Blind Sight (A Mallory Novel) (42 page)

—

IGGY CONROY
stood at the kitchen counter with ingredients culled from his drug stash. After mashing pills with mortar and pestle, he emptied powder from the bowl and cut it into two parts with a razor blade, but the doses were not equal. He had become proficient in estimating the weight of the meat—the measure of a drug.

And now for something different. He dropped Harvey Madden’s sugar cube into one of the water bottles, a promise of pretty pictures for a boy who could not see, not with his eyes.

Iggy thought he finally had the hang of blindness, and maybe it should not be called that. There was seeing—and there was
seeing
.

—

AS MALLORY TORE
up the access road that led to the freeway, she had a name for the hit man: Ignatius Conroy, only child of the late Moira Conroy. He was also the beneficiary of his mother’s life insurance—which he had never collected. No death certificate had ever been issued for the woman buried in that plot nine years ago.

Mrs. Conroy, alias Kenna, could never be allowed to die, not on paper, not while her son was alive with all his assets in her name. Very creative, using a woman for his paper persona—but why steal the heart of a little boy from that cemetery? It was a place he knew well, a comfort zone for grave robbing, but why the risk?

Why not just cut out Jonah’s heart?

—

IGGY OPENED THE DOOR
that led down to the basement. The dog was yapping, so happy to hear him coming. By the time he cleared the stairs and crossed the cement floor to unbolt the laundry-room door, the mutt had barked himself into a coughing fit. Iggy leaned down to pour the contents of one bottle into the dog’s dry water bowl.

Beyond the doorway, Jonah sat cross-legged on the mattress. No fresh blood had seeped through the gauze wrapped round his head to cover the damage done by a stone troll, but, despite the antibiotics, pus oozed from the bandage on his leg. Dog bites were a bitch to heal.

Iggy wished the boy would close those broken eyes.

—

BURNING DOWN THE ON
-
RAMP
and into four lanes of traffic, Mallory had no portable siren for her silver convertible. That kind of warning was futile. Few motorists would take this
cute
Volkswagen for a police vehicle, even
with
a screaming siren, and time would be lost to
their confusion. This was the rationale she had given to her partner for silent running, and she half believed it.

The detective drove up on the tail of the pickup truck ahead, quickly turning a frail old man into a road-rage crazy. He
did
get out of her way, but then he tried to chase her down with the mistaken idea that his junker could beat the Porsche engine hidden under her hood.

Some things in life were just more fun than guns.

Next she bore down on a sports car that could give her at least
some
competition— should the driver fall into a vehicular-homicide state of mind. Nothing could make this motorist crazier than a VW in his rearview mirror, keeping pace with his
real
car, coming up to kiss his very expensive paint and maybe take a bite out of his fiberglass shell.

—

THE CONVOY OF DETECTIVES
, stuck in city traffic, created a deafening scream of sirens and horns trained on motorists up ahead. Civilian drivers were jangled enough to brave the red light, and some pulled into a one-way side street to face oncoming traffic—anything to get out of the way, to escape the noise that played with their nerve endings. Other vehicles were crawling up on sidewalks to startle pedestrians, who turned en masse to face the string of wailing, honking cop cars, and they waved to the detectives, middle fingers extended in that New York salutation of
Hi, how are ya—and go fuck yourselves
.

—

BEYOND THE OPEN LAUNDRY
-
ROOM DOOR
, the dog lapped at his bowl with thirsty gusto.

“Here.” The man pressed a small bottle into Jonah’s hands. “No tricks. The water’s drugged. Pretty soon, this house is gonna be one big ball of fire. You don’t want that, kid. . . . Burnin’ alive? . . . Naw.”

“You could let me go.”

The cigarette lighter clicked. “There won’t be any pain. I slipped in somethin’ extra, a little somethin’ for the road. You’ll like it. . . . Up to you. I’m not gonna pour the stuff down your throat. But you really don’t wanna wait for the smoke to come downstairs.”

Jonah rocked himself as he strained to listen. No bells. No sirens. No one was coming to carry him away.

