It Happens in the Dark (31 page)

That false name had been the big lie that everyone had tipped to back in the incident room. The detective suspected that Charles had simply been too polite to tell them what they so obviously already knew.

What a gentleman.

“Rats!” Janos had just discovered that birth records were not cross-indexed under mothers’ maiden names, and none of the neighbors had been able to supply a married name for the mother of the bedridden boy. It would have been so easy to stick pins beneath the sheriff’s fingernails, but Janos was not inclined to do such things. Or he might have bent the man’s arm back till he heard that stunning sound of a snapping bone—almost music—but the torture of another human being was unthinkable. Or, if not unthinkable—

“Forget Mrs. Chalmers’s sister.” Mallory sat down in the chair beside his desk. “That woman’s a dead end.” She laid a birth certificate on the blotter, though not the one he was looking for. It belonged to the invalid’s mother. “If she’d ever applied for a Social Security card, the feds would’ve had this on file—and they don’t.”

He would never ask how she knew that. His old boss, Lou Markowitz, had set the rule by example, never questioning why giant government bureaucracies were so helpful to the squad’s computer witch. “So . . . she couldn’t have filed a tax return or a joint return with her husband. No tracks.” Now he could see the mother and her ex-husband as the cash-and-carry type, who had lived off the grid with their son, the bad driver.

It was still possible to get lost in America.

Rats.

Mallory gave Charles Butler a smile. “Nice catch with the sheriff’s lies.”

Very
nice catch, since the sheriff had kept silent for much of the questioning. This man had caught lies untold.

“How’d you do it?” asked Janos. “Micro expressions? That kind of thing?”

“Oh, no. Waste of time.” Charles laid down his stack of accident reports. “There
are
involuntary expressions of core emotions, but you’d have to catch the cues flying by in a fifteenth of a second. And there’s no universal Pinocchio expression. Micro expressions won’t catch lies. That’s a fairy tale.”

“So how—”

“I do it with poker tells. The sheriff was easy to read because he doesn’t
like
deceiving you. That was obvious in the first big lie, the one everybody caught. The man hesitated. Next, he inhaled a puff of air. Then pursed lips. And then he gave you that made-up name. So that’s three tells for one deception. The give-away for his nonverbal lies is pursed lips and an upturn at one corner of his mouth. Micro-expression data lists that one as a sign of contempt. But he showed no contempt for any of you, not even when you dumped his dirty laundry on the floor.” Charles turned to face Mallory—who was not there anymore. His lecture had gone on too long for the likes of her, and she had slipped away.

Janos rolled one hand as encouragement to continue.

And Charles did. “So when you asked questions that got
no
verbal response, in
his
case, in
that
situation, the expression meant he was holding four aces while trying to convey that he couldn’t beat a pair. I know people who have other poker tells for the exact same thing. Twitchy fingers, a tilt of the head. Different tells for all of them. . . . So much for the myth of one-size-fits-all science.”

Janos gave him a broad smile and hoped that Charles could not read the thought behind it. This lecture on poker tells would be interesting to everyone on the squad who knew that Charles Butler stank at poker—and that was everyone. This man could read another man’s hand, no doubt about it, but never hide cards of his own. Charles could not win with deception, and yet he
loved
the liar’s game.

The detective turned his eyes to the wide window on the lieutenant’s private office, where Riker sat drinking coffee with the enemy.

And the games went on.

•   •   •

Sheriff Harper had a second cup of brew while waiting for the boss of this outfit to show his face again.

Riker passed the time with him, commiserating on divorce lawyers and the misery that women left behind them—when they left. This smiling, laid-back cop was right when he said he
knew
things about women. Now he knew the first name of the sheriff’s ex-wife and even her maiden name. He also knew what she did for a living these days, as well as the fact that she had not left her hometown after the divorce.

But, thankfully, the man from Nebraska had not been asked one question about the family massacre, for he would deeply regret a lie told to this very decent man.

James Harper looked out through the window on the squad room, and he saw Mallory with a duffel bag slung over one shoulder as she walked alongside a small, scruffy man in baggy jeans. Her free hand was on the little fella’s arm, as if he might need help walking to the stairwell door. “A person of interest?”

Riker glanced at the window. “Naw.” The detective sipped his coffee and smiled. “So your ex-wife moved back in with her dad.”

“Yup. Only six blocks away.”

Lieutenant Coffey entered the private office.

About time
.

The lieutenant was definitely one angry man as he faced his detective, saying, “The play goes on tonight.”

What
play?

“Bad move.” Riker rose to his feet, not liking this news one bit. “You
know
what’s gonna—”

“Tell it to Councilman Perry. That twit leaned on Beale again.”

