Blind Sight (A Mallory Novel) (43 page)

She sat tailor-fashion on a gurney and sucked air from an oxygen mask. The stink of vomit had been thrown away with her cast-off linen blazer, but the smell of smoke hung all around her. How much of it had she taken into her lungs during her search of the house? Riker reached out to touch a strand of her hair singed by flames and frizzed like blond steel wool.
“Nice.”

“Just one more question, okay?” Janos had offered to write up her report, and he wanted to meet her insane standard for detail. “The ER doc says the tox screen backed you up, but how’d you know the kid was poisoned?”

Mallory lowered the clear plastic mask. “The water in the dog’s bowl was colored—doctored. Hardly any smoke in the basement, but the dog was dead. And the kid was out cold.”

Colored water in a dog’s bowl? Of all the detectives in this room, only Mallory would stop to look at that one odd thing—
in a burning house.
Before the report hit Jack Coffey’s desk, Riker planned to edit out those lines.

“Good enough.” Janos closed his notebook and said to her, “What you did—that was awesome.”

“Yet stupid,” said Riker.
“The house was on fire!”

Testy, prickly, she said, “The fire was in a back room. The way to the basement was
clear!”

“Oh, sure.
That
makes sense. The basement would’ve been the
last
place you checked.”

“I followed the music.”

That got everybody’s attention. There had been only sirens and
shouts, the roar of fire and the breaking of glass from a blown-out window—hardly music. Riker fingered the oxygen mask that hung loose around her neck. “Does this stuff get you high?”

In the next moment, he wished that he could take back every caustic word, though the hero halo was not a good fit for his partner. Jonah Quill owed his life to a defect in her, the lack of a healthy sense of fear. That was Mallory’s weakness, even back in her puppy days, and one day it would get her killed. From the time she had entered the Police Academy, Lou Markowitz had known that his kid would surely die young. While sitting side by side on bar stools late one night, the old man had said to Riker, “When it happens, don’t hold it against her. It won’t be her fault.”

Detective Gonzales crossed the room to join the rest of the squad. “I talked to the fire marshal. He doesn’t see it as arson. His guys found a corpse in the back bedroom. Adult male.
Totally
cooked. He figures the guy was smoking in bed and—”

“I don’t think we could be that lucky,” said Mallory.

“Me, either,” said Gonzales. “There was only one car in the garage—a Jag smashed to shit. The Jersey cops found the oil slick from a second vehicle, but they still like the fire marshal’s theory. They don’t plan to waste any time looking for Conroy. And I’m guessing whoever died in that bed, he’s not gonna be missed.”

Mallory nodded. “Any idea when they plan to release the other body?”

“It’s a done deal,” said Riker. “The Phelps kid—”

“He’s been returned to his grave.” Rabbi Kaplan stepped inside the circle of detectives. “And the stolen heart was buried with him.” When Mallory showed surprise to see him standing there, he shrugged. “I was in the neighborhood,” a neighborhood that extended for seventy miles.

Now Riker learned that the rabbi had ridden here with Dr. Slope and not the detectives sent to fetch him.

“Edward brought the heart from the city so the boy could be made whole before—”

“That heart was
evidence!”
Mallory punctuated this with a raised fist. “Where does Slope get
off
—
”

Undaunted by her anger, the rabbi said, “I told Edward he could kiss his poker nights goodbye if that little boy was reburied without his heart.” David Kaplan wore a winner’s smile. Like every player in the Louis Markowitz Floating Poker Game, this man gambled for penny-ante stakes that were still tailored to a child’s allowance money. And that child, a twelve-year-old Kathy Mallory, had described it as an old-ladies-night-out kind of game. So the rabbi had to grab his big wins elsewhere.

Riker was certainly impressed. Dr. Slope had never caved in so fast for—

“Kathy,” said Rabbi Kaplan, one of the few to use her given name with no fear of reprisal. “I told Mrs. Phelps her boy’s heart was restored. She was grateful. . . . When I told her you found Jonah alive, she was overjoyed.”

Son of a bitch!
All these detectives and not one of them had thought to take the rabbi’s cell phone away from him?

Gonzales gave Riker a nod to say that he had received the unspoken
son of a bitch
loud and clear. He held up his own phone as he backed through the door, pulling the rabbi along with him to plug that leak with a call to Mrs. Phelps.

