‘No way to know. It’s a fact that a shrink was observing her for signs of paranoia during a brief hospital stay. She didn’t leave a suicide note. The ME investigator tried to do the work-up for a postmortem psychological autopsy. He said the family never discussed flying objects with him. There’s the file on the woman’s death. There are personal notes in there about the kid. The word spooky is mentioned twice. I’m only repeating the facts.’
There was a restrained violence to the words, a force being held in check. Though her anger was increasing in pent up energy, there were no signs in the cool mask of a face.
‘Well, the suicide rules out the insurance motive.’
‘No, Charles, in fact it doesn’t. Riccalo went to court to make them pay off. There was no suicide exclusion, and she had no psychiatric history at the time she took out the policy.’
‘And Robert Riccalo was the beneficiary.’
‘That’s a fact. The settlement was deposited into the boy’s trust.’
‘That sounds sinister.’
‘Let’s stick to the facts, Charles. The settlement barely covered the amount lost in bad investments the previous quarter. If that trust fund had dropped too low, it would have triggered a bank audit. He didn’t have much choice about depositing the money back into the trust. So, just at the right time, a heavily insured woman dies. I call that interesting.’
‘You have nothing to indicate foul play. As I understand it, there was no one in the house when it happened.’
‘That’s speculation. The department won’t check an alibi unless the case is written up as a homicide. If you stick to the facts, you have a logical case to fit any one of them. But, if instinct counts for nothing, how come I know the perp from the next victim, and you don’t?’
The air between them was chill to dangerous. Even Malakhai in his debunking days would have found her quite unnatural in the world. All the good logic of his good brain excused itself and went off to keep the cat company under the couch. Too late, he had come to believe in her as others might believe in magic.
‘Which one of them is doing it?’
‘Too bad I can’t tell you. I didn’t figure it out with logic, so it doesn’t count, does it?’
‘Which one? Who do you think it is.’
‘Oh no, Charles. I’ve seen the light. I’ve got religion. I’m only a cop, a detective. You’re the genius, and now that you have it trimmed down to logic and solid facts, the rest should be easy for you. Let me know if you ever work it out.’
‘But there’s a case to fit any of them. Logic – ’
‘Logic is your handicap, not mine. If logic is king, how come I know and you don’t? Have fun, Charles. Don’t forget to duck. Send postcards.’
She began unpacking new boxes of disks from the duffel bag.
‘You make it sound like I won’t be seeing you for a while.’
‘I’ve got things to do.’
He only turned his back for a moment, looking for something to say to her. When he turned back to face her, she was gone. The door to a back room was closing behind her, the cat was padding after her, and he was left to show himself out.
‘So, we’re still on for this evening, right?’ he called to her through the door to the back room.
Silence.
As he walked to the front door, he had to examine another set of facts. She had been right about the manuscript being autobiographical, certainly to the extent of the pregnancy and the dancing cat. And right about the meeting, the spontaneity of the act. He had closed the door behind him and was standing at the elevator when he thought to go back, to pound on her door and demand to know which one of them made the pencils fly.
She knew.
And only now he remembered the knife was still sitting on the coffee table. Why had she brought it back to the Rosens’ apartment? What had she been doing in the basement?
Robert Riccalo still managed to dominate the large room, though he had retreated behind the financial pages of his newspaper, which obscured all but his trouser legs and the green leather of his chair.
The chair was positioned like a throne and elevated above the cushions of the couch where his wife perched. Justin sat in a small wingback chair which might have been made with a child’s size in mind.
The rustle of Robert Riccalo’s newspaper could be heard above the television chatter of a commercial for fabric softener. Every grunt or sigh from the throne called Justin’s eyes up and away from his book. Each time he looked up, he would catch his stepmother staring at him, finding Justin a hundred times more interesting than the television set which played on to no one.
All three heads turned in the same direction when they heard the crash of glass in the next room. Robert Riccalo looked at his son, who scrunched down in the chair. Sally Riccalo was rigid as a board, sitting ramrod straight at the edge of the couch cushion, eyes fixed in the direction of the noise, her long thin nose pointing to it like a compass for things that went bump in the night.
Robert Riccalo was first into the dining room. Pieces of blue glass lay on the marble tiles. Four of the longest shards were lined up in a row pointing toward the room he had just left. Now he turned quickly at the sound coming from his wife, who stood behind him. It was from deep inside of her, a squeak that escaped. Her eyes fixed on the bits of broken glass.
Justin was last to enter the room as the first shard of glass was inching along the floor toward Sally Riccalo. She stood there paralyzed, unmoving. Now she broke formation and pointed at Justin. ‘It’s him, he’s doing this to me. He’s trying to kill me! It’s him!’ Her finger pointed at the boy, and Robert Riccalo turned to his son, thunder brewing in his eyes.
Justin fled the dining room and ran down the hall to his own room. He turned the lock and strained to move furniture across the door.
‘Justin.’ his father bellowed. ‘Justin.’ The yelling was› coming closer. ‘Justin!’ Almost at the door now. The doorknob moved as the lock was tried. He listened to the large man turning on his heel, footsteps fading off to get the key. Then Robert Riccalo was back and fitting a key into the lock.
Justin backed up to the far wall as the door cracked against the dresser and that heavy piece of furniture was being moved slowly, relentlessly out of his father’s way.
It was the five-year-old who caught her attention when he yelled in anger, ‘I want to see the body!’ and now Mallory wanted to see it too. She walked toward the group of pedestrians clotting the sidewalk in front of the next building. The boy kicked the leg of a woman who held him by one arm. The woman was of a different color, and by her uniform, a different piece of the planet earth, one closer to the ground than the highrise strata where the child dwelled.
‘I will not go inside!’ said the child, balling his tiny fists.
Now she noticed the long black coat of outstanding tailoring, even by Mallory’s standards. It was draped on the man who was pushing at the body with the tip of his umbrella.
‘Is he dead?’ asked the woman next to him, drawing back. ‘Is that why he smells?’
‘No,’ said another woman. ‘They all smell like that.’
Mallory pushed through the small group to see the umbrella successfully rolling the stiff body of a man. The eyes were closed as if in sleep, and there was no trauma to the grimy face, no trace of insult at the prodding umbrella, for he was dead. The bottle by his side, the spill of vomit, and the ragged clothing told his story. He had crawled into the bushes late at night and frozen to death, too far gone with booze to seek better shelter. Or perhaps he had choked to death in the vomit. The third shift doorman, whose job in life was to drive off the poor, had probably been sleeping on duty or reading his paper when the man had taken refuge from last night’s snow beneath the slim cover of a bush.