“So what? The commissioner can’t interfere with an ongoing—”

“Yeah,” said Coffey, “I’ve heard that joke, too. Since when did regulations ever stop that old fart? And now he’s got the mayor onboard. God forbid one closed theater should interfere with tourism. We got nine hours before—” The lieutenant turned around to face James Harper. “Oh, you’re invited, Sheriff. We got front-row seats for the hottest show in town.”

Well,
finally.
Some hospitality.

•   •   •

Mallory entered the dressing room and dropped the gopher’s duffel bag on the padded armchair. A small dust cloud rose up from the cushion.

Bugsy’s sedation had worn off, but he had been silent during the ride from the station house. Now he sat down on his bedroll. So very still. This was not his twitchy nature, and neither was the sadness. Mallory had brought a bottle of pills to help him sleep—to forget this day. That would be the easy way out.

For him.

And for her.

Instead, she turned to the makeup table and stared at the broken mirror. “That story you told me? The one about the old murder? I looked it up.” Two decades ago, that case had been neatly wrapped within an hour. She reached out to touch the glass and run one finger around the outline of a missing shard. “There was no murder weapon at the crime scene. A hunk of glass might match up with the ME’s report, but the theater owner’s corpse wasn’t found up here.”

“I know,” said Bugsy. “The way the real story goes, it was the family’s idea to move his body outta the lady’s dressin’ room.” With some effort, he rose to his feet. “I told ya about the renovations, right? The theater let us use the stage at night—saved a bundle on rentin’ rehearsal space.” He pulled down a decades-old calendar, exposing a clean square of green wall. At its center was a small, round spot of raw plaster. “Before the contractors fixed up the other dressin’ rooms, I found plugs like this one in all of ’em. . . . Filled-in peepholes.”

Mallory nodded her understanding: Twenty years ago, the victim’s family had not wanted this room searched by the police. The hole in the wall might have exposed the murdered relative as a sexual deviant—a peeper.

“See this?” Bugsy pointed to a patch of the mirror where a second shard was missing, a smaller one. “The way I heard it, while they were cartin’ the old guy’s body downstairs, the actress was up here, slittin’ her wrists.” He pulled back a scatter rug to reveal a bleached-out section of floor—blood evidence destroyed. “The lady was still alive when the family dragged her outta here. The cops found her bleedin’ to death in the alley.”

“Did you tell that story to Alma Sutter?”

“Yeah, I tried to tell her she wasn’t the only one to—” His head snapped toward the open door.

Mallory had also heard it—the sound of an object hitting the floor below them, something dropped or knocked over. Other people had keys to this theater and reason to be here, but it was the absence of any more sound that made her slide the revolver from its holster. This was the guilty silence of someone frozen in waiting—another listener downstairs.

ROLLO:
There is one thing that I can do if you allow it.

—
The Brass Bed
, Act III

“Lock up after me,” she whispered. “No noise.” Gun in hand, Mallory stepped over the threshold of the dressing room.

Along the railed walkway, she stopped at every door beyond Bugsy’s. No need to pick the locks. She had a good ear for a dead room. She descended the stairs, treading lightly, and crossed the floor behind the stage set for a look at the blackboard.

The slate was wiped clean.

Mallory walked to the alley door and tried the knob. Still locked. There was no noise, and she could not say why reflex kicked in, why she spun around to point her gun at a ginger cat—
with chalk-dusted fur
.

The cat arched its back, tail high, and hissed with a show of sharp teeth. Then, conceding victory, it fled, followed closely by the detective holstering her revolver on the run. Mallory crashed through the clothes on the wardrobe racks in time to see the animal disappear through a rubber pet flap in a door—an undersized door with an old-fashioned keyhole lock.

Another damn screwup!

This exit had not been marked on the crime-scene diagram. But this time, Clara Loman could not be faulted; before her late arrival that night, the floor plan had been sketched out by her CSIs. And not one of those bastards had thought to search behind the wardrobe racks.
No
, too much
work
.

The ancient lock was easily picked with tools from her pouch, though she could have opened it with any small bits of metal that came to hand. The lock undone, she opened the door.

Not
a building exit.

Mallory stepped through the opening in the brick wall and onto a small, square landing. One narrow flight of stairs led upward, and this would be the long-dead peeper’s passageway to the dressing rooms. The other one, a down-staircase, faded to black after six steps. Smells of piss, feces and wood rot rose from below. She flicked a wall switch, and a bare bulb came to light at the foot of the stairs. Though she stepped softly, the ancient wood creaked underfoot. Half the way down, she stopped.

Another creak of the wood.

She turned to see Bugsy four steps above—armed with a baseball bat. Her own noise on the stairs had masked his steps coming down behind her. Surprise number two: Her gun was pointed at his head, an act of reflex, but he showed no sign of fear, though that was his normal state in every waking minute.

