The cop called Mallory pulled a notebook from the back pocket of her superb designer jeans. Pen to the open page, her words were frosty when she said, ‘So, Miss Fallon, now that you’re awake—’
‘You bitch! You cunt!’
‘—can you think of anyone who might want you dead?’
‘I can make you wish you were never born!’
The man pulled back Mallory’s blazer to expose a gun in a shoulder holster. ‘My partner can shoot you,’ he said. ‘She wins. Now answer the damn question.’
The blonde seemed almost bored when she asked again, ‘Who wants you dead?’
‘Tough one, huh?’ The man smiled. ‘Just give us your top ten.’
The patient recited an automatic response, a phrase oft repeated on the occasions of drunk driving and possession of recreational drugs. When she was done, the detectives could only stare at her, and the uniformed officer said, ‘Huh?’ This was the first time these words had elicited any surprise from the police.
Willy raised herself up on one elbow. ‘Didn’t you hear me, you morons? I’m invoking my right to remain silent. No more questions till my lawyer shows up.’
The male detective answered his cell phone, said ‘Yeah?’ and then turned to his partner. ‘Heller’s got something.’
The detectives quit the room, trailed out the door by the cop in uniform.
Well, that was easy.
Willy reached for the device that hung from her bedstead. So familiar from her days in drug-rehab facilities, this was a remote control for running nurses until they dropped. Oh, but first she must call a lawyer. Yes, that was rule one, impressed upon her when she was child – when her parents still cared if she lived or died.
What the hell was the name of that stupid assistant district attorney? Had she ever called him by his right name? No. When she was thirteen years old, she had alternated between Bowtie Boy and You Jerk.
TWELVE
Phoebe and I are always the first ones into the dining hall. When the doors open, we run like crazy so we can grab chairs at the end of a corner table, a safe place with two walls at our backs. We call it the Fox Hole. Everyone else calls it the Losers’ Table. Even losers new to the school know to come here. They see kids in glasses or braces, the lumpy, shapeless ones and the pencil-shaped uncool, and every loser says to himself – These are my people.
Toby Wilder walks in. Phoebe’s eyes shine. And there are other girls with shiny eyes, here and there, all around the room. He definitely has power over women – but he doesn’t care. Toby sits down to lunch in his Fortress of Silence. Everyone wants to hang with this kid, but no one bothers him. Phoebe and I watch him from the Fox Hole. We all know our places.
—Ernest Nadler
The private office of the man who ran Crime Scene Unit was a cluttered repository of weird dead things in glass jars and catalogues of arcane knowledge. Riker and Mallory had been kept waiting – and wondering how much trouble they were in – and how were they going to dig their way out?
Heller lumbered into his office and glared at each detective in turn. Sizing their necks for nooses? No hellos were offered. He opened a desk drawer and pulled out a photograph of two holes in tree bark. ‘This is what we started out with. Screw holes in trees . . . after we read about the trees in the newspaper.’
Apparently all was not forgiven. Riker turned his head toward the sound of squeaky wheels. The new hire, CSI John Pollard, entered the room, pushing a hand truck that fit Coco’s loose description of a delivery man’s dolly. The long struts of the handle extended up from a square of metal between two wheels. A large cardboard carton sat on this low platform, held in place by buckled straps.
‘That box holds a simulation of the murder kit,’ said Heller. ‘My guy’s the same weight as the heaviest victim. John, sit on the box.’ The CSI perched tailor-fashion on top of the carton, and his boss secured him to the dolly with straps. ‘Now you got a rolling weight of just under two hundred pounds.’
Riker eyed the hand truck with its load of box and man. ‘Could a woman move that thing?’
‘One way to find out.’ Heller turned to Mallory. ‘Give it a shot.’ And then he walked out the door, unconcerned that this might give her a hernia.
She tipped back the hand truck and wheeled the carton with the ride-along CSI out of the office and down the hall. If this caused her any strain, Riker saw no sign of it. They entered a room of bare walls and a clean, steel table. This was a thinking-man’s lab with no visual distractions – and no noise. Heller could gut detectives in here all day long, and no one would hear the screams.
John Pollard, freed from his bindings, began to unload the carton, and Riker shook his head – no, no, no! – as a jumble of equipment accumulated on the long table: a bag of screws, a cordless drill, a metal plate, a socket wrench, a pulley – and a winch? Attached to the winch cable was a heavy-duty hook used for towing cars and trailers. Two battery leads extended from its back end, and now – Christ Almighty – a car battery was set on the table. ‘What’s with all this crap? Our perp used a rope to hang the sacks. We gave it to you. We even saved you the knots.’
CSI Pollard leaned down to retrieve a bagged coil from the carton. ‘This is one of the ropes from the crime scenes. But the Hunger Artist used a winch cable to lift those bodies into the trees.’
Heller laid a photograph on the table. It was a close-up shot of a branch. ‘You see those marks? Those are imprints from a chain used to hang this.’ He picked up an open-sided pulley. ‘Your perp threaded one of these with a winch cable.’
John Pollard rested one hand on the winch. ‘This model can pull a rolling weight of five thousand pounds – cars, boats. It wasn’t designed to lift anything, but we tested this one in the park.’ He touched the two red battery leads. ‘These hook up to any twelve-volt.’ He nodded to the car battery at the other end of the table. ‘I’m guessing the Hunger Artist would pick the lightest brand. That one weighs thirty-five pounds.’
Mallory folded her arms, clearly not buying any of this. ‘There’s no good reason why a perp would make this so complicated.’
‘I don’t care about why,’ said Heller. ‘We’re telling you how he did it.’ He bent down to the carton, pulled out a six-inch length of branch in a clear plastic bag. ‘Here’s the damn tree, Mallory. Look at it. Chain-link impressions – just what you’d expect from holding dead weight. No sign of burn or drag. The rope only held the sack in place. It didn’t pull anything over this branch. A pulley and a winch lifted the body straight up. That’s the only scenario the evidence can support.’
‘The Hunger Artist put a lot of thought into this,’ said CSI Pollard. ‘In fact, he over thought everything, every possible problem. In all three trees, the sacks were tied off on a high branch. If this guy hauled the victims up with a rope and used his own body as a counterweight, he couldn’t even climb the—’
‘So that’s where the winch comes in,’ said Riker. A second rope would have neatly solved the problem, but he only wanted to end the windy lecture – before Mallory did.
‘That’s right,’ said Pollard in a tone reserved for rewarding small children and pissing off homicide detectives.