Heads turned when Dr. Slope walked in to announce that Jonah had just been dispatched by helicopter to a facility across the river. “This hospital isn’t up to the standards of a New York trauma center. If he isn’t properly treated for the wound on his leg, he could lose—” And now the doctor must have seen something that
might
be concern in Mallory’s eyes. Or maybe not. It was a crapshoot. And he said, “The boy’s wound is septic, but the prognosis is excellent.”

And
she
said, “That heart was
evidence!”
But that was not her only complaint.

—

OUTSIDE THE HOSPITAL
, the medical examiner sat on a stone bench, answering questions for the detective whose chore of damage control was nearly done.

Riker’s cigarette had gone dark and smokeless. He crushed it in his hand, neatly palming this only sign of anger. The first mistake of the day had been to invite Rabbi Kaplan here so he would not be stranded on this side of the bridge—with too much dangerous information. And now the grieving Mrs. Phelps knew that Jonah was alive. But it was Dr. Slope who had blown security all to hell.

Thanks for that, you bastard!

Less than an hour ago, the squad had nailed down containment. The Jersey firefighters never knew that a child had been taken from the burning house. And here at the hospital, the emergency-room staff had not recognized the unconscious boy with the sooty, swollen face. A gang of men with badges aplenty had supplied them with the story of just another ordinary kid doing party drugs and poison while playing with matches and a mad dog.

“So, Doc, what name did you give the—”

“
John Doe!
Did you really think I’d tell the pilot he was transporting Jonah Quill?”

Oh, no. Perish the thought. The chief medical examiner could be trusted to keep case details to himself—even if he could
not
be trusted to keep a goddamn heart under lock and key, even though Slope had taken it upon himself to whisk a little boy away from a squad of police protection—
hanging the kid out in the line of fire!

However, mopping up damage took precedence over revenge, and so Riker had robbed his partner of the chance to debrief this
man. Though he wished it was Mallory sitting here with a loaded gun.

Dr. Slope had yet to finish ragging on her, and this did not sit well with Riker.

The detective stood up, an invitation for the doctor to join him in a stroll to the far side of the parking lot. At the end of an aisle of cars, David Kaplan sat in the passenger seat of Slope’s black sedan, waiting for his ride home. This had been a long brutal day for that very gentle man, though the rabbi did seem at peace with the outcome.

Not so for Dr. Slope, who railed against Mallory as he walked. “I’ll tell you the real crime here. David’s already forgiven her. Do you have any idea what she put him through today? And the damage she did to the Phelps boy’s parents, those poor people.
No
remorse. A total lack of empathy—a complete disconnect from their grief, their
pain.
It’s . . . cold.”

“Yeah, I hear you, Doc. You’re absolutely right. Grieving family—that’s somethin’ Mallory can’t handle worth shit. . . . I guess we all remember the comical look on her face when her old man died.”

The doctor broke stride with a stumble.

Riker gallantly opened the car door, and a more subdued Edward Slope got in behind the wheel.

Small satisfaction.

The detective moseyed back across the parking lot, his mind on damages to come. How long would the kid’s John Doe alias hold up? Minutes? Hours? How much time did they have before a hit man went roaming the corridors of New York City hospitals, hunting down a little boy?

Two more questions occurred to him before he reached the other side of the lot: How many cops would it take to protect one kid from a professional killer? And how many presidents had the Secret Service lost to amateurs?

—

ALL THE PREP
work was done. In the back of the van, Iggy buttoned up the coverall that he had packed in the duffel bag. Around the corner of this block, an NYPD cop was still wearing the uniform that Iggy coveted for his next change of clothing.

Using the duffel as a pillow, he laid himself down to catch a nap before dark, but he could not shut down his brain. What had he done to himself? For the first time in his life, he was homeless, and he grieved for his house, though he would not miss that
thing
in the attic.

—

THE DOOR
to the Connecticut home was opened by Gail Rawly’s widow, a high-maintenance type with four different shades of salon highlights in her light brown hair. If this woman had not loved her husband, she would have filed down the jagged edge of that one broken fingernail in an otherwise perfect manicure. And she appeared not to notice that one of the detectives on her doorstep smelled of smoke.

