The Chalk Girl (27 page)

‘Oh, I remember
that
face,’ said the photographer. ‘
Great
-looking kid – and nice enough, but he couldn’t sit still – feet tapping, fingers snapping all the time. I know I’ve got more shots of him. What’s the name?’ The man leaned closer to read the caption. ‘Okay.’ He disappeared into a back room and then returned with more pictures in hand. ‘My private stash. I like these better.’ He laid them out on the table. ‘They cover the three years he went to the Driscol School.’

This was not the still and somber boy of Rolland Mann’s interview tape. Every one of these photographs was blurred. This was Toby in motion, Toby when he was hyper-aware and juiced on the batteries of childhood – so
alive
.

When the proprietor had given them a complete set of pictures, one for each student they had marked, Mallory stared at the enlarged portrait of Ernest Nadler. The line of the child’s shirt collar was slightly – minutely –
off
. ‘You airbrushed this one.’ She glared at the photographer, as if this might be a felony. ‘We’ll wait while you make a new print from the negative.’

‘Oh, I don’t have that neg anymore. When I was making up prints for the kid’s parents, I had a chemical spill in the darkroom.’

‘And you remembered which negative got wrecked,’ said Riker, ‘fifteen years later. Must’ve been a hell of a shot . . . before you cleaned it up.’

‘A memorable shot,’ said Mallory. ‘So you kept an original print . . . for your private stash. Now I want to see what you airbrushed out.’

‘My partner really likes kids,’ said Riker in one of his more imaginative lies. ‘Trust me, pal, you don’t wanna piss her off.’

And that part was true.

She rose from the table, and the man moved away from her, back stepping all the way into the next room of filing cabinets, where the original print was found – very quickly.

And now they could see what had been airbrushed from the yearbook shot.

‘Teeth marks,’ said Riker. ‘
Damn
. It’s like Aggy the Biter signed his neck.’

It was a very small school reunion at the Mexican restaurant on Bleecker Street: Phoebe Bledsoe and a dead child on one side of the room, Toby Wilder on the other.

‘I hate to see him like this,’ said Dead Ernest. He glanced at his companion. ‘And what about you, Phoebe? You wanted to teach the classics. Now you spend the whole school year locked up in the nurse’s office.’

And no one ever came to visit the spooky nurse. Driscol students were remarkable for soldiering on with the scraped knees and stomachaches that plagued every other school in America.

‘You have a degree in English lit, and what did they offer you?’

Custody of a box of Band-Aids
. She should thank her mother for insisting on the nursing credential tacked onto the end of her education, else she would be jobless.

‘You were robbed,’ said Dead Ernest.

Perhaps
. She had spent her lonely workdays reading great literature. At night, she read comic books aloud for penance . . . for Ernie. Not much of a life, not what she had planned.

Toby’s meal was done. He rose from his chair and moved toward the door. Phoebe’s fingers worried over the surface of the gold cigarette lighter, the only piece of him that she could keep with her.

Dead Ernest also left her. Phoebe had no energy to sustain him or restrain him. She watched her old playmate approach the door. As the next customer came in, he slipped out. The child was always at the mercy of flesh-and-blood people to open doors for him. But even if a phantom could manage solid gateways, Phoebe would never allow him to take his hands from his pockets.

She traveled home alone.

When she stepped out of the taxi in front of the Driscol School, the key to the alley passage was in her hand – but the iron gate was unlocked and ajar. Could she have forgotten to close it? No, that was unthinkable.

She passed down the narrow walkway between the Driscol School and the neighboring building, traveling halfway across the back garden before she saw him standing by the door to her cottage. Rolland Mann was losing his hair. It was gone to the pinfeathers of a chick newly hatched or a chicken prepped for slaughter. The deputy police commissioner’s name always topped the guest list for her mother’s charity galas, and he was a regular visitor to the weekly salons at the mansion. But Phoebe had first come to know him when she was a child and he was Detective Mann.