“Arson is where I really shine. It’ll start in the back of the house. Then it’s gonna rip along the hall and into the front room. . . . I wish you could see what I’m lookin’ at, kid. The support beams for the floor—they’re right over your head. No termites now, but they had a go at that wood for years before I bought this place. Brittle, dried out, fulla holes. It won’t take much to bring the floor down . . . and down comes the fire. . . . But maybe the smoke gets you first. It’s like breathin’ in acid. You cough your insides out. Then you choke. You can’t breathe. You go
nuts
. Total panic. I don’t know what’s worse. The flames or the smoke. So . . . drink the water. Don’t drink it. Up to you, kid. But I know your Aunt Angie would want it this way. No fear, no pain.”

Outside the laundry room, the lapping at the pit bull’s water bowl had stopped. There was thump to the floor, but this was not a lie-down-to-sleep sound. More like a dropped sandbag. “You killed the dog?”

“He’s not dead. Not yet. Wanna see?” Footsteps crossed the threshold and, seconds later, returned to the room.

Fur grazed Jonah’s toes as the dog was laid on the floor, not with another thump, but gently. The man took the boy’s hand and lowered it to the animal’s pelt. Jonah could hear the pit bull’s breathing, and he could feel it by the rise and fall of the ribs. And then came the familiar whistle the dog always made while asleep, a lullaby of old lungs.

“Oh,
hey,”
said Cigarette Man. “You gotta see this.”

He moved Jonah’s hand down the dog’s fur to rest it on a lively haunch, and the boy’s blind fingers walked up the animal’s kicking leg.

“That’s how you know he’s dreamin,’” said the man. “He’s runnin’
around in his dreams, chasin’ down squirrels. . . . If that ain’t Dog Heaven.”

The kicking subsided.

The leg dropped.

The dog’s song, the whistle of lungs, that stopped, too.

“You’ll last longer,” said Cigarette Man. “Not such a bad way to go. Up to you, kid.”

—

RIKER RODE IN THE BACKSEAT
. Despite the racket, the freeway traffic ahead was slow to divide and yield them a free lane.

Janos, behind the wheel, shouted reassurances to be heard over the sirens of their six-car convoy. “She can’t beat us there! Not with a seventy-mile handicap!”

But Mallory would be driving most of that distance on open road—no red lights or city gridlock. They had already lost so much time along their escape route out of Manhattan.

Washington, who rode shotgun, turned around in his seat, offering Riker more comfort in a louder scream. “I saw Mallory when she left for Jersey! She’s driving her VW! A damn
bug!”

A bug. Yeah,
right
. No worries there
—
a Porsche disguised as a Volkswagen Beetle.

She liked her little jokes.

If Mallory had only taken a Crown Victoria to Jersey, the rest of the squad would stand a fair chance in this race. But her incognito engine was revved up way beyond factory settings. She was melting away her handicap
.

—

IGGY STRUNG SHEER WHITE CURTAINS
on one of the bedroom windows. These had come from his arson kit. With no flame-retardant qualities, they were better than tinder. He wondered that sunlight did not set them on fire.

The second window was left bare. He opened it by a crack. Fire loved oxygen.

The second set of curtains were wadded up, and he tossed them on the mattress with their metal rod—as if this chore had been left undone, work forsaken to take a nap. He set an ashtray next to the pile of flimsy material.

A lit cigarette was dropped. The flash was quick. The meat locker was as good as torched.

The door closed—like someone had come in behind him. A trick of drafts? This house had lots of pranks to play: a bang of pipes, a creak of beams and mouse crumbles inside the walls. But he had to spin around. He
had
to look.

No one there. And no one on the other side of the door. Flames crackling behind him, he walked down the hall—and stopped—dead still now.

What the hell was
that?

He stared at the square door in the ceiling, the attic access. A footstep? Up there? Oh, Christ, were the police already here?

No.
Idiot!
Cops in the attic?
Gimme a break!

But rodents lacked the weight to account for that sound. Iggy took the revolver from his waistband. Then he pulled a hooked pole from the linen closet and held it high to snag the latch for the overhead door. Before the ladder could slide out of that square hole in the ceiling and into his outstretched hand, his mouth opened wide, but he did not scream.

