Blind Sight (A Mallory Novel) (5 page)

BOOK: Blind Sight (A Mallory Novel)
3.14Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Just a hint of crazy got a world of respect in this town, though there were detectives in the Special Crimes Unit who suspected that Kathy Mallory was not hinting. She
might
be the real deal. Riker believed she knew this and encouraged it in the same way that the clothes on her back flaunted the idea of a cop who
might
be dirty.

She liked her games. She played them well.

When they reached the street, Riker ignored the government suits—so as not to lose face with the cops on the line. He spoke to the uniform with the sergeant’s stripe, “What’s up, Murray? You got a body count?”

“Yeah, I seen four of ’em in there.” The sergeant glanced at officers to his left and right, indicating that this was not a good time to thank him for a tip on a dead nun. “The security cameras are useless—blacked out with paintballs. But I know the perp was wearing NYPD blue last night. On the other side of the park, we found a cop knocked out cold and stripped down to his skivvies.”

Mallory was distracted by an argument half a block away. It looked to be one-sided, no fists in play yet, but getting there. Riker also watched this scene as a government agent, red in the face, rose off the balls of his feet, trying so hard to be taller. The fed was outsized by the man who set a Gladstone bag down on the sidewalk at his booted feet. Chief Medical Examiner Edward Slope ripped off his protective helmet and gloves. The doctor’s anger was more dignified—and more effective. The flat of one raised hand silenced the younger, shorter man from Homeland Security. Now it was Dr. Slope’s turn to vent, and the federal agent came down from his tiptoes.

“A scam.” Without hearing one clear word, Mallory had the gist of the ME’s complaint. “Those moon suits are just for show, right?”

“That’s
my
guess,” said Sergeant Murray. “What we got in there is
weird, but it’s got shit to do with germs or poison gas. I figure the mayor wanted to keep people outta the park . . . on a
Sunday.
Well, forget that.” With a nod toward the plastic curtain, he said, “So one of those clowns in there called out the hazmat team. Figured that’d scare ’em off.” He turned back to the bagel-noshing sidewalk crowd. “Do they look scared to you?”

Since diplomacy was not his partner’s forte, Riker walked down the street to join the kiddie agent in charge of false alarms and circuses. The detective offered this youngster the carrot of being addressed as a grown-up. “Look, pal, I know you got jerked around today, but don’t go off on anybody else, okay? We need some leverage here. Just pack up the moon suits and go.”

“Somebody’s gotta pay for dragging out the whole damn—”

“Me and my partner, we can make that happen. We can make the pack of ’em wish they’d never screwed with you.” In the hierarchy of New York City, this was a fairy tale, but the young agent seemed to like the story.


EDWARD SLOPE

S
shed hazmat suit was carried off by Homeland Security agents, and now the chief medical examiner wore only the uniform of a Sunday backyard barbecuer. Never mind loud—his Hawaiian shirt
shrieked
color. Even so, he was the most distinguished man on the scene. Silver-haired and tall, he had the posture and bark of a general as he issued orders to his minions, who had been waiting on the sidelines all this time. The ME had entered the red zone alone; he thought most of his people were idiots, but they were his idiots, and he would never put them in harm’s way. At the top of the short driveway, two of them pulled aside the plastic curtain, and a gurney stacked with body bags wheeled past them.

Dr. Slope lowered his voice to speak with Riker and Mallory. “A
very egalitarian killer. The victims are different genders, races, ages. I’d call it
pointedly
random.”

The doctor marched into the tented area, and the detectives followed him past the gatehouse, beyond the extension building and along one side of the yellow mansion. At the turn of this corner, the plastic curtain was torn down to give them a view of the river beyond a wide circle of manicured grass.

Three corpses lay facedown in a careless pile at the foot of the stairs to the veranda and the mayor’s front door. An old woman’s stark white face was pressed to the brown hand of a young man’s body, and his head was pillowed on feet that stuck out from beneath him. Most notable among the dead was the fourth corpse, Sister Michael, also known as Angela Quill. This body had been rolled over and set apart from the rest.

Riker pulled out his notebook and pen. “Likely weapon?”

“A knife,” said Dr. Slope. “But when this was called in, I was told that a doctor on the scene had identified symptoms of sarin gas.
In a pig’s eye.
And that doctor turned out to be a press secretary. I want her charged with falsifying—”

“Okay,” said Riker. “We’ll talk to her.”