‘The gate was wide open,’ he said. ‘That was careless, Phoebe. Especially now.’ He held up a folded copy of today’s
Times
. ‘The third Ramble victim hasn’t made the papers yet, but they’ve all been identified. It looks like someone’s cleaning up loose ends.’ He paused. Waiting for her reaction? ‘You need police protection. I could post a guard on the—’

‘No! . . . No more police.’ One hand of chewed fingernails rose to her mouth. Self-conscious now, she hid both ruined hands behind her back.

At least she did not have to face this unwanted visitor alone. Stress had summoned up Dead Ernest. He stood behind Rolland Mann and stuck out his tongue.

The deputy police commissioner, following the track of her eyes, turned around to see that there was no one there. Then he looked at the door. ‘Oh, your phone’s ringing. Don’t you want to answer that?’

No. She had no plans to unlock her door while he was still here.

‘You need protection.’ And now the man measured his words
very carefully, giving each syllable equal weight. ‘You do see the problem, don’t you, Phoebe?’

Why did he always talk to her as if she might be only half bright? She inclined her head to listen to the dead boy, who clarified this mystery. ‘He thinks you’re nuts.’

Rolland Mann smiled, as if in agreement with a voice he could not possibly hear. ‘There were
five
children in the Ramble when the incident happened.’ He held up five fingers in case she could not grasp such a high number. Adding insult, he counted them off, folding his long fingers one by one. ‘Ernie’s dead, Humphrey – Aggy. And Willy Fallon
nearly
died.’

All that remained was the worm-white thumb – herself.

‘It’s simple math, Phoebe.’ He turned his back on her and walked down the flagstone path, saying, ‘Call me if you change your mind about protection.’

By all appearances, Charles Butler had recovered from Mallory’s funeral scam to expose a little girl to a lineup of murder suspects. He was smiling broadly, happy to see the two detectives at his door, and he ushered them into his apartment.

This extended babysitting detail would be wearing on anyone. Maybe Charles was starved for adult company. That was Riker’s thought as he bent down to receive a hug from Coco. ‘Hey, kid. Can you play something for us? Know any good rock groups?’

She clapped her hands together, eyes lit brightly,
big
grin. ‘Echo and the Bunnymen!’

Charles smiled. ‘Sounds charming.’

‘Excellent choice,’ said Riker, ‘post-punk rock.’

And Charles stopped smiling, somewhat less charmed.

Coco took Mallory’s hand and led her into the adjoining room.
Moments later, the two men in the parlor were listening to a piano duet.

Riker slapped his worried host on the back. ‘It’ll be okay. As long as you can hear the music, you know Mallory isn’t beating the kid.’ And now the detective recognized the opening bars to an old song from a garage band that almost made it. ‘Oh, this is vintage. It’s called “Crazytown Breakdown” – a hit single back in the early nineties.’

The man who loved classical music had a baffled look about him. Charles Butler’s golden oldies predated rock music by centuries.

In the next room, two voices rose in song, high, pure notes running up and down the scale of the melody. When they came to the refrain, they both banged out the music and belted out the lyrics. Great fun – so said the child’s giggles accompanied by a softer ripple of piano keys.

Charles was entranced. ‘I’ve never heard Mallory sing.’

Riker had, but only once and long ago. That was the day of her little rock ’n’ roll rebellion at Special Crimes. A child-size Kathy Mallory had been suspended for some playground transgression before her school day had ended, and Lou Markowitz was on midget duty until his wife could arrive to pick up their foster child. He sat at his desk, facing Kathy’s chair. Her legs were shorter then, and her sneakers dangled above the floor. Maybe the kid was only bored when she began the staring contest with Lou, but then she had escalated with lyrics, putting their little war of nerves to music. The child had sung the old man this same refrain –
Crazy is a place I know. I come and go. I come and go
– over and over, all the while fixing him with her weird green eyes. And, with his best poker face, Lou had, one by one, snapped six lead pencils in two before saying, ‘You win.’

