“Oh, God.”
“Markowitz usually went for the money motive. My father was a smart cop, but with Aubry as the primary target, he had nowhere to go with this case.”
She was very close to his side, speaking into his ear. “If he’d only known that Aubry was there by accident, he would’ve gone after the man with the profit motive to kill Peter Ariel, someone who knew your family connections.”
He opened his eyes. She was in front of him now, leaning down, her face close to his.
“Everything pointed to Koozeman,” she said. “The killers would have been jailed-if you’d only stepped out of my father’s way. And Sabra? She’s been strung out on the street all these years for nothing.”
His head lolled back, eyes rolled up to the ceiling. He felt as though he had been mortally wounded. As she had said, there was stabbing, and then there was stabbing.
“So, Quinn, would you call this a clear win?”
He nodded.
She sat on the floor beside him and laid down her sword. “You knew the link between the old murders and Dean Starr. How did you know he was one of the killers? Did Sabra tell you, or did you tell her?”
“I didn’t send that letter to Riker.”
“I never said you did, Quinn. I know who sent that letter. I figured that one out a long time ago. How did Sabra know about Dean Starr’s connection?”
“Sabra surfaces now and then. When she turns up, I give her walking-around money and a place to stay. I keep an apartment for her-she keeps losing the key. But there are times when she seems fairly rational. She visits old haunts, old friends. For a while, she’s almost herself, almost sane. But then in a few days, she’s back wandering the streets again, looking for-”
“Answer the question! How did she know about Dean Starr?”
“I’m trying to tell you she doesn’t exist in a vacuum. She has sources in the art community. Koozeman has no idea how much the gallery boys hate him-they talk about him incessantly. So she was in Godd’s Bar one night and heard something strange, just snatches of conversations among the gallery staff. Sabra thought Starr might be blackmailing Koozeman. She asked me to find out more about it.”
“And did you?”
“Yes. It only cost me a few hundred per gallery boy to get all of it. It didn’t really sound like blackmail. Starr was only pressuring Koozeman to make him into a hot artist. Starr said he wanted to use the same scheme he used for Peter Ariel. I never heard Koozeman’s end of that conversation.”
“Is that all you told her?”
“That’s all there was to it.”
“She was crazy, you knew that. You just let her draw her own conclusions?”
“Well, they were the right conclusions, weren’t they? I gave her whatever she asked of me.”
“And then you went down to the morgue to view the remains of the jumper, the homeless woman who died in Times Square. You thought Sabra had killed Starr and then killed herself, right?”
He nodded.
“But now you believe your sister killed them both, don’t you? Starr and Koozeman?”
“We never discussed the murders.”
“How convenient. Was that on your attorney’s advice? Were you worried about conspiracy charges?”
“Mallory, I have an idea you know that feeling of nothing left to lose. So does Sabra. She can’t depend on the police to finish it for her, can she? Look at the way they-”
“Are you telling me she’s not done? There’s another one on her list? You son of a bitch! Who is it? Andrew Bliss? Did you give her Andrew as a murder suspect? I told you his pathetic little confession was nothing-”
“What does it matter? Andrew is well away from harm on the roof of Bloomingdale’s.”
“Your own mother could make it up to that roof. Anyone who wants him can get at him.”
“But you have people watching him, right?”
“Yes, from the distance of the next roof and a street. If she goes near him with a weapon, she’ll be shot down. I selected that assault rifle to make a big hole. She won’t survive.”
The rain shower had ended. Charles wiped the lenses of the binoculars and looked again. He believed he was watching a religious ceremony-a baptism or purification rite. Andrew had been on his knees in fervent prayer for a long time. Then he had removed all his clothes.
Now he was standing in a circle of candles and pouring champagne over his head, letting the liquid run over his naked body. Andrew looked up at the mangled staircase twisting away from the roof door. He turned and stared at the storm cellar door of the second exit. The ground door was more than half covered by steel beams and large wooden crates. Andrew put his shoulder to a crate and tried to move it. No luck. He slid to the ground and banged his fist on the door handle like a tired child begging to be let back into the house. The door fell away under his hand, opening downward to expose a square of dull light.
Charles focussed on the opening in the roof. So the heavy material blocking half the door had never been an impediment. Mallory had been right. All this time, anyone who wanted Andrew could have gotten at him by simply opening the door inward.
Andrew was climbing down the rungs of an interior ladder, disappearing through the square of light and below the level of the roof, wearing nothing, only carrying a cellular phone.
Charles was thinking of the cellular phone he had left behind on the coffee table by the sleeping Riker. How foolish. That was the one thing he should have brought with him. Well, at least Andrew was moving slowly. Charles’s own roof had more floors. He would have to hurry.
When Charles emerged on the ground floor, he ran across the street to the fire exit Mallory had diagrammed on her bulletin board. He looked around in all directions. Andrew had not yet emerged.
He began to turn around at the sound of a squeaking wheel, but he was not fast enough. He felt the blow to the back of his head, and he was falling to the sidewalk as Andrew exited by the fire door, setting off the alarm.
Riker awakened under the cover of a toasty quilt. He looked to the clock on the end table by the couch. He was slow to register the fact that he had overslept-and there was no one watching over Andrew Bliss. He sat bolt upright.
“Charles?”
He knew there wouldn’t be a response. The apartment had an empty feel to it. He was alone.
Now he saw the sheet of paper on the coffee table. It was Charles’s note to say he had taken the tour of duty on the roof. But the rifle was still under the couch, and the cellular phone was lying on the table.
Charles would never make it as a cop.
Riker threw off the quilt, smashed the phone into his pocket and looked for his shoes. When his laces were tied, he put on some speed, gathering up his gun and the rifle and heading out the door.
The alarm for the department store continued to scream and wail. Cars drove by, drivers hazarding a quick look at the trio on the sidewalk and then driving on.
“Is he all right?” Quinn raised his voice to be heard above the alarm.
He knelt down beside Mallory as she ran her fingers over the back of Charles’s skull. Next she rolled the large man’s unconscious body onto his back and gently pulled back one eyelid. She moved her hand to create extremes of shadows and light. Satisfied with the reaction time of his pupils, she nodded. “He’ll be okay. It’s just a scalp wound. I’m guessing she came up behind him and hit him with a bottle.”
“You don’t know that Sabra did this.”
“I know Andrew didn’t do it. He couldn’t beat up a bouquet of flowers-not in the shape he’s in.”
She pulled out the antenna of her new cellular phone and punched in the number for Riker’s. “Riker? It’s Mallory… Yeah, I’m here now… How far away are you?… Fine.” Closing the antenna, she turned back to Quinn. “I want you to stay with Charles until Riker shows up.”
“Where are you going?”