can spend in the open. Every cash transaction is a risk.’

‘Are we gonna share this with the rest of the squad?’

‘If we do, it’ll get back to Joe Goddard.’ One hand waved over her list of top politicians on the charity circuit – and on the take. ‘You want him to run this town?’

‘Oh, God, no.’ Crazy bastard – the chief of detectives was on a twisted mission, collecting dirty secrets for the good of the force, an extortionist on the side of the angels and the NYPD. It would be insane to give him the entire city. Yet Riker’s next thought was for a day down the road, when he might need to use all of this, trade the whole town to that lunatic to save his partner’s badge – and to keep her from waging a war she could not win.

‘It’s all about power with him,’ said Mallory, ‘but the chief’s just another version of Grace – just as dangerous.’

Amen to that
.

‘So . . . if the bad guys don’t get us, the good guys will?’

‘Now you’ve got it.’ Mallory tilted the whiskey bottle, and when she had filled his glass to the brim, she looked deep into his eyes, as if she could extract his soul this way. ‘That day – when Goddard told us he planned to get rid of Rocket Mann – he put his own job on the line. So he already knew he could control us . . . but how? A blackmailer has to put his leverage on the table. There’s no other way to get what he wants.’

Through one clear spot in a fog of alcohol, he saw the true purpose of tonight’s civics lesson.
Civics my ass
. It worried him how often Mallory’s paranoia panned out. She knew the leverage
had
been laid out – for her partner.

Riker shook his head to plead clueless. He waited for the accusation of betrayal, but all that came back on him was heartache. She only stood there so quietly – waiting for the truth.

Standoff
.

He set down his glass and showed himself out.

The alarm on the bedside monitor woke Grace Driscol-Bledsoe. The loud noise was enough to terrify her even before the door opened and the apparition flew into the room. By the poor light of a bedside lamp, she saw a disembodied head with balls of fire for eyes.
Oh
– only the nurse wrapped in a black robe. The lenses of Hoffman’s eyeglasses reflected the opaque globe of the lamp on the night table as she leaned over her employer to fuss with the tangle of sheets.

‘You slipped off the finger cuff, ma’am. Here it is.’ Hoffman had found the small device that was attached to the monitor by a cord, and she replaced it on Grace’s index finger.

So this was not a stroke – more like a rehearsal.

When the nurse had returned to her own room, Grace lay back
on the pillows, but sleep would not come. After switching off the monitor and removing its connecting finger cuff, she rose from her bed with only the security of her emergency-alert medallion. With one press of the button at its center, a voice would boom from a box, seeking her out wherever she might be, increasing its volume and sound sensitivity until it found her and assessed her needs. During all her waking hours, this level of security would do. It was the nights that frightened her. She was most vulnerable in sleep.

Barefooted, she padded down the hall to the room where her father had died. It was much the same as it had been all those years ago when Papa had been crippled by a stroke.

As a girl, Grace had seldom visited the sickroom, so repulsed was she by the sight of that drooling man rolling his eyes and making pathetic attempts to form words, half her father’s face gone slack and the other half crying. In recent years, Grace came here all the time. Taking inventory soothed her. The closet had been restocked with supplies, and now she counted the bottles of medicines not yet invented in the days of Papa’s drawn-out death. Prized above all of them were doses of tbs, not legally obtainable outside of a hospital. This precious contraband was also kept in Hoffman’s black bag – kept close at hand every hour of the day and night.

Moonlight gleamed on the chrome rails of the mechanized bed – her inheritance. It was still serviceable, though a new mattress had been purchased against a day when Grace might suffer another stroke of her own, a trauma more debilitating than the other two. It ran in the family – this
other
legacy from her late father. Papa, thank you so much.

She inspected the red lights on a march of bedside machines, assurance that they were operational. Last, she opened a door to a linen closet, making certain that the stacks of sheets had not become musty while awaiting the worst day of her life.

And the checklist was done.

There were clinics in this country that were not so wonderfully equipped. This room guaranteed that she would not end her days in a nursing home, however feeble she might become. Hopefully, by the time she could no longer fend for herself, Hoffman would have been replaced by another nurse, one with greater incentive to keep her alive. And Phoebe would sleep at the foot of the bed, much like a good and loyal dog.

Phoebe Bledsoe’s friend, Mr Polanski, was a skinny twin to Santa Claus and a kindred soul, another one who walked with the dead. The night watchman could not part with his late wife, and so he took her with him on his solitary rounds. But not tonight. ‘I talk to her more as I get older,’ he said, accepting a thermos of ice tea from Phoebe’s hand.

‘But your wife never talks.’

‘No,’ he said, ‘not like your Dead Ernest. I missed that little boy when he left us.’

Years ago, Mr Polanski had been the Driscol School’s man of odd jobs, a janitor and a fixer of leaks, a mender of cracks in the plaster and sometimes a roofer. In later life, physical labor had been too hard on him, and so he had become the protector of priceless furnishings and artwork. With a change of title from handyman to watchman, he had been kept on in this place of tradition – just another antique to the board of directors.

And Phoebe, a former student, had been recycled as the school nurse.

She accompanied the old man on his rounds, and they strolled through the gallery of alumni portraits dating back to the 1800s. Most of the people pictured here were renowned in the seas of politics and commerce. These lying walls advertised respectability beyond reproach.

