Blind Sight (A Mallory Novel) (20 page)

Poor freak.

The lieutenant kept his silence as he backed away from the door. With one crooked finger, he commanded his detective to walk with him, and when they stood at the end of the hall, Mallory said, “So . . . the other thing,” the flash drive, which, of course, neither of them
would have any knowledge of, “I think it’s the mayor’s idea of smoke. He didn’t want Tucker to get too curious about the sealed envelope. That SEC doc was all Polk cared about, and he couldn’t destroy his signature copy.”

The lieutenant gave the federal document a last glance, then folded it into the envelope. “Okay, Polk did something outside the law. He admits that to the feds.” And normally a broker would have to rip the face off a newborn baby to lose his license. “But the crime’s not spelled out. Unless you’ve got a snitch in the SEC. . . . No? Well, then I guess you’ve got nothing.”

Mallory shifted to a boxer’s stance and grabbed the purloined envelope. “
This
nets me a suspect. You
know
the feds caught him in a stock scam. So Polk did some financial damage to our hit man’s client, and that guy wants payback.”

She was spinning theory from air again. Four people had their hearts cut out, and Mallory only saw a money angle, but now she had layered on the imagined element of revenge—another favorite of hers. And she was going to run with it. Run where? Into whose computer?

And why was she smiling?

Coffey held up both hands to say that he was in collusion with all three wise monkeys of
see no evil, hear none, and know
nothing
that you do behind my back.
This surrender attitude had originated with the former commander of Special Crimes, that late great cop Lou Markowitz. Hacker’s goods could not be used in court, but they could be useful.

So . . . need he have any worries on this account?

All the time.

The monkeys were heavy; they weighed on his back; they fed on his brain. He would take them to bed with him tonight and get damn little sleep. And
that
was why she smiled.

—

FOR THIS OCCASION
of a home invasion by the Crime Scene Unit, the mayor expressed an appropriate amount of stress, though he felt none. And Sunday’s discovery of four dead bodies on the lawn had not quickened his pulse by one beat. This was nothing like the old days on the trading floor, all hell cracked wide open, the heat and the screams and the
pain,
the roof coming down, the ante jacking up. Wall Street
knew
how to do up a bloodbath. A serial killer was somewhat tame by comparison.

Once the CSIs were done with the laptop in his personal office, Mayor Polk sat down in the leather chair at his desk. Its seat was perfectly molded to receive his backside, and now, relaxing in cushioned comfort, he smiled at every cop to pass his way, and he posed with one of them for a cell-phone-picture souvenir. His own phone vibrated in his breast pocket. He pulled it out to see that it was just the lawyer texting to tell him that Tuck had been delayed in traffic, but now everything intended for the vault was accounted for.

And all was right with the world of His Honor Andrew Polk.

The phone pulsed again. This call could only be from his nitwit aide. It was predictable that Tuck would grovel for being late to the lawyer’s office and— No, not Tuck.

He stared at the image on his cell-phone screen—a picture of young Jonah Quill holding a newspaper and posed against the backdrop of a cloudless blue sky. The companion text was short, only three words,
proof of life.

Well,
this
was different. The previous ransom demands had come by snail mail of more expansive text accompanied by printed photographs. Each stamped postal date had preceded one for packaged proof of a murder. This electronic dispatch indicated urgency of lost patience and imminent death for a little boy. Yet the mayor only contemplated his list of those with access to this cell-phone number—a short list—which made this new demand rather risky.

And exciting.

The kidnapper was obviously coming undone and rushing his play. Or maybe—even better—this guy
knew
that Gracie Mansion was full of investigators from the Crime Scene Unit, some of them only a few feet away.

So delicious—like going naked in public.

Given only television ideas of police procedure, Andrew Polk was certain that this cell-phone communication could be traced, and the child could be brought home safe with his heart still beating inside him.

It was an exquisite moment, one to be savored.

And then—
click, click
—the photograph and the text were deleted.

 
11

They should not call it a bell. It did not ring—it shrieked like an alarm for a house afire.

