The Chalk Girl (50 page)

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.’

‘Maybe it’s a bad idea. Loud noises drive the kid up the wall.’ Riker used a small hand truck to roll the heavy carton down the hallway in Charles Butler’s building. The cardboard box was filled with every winch and drill that would fit the Hunger Artist’s murder kit. ‘Charles is never gonna go along with this.’

‘He’s in Chicago,’ said Mallory. ‘Robin Duffy’s babysitting.’

Well, problem solved. That particular lawyer would let his partner set fire to a busload of orphans just to see her smile.

When the door opened, Mallory suffered through another bear hug of warmth and affection. Fingers to his lips, Duffy whispered, ‘Coco’s taking a nap.’ He ushered them into the kitchen, where documents were laid out on the table. ‘Charles found these wonderful people in Chicago – the Harveys. They were pre-qualified for adoption a year ago, and they’re both teachers in a charter school. This is
so
great. She’ll have parental supervision all day long. Charles says the best part is that Coco can go to school like
every other kid. She can have a normal life.’ He sat down at the table and sifted through the paperwork. ‘Oh, here it is.’ He handed one sheet to Mallory.

Reading over her shoulder, Riker scanned another copy of the release form that would allow their material witness to leave the state of New York.

‘Just sign there, Kathy.’ Duffy pointed to the signature line at the bottom of the page. ‘The Harveys are flying back with Charles today. If everything goes well, they’ll take Coco to Illinois for a probationary period.’

‘No way.’ Mallory folded the form. ‘The kid’s not going anywhere until we wrap this case.’

And when she laid the form down on the table, the old man said, ‘Charles wants you to know that the Harveys have a big backyard full of bugs. He thought that might be meaningful to you.’

‘She stays until—’

‘Fine.’ Duffy put up both hands in surrender. ‘Whenever you’re ready, Kathy. The Harveys will be in town for a while.’

‘You can go now,’ said Mallory. ‘I’ll stay with Coco.’

‘Yeah,’ said Riker. ‘I’ll walk you out.’

Robin Duffy hesitated, stalling, his eyes rising to the clock on the wall. ‘Charles told me to stay – just until Mrs Ortega gets back. She’s out running errands.’ The old man had a worried look about him.

Riker was confused.

Mallory was not. ‘What else did Charles tell you? Did he tell you not to leave me alone with Coco? Did he tell you not to trust me anymore?’

Riker left the apartment with a very contrite Robin Duffy, and though the door was closed gently, the sound woke Coco from her nap. She ran out of the guest room and shot down the hall to wrap
her arms around Mallory, so happy was she, her smile so wide. And, yes, she would love to help solve a murder.
Great
fun.

The detective wheeled the carton into Charles Butler’s kitchen, and the child watched her open it to pull out the first winch. Mallory connected it to an adapter to make it run on household current. ‘Riker says you have a good memory for motors.’

Coco rattled off a catalogue of motor-driven things, old ones and their replacements over the years: her grandmother’s blenders and washing machines, vacuums, electric brooms and carving knives. And then there were the neighbors’ motors, more brand names and models. And all the while, the child watched the detective cover the countertop with elements of a murder kit.

The little girl’s words broke off as her eyes turned toward the kitchen door. ‘Mrs Ortega’s coming. Those are her shoes in the hall. You hear them?’

No, Mallory heard nothing. A moment later came the clicks of a key working the lock to the front door. She left the child in the kitchen and entered the living room to see the cleaning lady flop down in an armchair. Shopping bags lay on the floor at her feet.

‘Hey, Mallory.’ Mrs Ortega bent down to one of her bags. ‘Wait’ll you see what I got for the kid.’ She pulled out a shoebox and opened it to display a small pair of pink sneakers. ‘A going-away present. Real shoelaces instead of that Velcro crap.’

‘But she can’t tie the laces,’ said Mallory.

‘If she can learn buttons, she can learn laces,’ said Mrs Ortega.

‘No more damn Velcro. That’s like buying a wheelchair for a kid who only limps a little. It’ll cripple her.’

‘But she can’t—’

‘She
has
to!’ Exasperated, the cleaning lady threw up her hands. ‘How’s that kid gonna make it in life if she can’t even tie her shoes?’

Indeed. Mallory, in her feral days, had survived by packing razor blades in the pockets of her child-size jeans; and by stealing only the
best running shoes, and running like crazy to escape kiddy rapists; and she had learned to make her bed only places where she was most likely to live through the night. She had stolen wallets and wheedled money from whores and acquired so many other skills that Coco could never learn for lack of guile.

The little girl stood in the doorway, and her face had a worried look. Of course, she had overheard everything, and now her steps were timid as she stole up beside the detective and shyly took her hand. Those blue eyes were full of hope – and thus alien to Mallory, who saw all hope as pointless.

The cleaning lady went downstairs to ready an apartment for Charles Butler’s guests, the Harveys of Illinois. And the detective sat on the floor, teaching Coco to tie shoelaces so that this tiny child could survive in the wide world. Their fingers intertwined for hours as they worked the laces together. The child so loved Mallory that, though she tired, she would not stop until she had done this one thing right. And so the final triumphal knot was a gift that each of them gave to the other.

When Charles Butler entered his apartment, he heard the sound of a motor running, and Coco was yelling, ‘Stop! That’s
it
!’

He raced to the kitchen, and there he found the child seated at the table, both hands pressed to her ears. Her mouth formed a silent scream – while Mallory powered down a mechanical device. His kitchen counter was lined up with motorized things. This was torture for a child with hyperacuity.

‘Hi.’ Mallory turned to Charles, smiling as if this might be a perfectly normal way to occupy a little girl’s time. ‘Coco identified the motors she heard in the Ramble. I need a letter from you to back up how good she is with sounds.’

