Riker grabbed the evidence bag and held it up to the attorney as he squeezed the stash of pills in a fist. ‘Toby says she drugged his wine.’
‘That was only fair!’ yelled Willy, all but confessing before the attorney could lean over and say, ‘Shut the hell up.’
‘I won’t!’ she said. ‘Toby was the one who strung me up in the Ramble. He tried to kill me.’
‘You’re lying,’ said Riker. ‘You couldn’t identify your kidnapper. And that’s backed up by the ER doc who examined you.’
Mallory, in the spirit of being helpful, pushed the doctor’s statement across the table. ‘He said the blow to the back of your head wiped out ten or fifteen minutes of memory. So you couldn’t—’
‘It had to be Toby!’ Willy’s voice was climbing into a high whine. ‘I know it wasn’t that creep Rolland Mann. He was a fucking amateur at killing. He’s dead, isn’t he? So it had to be Toby.’
The detectives looked at each other in mutual understanding of Willy logic: Their suspect had deduced this by process of lethal elimination.
‘So let’s recap,’ said Riker, addressing the only grown-up on the other side of the table. ‘Your client pushes one victim in front of a bus, and then she drugs another one. Tries to push that guy in front of a moving train. And the charge of resisting arrest brings us back to tossing the baby on the tracks. Maybe you saw the baby-tossing video? It’s on every TV channel.’
‘I do watch the news,’ said the lawyer. ‘So I know Detective Mallory here survived being run over by a train. I’m told there’s two feet of clearance between the rail bed and the—’
‘Don’t.’ Riker, with only this one syllable, promised the lawyer that it was worth his life to continue that thought. ‘When you toss a baby on the tracks, you can count on injury from the fall. And then there’s an expectation of sudden death!’ He pounded his fist on the table to punctuate those last two words and then turned his angry face to Willy. ‘The kid’s gonna be okay, but the mother’s suing you for every dime you’ll ever own.’ And now back to the lawyer once more. ‘So I hope you got paid up front, pal. We talked to Willy’s parents. They’re not laying out one dime for legal expenses. Her credit cards are maxed out, but she’s got about five grand in a paper sack. Will that do you?’
This was clearly a surprise to the lawyer. His smile of confidence faltered and failed. It was easy to read his face when he brightened up a little. Hey – five thousand dollars. The man stole a glance at his wristwatch, probably counting the money flying by per minute. ‘I propose a reasonable plea agreement for lesser charges.’
‘What?’ Riker was on his feet and leaning over the table, as though he meant to throttle the lawyer. His partner rested one light hand on his arm, and he settled back into his chair.
Mallory smiled pleasantly, as if the lawyer had said something sane. ‘I think we can work out a deal.’
On the other side of the looking glass, Jack Coffey shook his head in wonder. He had previously supposed that only in hell could Mallory play good cop to Riker’s bad cop.
A visiting VIP, District Attorney Walter Hamlin, was also seated in the front row of the watchers’ room. This distinguished man – in pop-eyed shock – leaned toward the one-way window. He listened to the intercom with rapt attention – while Mallory magnanimously offered to write off the murder of a deputy police commissioner as a traffic accident.
Score one for the smiling chief of detectives, who sat in the chair on Coffey’s right. The problem of Rolland Mann was neatly disposed of, and the department would escape the worst police corruption scandal in twenty years.
In the next room, Riker was throwing up his hands in a show of disgust. And when he quit the interrogation, he slammed the door behind him.
Now Coffey heard his remaining detective agree to throw in the attempted murder of Toby Wilder. ‘We’ll call it a misunderstanding,’ said Mallory. ‘Why not? The guy was stoned. He won’t remember anything.’
Willy’s lawyer nodded and smiled.
The district attorney in the watchers’ room turned to Jack Coffey. ‘Does Detective Mallory know I’m here – listening to this?’
‘Hell, yes,’ Chief Goddard answered for the lieutenant. ‘Walt, you know an ADA would never have the balls to sign off on this deal. That’s why I invited you.’
In the next room, Mallory was making it very clear that Willy would have to plead guilty to the unfortunate baby-tossing incident. ‘But we can knock that down to a misdemeanor.’
The defense lawyer leaned toward the nice detective to ask what she wanted in return.
Mallory proposed a trade of new murders for old. ‘Willy was only a kid when that wino died in the Ramble. I’m also interested in an assault on a boy from her school. If she tells me everything she knows, those old cases go to a judge in Family Court. She’ll get the same sentence as a juvenile offender.’
Riker entered the watchers’ room and stepped up to the glass. ‘Can you believe that lawyer? Willy got him out of the yellow pages. I’m guessing his biggest case was in traffic court. Zero experience in criminal law.’
This was the defense attorney every cop prayed for.
‘Detective,’ said DA Hamlin, calling for Riker’s attention. ‘Even if I put Mallory’s deal in writing, it’ll never stand up in court. Eight million New Yorkers are watching the baby-tossing film on television – right now. There isn’t a judge in town who won’t set aside the deal and hit Miss Fallon with the maximum sentence.’
Riker grinned. ‘Yeah, we’re counting on that.’
DA Hamlin was not done yet. ‘About that wino. If Miss Fallon confesses to a murder done as a juvenile, she’ll still do time in an adult facility – most likely the maximum time allowed by law. Do you think she fully understands this?’
‘No,’ said Riker. ‘But I’m only required to read Willy her rights. She’s a moron, and the lawyer isn’t much smarter. Look at that smile on the guy’s face. He thinks this is a good deal.’
When an hour had passed, the signed plea agreement was put on the table in the interrogation room. Mallory also laid out morgue photographs of the wino’s dead body savaged by three children in the Ramble. ‘I already know most of the details. I can even tell you how many times Agatha Sutton bit the victim. Aggy the Biter – isn’t that what you called her?’
Willy Fallon stared at the pictures. She was frozen, holding her breath – big eyes – as good as a guilty plea.
‘If you lie to me, Willy, just one lie, the deal is off, and I can’t help you anymore. You’ll rot in jail for the rest of your life.’
The lawyer nudged his client, prodding her into a nod.
And so it began, halting at first – and then with gusto.
The watchers in the next room sat in the dark – the only proper way to listen to a scary story. They heard the secondhand screams of a homeless man broken by rocks and torn by little teeth, bleeding and dying on the grass. And then came the long travail of Ernest Nadler. On days following the cruelty of stringing up the little boy by his wrists, his three torturers had returned to climb the hanging tree, to poke him with sticks – and other things – and the pain went on and on. Willy would not shut up. She was reliving all the torture, reveling in it – she crazy loved it.
FORTY-ONE
I sit in the garden and tell my story to Mr Polanski, the school handyman. ‘I think the dead wino is being erased,’ I say. ‘Like Poor Allison, the jumper.’