‘My fault, I left in rather a hurry. You didn’t by any chance pull that knife out of the target, did you?’
She nodded.
Charles stared down at the knife and forgot to ask what had brought her to the basement, so great was his surprise. It was the wrong knife of course. All the blades that came from the interior of the target were partial blades without points, and fixed to the mechanism. They could be pushed back into the compartments but not drawn out, and not with a full blade and a point.
When he had explained it to Mallory, she asked, ‘Could anyone else have been in the basement with you and Justin?’
‘Well, it’s possible, but I doubt it.’
‘Did you tell the parents what happened in the basement?’
‘Yes, of course. I called them from the office. It took me forty minutes to track them down to a cocktail party. The child had been in trauma. They had a right to know he was upset.’
‘Well, you also left the basement door open. Has the boy had time to go back and change the knives, the boy or one of the parents?’
‘But the front door of the building wasn’t unlocked. It’s self – ’
‘And we both know that a kid can bypass that security. How tough do you think it would be for an adult?’
‘I just can’t picture one of them – ’
‘Easier to picture that scenario than a knife flying through the air on its own. Someone has gone to some trouble here, and this is quite an escalation from flying pencils. This business has got to be cleaned up, and it’s up to you. I’ve got my hands full with a murderer.’
‘You truly believe someone in the Riccalo family is going to get hurt?’
‘Oh, sure. It’s coming. Count on it.’
‘There’s no supportable argument for that.’
‘So?’
So, when did logic ever interfere with her train of thought? It was her method first to settle upon a target hypothesis and then to move toward it with great velocity, and let nothing get between her and it.
An eye-blink ago, the space by Mallory’s feet had been empty, and now it was full of cat. Nose was picking up her bad habits.
‘Are you still planning to wrap up Amanda’s death by the twenty-sixth?’
She nodded. ‘If I don’t move on it now, I’ll lose him. If I string him out too far, he might get to a lawyer before I can nail him.’
‘Lucky for you, all three suspects are spending the holidays in town.’
‘If one of them had left town, I would’ve crossed him off the list.’
‘But logically – ’
‘Logic only works on paper.’
‘Jack Coffey seems to think – ’
‘You talked to Coffey? You didn’t tell him about the novel, did you?’
‘No. Why didn’t you tell him? Why all the secrecy? You work with these people.’ No, wait, fool. She doesn’t. She works alone.
‘A cop is leaking information. I’m not taking any more chances.’
‘But you’re taking terrible chances. Suppose you’ve underestimated the murderer. Coffey says you underestimate every – ’
Mallory’s posture was ramrod straight. Her chin lifted only a little.
‘I know this man. He cleaned that apartment over and over again. He cleaned things he couldn’t have touched. He had to be absolutely sure he wouldn’t miss anything. And so he can never be sure he didn’t miss something. He’s the only one who can tie me to Amanda Bosch, because he’s the only one who knows she’s dead, and that I was mistaken for her. He wants to run, but he can’t. He figures I know something, but he doesn’t know how much. It’s driving him crazy, me being here. Every message I leave on the computer puts him closer to the edge. He can’t leave. He was my prisoner the day I moved into this condo. He’s waiting for me to come and get him. Every knock on his front door is the end for him. When he can’t stand it any more, when he snaps, he’ll come to me. And I will pick that moment.’
For the duration of her soliloquy, he could swear she never blinked her eyes. There was an edge to her voice. It was the sort of edge fools like himself were prone to falling off of, crashing as they fell, and proximity made him nervous.
‘Jack Coffey’s right, you know.’
Nose locked eyes with him as though asking how he could have said such a thing out loud.
‘Coffey is?’
‘Well, yes, I think he is right about a few things.’
The cat looked away, giving him up for dead.
‘And I’m wrong?’
The measured weight of her words also carried the second question: Whose side are you on? For it would always be that way with her, this demand to choose up sides – her side versus the balance of the planet.
‘Mallory, if you string out all the facts, just the bare facts, they don’t amount to much of a portrait, certainly not what you’ve extrapolated. You can’t bet your life on it.’
It was Nose who picked up the warning signs first, with an animal’s radar for the impending storm. He bristled and crept under the couch. And Charles was suddenly reminded of the old man in the park quoting from Revelations – warnings of earthquake, the dark of the sun.
The long red fingernails disappeared into the duffel bag on the coffee table and emerged again with a small bundle of printouts sectioned off with paper clips. She selected one clipped bundle of sheets and held it up to him.
‘Okay, Charles. Let’s take a look at your own little problem with the flying objects.’ The light sheaf of papers hit the coffee table with real force. Her face was rigid.
‘These are the facts - my contribution to the partnership. Two women died. Two insurance companies paid off. A third woman is frightened, or at least she acts that way. The kid’s trust fund is down by a full third. The father is the executor of the trust. You might assume he just made bad investments because his own portfolio and accounts are also depleted, but that would be supposition, and I’m sticking to the facts. The stepmother is a computer programmer with a financial background. She has a FAX origin number, access to the executor’s signature and documents. She knew Robert Riccalo for ten years before she married him. Per your own notes, nothing flies unless the three of them are in the room. A pencil flew at the stepmother. Now it’s easiest to make the pencil fly to the person pulling the thread, but I made it fly to you, didn’t I?’
Her voice was entirely too civilized, prompting the cat to stick its head out from under the couch.
Where was all this background information coming from? As quickly as he framed that question, he filed it away among all the other unspoken, unanswered questions which were suspended from the rafters of his brain like bats sleeping in the dark. When she got information for him, he had ceased to ask where she got it, and he tried not to speculate on the source, setting his ethics adrift – becoming more like Markowitz.
Another printout hit the coffee table with a hard slap. The cat was gone again.
‘The boy used to keep normal school hours. He had one after-school program to fill out the parent workdays,’ she said. ‘Now his hours are longer at the Tanner School. He sometimes goes six days a week without eating a single meal at home. The new stepmother arranged that. And Justin was right about all the wives being copies of one another. They all favored extended after-school programs. None of them wanted the kid around. The kid’s trust fund is down, and Dad’s in a hole. The new stepmother is top-heavy with insurance from her job. The natural mother had a history of heart problems. The suicidal stepmother had a brief psychiatric history. These are facts.’
‘I suppose the one with the psychiatric history saw things flying through the air?’