Blind Sight (A Mallory Novel) (11 page)

Leaning over the threshold, Riker tapped the light switch. Two feet in, he looked down to see a bloodstain on the floor. “So that’s where Albert cracked his head.”

“In a fall,” said Mallory. “That fits getting drugged with a paralytic—like the old lady in Jersey.”

Even
if
she had a tox screen to say the old man was drugged, a fall was no sure thing. Costello’s head might have been bashed into this floor. But Riker said nothing. He was accustomed to her forcing puzzle
pieces to fit the picture she liked best. He turned to the window and its view of a tall silver pole dead center in the frame. That had to be what one neighbor had called the old man’s favorite lamppost, his hangout spot for an hour every day. The hermit’s fixed routine was another match with three of their murder victims.

Mallory stood on the far side of the room, leaning down for a look at the lock on the back door. “A few light tool marks. Nice job. This was jimmied in advance. It’s a good lock, damn near pickproof. Our perp wouldn’t leave it for the last minute.” She walked back to the front of the store to stand by the window. “He chose this place because he knew he’d find the old man out there by the lamppost. That says stalking, planning.” She opened her hand to show him a single red rose petal. “Found it in the doorjamb. The nun was in here, too. The perp must’ve taken her flowers with him, but he missed this.”

It was a leap to pin the nun’s presence on a flower petal, yet Riker would go along with her on that. And now the paralytic made more sense to him. “So our perp sticks Albert with—”

“A medi-dart. Animal Control uses that same paralytic to bring down wild dogs. So the perp would’ve fired his dart gun from in here. He’s nowhere near Albert when the drug kicks in.”

“Okay.” It was a stretch, but— “I’ll buy that. So then he hustles Albert in the door before the old guy can hit the sidewalk.” Just being neighborly. “And along comes the nun, lookin’ to meet up with her nephew, and she gets this far.”

Mallory glanced at the stain that
might
be Albert Costello’s blood. “The old man’s out cold on the floor. She can’t see him. But she sees our perp through the window, or maybe he’s standing in the doorway. She
knows
him. That’s why he reaches out and drags her inside. And then, before he can kill her . . . she screams.”

Riker grinned. “Yeah, sure she did.” Hell she did. A lot could be gotten from the physical evidence, but, for damn sure, evidence made
no noise, no screaming, not so much as a whisper. The sarcasm should have pissed off his partner, but no. Her eyes lit up like scary green candles, advance notice of his impending humiliation.

He would never learn.

Mallory turned to the open door. “Our guy goes to a lot of trouble to cover up what he’s doing in here with Costello. Grabbing the nun, a witness who can place him on the scene—that’s chancy, but she’s right there. Reaching distance. Why would he risk going outside to snatch a
blind
kid off the street? And you know Jonah hasn’t gotten as far as this store before something startles him.” Arms folded, she faced her partner. “The boy can’t see, but he
hears
his aunt scream. It surprises him, scares him. Nothing else fits with the kid dropping his cane out there on the sidewalk and
leaving
it there—yards away from this store.”

Okay, maybe the evidence
could
scream. Riker nodded. “So . . . no cane in the kid’s hand when he comes through the door, lookin’ for his aunt. Maybe the perp doesn’t know Jonah’s blind.”

“Or the boy can tie him to the nun. She
knew
her killer.”

Maybe
the nun knew their perp, but Riker let that part slide on the off chance that his partner was holding out on him, setting him up for another fall. A hard call. It could be that she just loved this theory enough to marry it.

The detectives left by the rear door to stand in the alley on a large square of cement piled with the store’s discarded shelving and bags of trash. But there was room enough to park a car, even a van, and there was privacy for a double kidnapping. The rusty metal overhang would’ve sheltered the scene from the high windows, and a view from the lower ones would have been blocked by a dumpster.

“The perp cut out the nun’s heart to match the MO for the other kills,” said Mallory. “He figures we probably won’t make a connection to a mugging victim, the original target, but why risk it? So today he came back to finish off Albert Costello.”

