Was Mallory paying attention? No, she was looking down at the floor, finding a pile of discarded clothing miles more interesting.
‘This is where the perp assaulted Humphrey Bledsoe and bagged him,’ she said. ‘I need to know where Coco was hiding when this went down. If she saw the perp, maybe he saw her, too. A sadist could be looking for that kid.’ Mallory smiled, and he wished she would not, for this was hardly a happy smile, not at all friendly. ‘But you’re right to take her away from me, Charles. You’re so right.’ And her sarcasm said he was so wrong. ‘I only wanted to keep that kid alive. What was I thinking? I must be a sociopath.’
This last word was put out there to hang in the air between them like a dare. This was the way she had been characterized in Dr Kane’s psych evaluation for the NYPD. But Charles had been her champion in this matter, and he was her defender to this day, this moment. ‘I would never believe that of you.’ He would not – even if he knew it to be true.
She stepped closer to study his face. Was she waiting for the red bloom in his cheeks that killed all possibility of deception and every chance of winning at cards? Well, she would not see him blush, not today. He was telling the truth. He would stake his own heart on the hope that she might also have one.
Lieutenant Coffey listened as an uptown desk sergeant told him on the telephone, ‘The coma guy’s got a visitor.’ That young woman was being detained by the officer on hospital guard duty. ‘And you got another leak in your case.’
After the lieutenant thanked the man for this brand-new wound to his stomach lining, he ended the call with a slammed-down receiver. Without opening the door of his office, he yelled loud enough to be heard by the entire squad, ‘Who’s got a copy of the Daily!’ He turned to his window on the outer room to see more than a few hands go up; this was not a Wall Street Journal crowd.
Janos rose from his desk with a newspaper in hand. The man was built like a refrigerator that could walk and talk; the five o’clock shadow of his beard appeared at nine every morning; and he had the most brutal face that God ever gave a detective – all of which made him invaluable during interrogations. He entered the private office on cat’s feet and delicately placed his copy of the Daily News on his boss’s desk.
Jack Coffey turned to page nine, as directed by the desk sergeant of the Upper West Side precinct, and there he found a picture of the surviving victim from Central Park, eyes closed and posed in a hospital bed beneath the headline: Do You Know This Man?
‘And none of you guys caught this?’ Coffey looked up at his detective. ‘Does anybody on this squad read anything but the sports pages?’
Janos always politely considered his responses and delivered them softly. ‘I like the movie reviews.’
Though the Times had scooped the big story of the day, there was a reference to Central Park in this newspaper, too. But it was only a passing mention of the place where a dehydrated, naked man had been found. At least the photograph had been buried on the inside pages by an editor who favored rat-eaten little old ladies like Mrs Lanyard over unidentified coma patients.
‘Now our perp knows the guy’s alive,’ said Coffey.
Oh, and the article had thoughtfully provided the name and address of the hospital – so a killer would know where to go if he felt inclined to clean up this sloppy loose end of a living witness.
‘So Coco was hiding behind a door.’ Charles Butler had been restored to his rightful place in the universe. Mallory ruled. She always won.
‘No,’ she said. ‘The kid lied about the door.’
‘I doubt that. Her stories are for entertainment, not deception. Coco has no guile.’ Charles was staring at the raised section of floor on the other side of this spacious room. ‘Hello.’ He walked toward a short flight of steps leading up to that next level. ‘I knew something was off about this place. My parents had friends in this building. That’s a chimney wall. So you have to wonder . . . why would anyone wipe out a fireplace?’ That would be a real-estate sin in Manhattan. He climbed the stairs to stand on the higher floor, and Mallory joined him.
‘Coco was hiding here,’ he said, so confident of what he would find when he lifted the area rug to expose a handle set into the woodwork. ‘And she was behind a door – a door in the floor.’
Mallory leaned down to pull on the handle, lifting a square of wood to look into a dark hole. ‘This is where the bastard kept her.’ She ran one hand over the rough texture on the underside of the trapdoor. ‘He soundproofed it.’
‘It’s a pedophile’s dream house,’ said Charles. There would be no fear of a child’s rescue, not by the accidental discovery of a building handyman letting himself in to fix a broken pipe. ‘You couldn’t do this sort of renovation in any of the smaller rooms. And not over there by the windows. The raised floor would’ve overshot the sills. That’s why he had to take out the fireplace.’
He descended a short ladder into the secret room beneath the floor, where he had to hunch down to look around. ‘No light switch. At Coco’s age, lots of children are afraid of the dark, and fear makes a good control device. So you’ll excuse her if she left this frightening place out of her little narrative about a man who turned himself into a tree.’ By the light from the opening above, he could see stuffed toys and a bed that appeared to be unslept in. Thank you, God. Something crunched beneath his feet as the trapdoor was slowly closing.
‘Give me a minute,’ said Mallory, ‘then open it – just a crack.’
When Charles had finished his countdown, he lifted the square of wood by a few inches, and he was looking through the fringe of the area rug that once again covered this hiding place. The detective had closed the drapes and lit the only lamp. His side of the room was deep in shadow.
Mallory walked to the pile of clothes on the floor and stood in the place of a sadist, her eyes on the trapdoor. ‘Too dark. The perp didn’t see Coco.’
‘She probably didn’t see him, either, at least not in any detail.’ Charles climbed out and walked to the window, carrying a tiny pair of eyeglasses with one broken lens. ‘I found these on the floor – after I stepped on them.’ He pulled back a curtain for a few inches of light, the better to read the small print of the prescription on one stem. ‘If the glasses belong to Coco, she’s nearsighted.’
Through the slit in the drapes, he stared at the planetarium across the street. Poor eyesight explained why the child had mistaken the mock sun for the moon. She had not seen the orbiting planets – nor could she distinguish a green burlap bag from the leaves of trees. He looked down at the spectacles in his hand, regarding them as yet another wound to a little girl. ‘This is why Coco could only tell you about the coveralls and the dolly, nothing about the Hunger Artist’s face.’
‘But we’re the only ones who know that.’
And now the only evidence was gone. The broken eyeglasses had disappeared from his hand and entered the pocket of Mallory’s blazer. The late Louis Markowitz had once described his foster child as a world-class thief, born to steal, and the policeman had said this with some degree of pride, adding, ‘What a kid.’