Coco was rocking back and forth, hugging herself – calming herself.

Charles’s face was grim. ‘A moment, Mallory? Out in the hall?’ This was not an invitation. He took her by the arm and propelled her from the kitchen, through the apartment and into the outer hallway, shutting doors behind him so the child would not hear him ask the detective, ‘Are you
insane
? I can’t believe you put her through that. Don’t you
ever
go near that child again.’

The detective was squaring off, gearing up for a fight. ‘I need—’

‘Who cares? The prospective parents are downstairs right now. Don’t make that little girl choose between you and them. Even
you
couldn’t be that cruel.’

Did she flinch? She did.

He pressed on. ‘Those two people are all prepared to love that child on sight. You have only the most
superficial
interest in Coco. Get out, Mallory! Just go!’

Mallory turned away from him, and she was striding toward the elevator when Coco came running out the door, screaming, ‘Wait for me!’ She wriggled free from Charles’s grasp and flung herself down the hall, lurching, crying, ‘Mallory! Mallory!’

The detective never even turned her head to acknowledge the little girl. She only put up the flat of her hand and commanded, ‘Stop.’ Obedient as any dog, the child did stop. ‘Stay,’ said Mallory as she stepped into the elevator and vanished.

‘No!
No-o-o!
’ Coco ran to the end of the hall and banged the metal doors. She sank to the floor, a puddle of a child. Charles was at her side, reaching down to her. She waved her arms to ward him off, and then her interest wandered to a shoelace that had come undone.

Laces?

Her face was anguished. Lost again, anchorless. Her arms flung wide, small hands curling into fists. This was the breach he had wanted; the precise moment to replace one bond for another was
now. He knelt down beside her. ‘There are two very nice people downstairs. They’ve come all the way from Illinois to meet you.’

‘I want Mallory.’

‘She won’t be back.’

Coco shook her head. ‘Mallory loves me. She
loves
me.’

And now he watched her bow her head to –
tie
–
her
–
shoelace
. And when she was done, she looked up at him, so defiant. She stuck out her foot to show him this accomplishment of an awkward child-tied knot. ‘Is
that
superficial?’

Oh, God – her remarkable hearing. Every word said in the hall had been overheard.

Coco leaned toward him, eyes glittering and wet, and there was anger when she said with great dignity, ‘Mallory
loved
me.’

Past tense.

Stripped of all hope, the floundering child wrapped her arms around his neck. Her tiny body was shaking with sobs, her voice cracking as she recited a litany of deep pain. They sat there in the hallway for a very long time, Charles dying, Coco crying, grieving over every unfair loss, lost home, lost love.

The Harveys of Illinois had finished unpacking their bags in the downstairs apartment, and now they were surprised when the elevator doors opened upon the sight of a tiny child with swollen red eyes. Mrs Harvey picked up the little girl to carry her down the hall and through the open door to Charles’s apartment, saying all the while in tones of motherlove, ‘Everything’s going to be all right.’ In charge now, Mrs Harvey pulled a tissue from her purse and wiped Coco’s face clean of tears.

Charles was unprepared for the child’s reaction to this small kindness, and it killed him to watch it play out.

Coco’s fabulous smile was instant and wide – if not genuine – as she informed the Harveys that rats were carriers of bubonic plague.
Next, she ran to the piano in the music room. She played them a song and sang for them, then danced back into the parlor and began a monologue of vermin trivia. How hard she worked, auditioning for a new home and negotiating for love to replace what was so recently ripped away. And the Harveys were blindly enchanted by a child’s ruthless pitch for survival.

Excusing himself, Charles retired to Coco’s bedroom, where he sat alone with his pain. The drapes were drawn, and the only light was the glow of fireflies. How bright. How odd. They should have begun to die off long before now, but there was not one dead insect in the jar.

Oh, fool
. Would that he could die of foolishness.

It was so obvious. Mallory had been entering by stealth, by night – every night – to replenish the lightning bugs so that Coco would not wake up in a dark place.

The sorry man reached beneath the pillow and found Coco’s one-button cell phone. He pressed the button, and the connection was instant. ‘Mallory?’

And she said, ‘I signed Coco’s release form. You’ll find it on the kitchen table. Are you happy now?’

‘No,’ he said.

This summer afternoon would remain in his memory forever, a bookmark to a sad and curious passage that he must return to again and again. Well into his nineties and long after the death of Kathy Mallory, on every fine, warm day, he would sit in a garden where he would only suffer daisies to be planted. Sometimes his great-grandchildren would find him there, tearing petals from flowers. They would smile to see the old man playing a children’s game of
loves
me
,
loves me not
, never suspecting that he grappled with an old problem of bugs in a jar.

He, who was whole and sane and fully human – he would never have thought to light a child’s way through the night with fireflies.
And so he plucked the daisies bald, alternating Mallory’s possibilities, saying with one torn petal, ‘She had no heart,’ and with the next petal, ‘She did.’

Riker walked down a row of cages made of wood and chicken wire, flimsy protection for the artifacts of those who had died without leaving wills, all their goods condemned to probate limbo. He paused by the only storage space that burned with interior lights. His partner had been busy rewiring. Extension cords trailed down from a ceiling fixture and hooked up with table lamps to illuminate rooms of furnishings crowded into the space of an oversized closet.

The largest item was the Nadlers’ walk-in safe, and it was wide open. Evidently, Mallory had tired of following their boss’s instruction to wait for a proper work order to get the lock bored out. A huge drill lay on the floor, and the safe now had a gaping hole in its door – and a cop inside.

‘Find anything useful?’ He leaned into the safe and whistled at the walls of stacked-up comic books. On top of one of the shorter piles was a pristine Batman issue that was older than he was.