—

TRAFFIC ON THE BRIDGE
was light. The stranger walked ahead of him on the footpath, walking fast, and Albert was being left behind. Hey, he had not come all the way out here to take a stroll by himself. He had to hoof it to catch up. The younger man stopped behind a wide section of the steel framework, hidden from the passing cars. The brim of his cap was pulled low, and his eyes were going in all directions, everywhere but up.

“Smell that air,” said Albert. “I think it might rain. . . . What’re you lookin’ for?”

“Cameras. They’re everywhere these days.”

“Yeah, it’s gettin’ so you can’t take a piss without somebody watchin’.” Albert raised his eyes to the high ironwork. “I don’t see no cameras.”

The stranger was on him, grabbing him.
Wait a blessed minute here!
Gripped by arm and leg, Albert was lifted upward.

Over the railing.

God Almighty!

He was in flight over night-black water.

Falling,
screaming,
Albert pawed the air, working his legs, as if he could climb an air-stair back up to the bridge. Reason was flown. Life was
everything.
Life was
all.

He hit the water, landing hard, as if upon a bed of concrete. The
pain
. His legs. His back. Plunging down and down. Holding his breath. He would
not
give up his last bit of air. His arms flapped like wings. He flew up to the surface and filled his lungs.
Blessed be.

Albert expelled a gulp of air as a wave covered him and he was sucked under, inhaling water, his chest in the grip of a giant fist. Back to the surface, and there his coughing ripped his innards. Drowning was lung-tearing, nose-searing, godawful hurt. The water torture went on and
on
—until, exhausted, he sank below the black waves and hung
there. Motionless. Calm now, all the oxygen cut from his brain. Taking away the pain. No trace of him was left on the skin of the river. The last bubble from his mouth floated up and away to pop his final breath in the open air.

—

WATER
?

Jonah Quill was slow to awaken in this dank room, sipping air fat with moisture. He could feel water all around him—taunting him. His throat was sore. His lips were cracked. One hand dropped to a cool stone floor. The other one touched down on a rubber surface, and he walked his fingers across it to find a wire that would plug an air pump into a wall socket. This was an inflatable mattress like the one his uncle dragged out for Jonah’s sleepovers with friends.

The boy lay very still, listening to his own replay of an old soft-spoken reminder, his ritual for every awakening,
Open your eyes.
This had always been his aunt’s first command of the day. Not till he was in kindergarten did he think to wonder—what for? Why lift up his lids for eyes that could not see?

“I’ll show you.” Aunt Angie had taken him up to Bloomingdale’s to run his hands over a department-store manikin. A saleslady had lain one down for him, so he could reach and touch the lids of open plastic eyes, and the saleslady had told him it looked nothing like a living person.“But shoppers
feel
the dummies watching them, and they don’t steal so much. We call it the spook effect.”

And then Aunt Angie had said, “Open eyes, even blind eyes are useful . . . because you
might
be watching them, all those strangers out there with eyes that can see.”

This was a gift she had given him, one that had increased him by guile, but it was not so useful now, not here. Still, he opened his eyes—for her.

The boy rose from the mattress, and it took some effort to stand up
on cramped legs. He was nauseated, and his stomach hurt. Jonah kicked off one sneaker and, by light touch of toes, looked for obstacles in his path. His big toe hit cold metal, and he ran his hands over the stacked appliances, identifying the clothes dryer by its round door and inside drum. The object beside it was lower to the ground, smooth and—

A laundry room with a toilet?

Jonah was tempted to drink the smelly water in the bowl, but then his elbow hit something taller, and his hands found—what? Rough outside, smooth inside, a hole. A drain? A
sink!
A
big
one! His fingers traveled along the edge to find the faucet taps, and he turned on the water. Cupping his hands, he drank from a stream of cold, clean liquid.

All the while, he gave thanks for this manna, forgetting for the moment that God was his sworn enemy, He Who had stolen Aunt Angie—and then let her die. Jonah’s voice was hoarse as he sent up another prayer to the Almighty
Bastard
Who art in Heaven, a suggestion for God to drop dead.