Charles Butler stood at the epicenter of Jonah Quill’s milieu.
Pandemonium!
He pressed his back to the guidance counselor’s door as children poured out of classrooms to jostle one another, jockeying for the fast track along the hallway, their shouts and conversations all around him. Up and down this corridor, the metal doors of lockers opened and slammed shut. There was a jailbreak energy in the air.

He imagined Jonah in this swarm, tensing, anticipating the last bell and flight into summer vacation.
Freedom.
At this day’s end, they would all hightail it out of here and into the sunlight. Places to go. An endless afternoon, and they could not use it up fast enough.

Reverie broken, a door opened behind him, and a little red-haired girl left the guidance counselor’s office. Oh, so many freckles. And tears.

Dr. Eunice Purcell invited Charles in—and out of the fray.

This morning’s interview had been scheduled at the behest of Detective Janos, who believed that this woman might be more forthcoming if a fellow psychologist asked the questions. Thus Charles, a man with a boxcar line of Ph.D.s, shook hands with Dr. Purcell, thin
and gray in her sixtieth year. Her dress was conservative, her posture ruler-straight, and her face was stern—until he smiled. And then, confronted with the tall frog-eyed man who grinned like a halfwit, she smiled, too, albeit against her will, for the lady was on the defensive once they were seated at opposite sides of her desk.

“I
did
cooperate with the police. I answered all their questions . . .
twice.”
She handed him a thick manila folder. “I only refused to give them a copy of Jonah’s file. Feel free to leaf through it, but I can’t allow you to take it with you.”

Charles was already pilfering the file, committing each line of text to eidetic memory. Only pages in, he knew the boy was intelligent, not a genius IQ, but most children had a genius for something or other. They were
all
brilliant liars. However, there was not enough here to make an assessment of survival skills. Most important was Jonah’s behavior under stress, and there was no clue to that, either. Perhaps the most intimate things were not written down. “Dr. Purcell, his uncle is the only one listed under family contacts. Did he ever speak to you about—”

“The nun? Before Jonah disappeared, I didn’t know his aunt existed.”

The boy’s file logged numerous visits to this guidance counselor, but he never confided in her? Or was this woman protecting a child’s privacy? Trolling for his answer, he asked, “Did Jonah
ever
come to you with serious problems?”

Correctly inferring an insult, she put some ice in her voice. “He’s seriously in love with Lucinda Wells. The girl who just left. I give him tips for staying on her good side. It’s a bad day for Jonah when they have a falling-out.”

The boy was clearly a favorite of Dr. Purcell’s, and yet, “Here it says he’s spent a lot of time in detention.”

“Yes, our new headmaster is humorless, and Jonah writes a humor column for the school newspaper—so they’re natural enemies. But
here’s where the boy gets into trouble. He doesn’t think Mr. Keller’s smart enough to pick up on a twelve-year-old’s idea of double entendre. Half the time, he’s right about that. And the other half—Jonah does detention.”

“When you say they’re enemies—”

“Well, no one
likes
the headmaster. He’s an authoritarian ass. I think most of the children would like to get rid of him—if they could only get a gun past the metal detector.”

Dr. Purcell was nothing if not candid—in some respects. However, in regard to what he needed from her, she was a vault.

Charles closed the file and set it on her desk. “I don’t suppose you’d care to tell me why Lucinda Wells was crying?” When the woman shook her head, he knew the little girl had not wept for the obvious reason—missing Jonah. On to the next most obvious thing, he said, “If she’s keeping secrets, holding something back, something the police would—” Yes, he had gotten that right. Dr. Purcell made no response as she rose from her desk.

He was being dismissed.

—

AH
,
A FUGITIVE
.

The little redhead was perched on the middle step between the school’s front door and the sidewalk below, perhaps trapped there by indecision. Should she stay till the final bell of the day—or run like mad?

“Miss Wells?” Charles smiled, but the girl never saw this, his most winning trick. Her head bowed with some great weight as he sat down beside her to offer his card. It identified him as a police consultant to the NYPD.

“It should say you’re
Dr.
Butler.” She pointed to the line of academic credentials following his name.