He shut the attic door.

Dropped the pole.

And ran.

—

CIGARETTE MAN
had left him the music of a boxy plug-in radio. Jonah rested one hand on top of it, and his palm tingled with the
vibrations of golden oldies. He hugged himself and rocked his body, but the motion could not calm him anymore. His fear had a drumbeat and the wicked-fast riff of a guitar. He rocked fast now.

Faster
.

Smoke!

The smell was the distant size of a whiff, but it was coming for him. Soon it would be seeping, creeping under the bolted door—to
get
him.

Jonah found the radio’s volume dial and turned up the music because he had lost his faith. He was done waiting for jingle bells on the stairs out there. His rocking stopped. It was time to choose between the fire and the water. He lifted the bottle to his nose. Death had no smell, but a tentative sip told him it was sugary. He drank one big gulp. And another. How long would it take? The dog had lasted for minutes.

His eyelids were heavy. Closing. The bottle dropped from his hand to slosh and roll away. Jonah knew he was going into the blink of Cigarette Man’s eye, the one closed eye where the nothingness was—no air, no life. Not even ghosts could live there.

 
27

Jonah curled into a ball. Shrinking. Soon he would disappear into—

He was
flying!
Zooming!
Air rushed past him. An object flew alongside him, brushing against his hand. Cold. Metallic. He wrapped his fingers round it, the better to see it, and he made out the shape. The hood ornament! The car! And then it was gone, diving down out of his grasp. And he was falling, too, air whooshing all around him as he dropped through empty space—and fell into the front seat and, beneath his bare feet, was the sensation of rolling down smooth pavement.

Aunt Angie was driving. He saw her in the scent of perfume, a hand caressing his face. The car radio came alive in a stream of quick musical notes, a piano riff. It must be late. She always said that jazz belonged to night, and she liked a boogie rhythm to work with the blinking taillights of after-dark traffic. Now they shifted into daytime, and the sun was warm on his skin. Their new road song was a blast of rock ’n’ roll. The car picked up speed.

“I love you,” he said. “I
love
—
”

Aunt Angie roughly pulled the hair at the back of his head, and she jammed her fingers into his mouth, all the way to the back of his
tongue, and pressed down till he gagged. Vomit poured out of him in a thick smelly river. Far off, he heard a soft rush of words in a silken thread. “Sick it up,” she said. And he puked more slime in waves of nausea. Oh,
so
sick. He gulped stinking air as his limp body rose off the mattress, lifted in her arms.

She carried him up the stairs. Through the thick acid smog of the house. The terrible heat of an oven.
Crackle
and
roar.
Into the cool wind of the out-of-doors, a war of stink and perfume, smoke and roses.

Her footsteps slowed.

Stopped.

He was falling, slowly sliding out of her arms, down and down, to feel the grass with his spread hands. He had no more breath, not a sip of air. And he could not fight for it. And he did not want to. It was irresistible, this sinking sensation. Letting go. Spent, he lay quiet and still. Soft hair curled across his neck as her head pressed to his chest. Then she pounded his ribs. Again
.
Again.
Louder now, silk threads snapped, she commanded him to
“Breathe!”
Patience lost, she breathed for him, velvet lips covering his mouth.

First kiss—and then the stench of bile exploded through his teeth.

Burning
his throat.

He coughed and spewed vomit as his body was dragged across the grass. The air smelled sweeter here. She laid him down.

Before she fell.

Sirens! So loud! So many! Tires spit pebbles and rocks to knock on the underbelly of a car in its rush up the driveway. More were coming. They were
here!
The high-pitched wailing shut down. Shut off. And now the sounds of many car doors opening—and
left
open. Feet on the run.

Jonah reached out for the one who lay beside him. But he could not rouse her. She had carried him out of the fire on last legs, and now—

Nearby, a man’s anguished voice screamed,
“Mallory!”

—

THE NEW JERSEY HOSPITAL
was small, more the size of a clinic, and the walls were thin. The detectives of Special Crimes could hear a baby being born down the corridor from this exam room, where they waited for Mallory to be discharged.