Next in the order of exploration, his one naked foot touched the source of a mildew smell, and his hands dipped low to identify a bucket with a mop inside. Then he let his fingers travel waist-high across the wall to find the ball of a knob and turn it. There was no give to the door—locked—but there was a growl on the other side. Low to the ground. Guttural. Ugly.

Given more water over the past few days, he might have pissed his jeans when the dog barked and raked its nails on the wood, scratching, pawing, clawing,
howling
now,
mad
to get inside—to get
at
him!

Jonah had never fainted before, and so he would not call it that, and he would not call it sleep. He—just—switched—
off.

—

MALLORY AND RIKER
remained standing, still waiting for a response from their boss, the
very
quiet man behind the desk.

Lieutenant Coffey continued to toy with a paper clip, unfolding it to a straight length of metal, a flimsy weapon at best, but he dared not unlock the drawer where he kept his gun. Calm enough now, he said, “Okay,
that’s
a first. You want me to believe this freak, this whack-job serial killer . . . hired a
professional
killer . . . for the wetwork?” No doubt, bet money would change hands between these two when they realized that he was not falling for their bullshit. But Jack Coffey was not inclined to drag this out, and so he reminded them that “The freak takes trophies,” and then yelled,
“He cut out their fucking hearts!”

Riker nodded in agreement. So true. “Talk to Heller. He says—”

“No!” He was
not
going to play this out with the commander of Crime Scene Unit, a man with no sense of humor. The lieutenant turned his back on the detectives, swiveling his chair to stare at a street window never washed in this century, as if he could see through it. Good sport that he was, and with no rancor at all, he said, “Go away.”

And they did.

—

KILLING A
NUN
?
Snatching a
kid?
Had Iggy lost his mind? Their client was only paying for four
low-profile
kills. Oh, and a phone call, a lousy heads-up on this mess, that would’ve been nice—a professional courtesy.

Goddamn hell of a day!

Gail Rawly was not the one on the murdering end of this enterprise. He saw himself as more of a matchmaker, though his wife believed he was a freelance insurance investigator, and he was—on the side—but only for the sake of filing income taxes. He would never want to run afoul of the Internal Revenue Service.

If only his partner would be so cautious of the law.

He switched off the radio’s gory news story when six-year-old Patty entered his home office in footed pajamas. Gail could see his own features in the little girl with his wavy brown hair and ocean-blue eyes. She was carrying a newspaper, helping Daddy, so he might overlook the fact that she was not asleep at this hour. He thanked her for the paper and laid it on his desk. “Back to bed, Princess.”

No, she would stay. Her pajama feet were firmly planted on the rug to say so, and the lift of her chin said she went where she pleased, did she not?

Gail turned his eyes to the newspaper. He could not recall the last decade when the New York
Daily News
had published a late edition. This one had front-page photographs of the nun and the boy. Three of the four bodies dumped on the mayor’s lawn were almost footnotes to this story. And there was no mention of the mutilation, not a line about organs cut out of the corpses.

What was the client doing with those hearts?

A phone rang. Before Gail opened his desk drawer, chock-full of cell phones, to see which one it was, he predicted that his caller would be the freak for hearts, wanting to carp about the
alteration
in the plan. He could almost read anger into the phone’s chirp.

But there was pure joy in the client’s voice. “Well,” said Gail, “I’m so happy you’re pleased.”

He waved one hand to shoo the princess from the room. Her Highness ignored him. “Yes,” he said to his caller, “quite a splash in the news.” Did the hit man still have the blind boy? “I’ll check on that.” He must do it quickly, and that little boy should not turn up dead or alive without further instructions. “Okay.” A photograph? “That’s not a problem.” Now he received another instruction to carry out before the next sum would wind up in his offshore account. And their business was done.

Gail dropped the client phone into his desk drawer and picked up the one reserved for conversation with his business partner.

The little girl glared at her father, so impatient for him to read her a bedtime story because—
that was Daddy’s damn job!