‘No time to be announced – I’m late!’ yelled the large man in passing. ‘She’ll kill me if I’m any later.’ The words trailed behind the man as he ran past the occupied elevator and pushed through the side door and into the stairwell.
Arthur nodded his understanding at the closing stairwell door as he pocketed the twenty. He would not like to cross Miss Mallory either.
‘Oh, no. I killed her,’ said Justin.
‘She died of a heart attack,’ said Mallory. ‘I’ve seen the death certificate.’
‘Yes. I suppose you could say I scared her to death. Once she was weakened by the lack of medication, it wasn’t all that difficult. I did the sort of things that would make her seem crazy if she told anyone. She was hardly going to tell my father she saw things flying through the air. You’ve met my father. A bit intractable, wouldn’t you say?’
‘You are an interesting kid, I’ll give you that much, but this still sounds very tame as murders go.’
‘Oh, it wasn’t tame at all. She crawled from room to room following that bottle of worthless pills. I walked along beside her kicking the bottle out of her reach. She screamed, she cried. She was terrified. It was glorious. You should have seen her face as she was dying. She just could not believe this was happening to her.’
‘And what about her replacement, the first stepmother? I suppose you killed her too?’
‘Yes. I also made things float through the air for her. She never told anyone either. She thought she was going crazy. In my opinion, she was half crazy when I started to work on her.’
‘But there was nothing wrong with her heart.’
‘No. But with her brief stay in the psychiatric hospital, the suicide was quite believable. They should have had a child guard on that window, you know. It’s the law.’
‘According to the ME investigator’s reports, both women were alone when they died.’
‘School was in session both times. I’m afraid the Tanner School doesn’t keep very good track of children. They’re very progressive – attendance is on the honor system. But I don’t think anyone bothered to check. They just assumed I wasn’t in the apartment. They also assumed neither death was all that suspicious.’
Amanda was less the thing of solid stuff as she floated up the stairway beside him. ‘It’s three more flights. You should’ve taken the elevator, Charles.’
‘Now you tell me.’
His side hurt from the unaccustomed exertion. He could feel a searing in his lungs as though he had swallowed fire.
‘Did you keep any trophies, Justin? It’s just professional curiosity on my part. All the big names in serial killing kept trophies of every murder.’
‘I kept the bottle of doctored pills, and the tricks I used on my first stepmother.’
‘How did you get her to jump out the window?’
‘Well, she didn’t actually jump. I had the window open. It was a large window. Then I took the knife and ran the cord to follow the bars of the track lighting system that runs across the ceiling. I only had to maneuver her into line with the window and make her back up. When you see a knife floating toward you, you do tend to back up in a hurry. When she was at the window and off balance, I only had to run at her to give her a push in the direction she was going in. That was the tricky part. There was a moment when she understood what was happening to her, and she was reaching out to take me with her. There was a bit of a risk in that one.’
‘But your new stepmother told your father about the floating objects.’
‘Yes, and I blame myself for that. I should have spent more time with Sally, gotten to know her better. I had no idea she was one of those pathetic New Age freaks, a paranormal obsessive. But it’s working in my favor. Now she’s a documented hysteric.’
‘So you’re still planning to kill her.’
‘Well, of course. You can kiss that bitch goodbye. And now I’m going to kill you. It’s been fun, Mallory. Really it has.’
The boy was raising the gun.
‘Look, kid, the gun won’t fire,’ she said. ‘The safety is on.’
‘A revolver doesn’t have a safety. Good try, Mallory. What else have you got?’
‘Have you ever heard that old standby “Look, someone’s coming up behind you”?’
‘Once, I think. It was a television rerun from the seventies.’
Charles Butler was standing in the foyer on the far side of the room, which seemed miles wide to her now. Markowitz’s Colt was in his hand. His head was turned to the side and down as though he were distracted by someone or something unseen. What was wrong with him?
Charles, don’t fail me now.
‘So if I tell the guy behind you to shoot you, there won’t be any hard feelings?’
Charles was staring at her now, eyes wide, head shaking slowly from side to side.
Charles, don’t fail me.
The boy was smiling. ‘They’re your last words, Mallory. Say what you like.’
The barrel was rising, aiming at her face when she yelled, ‘Charles, shoot him!’
Charles raised the Colt and fired on the boy, not once, but pull after pull on the trigger, walking the length of the room on shock-slowed feet, firing and firing.
The boy’s head had turned quickly with the first click of the empty gun, and now he stared at the crazed giant with the wide eyes, sad eyes, advancing on him, clicking and clicking and clicking.
Mallory moved and the boy’s head snapped back. She watched his eyes making choices. He was opting for the larger threat. The barrel was turning to Charles as the cat ran out from under the couch and stepped lightly, delicately on its hind legs, dancing up to the gun. The boy stared. Mallory dived for the gun. It went off. The bullet spun the cat in a wicked turn, and blood splattered the rug.
Kipling’s body went limp as his eyes rolled back, lids closing, chin falling to his chest, mouth hanging open, all still now.
Before she and the boy hit the carpet, she had the gun in her hand.
‘Nice going…’ she said, pinning the boy neatly under one leg and looking up at Charles.
His gun hand dangled by his side, but his grip was tight and the trigger finger continued to spasm and click the misfires. And then the ammo box fell from Charles’s other hand, seal unbroken.
‘You’ve never loaded a gun, have you, Charles?’
‘No, no I never have.’
So he had gone up against the boy with no bullets in the gun, no cover, and no hesitation. And the empty gun had to be the explanation for the lack of hesitation. He couldn’t have fired so fast, not looking at a child in his sights. Civilians were not constructed that way. Charles was the soft and civilized type; such things were not done in his world. So, with his own peculiar courage and backward thinking, he had risked his life to draw fire and buy her time.
Now Riker and Martin were coming through the door, Martin first, Riker panting behind him, guns drawn. They stared at the hogtied Kipling and the boy pinned under Mallory.
Riker hunkered down beside her, panting from the run upstairs, fishing for his irons. In another moment the boy’s hands were cuffed behind his back.
‘How did you get here so fast?’ she said. It was an accusation.
‘Well, Charles caught my eye when he streaked by the car.’ Riker pulled a small device from one ear. ‘Oh, I’ve been listening in. I planted a highly illegal bug in the apartment the last time I was here. I’ve learned a lot from you, kid.’ And now he fingered the fallen drapes on the floor. ‘Very messy, Mallory. This is so unlike you.’
Martin holstered his gun. ‘The reception kept going in and out. Most of the time, all we could hear was this noise like a little engine. So Riker tells me it’s a cat snoring. He thinks I’ll buy anything.’
Riker nodded her attention toward Charles. ‘You think you could stop him from clicking that thing? It’s getting on my nerves.’