He lowered the bat.

She lowered the gun.

By hand signals, Mallory pointed the way back up the stairs, mouthing the words,
Get out! Now!

Shoulders back, he stood up straight, and his feet were firmly planted in a very unBugsy way.
Acting
brave?

No, that wasn’t it.

Hello, Alan Rains.

What a hell of a time to go sane.

All her gesturing was of no use. He meant to make a stand with her. He was her wingman now. In sign language, they agreed that he would remain here to guard the stairs leading up to the door.
No
noise.

When Mallory touched down on the last step, she saw crisscrossing tracks, paw prints of chalk dust, each trail fading to nothing. Nearby was a Kitty Litter box overflowing with turds. Beyond that, she saw a bone-dry pet bowl with the word
water
printed on the side. Only the one empty bowl. There was no sign that the cat was ever fed. And this told her it was a working animal, catching its own supper of mice or rats.

The ceiling was a patchwork of tin squares stained with rust, and the floor was stacked with dusty cartons, trunks and crates. Alongside a mop covered with mold, a workman’s ladder with a broken step was propped against one wall. And cat turds littered the floor. This space had gone unused for so long, even the existence of the theater’s mouse catcher had been forgotten.

On the far side of the room, the ginger cat crouched beneath a pipe joint that leaked occasional drops of water into the patient animal’s open mouth. His perch was a drip-stained carton. One side of the cardboard had collapsed and spilled out a cache of small, soggy boxes that were falling to pieces, releasing sticks of white chalk, some of them degraded by water leaking from the pipe above. Mallory rounded the crate to surprise the cat.

Yellow eyes big with fear, it ran for cover behind a steamer trunk, leaving a chalk-dust trail on the floor.

Other trails, faint ones, repeatedly led to a door with scratches on it as high as a cat could reach. There was no lock, but the knob would not turn under her hand. It was stuck—fused shut with rusted works. Mallory applied more force until she heard a click and a metallic snap of something broken inside the mechanism. And still the door would not open. One foot wedged against the wall, hand to the knob, she pulled.

The cat reappeared. It was at her heels, then brushing past her legs. Frantic now, it clawed the wood, mad to get inside. Whatever was in there, it outweighed the animal’s fear of humans. The door was giving, and now it opened—to show her a grimy toilet and nothing more.

The cat smelled water.

The animal was on its hind legs, pawing the closed toilet seat, crying—
so
thirsty.

Mallory snapped on a latex glove. After flushing the toilet, she opened the filthy seat cover as fresh water swirled into the bowl. Then a quick flash of flying ginger fur—and now the cat artfully balanced on the porcelain rim, head dipping low, drinking its fill. Above the light noise of the lapping cat, Mallory heard a sound upstairs, a subtle movement of shoes—stealthy. The detective stood motionless, listening, her ears stripping away the ceiling, to hear the sound of nails scratching slate.

An invitation?

The cat stopped lapping. The detective drew her gun.

On the run, Mallory took the stairs three at a time, hissing to the little man with the baseball bat, “Stay here.”

But he would
not
stay. He was right behind her when she passed through the open door. She held up the flat of one hand to tell him to stop, and then used her gun to point him back down the stairs. The gopher would not go, but his expression was not defiance. What was it?

Resolve
.

Alan Rains had resolved to stand by her.

Defeated, she moved toward the blackboard, where she read the line: GOOD MORNING, DETECTIVE MALLORY.

She turned her back on the slate to face the rectangle of ghost light shining through the open door in the scenery. There was no one on the stage. Another scratching sound called her attention back to the board, where the message had changed to say, I MISSED YOU.

Impossible.

Only seconds had passed, not time enough for the other message to be wiped away and this new one left in its place. There were no signs of erasure, no smears of chalk. And she was not a believer in Alma’s haunt.

Mallory walked up to the board. There was no give when she pushed the sides of the blackboard, no yield when she pulled on the wooden frame. Turning to the stage manager’s desk, she grabbed up a sheet of paper and slid it between the slate and the wood—and then slid it half way through the wall—the
false
wall—and it was ripped from her hand.

She stepped back.

“Took you long enough,” said the muffled voice of Axel Clayborne.

The slate revolved on a center pivot, turning round until one thick edge jutted out in a vertical line down the middle of the wide frame. And now she had a split view of the space behind the blackboard, a small, enclosed room, as narrow as the hidden staircase—but there were no stairs.

“Hel
lo!”
Smiling, Clayborne leaned through one side of the opening, propping his arms on the sill of his odd window. Small metal cylinders protruded from one closed hand.

