They were still playing ‘backup, no backup’ when Heller arrived with his kit and began to scrape the samples off the door. Riker was worn down to ‘okay, no backup’ when Heller left.
‘When do you figure to bag him?’
‘Maybe on Sunday.’
It figured that she would pick the day when God was resting, not looking – if she wasn’t lying to him again.
The cat was purring around Mallory’s legs as she holstered her gun. Mallory picked the cat up in her arms. Nose nuzzled her face, licking her skin with a pink sandpaper tongue, eyes closed slowly in the cat’s idea of a smile. Mallory walked to the door of the bathroom, held the cat out at arm’s length and dropped it on the tiles. The cat stood up and began to dance.
Riker whistled low. ‘Has he ever done that before?’
‘No.’
Kneeling down, she took the paws in her hands and put them firmly on the floor.
The cat purred at her, half closing its eyes again. She stood up, and now the cat’s eyes were open hurt as she was closing the door. What did I do wrong? asked a confusion of rounding eyes and jerking starts of the small head, the paws rising.
The door shut.
If only she had been a woman of standard intelligence and ambition. If only her countenance had not been the beautiful antithesis of his own clown’s face; if she had only been normal, he would have given her everything he had. But she was abnormal and deviant, and if she wanted it, he would give her everything he had.
He had known she wasn’t coming at only five minutes past the hour. Now he measured the passage of time by the ice melt in the silver bucket. The red wrapping on her gift looked pathetic to him now. Stupid box, ridiculous thing, sitting there all dressed up for a woman who didn’t care to open it. For an hour more, he stared at the door she would never knock on. And then, he was pulling on his coat and opening the front door, which he would not remember locking behind him, because he hadn’t. He passed through the halls and down the stairs and into the dark to walk and think.
The night was crisp and cold. To the north he could hear the bells of the convent on Bleecker Street, and to the west the bells of St Anthony’s. He was such a fool that he found the night romantic, though he had no one to share it with, and perhaps he never would.
Mallory was everything Riker said she was: no heart, no soft places he might reach. Of course she thought him a fool. Of course he was one. He always said the wrong thing. If only there were some aspect of her that was conventional, a bit of sure ground that he could understand.
The CD player slammed on his thigh from the deep pocket of his coat. He had thanked her for the gift, but never used it. Well, perhaps this bit of technology was the bridge to Mallory. He pulled it from his pocket, set the earplugs in place and pushed the play button. Music poured into the center of his skull and seemed to be coming from everywhere at once. It was wonderful. It was all new again, this music he had carried in his head since childhood.
And something new had been added to his homemade madness.
For a moment, he forgot to breathe as he listened to that sound that was not music, and neither car horn nor church bell. He knew it was Amanda’s footstep behind him, even before she came abreast of him. A delusion with audible footfalls. Her tread was too light and a bit off stride, an as yet imperfect imitation of a living woman. He turned away from her and turned the music off.
The footsteps vanished.
He kept his eyes other-way directed and focused his concentration on Mallory.
She knew who made the pencils fly. Perhaps she also knew the dynamics of his small telekinetic family in a way that he could not. Was it signs of abuse she recognized in Justin? Or, as Justin had said, something she saw in the boy that she did not like in herself? Or was it something simple that allowed her to see what he could not? Something simple – the absence of a heart?
‘Sometimes they can’t love back,’ Amanda said, keeping time now with his own footsteps. His delusion had a near human persistence. Amanda had come back to keep him company for a while. He looked down at her sad face, and fear of her turned into curiosity.
‘You weren’t loved back either, were you?’
‘No.’
‘And when you came to know this man, contempt killed what feelings you had for him. Am I right?’
‘Yes. But you will never have contempt for Mallory -it’s not the same. My contempt was for his weakness. She has a terrible strength that’s not quite in the normal scheme of things, and frightening sometimes, isn’t it? You’re lost, Charles. I was better off than you. It’s better to have a definite end to the loving.’
‘In the end, it was only the child you cared about.’
‘Yes.’
‘Why then, did you ask to have the child cut away from you?’
‘He lied to me.’
Her footsteps made less noise now, as she walked along beside a lonely man who cast one shadow for both of them. He had gone to no trouble to create her this time, and this should have worried him, but he was oddly glad of her company.
‘Do you know why she gave you my manuscript?’
‘So I could give it a thorough read, maybe find something of value to the investigation.’
‘You know she read every page before she gave it to you.’
‘Of course she did.’
‘It was the love of the child she couldn’t fathom. She couldn’t understand how I could want to build plans for a lifetime around the future of an unborn baby.’
‘But Mallory was a much loved child. Helen and Louis were devoted to her.’
‘Yes, after the damage had been done to her out on the street. What about Mallory’s own mother? How was a child so quick, so beautiful left wandering the streets? She was the child women pray for. How was she let go? If you’re still looking for the link to the boy, it might lie in her history. What do you really know about her early days?’
Charles sighed. ‘Mallory is an intensely private person. Her history was never open to discussion.’
‘If you could bend your mind outside the parameters of fact and logic, you might reach the conclusion that Mallory’s mother is dead, perhaps murdered.’
‘I think that’s a bit far-fetched, Amanda.’
‘Is it? She’s predicting violence in the Riccalo family. You see a link between her and the boy. They’ve both lost their mothers. Doesn’t it make you wonder? What sent her into the street, a small child on the run? What was she running from?’
‘Perhaps she was abused as a child?’
‘By her mother? No. She loved Helen on first sight. Someone taught her to trust women like Helen Markowitz the nurturer, healer of scraped knees, lover of children. Suppose Mallory saw her mother killed?’
‘Oh, this is absolute rot. There are no facts to support that line of reasoning. Next you’ll be telling me that Justin saw his mother die, and that’s the common bond, as though Mallory could read that in his mind.’
‘Maybe they read one another’s eyes. Don’t they both have the look of damage? Justin doesn’t behave much like a child, does he? He doesn’t have a child’s conversations. There’s another commonality. Mallory was the same way, wasn’t she?’
‘The purpose of creating you was to find out who killed you.’
‘Yes, but was that your idea? She only gave you my manuscript when she realized that once you had this intimate piece of me, you could do the succubus illusion.’
Could she be that convoluted? Mallory? Certainly. All those prompts about Malakhai? What else could that have been about? He’d been had.
Amanda nodded her understanding and walked ahead of him.
‘And what about you, Amanda?’ he called after her. ‘Who killed you? How could you be killed that way and why?’
‘He lied to me.’