Mallory held up her cell phone so Mary Rawly could see the small-screen image from a high-school yearbook. This was the only existing photograph of Ignatius Conroy, son of Moira Conroy. “He’s nineteen years older now.”

“I’m sorry. I’ve never seen him before.” After inviting them in, she sent her child out to play in the backyard. The widow raised her hands, and then let them fall limp at her sides. This gesture conceded that, yes, her little girl should be in pajamas by now, but her husband was dead, and all the mom rules were suspended today.

The sun was still shining in a low orbit, but inside the house it was dark. The air was stale. The detectives followed her into the kitchen, the only room with an unshuttered window and natural light. Mrs.
Rawly sat down at the table with Riker, who said, “I’m sorry for your loss, ma’am.”

The window had a view of the backyard. Close by was another house, a little one built to the scale of Mrs. Rawly’s daughter. There were expensive toys scattered here and there, but Mallory liked the swing best. It was an old rubber tire suspended from a tree limb by a rope. Finest kind. And there was Patty Rawly, riding high on the tire, toes pointing up to the sun—
happy
in this moment. “She doesn’t know?”

Mrs. Rawly covered her face with both hands. “Patty saw an ambulance in the driveway. I pulled her inside before it left . . . before the others came for his body. She thinks Gail’s in the hospital—and he’s only sick.
I
didn’t tell her that. I didn’t know
what
to tell her.”

Mallory sat down beside the woman. “I’d like to show Patty the photo. Maybe she saw the man around the house when you weren’t home. . . . I won’t say anything about the murder.”

With the mother’s nod of permission, Mallory left by the kitchen door and walked into the sweet smell of fresh air. Casting a long shadow, she crossed the grass to stand near the swinging tire’s wide arc. She held out the cell phone to show the child Conroy’s photograph. “Do you know this man?”

The girl swung up close, touching distance, to stare at the small screen, and then she swung down and away. “He doesn’t have hair anymore,” said Patty on the backswing. “He shaved it off.” On the upswing, she added, “He’s got a five o’clock shadow like Daddy’s.” The swinging slowed. “But it’s all over his head.” The tire dangled. The child turned pensive. “Iggy’s one of those things we don’t tell Mommy about.”

“You can tell
me.”
Mallory smiled. “I won’t rat on you. Promise.”

“He never comes to the front door. He goes in that way.” Patty pointed to the French doors at the back of the house. “I don’t
like
him. I
don’t
like his eyes. . . . That’s all I know.”

“Are there other things you’re not supposed to tell Mommy?”

Patty drummed her fingers on the tire’s rim, giving this grave consideration. “Well, there’s the clown in my bedroom. His head comes off, but Mommy doesn’t know that. And Daddy’s the only one who knows how to take it off. He does it after lights out . . . when he thinks I’m asleep. I tried to pull the head off myself—but I just can’t do it.”

“I could help you with that. . . . No one else has to know.”

Patty liked this idea. She liked it a lot. Her smile was adorably evil.

Hand in hand, they walked back to the house, entering by the French doors of Gail Rawly’s low-tech office. A standard landline sat on the desk beside a laptop that was six years out of date. Even the fax machine was a dinosaur. At Patty’s insistence, they crept down the hallway on their toes.

The stuffed clown had a chair of its own in the corner of the pink bedroom, where it lay facedown because the child
hated
clowns. “And I think Daddy knows that, but
he
gave it to me. So we both pretend I like it.”

Very smart. Mallory picked up the large doll with the red bulbous nose. This would be the toy that Patty was least likely to play with, cuddle with, and maybe notice the faint rattle in its belly. If only Daddy had known how much the trick feature intrigued the little clown hater, who longed to rip off its head.

Mallory unfastened the buttons that held a ruffled collar in place. When the ceramic neck was bare, she could see the hinge at the front and a tiny keyhole on the other side.

Would the mother mind this search, this act of breaking into the head of a clown? In a worst-case scenario for evidence not in plain sight, the need for a warrant would lead to a war with the local cops who owned Gail Rawly’s murder. In any case, time would be lost. She reached into her back pocket and pulled out a velvet pouch of lock picks. “Patty, this is another one of those things we don’t tell Mommy about. So . . . whatever we find inside the clown . . . ?”