‘You’re a. psychiatrist.’ Warwick spat out this last word as if it had a bad taste.
‘No, I’m not.’ Charles looked down at the card. ‘A few of those degrees are in psychology, but I’ve never been a practicing – ’
‘And now you’re going to tell me that Riker didn’t lie to me. Am I right – Doctor!’ Warwick spoke to the tabletop when he whispered, ‘I’m crazy not to believe him. Right again?’
‘I’ve never known Riker to lie.’ Charles softened his voice, not wanting the man to acquiesce because of some imagined threat. ‘I’m sure he wouldn’t – ’
‘More tricks.’ Warwick conquered his ingrained posture of compliance and sat up straight. His eyes darted from one bookshelf to another, then locked with those of his inquisitor. As the little man drew a deep breath, he seemed to be inhaling energy. His voice was stronger now. ‘You go back and tell Riker – ’ One tremulous finger rose from a closed fist, and he pointed it like a weapon. ‘You tell him – she’s alive!’
‘Who do you – ’
‘I’m not senile, if that’s what you’re thinking. First Markowitz, then – ’
‘Louis Markowitz?’
‘You think I’d forget that name? There’s nothing wrong with my memory. You tell that to Riker.’
‘I didn’t come here to examine you.’ When Charles smiled, as he did now, he knew it made him look like an escaped fool who had dodged his keeper. Such a silly face. Even the most paranoid of lunatics could not perceive him as a threat.
Warwick relaxed by slow degrees. ‘It’s been a long time, but I remember everything. She was a rare one. Most runaways are teenagers. The little ones like her, they usually go where they’re kicked – juvenile facilities, foster homes. You know how she survived the hunt? She was smarter than them. So smart.’
‘Them? The police?’
‘Markowitz and Riker. They staked out my store. What fools.’ Warwick pushed the thick spectacles up the bridge of his nose. ‘As if they could ever catch her.’
‘Who? What was her – ’
‘The little girl who loved westerns,’ he snapped, as if his interrogator should know this.
Charles called up an old photograph from an archive of eidetic memory. It was the picture that Louis Markowitz had carried in his wallet. Perfect recall included a tear in the protective plastic sleeve. ‘This child’s hair – was it long and wavy? Was it blond?’
‘And matted and dirty.’ Warwick nodded. ‘Her face was dirty, too.’ Eyes focused on some middle ground, he was also looking at a memory. ‘Her jeans were always rolled up in fat cuffs. Clothes never fit her – except for the running shoes. They were always spanking white. I think she stole a new pair every week. Markowitz said she was robbing New York City blind. But she never stole from me. She’d take a book off the shelf and put back the last one she borrowed.’ He smiled now, but not with happiness, more like defiance. ‘You see? I don’t forget anything.’
‘How long did this stakeout last?’
‘Off and on? Two months – and they couldn’t catch her.’
Charles recalled a different series of events: Louis had been enroute to his wife’s birthday party when he had just happened upon a strange child robbing a car. Rather than spend the night filling out paperwork, he had taken Kathy home to the party, and his wife had mistaken the baby felon for a present. What a lovely story – told so many times. Riker was not even mentioned in that version. And nothing had ever been said about stalking, hunting down a little girl over a period of months.
‘And what was your part in this, Mr Warwick? You just loaned her the books?’
‘No, no.’ The man was exasperated, perhaps still believing that this was a psychiatric interview, a test of trick questions. ‘The girl took the books, like she had a right to them. She’d take one, then bring it back. That’s how Markowitz figured out that she came from a small town.’
‘Pardon?’
‘Markowitz said, in her part of the world, my little store was probably the size of a public library. He said to me, „The kid brings the books back because her mother raised her right.“ Then that bastard confiscated her westerns, all but the last one.’
‘The book you traced for him?’
Warwick nodded. ‘I had to track down all the buyers at the estate sale where I got the others. He paid me, then put the book on the shelf – so she would find it. But she never did. I never saw her again. The last time Markowitz came in, he told me the little girl was dead. He scribbled a few words in the book, then left it behind.’
‘So you know what he wrote on the – ’
‘It was a love letter to a dead child. The words weren’t meant for you.’ Warwick sighed, then looked down at his hands. ‘He wanted me to believe she was dead, but it was just a trick. He was crying that day. I – almost believed him.’
‘Interesting pattern,’ said Charles. ‘The little girl and her books. She must have come in here quite a few times before you reported her to the police.’
‘I never did that. I never betrayed her.’ The bookseller said this with great pride, as if he had defeated yet another trap of the inquisition.
No, that was wrong.
Charles decided that the man’s pride stemmed from honoring some unspoken pact with a child, for he was certain there had been no conversation between the bookseller and young Kathy Mallory. ‘I bet you couldn’t get within three feet of her.’ He was working with Louis Markowitz’s description of the feral child raised as his own. ‘Edgy as a cat, wasn’t she?’
Every detail dropped into its proper slot as Charles arrived at an uncomfortable conclusion: Warwick had not wanted the little girl to be caught and locked away in some institution – like the one that had imprisoned him and probably drugged him every day so he would not pose problems for the staff. Warwick had not seen the comforts of adoption or foster care in Kathy Mallory’s future. No, this ex-mental patient had seen a kindred malady in a small child, something abnormal and dark. One sick mind had reached out to a -
Charles shook his head in a futile attempt to empty out this idea. Seeking some better reason that he could believe in, he leaned toward the bookseller. ‘Her clothes, her hair – you had to know she was homeless. But you never reported her. Why not?’
He saw the question in Warwick’s eyes, Would you buy a lie? And it was all Charles could do to keep from shouting, Hell, yes!
John Warwick reacted as if mere thoughts were screams. He ducked his head under some imagined blow. His bony shoulders were rising, and his chin disappeared into his shirt collar, a frightened turtle in retreat.
With deep apology in his voice, Charles leaned forward to lure the man back out with an easier question. ‘What sort of books did she like?’
The man’s neck slowly attenuated, eyes still wary, searching the room for hidden enemies. ‘Only westerns.’ Warwick almost smiled. ‘And only one writer.’ The agitation had abated, and he seemed merely tired as he leaned back in his chair. ‘All of Jake Swain’s work went out of print long ago – and for good reason. It was terrible writing. But she read those westerns over and over, the same eleven novels.’
‘Any idea why?’
‘Who knows?’ The bookseller shook his head. ‘The child was so small and skinny, so vulnerable – always alone. I suppose she read them for comfort. She always knew what would happen in her books.’ Warwick turned his face to the window on the street. ‘She never knew what might happen out there.’
CHAPTER 5
Sergeant Riker crossed the squad room of Special Crimes Unit, a haphazard arrangement of fifteen desks littered with deli bags, pizza boxes and men with guns. On the far side of the room, a wide glass panel gave him a look inside Lieutenant Coffey’s private office, where Mallory stood before the desk, her eyes cast down in the manner of a penitent schoolgirl.