Dowels? Yes. She saw drilled holes of matching width on an inside edge of the frame. The dowels, once dropped into their sockets, would keep the slate from moving until the chalk messages were changed.

So Alma Sutter was not crazy. And Mallory had already tired of this trick of spinning slate.

“If you’d like to join me,” said Clayborne, “just go back down the stairs, climb the ladder and push on a ceiling square, the one with a stain in the shape of— No? It’s
very
cozy back here.”

One hand rode on her hip to tell him that he should not annoy her one more time.

“Okay, have it your way.” The actor climbed out through one side of the opening to stand before her, not contrite, but a bit surprised to see her gun leveled at his gut.

“Can’t take a joke?” Clayborne turned to face the gopher. “I need a few minutes with Detective Mallory—
alone
.” He smiled again, so condescending, regarding the baseball bat held in the ready position for a head-slamming swing—and the one who held it—as
insignificant
threats.

Mallory lowered her gun and leaned down to the little man at her side. “Don’t hit him unless you really want to. Clayborne’s
harmless. . . .
You know the type.” She shot a quick glance at the movie star’s face, pleased to see him wince at this insult, this payback for the slight to her wingman.

The baseball bat dropped to the floor. The gopher’s shoulders slumped. His head ducked low.

Goodbye, Alan Rains.

It was Bugsy who scrambled off to quick-climb distant stairs. Between the hanging sandbags and loops of rope and cable, she caught a glimpse of him running along the high walkway toward the safety of his dressing room.

A door closed.

Axel Clayborne smugly regarded his handiwork on the blackboard. “Clever, isn’t it?”

“So you’re the ghostwriter. . . . I’m shocked,” she said, not at all shocked. No one on the squad had even bothered to place a bet against him.

The actor lightly slapped the blackboard. “When I was a kid, the old man who built this place was still alive. A bit of a practical joker—
and
a voyeur. Well, I figured out the trick. Caught him in the act. He swore me to secrecy, and then he wrote me a letter of introduction to a Hollywood producer.”

“You only
think
I’m listening.” Mallory holstered her gun.

“I can be miles more entertaining. Here’s the deal. I’ll answer all your questions—
if
you let the show go on tonight.”

An easy bargain. Permission had already been granted, but no one had told this actor that the politicians, the
amateurs
, were running the NYPD today.

“Deal.” She nodded at the chair behind the stage manager’s desk. “Sit!”

He pulled out the chair, saluted her and sat down.

“You lie to me—
one time
,” she said, “I’ll shut this play down for good.”

He rocked the chair on two back legs, grinning at her, so happy to comply. “First question?”

“Years back, when you were working in Rome, I know you went to prison for Dickie Wyatt’s drug bust. How did he get you to do his jail time? Did Wyatt have something on you?”

Clayborne lost his grin. The chair tilted back toward the wall, and he was clumsy when he righted it to save himself. “No, it was nothing like that. . . . Dickie told me he’d rather die than kick heroin in jail. . . . I believed him. So
I
went to jail.”

She recognized the sound of a true thing. And
now
she believed he had loved Dickie Wyatt. That man’s death was an open, bloody sore—something useful. “So when you came up with the ghostwriter scam, you called in that old favor.”

“No, I offered him a share of the profits. He would’ve made a—”

“But he turned down the money, didn’t he?” Yes, she was right. The actor would not meet her eyes. So Dickie Wyatt’s agent had been right to label her client as “
a stand-up guy
”—until it came time to pay off his debt to Clayborne. Now any question she had for this man would be a welcome change of subject, and she said, “Tell me how long you’ve been torturing Alma Sutter.”

“From the beginning. She was all wrong for the part.”

“I know you didn’t write your play during rehearsals. If I go looking for the copyright—”

“You’ll find it under my mother’s maiden name.”

“But you gave Dickie Wyatt all the credit, right? You told Peter Beck—”

“So I lied to Peter.” He raised his eyebrows to ask,
What of it?
“I couldn’t have him following me around, nipping at my heels. Too distracting. But Dickie was accustomed to taking abuse from neurotics. That’s a director’s job.”

“And what did you say to the Rinaldi twins? Did you tell them Wyatt was the one who ripped off their lives?” Mallory waited for a look of surprise. But the actor only found this funny, a punch line to a joke—on
her
. “You
knew
they were—”

“Psychos? Killers? Oh, yes. The boys
gave
me their story, and they’ll get a nice cut when I sell the film rights. Our contract was drawn up a year ago.” Grief forgotten, mercurial Clayborne was enjoying himself again. “At first, they tried to pitch me a screenplay. It was absolute crap—only bare bones of the massacre. Not enough for an eight-minute slasher film. The character of the invalid was
my
creation. So was the dialogue, the plot—everything. I only used that massacre as backstory for—”