Mallory's Oracle (41 page)

“I don't know,” said Riker. “Since it's not one of our officers, this one goes back to the detectives on the West Side. It's nothing Special Crimes would have an interest in.”

More of her organs were dropping onto the scale. Three times he counted the cold slap of soft tissue on metal.

Riker kept his eyes nailed to his notebook. “I think Dr. Oberon said there were defensive wounds on the arm.”

Slope picked up the arm and bent closer to it. ‟No. More like a restraint bruise. The bastard had a strong grip on her arm. Large hand, too. Oh, and be sure to tell Palanski I'm going to sic Mallory on him. He's ruined my morning. I don't see why I shouldn't have him destroyed.”

Without looking up from his notebook, Riker knew that the organs of her torso were all accounted for. The younger pathologist was moving to the head of the table to make the long incision that would begin at one ear and stretch along the top of her crown to the other ear. Then the man would pull the flap of skin down over the face of the girl who was not Kathy. It was done quickly, with the sure strokes of a butcher. Now Riker listened to the saw slicing into her skull. A minute more and her brains would hit the scale. His pen hovered over the notebook as that minute dragged by. And then it was over.

She was gutted and ruined.

Because the woman might have been Kathy, the killer had touched him in his soft places. Kathy Mallory had crept into those soft places as a child and grown up in them.

Later in the day, he would soak his despair in scotch, but not drown it. It would be waiting for him in the morning with his hangover. Tomorrow, the two of them, despair and headache, would be married to one another and sitting at the foot of his bed when he awoke to a new morning, or maybe it would be afternoon, and then they would get him.

 

For all the days of her suspension from the force, the beautifully tailored lines of her blazers had been uninterrupted by the bulge of a .357 Smith & Wesson revolver. She might have passed for a civilian, but for the uncivilized green eyes. She was settled deep into the well-padded brocade of an eighteenth-century couch in a warm patch of afternoon sun. One slim blue-jeaned leg curled under her, but the running shoe never touched the material. Helen Markowitz had raised her to respect furniture, whether it be the antiques which filled this office with the colors of Persian rugs and stained-glass lampshades, or the cruder appointments of the NYPD.

“Talk to him, Mallory,” said Effrim Wilde, who knew better than to presume he might call her Kathy or Kathleen on only a few years' acquaintance, or even ten.

The long slants of her eyes were only half-open as she turned her face to Effrim. “I hope the kid isn't possessed by the devil,” she said. She glanced at Charles. “I really hate that.”

Charles Butler smiled broadly. Effrim Wilde smiled not at all.

Effrim was a rounded silhouette in the soft diffusion of light from the wide center window. Dwarfed by the tall triptych of arched glass panes, he might have been taken for an altar boy, and not a man in his middle fifties. The aging cherub face was crowned by wavy hair, more salt than pepper now.

“Charles, it's a fascinating problem.”

“Nothing fascinating about it,” said Charles. “It's garden-variety fraud.”

Charles coveted Effrim's pug nose, for his own was constantly reminding him of its size and length. Charles could look nowhere without looking over it, trying to see around it, or noting the shadow it cast on every wall. He was not a handsome man; he knew that. And he had long ago come to terms with the realization that strangers took him for an asylum escapee, perhaps because of the large egg-shaped eyes and the undersized blue marbles that rolled around the vast white surfaces, giving him the look of having been taken by surprise.

“Give it up, Effrim. I'm not dealing with that kind of nonsense,” he said, rising from a Queen Anne chair and inadvertently looming over the smaller man. At six-four, Charles's looming was unavoidable.

“It isn't nonsense, Charles. I have the data—”

“The Russian or the Chinese? Never mind. I'm not terribly impressed with either. Those experiments have never been duplicated to my satisfaction. I'm not buying it. Why don't you fob the case off on Malakhai?”

“Malakhai, the debunker? I thought he was dead.”