Today this old song had the same unnerving effect on Charles
Butler – and not by accident. What had this poor man done to Mallory?

On the next note of ‘—
cra-a-a-zy
—’ Riker described the invisible dead boy who spoke to Phoebe Bledsoe. ‘Her mother blames it on a child psychiatrist.’ The detective consulted his notebook for a name. ‘Dr Martin Fyfe. This guy had Phoebe
personalize
her anxiety.’ He squinted at his shorthand, isolated words standing for sentences and whole paragraphs. Most of his notes had been written on the fly while being shown to the door. ‘Well, that backfired. The kid was supposed to confront her problem –
talk
to it – but she only listened.’ He looked up. ‘Is this nuts, or what? So then the shrink tells the mother that Phoebe’s delusional, and the kid needs
years
on the couch.’ He closed his notebook. ‘The mother fired the shrink.’

‘A good maternal instinct.’ Charles looked into the music room to watch the piano players during a lull in the song. ‘Dr Fyfe was a fraud – not actually a psychiatrist.’ Assured that Mallory was not browbeating Coco, he turned back to Riker. ‘Fyfe
did
have a Ph.D. in psychology. Unfortunately for his patients, his education was the next best thing to a correspondence course in cartooning. But you don’t need any credentials for psychodrama, and that’s what you described.’

Charles rose from his chair, and Riker followed him down the hall and into the library, where every wall was thick with books, and shelves soared to a high ceiling. The music of the piano was thin and tinny here. Coco’s guardian had one ear cocked toward the open door, monitoring the piano duet, as he walked toward shelves filled with magazines. Their wooden holders were labeled by dates and titles of
Psychiatric
this and
Psychology
that.

‘So Phoebe Bledsoe started her therapy about fifteen years ago?’

‘Give or take.’ Riker watched him pull out holders for the nineties.

‘Fyfe would’ve been in a rush to publish a case like hers. I can almost guarantee that Phoebe Bledsoe made it into print. There won’t be a real name mentioned, but he wouldn’t change the patient’s gender or her age. This might take me a while.’

‘Hey, you’ve got a photographic memory.’

‘Sorry. I’ve only read one of that idiot’s papers.’

Riker glanced down at his wristwatch. ‘Me and Mallory got plans to ambush an assistant DA. We gotta corner the weasel before five.’ The detective stared at the stack of professional journals still piling up on the table. ‘This is gonna take all day, huh?’

‘Not that long.’ Charles picked up a large stack as if it weighed only ounces, and he carried it down the hall to the front room, unwilling to leave Coco and Mallory unchaperoned. He set the journals on the coffee table and sat down in line of sight with the piano.

Riker’s load was lighter by half, but he felt the strain of seldom-used muscle when he placed his stack beside the taller one.

The psychologist’s eyes scanned the printed word as fast as he could turn the pages, faster than anything passing for speed-reading. His face had the deep red flush of embarrassment, and that was understandable. This man was shy about any evidence of freakishness – his giant brain and even his tall stature. He always seemed apologetic when looking down at someone of average height. Being closely observed while reading at the speed of light – that must be humiliating.

Gallant Riker turned away to watch the singing piano players, and his feet tapped to the beat. Without turning his head, he said, ‘So you know this Dr Fyfe pretty well.’

‘No, only by name and a bad reputation.’ Charles held up one of the publications. ‘Years ago, this journal sent one of Fyfe’s papers for peer review. It was a case study on an eight-year-old boy. The idiot fed a child unwarranted drugs. Then the reviewer – a
real
psychiatrist – looked into his background and discovered that Fyfe wasn’t licensed to prescribe an aspirin. The article was evidence of illegal traffic in drugs – he bought them on the street. But it was a charge of child endangerment that got him suspended the first time.’