“I never cared much for titles. Call me Charles.” And then he learned that, like himself, she had no nickname. Just as he had never been a Chuck or a Charlie, she was neither Luce, nor Lucy, but always Lucinda, and this was followed by a comparison of notes on the downsides and upsides of being two of a kind—outsiders.

He plucked a bit of data from Dr. Purcell’s memorized file. “I understand you’re Jonah’s designated walker.”

She nodded. “But he doesn’t need anyone to get him to classes. He had the whole school mapped out when he was nine years old. . . . You know, there’s a lot more to it than counting steps. His maps aren’t like yours and mine. They’re
three-dimensional.
Everything has height, length, width. All the rooms in his life are stored in 3-D memory—three dimensions
he can’t see.”

Charles already knew how the blind repurposed the brain’s visual cortex for sense perception and spatial relationships, and it was fascinating, but so was Lucinda. She was a rare one. Few people could grasp that paradox as she did, and it added to his understanding of her bond with Jonah. “You’re still listed as his designated walker. So . . . sometimes you find that useful?” It would allow the two children to spend more time with each other. He could see them holding hands in the halls, their desks always side-by-side in class, two heads leaning close together in a covert exchange of whispers.

“I use it to do detention with Jonah.”

Charles now learned that this forced attendance on Saturday mornings could be very tedious without a friend along for company. And still, she would have him know that the hours passed like years. Phones and tablets were confiscated at the door by the headmaster, who personally,
joyfully
presided over these gatherings of at least ten children doing penance for the smallest infractions of rules. And one boy was condemned to do more time in this hell of boredom than any other student.

“I think Mr. Keller had a real hate on for Jonah. But detention
petered out after the thing with the spider.” She raised her face to his. “Did Dr. Purcell tell you about the tarantula?”

“No, she didn’t.” There were probably many things Dr. Purcell had failed to mention. “I rather like spiders myself.”

“So does Jonah. Well, he likes old Aggy. She lives in the science lab. She’s really very sweet. In spider years, Aggy’s in her nineties. Slow. Harmless. But the headmaster’s new. He didn’t know that. So, when Jonah walked into detention . . . with the tarantula on his head, Mr. Keller was petrified.” Lucinda slapped a concrete step to the beat of “He—could—not—
move.”
The little girl was smiling now, reliving a particularly happy moment. “When that big hairy spider crawled down Jonah’s face, the headmaster wet his pants.” And apparently she had so enjoyed that great dark stain spreading on Mr. Keller’s crotch. “Detention ended early that day.”

Her smile faded off. She looked down at her hands.

Somber again.

And so was Charles. He now had a portrait of a resourceful boy, a planner, a plotter and, worse luck, a—

Lucinda stood up, eyes shiny, watery, and she stepped lightly down to the pavement, saying over one shoulder, “I hope Jonah’s behaving himself.” The little girl ran to the subway entrance at the end of the block and disappeared down the stairs below the sidewalk.

Evidently, she foresaw the same grave problem of a child who would take on an adult opponent.

—

IGGY CONROY
killed a little time in an East Village plaza bordered by traffic lanes and famed for a giant black cube that stood on point, attracting tourists and homegrown roller boarders. There were no police in sight, not that they would take any notice of him today, though he hardly blended in with this crowd.

In a reversal of fashion sense, he had dressed up to visit the summer scene of T-shirts and sandals on St. Marks Place. He wore lace-up shoes, a white linen shirt and a tie. Dark glasses hid his eyes, his most striking feature. And so his old-fashioned straw boater would be the only stand-out memory of witnesses as he made his way along the first block, checking names posted by intercoms on the street doors. His outfit was almost cop-proof. The police were so busy looking for hiders lying low and acting shifty, he would have been invisible to them if he had worn a clown suit today.

This was the neighborhood where Angie Quill had grown up, so said the boy. She had lied about bedding down in an Alphabet City squat, one she had claimed to share with her hooker buddies and the roaches. All her free time had gone to the kid, keeping close to home, keeping him safe from his fruitcake grandmother.