“No, he's in retirement now, but I don't think a small boy will cause him any undue exertion. He won't charge you much for fifteen minutes' work.” Charles turned to Mallory. “Malakhai is an old friend of the family. He toured Europe with Cousin Max when he was a practicing magician. This was all a bit before your time.”

“Charles, I'm not concerned about the expense,” said Effrim.

“Good, not that he needs the money. Shall I call him?”

“Absolutely not. Every case he ever worked on became a sideshow. What we want here is discretion. We're talking about a little boy, a very troubled little boy.”

“Are we?” Charles rose of the balls of his feet, smiling pleasantly. “I thought you were sucking up to the boy's father because he controls a grant committee. It is that time of year, isn't it? When the think tank passes the hat? I only deal with legitimate gifts, measurable gifts.”

“Levitating objects? That's not a gift?” Effrim's eyes rounded in mock incredulity that Charles would not see things his way. But then, Charles saw Effrim's every expression as a mockery of honest sentiment.

“Effrim, you know the boy is a fraud. He's not levitating anything. And it's no good appealing to Mallory. She's not overly sentimental about small children, little old ladies or dogs. Nor does she believe that inanimate objects can fly without a physical activator. And the proper term is ‛psychokinesis.' ”

“Well, you would know the technical jargon better than I,” said Effrim, waving his hand in the expansive gesture of concession. “I stand corrected. Thank you.”

“And if the boy levitates food, it's called a food fight.”

“Thank you, Charles.”

Now Charles watched the mechanics of Effrim's small smile, the downcast eyes, the aggrieved sigh for those who were not yet enlightened, and he knew his old friend was regrouping for another assault.

“This child has been through a terrible emotional ordeal,” said Effrim in the tone of
Brothers and sisters, let us pray.
“His mother died when he was only nine years old. And fourteen months later, his first stepmother died.”

“No good, Effrim. Psychokinesis is not my field.”

Effrim rolled his eyes up in the manner of the insipid-saint school of fourteenth-century painting. “Your field is discovering new gifts and finding applications for them, is it not? This child is in the gifted category in other areas, you know. His IQ is somewhere between yours and mine. And there's some urgency to this. His new stepmother is badly frightened. It seems he's been applying his gift in a rather terrifying way.”

One long and slender arm, led by five red fingernails, stretched across the back of the couch as Mallory was roused from lethargy. “So, the new stepmother is the target? ”

Charles watched Effrim mentally stepping back to reap-praise Mallory as a possible ally, estimating the location of her buttons, what pressure to push them with, and which buttons to avoid. This was Effrim's special gift, his art.

“I do hope not,” said Effrim with exquisite insincerity. “He's been moving sharp objects around.”

Charles filled Mallory's empty glass with dry sherry. A look passed between them, and in that look, a small conversation took place in which he begged her not to encourage Effrim.

He next offered the decanter to his good friend of many years, whom he would not trust with the silver. “Effrim, if you believe the boy is in trauma, wouldn't it be better to refer him to a psychiatrist?”

“Probably not,” said Mallory, answering for Effrim. “How many shrinks fall into the genius category? If it's fraud and the boy is that bright, he could put it by the average peabrain.”

Charles looked her way, his smile dipping down on one side to say,
I begged you not to do that.

She was avoiding his eyes and further ocular conversation. He found it interesting that she would take Effrim's part when she was so suspicious of the man. She'd had a good instinct there.

“How did the mother and stepmother die?” she asked Effrim.

So it was only the body count that interested Mallory. He should have guessed that. She was bored with the partnership. When her suspension was over, he would lose her to Special Crimes Section. He had nothing to offer her, no dead bodies, no puzzles quite so interesting as murder.

Effrim was looking into his glass, reading his next line in the sherry. “It was tragic, really tragic. The boy's natural mother died of a heart attack. Odd because she was so young at the time, only twenty-eight.” He looked up to gauge the effect of the hook on Mallory, but her face was devoid of emotional cues. He stared into her eyes for too long and became unsettled by them. Turning back to his glass, he spoke to the sherry. “And then his first stepmother committed suicide.... She didn't leave a note.”