“Too late. I did the honors. You’ll find that little moron locked in a bathroom. She was crying—but still alive when I was done with her.”

“Yeah?” Riker suppressed a grin.
Liar.
A gentleman to the core, Dr. Slope would
never
make a woman cry. Though Mallory might make the doctor’s lie come true soon enough.

Most of the grassy land was enclosed by a tall fence of iron bars with pointed spikes, all but a section of redbrick wall that separated the mansion’s lawn from the public area of the park. This was the lowest and likeliest access. The detective reached out to snag the arm of a man he knew, a passing crime-scene investigator. “Hey, Rizzo. I know our perp didn’t toss the bodies over the wall. No crushed bushes, no drag marks on the grass. So what’s the deal here?”

“You gotta see this, or you’ll think I’m lying.” Rizzo led him around the south corner of the mansion and pointed to a jog in the brick wall, where another CSI was photographing a narrow iron gate that joined the two sections. “It was secured with—”

“A damn padlock?”
It lay on the ground at Riker’s feet—broken. Flimsy piece of crap.

“Yeah. Breaking in here—that’s three second’s work with the right tool. One of the guys on park patrol tells me this is the hooker entrance. The uniforms don’t go near it after dark. Mayor Polk thinks they might scare off his call girls.” CSI Rizzo pointed to the concrete stairwell leading down to the basement of the mansion’s wing, and no words were needed. This entry point could be seen by any visitor on the park side of the gate’s iron bars. It was an open invitation to any lunatic passing by.

“I see it—and I still don’t believe it,” said Riker. “Did the perp get inside last night?”

“Nope, no sign of entry anywhere but this gate. Your guy just dumped the bodies and left.” On their way back to the front lawn, the man from Crime Scene Unit said, “Here’s the real weak spot—no adults in charge of mansion security. The mayor’s protection detail answers to the commissioner, and—”

“And he answers to the mayor,” said Riker. “Got it.”

When the dead bodies were in sight, Rizzo stopped, and he
had
to ask, “What’s your partner doing?” As if it were not plain enough.

“She’s smelling corpses,” said Riker.

Mallory had finished with the nun, and now, as the ME’s team rolled the other bodies, she leaned down to sniff each one in turn. Done with that, she said, “So . . . not a spree killing.”

“No,” said the chief medical examiner. “All different stages of decomp. There’s signs of dehydration, too—except for the last kill. She’s the most disturbing one.” Dr. Slope looked down at the corpse in nun’s
regalia. The young woman’s large gray eyes were open, and she wore a faint, sly smile. “I’m going to see that in my sleep for a
long
time.”


MALLORY AND HER PARTNER
stood on the veranda of Gracie Mansion in a face-off with a lanky young man who wore a bow tie and a sneer.

The mayor’s aide, Samuel Tucker, was puffed up with all the importance of an entitled frat boy from some college of fastidious twits. He inspected their gold shields, squinting as if that might help him spot fakes—or germs. The aide then informed the detectives that they were not on the approved list for the meeting inside. He glanced at Riker’s suit with a moue of distaste. Clearly,
that
detective would not even make the cut for those allowed to enter by the front door on any occasion. He shrugged as if to say,
Perhaps the back door?
But not today.

Riker and Mallory walked around him to enter the mansion’s foyer, a generous space with a couch and chairs and a grand staircase.

Now that Tucker understood his true place in the world—not rising to the kneecap of a cockroach—he scrambled over the patterned floor, racing past the detectives to give the appearance of
leading
them into the library, a smaller room that might be misnamed, as it contained only a handful of books. It was a museum scheme of turquoise walls, white trim and period furnishings from the gaslight era. A dozen people milled around in a mix of suits and weekend wear. The aide walked through the low babble of conversations to approach one of the paired blue love seats in front of the fireplace, where he leaned down to whisper in the mayor’s ear.

His Honor Andrew Polk was nearly fifty, but his brown hair had not one strand of gray, and Mallory pronounced it an excellent dye job. He was reported to be five-feet-four, but that might be too generous a measure for this little man with the tiny shiny eyes of a rodent. He wore the casual clothes of a Sunday sailor, and his canvas shoes tapped
out the beat of nerves on the fray—or maybe this was just a sign of irritation with the man bending over him. Hands clasped together, Polk nodded at something his aide had just said.

