The Chalk Girl (9 page)

He reached out to pull the chain of a nearby floor lamp. It came to light in bright-colored stains of Tiffany glass, and now he saw the revolver that lay across Mallory’s lap. According to Riker, the rest of the force carried clip-loaded Glocks, and it was the detective’s theory that his partner favored the old .357 Smith and Wesson because it was scary in a way that a semi-automatic never could be. It was a damn cannon of a gun, so Riker said, and Charles agreed.

Her fingers were loosely closed around it so that she might shoot the first person through the door. He listened to her steady breathing, the sound of deepest sleep, and he thought to gently lift the weapon from her hand – just as a safety precaution. Her grip tightened, and he promptly gave up on this idea, so startled was he to be looking down the barrel of the gun.

And
then
her eyes opened.

She lowered the revolver and fell back into sleep. And Charles thought to breathe once more.

Miles away, another woman was awakening, but she could not open her eyes. They were taped shut, as was her mouth. Wilhelmina Fallon could hear nothing, not the rumbling of her empty stomach or any sounds that might help to identify her place in the world. And how long had she slept? Was it day or night? She ceased to strain against the bonds of hands and feet. The only other tactile sensation was the feel of rough material against her naked skin. Her body’s lack of hard support fueled an idea that she was suspended in space – that she might drop to earth at any moment, and this image chained back to an old memory of Ernest Nadler.

Oh, no. Oh, please no
.

If she could have screamed, she would have.

This is the Ramble! The Ramble! The Ramble!

Privileged New Yorkers had high windows in the tallest buildings facing Central Park. Those who were still awake could see trees lighting up in a moving line, a glow worm slowly rolling across the Ramble as policemen in tight formation shined their flashlights up into the leaves. Cadaver dogs had proved useless for bodies in the sky. A sergeant called out to his officers, calling them back to the station house to wait for daylight.

High above a group of retreating searchers, Wilhelmina Fallon, not yet a cadaver, awakened stone blind. Thirsty, so thirsty. Hungry, too. And all the way crazy, she strained to hear.

Silence only.

Muscles weakened, she gave up the struggle against her bonds. The panic ebbed away, and so did the cramps in her belly. Dehydrated and disoriented, she made friends with delusion, and in her waking dream, she drank great tumblers of ice water. In the real world, her body was consuming itself in a ruthless effort to survive. Life was everything. Life was all.

It was morning in her mind, where an imagined table was laden with food, glorious food.

The aroma of fresh-brewed coffee was heady. An old-fashioned percolator bubbled on the front burner, and batter sizzled in the frying pan.

Mallory made an odd picture of domesticity, flipping pancakes while wearing a large gun in her shoulder holster. Cooking was a skill she had learned from her foster mother, Helen Markowitz, and kitchens were her favorite rooms. This one was large, with warm ocher walls and a high ceiling. Charles Butler’s appliances only looked a hundred years old; they were custom-made to blend with an era where the Luddite felt more at home. It was a peaceful place where even New Yorkers lost their cautious edge; and this was why Mallory favored kitchens over interrogation rooms.

The door in the hall closed. Charles Butler was gone. And now the detectives could begin.

Coco had finished breakfast, and she idly ran one finger around her empty plate. ‘Rats like fruit and vegetables, but pancakes – not so much.’ She went on to explain why hungry rats were attracted to the faces of sleeping infants. ‘Babies smell like milk, and the skin around their mouths
tastes
like milk. If you wash a baby before you put it in the crib, it won’t get eaten.’

‘Good to know,’ said Riker, not even slightly put off his feed.
Between bites, he smiled at the little girl. ‘Tell us about Uncle Red.’

The child drew up her legs, hugged her knees and rocked herself. ‘He had red hair like mine. He said it ran in the family.’ She stood up to take a short walk around the table for the third time this morning.

If Charles Butler had been present, this would have been the signal to stop. He would not permit questions that agitated her. And so the psychologist had been sent outside on the errand of buying newspapers that Mallory could have easily retrieved from her laptop computer.

The detective filled the child’s glass with more orange juice to lure her back to the table. When Coco returned to light on the chair, she perched there on the edge – a tentative visitor.

‘So Uncle Red’s hair turned from red to brown,’ said Mallory. ‘When did that happen?’ She rephrased this for a child with a skewed sense of time. ‘After you got into Uncle Red’s car, did you stop anywhere on the way to his place?’

‘We stopped for food.’ Coco went on to describe the giant statue of a clown that greeted junk-food customers at a rest stop on the road. He was as tall as a mountain, she told them, and then she gave the statue lines of dialogue. But now she stopped mid-sentence, reading impatience in Mallory’s face.

‘So tell me,’ said Riker, whose patience with children was endless, ‘was that when Uncle Red dyed his hair? At the restaurant? Maybe he did it in the men’s room?’

‘No, his hair was still red when we stopped at the drugstore. I fell asleep in the car. When I woke up, we were at Uncle Red’s house. It was dark outside, and his hair was brown. Then he had himself delivered to the park.’ Coco excused herself to wash hands, her euphemism for a run to the toilet.

Down the hall, the bathroom door closed. The front door opened, and Charles Butler walked into his apartment, carrying
three newspapers. He entered the kitchen in time to hear Mallory say to her partner, ‘That kid was snatched.’

‘How do you figure?’ Riker laid down his fork. ‘Most perverts dye the
kid’s
hair. This guy dyed his own. Sounds more like Uncle Red was on the run from somebody he knew. That fits with him getting strung up in the Ramble.’

