The child was looking up at Mallory, having ferreted out some authority in her. ‘Is the doorman gonna call the road kill wagon, like he did for the dog?’
‘What dog?’
In the glee of a really great conspiracy, the boy said, ‘I saw a dog murdered. It happened right there.’ He was pointing to the curb. ‘I was upstairs – ’
‘How far upstairs?’
The nanny stepped forward. ‘He lives on the tenth floor. He keeps going on about the dog, but I don’t know if he could have seen – ’
‘I did too see it! And I wasn’t on the tenth floor. She just says that so my parents won’t find out I was unsupervised,’ said the child, giving care to this last word, which was obviously a newly acquired tool to blackmail the nanny. That would explain why the nanny wouldn’t fight back. The kid had something on her.
‘I was standing in the hall on the third floor,’ he said. ‘I looked down, and the man was murdering the dog.’
‘How?’
‘He strangled it. The dog pulled on the leash, and I guess he didn’t like that. He lifted the dog up by the choke chain. He lifted it right off the ground, and the dog was kicking and kicking. And then it stopped moving. It was dead. He kicked the body into the street. I wanted to go see the body, but the doorman wouldn’t let me. He said he was waiting for the road kill truck.’
‘When was this?’
‘I don’t know.’
Mallory looked to the nanny now. ‘When did it happen?’
The nanny shrugged. ‘It never happened. He makes these things up.’
‘I don’t, I don’t!’ said the boy, with another well-placed kick to the woman’s leg.
‘Maybe I should talk to the doorman or his parents,’ said Mallory.
‘It was on the nineteenth,’ said the nanny, with instant recall. ‘The day it rained.’
But neither doorman nor boy had been able to describe the dog. And Mallory knew the world would be a better place without the clutter of eyewitnesses.
The door was open. Mallory shifted the bag of groceries to one hip and pulled out her gun. With the gun concealed by the bag, she pressed through the door and into the apartment.
The concierge was standing in the front room when she came through the foyer. Now all of the room was exposed and she could see Angel Kipling opening the closet door.
‘Looking for something?’
The concierge spun around.
‘Oh, Miss Mallory, pardon the intrusion, but Mrs Kipling was sure she heard a scream coming from this apartment.’
‘It must have been the cat,’ said Angel. ‘Yeah, that’s it. Had to be. You always keep him locked up in there?’
‘It’s a big bathroom. I don’t want him shedding on the Rosens’ furniture.’
When the concierge had excused himself and closed the door behind him, the woman turned on Mallory.
‘We got your message.’
‘What message?’
‘Don’t be cute. I saw the setup in there.’ Kipling nodded to the door of the den, which was wide open. ‘Most of us only have the one computer. All the harassment comes over the computer. It explains a lot. So what do you want? How much?’
‘To keep quiet?’ Too good to be true. Pity the cameras weren’t rolling, but whatever Angel gave her couldn’t be used against the husband. ‘I’d rather deal with your husband.’
‘You’re dealing with him. I’m the husband in this relationship.’
Advancing on Mallory, Angel Kipling opened her mouth to say more, but then she either lost her words or thought better of them. The woman backed up in the way of the cat when Mallory’s glare said, Enough. Kipling stiff-walked to the door and slammed it behind her.
Mallory walked into the kitchen and set down the grocery bag. She laid the gun alongside it on the counter and put the perishables in the refrigerator. The phone rang. She let it. She put the butter away, and closed the door on the second ring. She walked into the front room in her own time with no hurried motions. The cat was pawing at the glass on the aquarium, maddened by the swim of fish, unable to get at them.
‘I know just how you feel,’ said Mallory. On the fourth ring, she picked up the receiver. ‘Mallory.’
‘It’s me, Justin. It wasn’t me that made the pencil fly.’
‘What?’
‘It wasn’t me. Will you help me?’
‘You know the conditions. When you’re ready to tell me the truth, I’ll help you.’
She heard the child’s sudden intake of breath, and then the connection was broken abruptly.
Justin was forgotten in the next minute. Through the open door to the back room of the Rosens’ den, she could see the vase falling from the small table, bouncing on the plush carpet, strewing yellow roses and water. Damn cat.
But now she heard Nose mewling from the room behind her. She stared at the roses until she was distracted by the warning light from her computer system. Another fax was coming in.
She brought the fax up on her monitor. It was addressed to Judge Heart. The logo bore the name of a law journal, and the text was a request for permission to reprint one of the judge’s papers in an upcoming edition.
She fed the fax into the graphics file where she cut and pasted the logo and signature on to a clean page. And then she typed her own text: ‘The journal is considering a manuscript, and we want to cover ourselves for libel. There are only a few little things to clear up. Is it true that you beat your wife on a regular basis? Is it true that your mother died of a savage beating?’
Then she sat down to a quiet hour of computer terror, tailoring new messages for the building bulletin board.
‘Oh sweet Jesus,’ said Riker as he approached Mallory’s door. Was that what he thought it was?
It was the genuine article all right. He pressed the buzzer and pounded on the door. ‘Mallory! You in there?’
When she opened the door, he grinned. Mallory would never know the relief that was washing through his system, shutting down all the reflexes that would have broken in the door if she hadn’t been quick enough to answer it.
He pointed to the large scrawled X on her front door. The marking could only be blood. They could both tell catsup from death.
‘Nice touch, Mallory,’ said Riker, walking past her and heading toward the phone on the table by the door. ‘A little ostentatious, but I like it. The perp knows your name, and where you live. That wasn’t enough? You thought he might lose his way?’
‘Definitely a squirrel,’ was all she said, still staring at the X.
‘Now let’s have another little talk about your pet theory. This guy’s stalking you. It doesn’t square with a frightened perp who kills in a panic and runs away. It’s a different game.’
‘Maybe it is. Or maybe somebody’s working with him?’
‘Okay. Two of the suspects are married. Say one of the wives is a different type of personality. More like yours. Either she’s a ballsy monster in her own right – ’
‘Or she does whatever she’s told.’
‘Still an open game, huh? Or maybe you’re shaking out too many trees. You had to scare all three of them? It never occurred to you someone else might come after you, maybe with a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against the city?’ Or a weapon. He looked back to the door. ‘How long do you think it’s been there?’
‘It wasn’t there an hour ago when I got in.’
Riker was on the phone now, saying, ‘Ask Heller if he can get down here. Maybe we’ll get lucky. If the blood is human, it might be his.’ He put down the phone and turned to Mallory. ‘Time for backup, kid.’
‘Don’t call me kid. And I’m the low budget case, remember?’
‘You can’t stay here alone any more.’
‘I don’t have that high an opinion of the perp. Look at this.’ She pointed to the center of the bloody X on the door. ‘Feathers. Our fearless perp murdered a bird. So no backup. I’m not letting anybody screw this up for me.’