Seated beside the city’s top politician was a fair-haired man, a decade younger and miles better looking. He sported a suntan to match the mayor’s, though no one would peg him as a fellow yachtsman, not dressed in
that
suit, a very nice one—and expensive for a man of the cloth. This could only be the cardinal’s man, Father DuPont,
another
politician. And Mallory could put that suntan down to rounds of whacking balls on a golf green, the favored political venue of churchmen currying and bestowing favor. The priest’s expression was somber to fit the occasion of finding a dead nun on the doorstep.

The police commissioner should have been the lone figure on the facing love seat, but there sat Chief of Detectives Joseph Goddard, a broad-shouldered man in a silk suit. Even before she saw his face, Mallory recognized the bullet-shaped head and the crew cut. He was an interesting choice of police confidant for Mayor Polk. All around them were civilian staff and NYPD bodyguards, most of them standing, others seated on chairs and a striped couch. In the next moment, all of them, except for the mayor’s aide, filed through the door, leaving in obedience to the wave of the chief’s hand and the word, “Out!”

The seat of power was now made clear.

So a deal had been struck, and the chief of detectives had a brand-new victim for his dossier collection. It was said that the use of power revealed a man’s true face, but Joe Goddard’s was on display all the time—a thug’s face. At least, they had been spared his trademark entrance, a walk on leaden feet to make the floor quake. The chief liked to advertise that he was coming—and that he was dangerous to cops and felons alike. His political currency was information, and he was a master at acquiring dirty secrets.

Did that frighten the mayor?

It should.

“I didn’t send for you.” Chief Goddard addressed Riker, showing displeasure with this gatecrasher and—
the other one.
Mallory easily read the man’s expression when he finally looked her way, all condescension and irritation, a warning to the puppy cop: She should
not
piss on the rug. He turned away from her, and she became invisible—dead to him. He
wished
she were dead. They had a history in a little dance of Crush Me If You Can.

“We ID’d one of the victims,” said Riker. “Sister Michael. She ties in to another case.” This was their passport. None could challenge it. Both cases would merge at the top of the NYPD priorities—now that the deadly virus scam had fizzled out.

When Chief Goddard grudgingly introduced the detectives, Mallory’s name did not register with Father DuPont. Was he that good an actor? Her second thought was that this priest had instructed Father Brenner not to name the selection for pet cop. Maybe the phrase,
plausible deniability,
was also terminology of the church.

“So . . . four bodies.” Mallory turned to Mayor Polk. “Four ransom notes?” Oh, the poor man was startled—as if she had smacked him. Well,
damn.

It was Samuel Tucker who stepped forward to say, “We’re not aware of any ransom demands.”

Riker ignored the aide to speak with the mayor. “Well, sir, you can see why we’d ask. . . . That dead nun outside? You knew she’d gone missing before the cops did.”

Good shot.

Polk’s left hand wrapped around his right fist. Again, his aide was the one who first opened his mouth for the predictable denial, and Riker said to this younger man, “That’s not a question, kid. It’s a
fact.”
The detective’s subtext was clear:
Don’t let me catch you in a lie.
And
that closed Tucker’s mouth. Riker turned back to Mayor Polk. “About the nun. We have to wonder why you didn’t call the police.”

In a little masterstroke of deflection, Andrew Polk turned to Chief Goddard and leaned forward, as if to ask this man the same question.

Without a glance at the detectives, the chief said, “He
did
call it in.
I
knew the nun was missing. I had a detective looking into it . . .
quietly.”

“A cop picked out by the
church?”
Mallory said this with a heavy lean on incredulity. “That’s a roundabout way of assigning a case.”

Joe Goddard looked up at her, quizzical at first, and then his expression changed to one reserved for stepping on a dog turd.

BOOK: Blind Sight (A Mallory Novel)
3.14Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

Suzanne Robinson by Lord of Enchantment
The Girl Next Door by Brad Parks
The Seventh Day by Joy Dettman
Bombs Away by Harry Turtledove
Empress of the Underworld by Gilbert L. Morris
A Killer Retreat by Tracy Weber
Whirlwind by Alison Hart
The Red Coffin by Sam Eastland