After graduating from New York’s Fordham University, Mallard had set out for Los Angeles, attempting a career in television and screenwriting. After six long years of failure, he returned to New York City, supporting himself as a copywriter at a well-known publishing house. It was through connections there that he met Samuel Kellerman, an up-and-coming agent specializing in literary novels and stage plays. Soon afterward, Kellerman represented Mallard on a novel he’d written while in California. The book eventually sold, receiving wide critical acclaim but little commercial success.
Then, when he was thirty, largely due to Kellerman’s efforts, Mallard’s life had flared into the bright, dizzying heights of success. A play he had scripted appeared off-Broadway, where it was seen by a powerful producer and ultimately restaged at Broadway’s Cort Theatre. The play was a huge success, earning Mallard great sums and garnering the first of his many prestigious awards, including the Tony and New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award.
Mallard’s first marriage dissolved as a result of his sensationalized affair with the play’s leading lady, a Hollywood starlet rarely seen on Broadway. After a quick Las Vegas wedding, their marriage lasted only two years, also ending in divorce. Mallard would suffer two more failed marriages before his untimely and violent death at age sixty-one.
Except for his six years in Hollywood, Mallard had been a lifelong resident of New York City. He often appeared in the news for his flamboyant and opinionated political pursuits and passionate social activism.
Rizzo picked up the printout of the man’s biography.
“Pain in the ass, this guy was,” he thought, then tossed the paper back down on his desk.
Rizzo ran the details of the slaying through his mind again, committing them to memory. He grudgingly acknowledged the professional and thorough job Manhattan South and Major Case had done so far.
But results had been scant.
Rizzo had reviewed all the reports, DD-5s, and photographs. Everything about the case was eerily similar to Lauria’s, right down to the relative security of Mallard’s rear yard, thus making his home an unlikely target for a random break-in. All prints at the scene were accounted for, no physical evidence had been found. Rizzo dismissed a passing thought: how nice it would have been if a stray fiber from a blue raincoat had been found on Mallard’s body.
The playwright had been largely inactive in recent years. Rizzo learned from the file that Mallard had been involved in small venue revivals of his former works in other cities, even adapting two of his old plays for television specials. But An Atlanta Landscape represented his only original work in nearly a de cade. The task force had investigated those idle years but came up dry. They had interviewed Mallard’s ex-wives, a number of former girlfriends and all his poker buddies, as well as fellow writers and various literary hangers-on.
It had only led them back to their original theory, a random burglary gone awry.
Rizzo contemplated his advantage. He and Jackson could now simply discount any and all relationships Mallard might have had except those connecting him to Lauria and both writers to the play itself, the seemingly plagiarized version of Lauria’s A Solitary Vessel.
A distinct advantage if played correctly, but an advantage wrought with great peril.
Rizzo understood that Priscilla’s fears were grounded in cold, hard fact: it was a very dangerous game they were playing.
If a third murder were to occur, their roles in it would be hard to ascertain. Rizzo knew the procedural requirements were clear. He, as the senior detective in charge of the Lauria case, was under an absolute mandate to report the existence of any possible link between it and the Mallard murder. If anything went wrong with either case, he and Priscilla would be hard pressed if confronted for explanations.
In fact, the only vaguely exculpable excuse they could formulate was one of mere stupidity. Rizzo would have to look some boss straight in the eye and say, “Sorry, I just never saw the connection.”
He stood, switching off the desk lamp and stretching out his tired back muscles. He shook his disquieting thoughts away and squared the file off, then slipped it into the large, non-police issue manila folder.
Rizzo left the basement, quietly retiring to bed, a nervous excitement simmering beneath his fatigue.
He looked forward to the morning and what ever the new day would bring.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
BY NINE-FIFTEEN THURSDAY MORNING, Rizzo and Jackson were speeding toward the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel, on their way to Avery Mallard’s Manhattan home. Priscilla wove the gray Impala deftly through the thinning rush-hour traffic.
“So,” she said. “If we turn up a blue raincoat at Mallard’s, and the fiber is a match to the one found on Lauria, we caught us a murderer.”
“Yeah,” said Rizzo. “A dead murderer. We clear our case, but it’ll be next to impossible to stay involved with the Mallard murder. Manhattan will jump on this new angle and brush us off like crumbs on a table.”
“I guess,” she said with a shrug. “But then we’d be off this hook we’re hanging ourselves on. And at least we’d have solved the Lauria case. They couldn’t take that from us.”
“Big fuckin’ deal,” Rizzo said. “I want the Mallard case.”
Priscilla glanced at her partner. “So, maybe we’ll get lucky and not find a coat.”
“Yeah,” he grunted. “Maybe.”
After a moment, he spoke again.
“Here’s what we got, Cil, from me readin’ the case file. There was no unusual activity on Mallard’s financial resources. So it’s unlikely he hired a pro to kill Lauria. All the ex-wives come back clean. Believe it or not, Mallard was on good terms with all four of ’em, even that screwball actress. Anyway, none of that connects to Lauria. Way I see it, we got his agent, the producer of the play, and maybe the director. Long shot is that friendly neighbor a his that found the body. Him and Mallard were pretty buddy-buddy. Equal long shot, some other pal Mallard mighta had. Any one a those guys coulda helped Mallard kill Lauria, then later on killed Mallard, or maybe killed ’em both on his own for reasons unknown to us. But their alibis are good all around for the Mallard case, and they’ve all flown under the radar with Manhattan South. With the agent, his alibi covers both killings: he was in Paris. Manhattan South didn’t need to alibi anybody for the possible dates of the Lauria killing ’cause they weren’t working it as connected, never even heard a Lauria.”
“What are the alibis?” Priscilla asked.
Rizzo looked to the notes he held in his hands.
“Agent in Paris, producer havin’ an early dinner at the Marriott Marquis with his mistress, then in a room with her till midnight. Mallard got whacked about nine. The director was at the theater for the play’s matinee, then the regular evening show. The neighbor was home with his wife, went out for cigarettes ’bout nine-thirty, saw Mallard’s front door ajar, checked it out, found the body, called nine-one-one from his cell.”
“How’d they establish time of death?” she asked.
“M.E. got to the scene by ten-fifteen, no rigor mortis yet, so he ballparks it no earlier than eight-thirty. Neighbor claims he found the body nine-forty or so. The M.E. runs some more tests, puts time a death around nine p.m. Sunday, November second.”
Priscilla nodded. “So the only alibi we know of covering both killings is the agent’s, and the weakest alibi in the Mallard case is the neighbor’s.”
“Yes,” Rizzo said. “He coulda gone out for smokes, killed Mallard, set the scene up to look like a burglary, then called the cops. But what’s that got to do with Lauria?”