Mallory flipped a pancake onto Riker’s plate, then traded the coffeepot to Charles in exchange for the newspapers, otherwise ignoring him as she spoke to her partner. ‘Two people with red hair, that’s a problem – that’s a detail for an Amber Alert. But he couldn’t bring himself to dye Coco’s hair. I say the creep had a thing for little redheads.
That’s
why he took her.’ She pulled a bill from the pocket of her jeans and showed it to him. ‘This twenty says Uncle Red’s no relation to Coco.’

‘You’re on.’ Riker turned a broad smile on their host. ‘What about you?’

‘No bet. I already know the answer.’ Charles filled three cups from the percolator, which he prized above a computerized coffeemaker that Mallory had given him one Christmas. That gift had been yet another of her failed efforts to introduce this man to a new century.

Riker sipped the brew and pronounced it wonderful. He glanced at the headlines as Mallory laid the newspapers down on the table next to his plate. One by one, he summarized the front-page stories: ‘Flesh-eating rats for the
Post
, more rats for the
Daily
,’ and ‘Oh, shit!’ for the
Times
, which carried a picture of the second hanging tree and two uniformed officers.

‘It’s all there,’ said Mallory, ‘the bodies, the bags, ropes – everything except Coco.’ She glanced at the clock on the wall. The man in charge of CSU would be reading his own newspaper right about now, and so would their boss, Lieutenant Coffey.

Riker attacked the remainder of his pancakes, his final meal
before the war over
misplaced
evidence. Chewing and swallowing, he continued his argument for Uncle Red as a blood relation instead of a child snatcher. ‘Dr Slope didn’t find any sign of molestation when he examined Coco.’

‘The pervert and the kid were still in the getting-to-know-you stage.’ Mallory sat down to a cup of coffee. ‘I bet Uncle Red didn’t have a clue about the Williams syndrome.’

‘But neither did Coco,’ said Charles. ‘She told me she was home-schooled by her grandmother. So the old lady – Coco says she’s a hundred and ninety-one – she evidently realized there was something odd about her granddaughter, but she didn’t have a diagnosis. I’ll tell you how I know that.’

At this point on any other day, one of the detectives would be bearing down on Charles, all but telling him at gunpoint to cut it short; but Mallory was sipping coffee, and Riker was still in the thrall of pancake rapture.

‘Coco’s never heard of the syndrome,’ said Charles. ‘If her grandmother had gotten the right diagnosis, there would’ve been special educational materials in the house. And the child would’ve noticed that. Her reading level is very advanced. She’s read Dickens. Isn’t that marvelous? And Coco tells me there were lots of pamphlets and books about rats. Her grandmother must’ve had a strong interest—’

‘Okay.’ Riker’s fork clattered to the plate. His last morsel was eaten, and now he rolled one hand to speed up the lecture. ‘Get to the part where the kid meets up with Uncle Red.’

And a childish voice said, ‘That was the day I couldn’t wake my granny.’ Coco stood in the doorway. ‘Granny was all stiff and cold.’ The little girl was wearing the button-up pants of Mrs Ortega’s youngest niece. She held them up with both hands. Buttons were a problem.

Mallory rose from the table to help her with this. ‘And then what happened?’

‘I went outside. I wasn’t supposed to, but I was scared . . . Don’t tell.’

‘You went outside to get help. That was very smart.’ How easy it was to manipulate a child starved for approval. Any praise would do. ‘And what happened then?’

‘I ran down a million stairs before I got outside. And then Uncle Red stopped in his car.’

‘Did you recognize him?’

She paused to think about this. ‘He had red hair like mine. I told him about Granny. He said she couldn’t take care of me anymore, and I was going to live with him.’

When the pants were securely buttoned, Mallory tucked in the child’s T-shirt. ‘Did he take you back to Granny’s to pack your suitcase?’

‘No, I just got into his car, and we drove and drove and drove.’

Riker, the sorry man who loved children, was slow to set down his coffee cup.

‘Tell them how you got your name,’ said Charles.

‘Uncle Red said we had to change my name. It had to be something I could remember. He asked me what I liked best in the whole world, and I said flannel pajamas and hot cocoa.’

Mallory reached out to snatch a twenty-dollar bill from Riker’s hand. ‘And what was your name before that?’

Coco pursed her lips and then ran out of the kitchen. Moments later, they heard a ragtime riff on the piano in the music room.

‘Baby Doll is what her grandmother called her,’ said Charles. ‘I’m sure she has another name, but she won’t say what it is, and I’m not about to interrogate her. So I suggest you stick with Coco. She likes that one.’

Mallory gathered up the dirty plates from the table. ‘Did you figure out
when
she was snatched?’

‘No more than four days ago.’ Charles nodded toward the
kitchen counter and the evidence bag that Riker had left here last night. ‘That was Mrs Ortega’s best guess based on the last time the child’s clothes were clean. I believe it was early morning when Coco went outside to get help for her grandmother.’

‘Her
dead
grandmother,’ said Mallory. ‘Figure one day for the road trip with Uncle Red. It was dark when they got into the city. And he dyed his hair on the road. So he didn’t stalk this kid. It wasn’t a planned snatch.’

‘Crime of opportunity,’ said Riker. ‘The pervert saw her walking down the sidewalk . . . all alone.’ He pushed back from the table. ‘So . . . a day’s ride from here, Granny’s rotting away in her apartment. She hasn’t begun to stink yet, not enough for the neighbors to call the cops.’

‘And nobody knows this kid is missing,’ said Mallory. ‘That’s a bonus.’

Jack Coffey wadded up his copy of the morning
Times
and bounced it off the rim of his wastebasket. That grand old lady of New York newspapers was behaving like a tabloid slut. After beating every other rag to the story of a double homicide in Central Park, the
Times
had won the right to name a killer with the town’s first literary moniker:
the Hunger Artist
– shades of Kafka.