The gallery opened onto the dining hall, a vast space lit by streetlight slanting down from a bank of tall windows. The long mahogany tables and their chairs wore ghosty dust covers. Long ago, this had been a place of sanctuary. The table in the far corner was where she had sat with Ernie, two children catching their breath and licking wounds in the no-cruelty zone of lunch hour.

Mr Polanski and Phoebe retraced their steps to the grand staircase and climbed to the next floor, where classroom doors stood open in a hallway lined with wood paneling and freestanding lockers that clanged when hit with the soft body of a child. Ernie had once asked her why he was the only one singled out for physical violence in a school that offered so many variations on torture. Phoebe had theorized then that it was because he was two years younger and ten years smarter than his tormentors.

When Mr Polanski had completed his rounds on every floor, they descended the back stairs to the garden door and went outside into a warm night scented by flowers. The watchman shined his torch on shrubs that hid a portion of the rear wall from the rooftop security lights.

Phoebe stared into a patch of absolute darkness where it was daylight in an old memory. This was where Humphrey and the girls had Ernie pinned down, his back to the wall. And here he had disappointed them. All his fear had been spent that day. The boy had given himself up for dead and faced them down with a calm resolve.

A mistake.

Nothing could have angered them more. Before they tired of him, one of them – was it her brother? No, that time it was Willy Fallon. She had grabbed Ernie by the ears and knocked his head into the gray stone wall. The little boy had slumped to the ground, leaving a slick of his blood to mark the spot. It was still there on the following day. And all that day long, other students had streamed
into the garden to gawk at a child’s blood. Eleven-year-old Phoebe knew the teachers had seen it, too, but they kept walking past it.

Mr Polanski saw the train of her gaze, peeked into her mind and said, ‘It took me a long time to get rid of that stain.’

No. Phoebe shook her head.
It’s still there
. And it was on her hands. It was everywhere.

By early-morning light, Detective Mallory scrutinized the alley gate for the Driscol School. ‘A ten-year-old kid could pick that lock. It’s an antique.’

‘I’m sure Miss Fallon used a key,’ said the white shield, Arthur Chu. ‘She got something out of her purse, and then it only took her a few seconds to open this gate.’

Riker finished reading the prowler report filed by Mr Polanski, the night watchman. ‘No mention of Willy’s name, no description.’ He pocketed his bifocals and turned to his partner. ‘But the time
works with Arty’s sighting of Willy Fallon on the run. Mr Polanski thought Phoebe must’ve left the gate open. Maybe that’s how Willy got in so fast.’

Officer Chu shook his head. ‘She pulled something from her purse to—’

‘But you didn’t see a key,’ said Mallory. ‘You were across the street. It was dark.’ She reached into the back pocket of her jeans and pulled out a velvet pouch that contained her kit of picks for breaking and entering. Inspector Louis Markowitz had confiscated it on the night of her arrest at age ten –
nearly
ten. She had lied her age up to twelve years old, and, failing at that, they had later agreed that she
might
be eleven. After his death, she had found the pouch among the contents of her foster father’s safe-deposit box. Sentimental old bastard, he had been unable to part with baby’s first lock picks. She showed them to Arthur Chu. ‘Maybe this is what Willy got from her purse.’ She restored the pouch to her back pocket and then held up a pair of bobby pins. ‘Or these.’ The detective turned her back on the white shield for a few seconds’ work – and the gate swung open. ‘A kid could do it.’

The somewhat dejected Officer Chu was dispatched to Willy Fallon’s hotel to continue his shadow detail. And when the young cop was out of sight, Riker said, ‘Poor guy. If he’d been right about that key—’

‘I think he was.’ Mallory faced the narrow alley beyond the gate. She could go no farther. The police had been barred from getting within two hundred feet of Phoebe Bledsoe’s residence behind the school. ‘This lock is at least a hundred years old. Who knows how many keys are floating around?’ She looked up at the lintel above the school’s door, where the Driscol name was engraved. ‘I bet Phoebe’s mother has a key to this gate – or
had
one.’

Chief Medical Examiner Edward Slope was a man of ramrod posture – but not this morning. He slouched in the chair behind his desk, one hand covering his tired eyes. His sleep had been fitful, and the caffeine jolt from his coffee had not yet kicked in when his secretary announced that there were detectives on the other side of his office door. Had Kathy come to gloat?

Last night’s affair had been his first visit to Grace Driscol-Bledsoe’s mansion, and he would never go back there again. A party invitation extended on the occasion of identifying her dead son – well, that should have given him pause.

He had left the mansion within ten minutes of his arrival. That was all the time needed to identify a number of politicians and other nefarious characters who belonged in jail, men and women he would never shake hands with in public or in private. It would sully a pope’s reputation just to be seen with such people. But a chief medical examiner, like Caesar’s wife, must take even more care with appearances. If not, his reputation and his word would be worthless in or out of court.

Kathy Mallory was the first one to enter, followed by Riker.

‘Let’s make this quick.’ Edward Slope was not up for another round of her war games. ‘I’ve got a busy day ahead. Contrary to the mayor’s last press conference, violent death appears to be an ongoing thing in New York City. I’m stacking up bodies as we speak.’

Both detectives sat down in the chairs facing his desk to let him know that this might take a while, and the doctor sipped another dose of coffee.