‘When did the dog die?’
And now the words came out in a gush of hysteria. ‘I don’t know! I haven’t seen Rosie for days. My husband took her out for a walk, and she never came back again. He said she was at the vet’s.’
‘But you called the vet and the dog wasn’t there, right?’
Pansy was nodding. Quiet now. Shock was doing its calming work.
Mallory turned away and left Hyde to clean up the damage, this puddle of a woman in the middle of her floor.
Edward Slope took his seat at the table. ‘Stop apologizing, Charles.’
‘But I only meant to leave a message on your office machine. I would never have dragged you away from your family on Christmas night.’
‘But I wasn’t with my family, Charles. I was catching up on a backlog of autopsies. Christmas is my busy season. So why the secrecy? Has the little brat asked you to break the law?’
Charles had never been able to win at poker. He didn’t have the face to run a bluff, or so Edward Slope had reminded him once a week. So how to begin this foray into lying, which was Mallory country and an uncharted place he had never been to?
‘I had a few words with Riker last night,’ said Charles. ‘I know Kathy witnessed a murder when she was a child.’ And that was true, wasn’t it? Riker’s reaction had confirmed it, certainly. And his reaction to discussing the matter with Edward Slope had suggested that Edward could tell him what Riker would not.
The doctor sat back in his chair and went through the stalling mechanics of removing his glasses and cleaning them. ‘So Riker told you about that?’
Charles nodded, and in that nod he told his first lie of the evening. He was practicing at Mallory’s religion of Everyone Lies.
Forgive me, Edward my friend, for my trespasses against thee.
Slope restored his glasses to the bridge of his nose. ‘When I asked Riker, point blank, if he had ever seen any of the films, he denied it. You haven’t mentioned this to anyone else, have you?’
‘No,’ said Charles, with the sudden realization that somehow he had just betrayed Riker. Forgive me, Riker, for I’m about to trespass some more. Charles settled the napkin on his lap, not wanting to meet the eyes of the man he could not beat at poker. ‘Riker wouldn’t go into any detail about the film.’ And that was true. No, it was not. It was deception. ‘I’m sure he wouldn’t. He’s not supposed to know the film existed. But apparently Riker did know about it. There’s no other way he could have known about the murder. I gather this is important, or he wouldn’t have hung himself out to dry that way.’
‘It’s very important.’ If he was right about the connection between Mallory and Justin, a child was at stake.
‘Markowitz swore to me that Riker had never seen the film. And we destroyed it that night. It wouldn’t make sense for him to tell Riker after the fact, not if you knew Markowitz’s style. Do you understand that, technically, this knowledge could make you an accessory?’
Charles nodded. Another lie. No, I don’t understand. And only a second has gone by and now I’ve somehow betrayed Markowitz too.
‘Markowitz would never have shown it to anyone else. This was Kathy’s history, and he protected it. He wouldn’t have risked the feds seeing Kathy on tape, interrogating her. He only showed it to me because he wanted to close out the case. He needed a positive identification based on a scar. The original wound was on the film. Did Riker give you any background on the case?’
‘Not much.’
‘The FBI came into Special Crimes Section when a body turned up in Manhattan. The remains had the trademark wounds of a pair of serial killers operating up and down the Eastern Seaboard. Markowitz turned up a lead on one of the killers, and the feds botched the arrest. They sent five men to arrest the suspect, and the man was killed in a shoot-out.’
‘Markowitz must have been furious.’
‘He was. He flushed the feds out of Special Crimes as though they were so much vermin. He took over the site of the shoot-out and recovered a cache of film. It took him a long time to go through all the reels. He did it himself. It was so brutal, he said he didn’t want to burn out his detectives. But really, he was a bit like Kathy, always keeping something back. All he shared with the others was a splice that showed the face of the second killer.
‘I know you’ve heard the story of how Markowitz took Kathy in. Well, he did arrest Kathy for breaking into a car. And Helen was adamant about keeping the child – that was all true. But the real reason he wouldn’t turn Kathy over to Juvenile Hall was because he recognized her. She’d been several years younger when the film was made. But who could forget that face?’
‘So she had seen the murder, and he wanted her as a material witness?’
‘No, they’d already found the location of the film set. Several years had gone by, and the site was cold. It was another four years before Riker made the arrest on the second man and killed him.’
‘But it was in the line of duty, wasn’t it?’
‘That was Riker’s story. One thing that worked in Riker’s favor at the hearing was that the FBI had killed the man’s accomplice during an arrest. Markowitz took the position that Riker had done the same thing it took five agents to do – no more, no less. And Markowitz swore under oath that he had been the only one to view the films. So LA couldn’t take it as a case of a cop cracking up and taking vengeance for the victims. And since Riker had killed the suspect with his fists and not his gun, Internal Affairs and the DA came to the conclusion that death was not premeditated, that it occurred while resisting arrest.’
‘That would seem reasonable.’
‘At the time, it did. I backed their conclusion. To my knowledge at the time, Markowitz was the only one who knew the personal connection of the film. So now it seems that Markowitz lied to me. Well that was typical. He wouldn’t have told me the truth if it made me an accessory after the fact. And he was probably feeling part of the blame for what Riker had done. You know, personal detachment is everything in police work.’ And Riker loved Kathy.
‘Kathy doesn’t know about the film. Markowitz wanted it that way. You can never tell her about this evening. That’s understood?’
‘Of course.’
‘Markowitz warned me, said I didn’t have to sit through the entire thing. He told me I’d regret it if I did. But I was so confident in my own professional detachment, I took it for a challenge. I had to view the film because Riker had made such a mess of the man’s face, Markowitz couldn’t identify the victim from the driver’s license photo, and there were no prints on file. He asked me to make the ID based on the scar from a wound the victim received in that film.’
‘Tell me about the film.’
‘After I tell you, you will wish I hadn’t. I guarantee that. Shall I go on?’
This was his last chance to be an honest man, the man Edward Slope thought he was dealing with.
‘Yes, go on.’
‘Do you know what a snuff film is?’
‘No.’
‘It’s a film of the torture and murder of a human being. A little something for the ultimate film buff – the freak. Most of the victims are children. Any child you see on the streets of New York can be turned into some kind of currency.’
Slope waved down a passing waiter to order a double scotch. He turned back to Charles. ‘I can’t do this sober. Are you sure you want to hear all the details?’
‘Quite sure.’
Not at all sure. I have nightmares enough. No. Go on. I deserve this.
‘When the film opened, the children, a boy and a girl, were asleep on the floor of a cage. It wasn’t a fancy production. It was shot in a warehouse with only one set. I believe the children were drugged. The little boy was just coming out of it. Maybe that’s why they took him first. The little girl wasn’t moving at all. It was Kathy, of course. You knew that.’