Mallory lifted her chin slightly. Her eyes were all the way open now.

Charles stared at the ceiling.
Oh, good job, Effrim
.

“That's quite a run of bad luck in one family,” said Charles.

“Only for the women,” said Mallory. “We'll take it.”

She didn't look to Charles for confirmation, not that he minded. It might keep her from cutting the cord of Mallory and Butler, Ltd., for a while, but the break was inevitable. Not likely NYPD would allow her to moonlight any longer. There must be limits to what she could get away with.

Effrim was edging toward the door.

“I'll send over a check for the retainer,” Effrim said. And then for his most stunning trick, the wide Cheshire smile lingered on after the door was closed behind him.

Mallory was rising off the couch, running shoes lighting on the floor at the edge of the carpet. “I'll chase down the life insurance angle.”

“Ah, just a minute, Mallory. We were asked to evaluate the psychokinetic activity, not the family history.”

“You're kidding, right?”

“Right. Lunch?”

“There's nothing in the office fridge.”

No, there wouldn't be, now that he thought of it. She had trusted him with a shopping list. He had used the back of it to jot down two telephone numbers, and the whole of it to mark his place in a book, but he had forgotten to use any part of it for shopping.

“Let's go to my place.”

They walked across the hall and into the apartment that was his residence. Here, an eagle-eyed Mrs. Ortega saw to the contents of the refrigerator out of pity for the shopping-disabled Charles. Today the cleaning woman had left a note on the refrigerator door, attached by a magnet. It was a diagram of the kitchen, showing all the war zones where she had set traps for the mouse. He felt sorry for the rodent, so great was his confidence in Mrs. Ortega.

Mallory was ensconced at the kitchen table. The kitchen was Charles's favorite room. The walls were lined with racks of spices, agents for tenderizing flesh, and instruments for torturing vegetables: slicing, dicing and boiling them in oil. He was now in the process of covering the table with refrigerator finds. Mallory was picking over plastic containers, packages of meat and no less than five colors of cheese, and putting together original creations of sandwich mania. On his final trip back from the refrigerator, he offered her a new discovery in pickle labels.

“You were happier in Special Crimes, weren't you?”

“When Markowitz was alive,” she said, opening the jar and sniffing, then approving the contents with a nod. “Working with Coffey isn't quite the same. If I go back, I'll be stuck in the computer room forever. He was really pissed off the last time I saw his face. He'll never let me out in the field again.”

“I thought this suspension was just a formality.”

“It is. When you shoot a perp, you're relieved of duty while the Civilian Review Board investigates the case.”

“But you didn't kill the mugger, and he did beat and rob that old man.”

“Coffey's got a different way of looking at things.”

“So you don't want to dissolve the partnership?”

“No, it never occurred to me. But that doesn't mean I won't go back to Special Crimes when my suspension is over.” She checked her watch and reached up to turn on the small television set on the kitchen counter. It was time for the news, and she did like to keep up on the city's death rate.

“But there are department regulations against moonlighting, aren't there?”

“Yes, there are.”
And what of it,
said her eyebrows on the way up.

The news show was reporting the daily carnage with a video window on the Death Clock of Times Square. As the statistics of the dead were read by the newscaster, the numbers on the giant public bulletin board changed before an audience of a thousand cars and pedestrians, and the millions more who preferred to view cheap spectacle on television.

“I hate that thing,” she said, watching the change of electronic digits which kept the national score of death by guns.

“The Death Clock? But, Mallory, I thought you of all people would appreciate computerized death. It makes homicide so neat and efficient.”

She said nothing. Her face shut him out, resolving itself into a cold mask. This was his only clue that he had erred. Why did he persist in the belief that he might ever learn to anticipate her? Who knew what went on inside of Mallory? And how could he not go on wondering?