‘Answer me, you prick. You don’t want me to cut off your allowance again, do you?’
‘Angel, I have no idea what’s going on. It’s probably a prank. Some kid in the building.’
‘It’s another bank swindle, isn’t it? I thought I made it very clear what would happen if you tried this one more time. You won’t like being poor again, Harry.’
‘I haven’t done anything.’
She pulled a crumple of computer paper from her robe pocket and thrust it at him.
‘This was faxed yesterday. It’s an application for a credit card, and the form is addressed to you.’
‘I haven’t applied for any credit cards.’
‘Read it!’
He accepted the ball of paper and made a small production out of smoothing it over the surface of the bedside table.
Under the heading of pertinent information it read: First, tell us why you did it. Please print or type your confession in the space provided.
He picked up the sheet of paper, bringing it close to his eyes, examining the logo of the credit card company, which appeared at the top of the page.
The next line read: Does your wife know what you did? If so, we have provided additional space for her comments.
Now he stared at the short list of questions:
1. Why did you lie?
2. Would you do it again if we gave you the chance? He lowered the page and then looked up as Angel paced back and forth across the rug with barely contained fury.
‘And now this message on the building bulletin board!’ The words exploded from her mouth. ‘What does it mean?’ She looked down at the most recent message, clutched in her hand. ‘ “I have a witness.” A witness to what? Talk to me, Harry, or I’ll cut off your allowance, and then I’ll cut off your balls!’
Eric Franz was slow to answer his door. Betty Hyde could hear him walking toward the foyer, a shuffle of hard soles on marble. When the door did open, he was looking over her shoulder, as though just missing her with his eyes. A sheet of paper was wadded in his hand. His face was a mask. The room behind him was dark but for the constant glow of the computer’s ever-open eye.
‘If she knew you were digging into her past, it could end your friendship,’ said Rabbi David Kaplan.
‘I only want the connection between the boy and Mailory,’ said Charles Butler, The rabbi’s den was a place where books lived. They were not kept to the shelves, but quietly gathered in stacks on every surface of the room, perched in groups of agreeable subjects. A single leather-bound volume lay open on the desk, patiently awaiting the rabbi’s return to the interrupted business of scholarship.
‘Perhaps the connection between them is only a simple commonality,’ said the rabbi.
‘The difference in their backgrounds doesn’t leave room for much in common.’
‘All children have a commonality in innocence.’
‘I wouldn’t describe either of them as innocent. The boy talks like a forty-year-old man. And Mallory… is Mallory.’
‘Perhaps they share the innocence of good and evil.’
‘That’s the first time I’ve heard the word innocence so connected with evil.’
‘Take Helen’s view of Kathy. Helen could see nothing bad in the child. Helen always said no one had ever explained the rules to Kathy, and she was close to the truth. These concepts of good and evil, right and wrong, heaven and hell, what is that to a child on the street, living by wit and theft? When she first came to live with Louis and Helen, her behavior sometimes bordered on that of feral children raised apart from humans.’
‘What about the natural mother? Is it possible she abused her child? Perhaps that would explain a lot of the damage.’
‘Charles, I know nothing about the natural mother. Kathy has never once spoken about this woman.’
‘Suppose you had to speculate on her parents. Just based on what you know of her, what would you say?’
‘We assumed Kathy had been on the street for three or four years before Markowitz arrested her. She was a ten-year-old thief. She tried to lie her way to twelve, and Markowitz let her get away with eleven – but she stole that year.
‘Now we know she’d never been to a formal school. Helen had her evaluated at the Learning Center. But someone had taught her to read and write at a very early age. She also had an astonishing natural aptitude for mathematics. That was why Helen and Louis spent more than they could afford on private schools. They were afraid her gifts would wither in the public school system with one teacher to every fifty children.’
The rabbi went to the shelf and took a box from among the books. From it he withdrew papers. ‘This is a sample of Kathy’s handwriting at ten. It’s not the hand of a child. Someone took great care with her, and very early on.
‘And then Helen evaluated her religious education. One day we took her with us to meet with Father Barry at the parish in the neighborhood. It was that time of year when we joined together to feed and clothe the poor. When Kathy saw the crucifix above the altar, she automatically made the sign of the cross. Helen took this as an omen, and she gave the Christians equal time in Kathy’s spiritual guidance. So someone had taught the child to make the sign of the cross.
‘From only this, I may deduce that someone spent an enormous amount of time with her. She was not unwanted or ignored, not considered a burden to her mother, but the focus of attention. And that person enabled Kathy to love Helen at first sight. I like to believe she must have been rather like Helen Markowitz, this special someone. Can you see this woman abusing her child? Or allowing anyone else to do it? I can not. This woman I know nothing about, I remember her in my prayers.’
‘May I take that to mean you think the woman is dead?’
‘What else could separate such a woman from her child?’
‘I’m going to bring down the judge.’
She thought that might make his little eyes spin around.
Mallory stared at the ME investigator across the same table in the same coffee house where she had first hooked him. She had left him just enough time to let his own imagination do all the work for her, and then she had reeled him back in. That was the old man’s style, and it had worked well.
Tkank you, Markowitz.
‘Heller lives for his work, and there’s none better. If he knew you were walking evidence out of the crime scenes, he’d hunt you down and put a bullet in you. So you walk the evidence. You give it to a cop, and you’re one person removed from the crime of blackmail.’
‘You’ve got nothin’ solid, Mallory. If you did – ‘
‘I’ve got reports on three suicides with no notes left behind. That’s what tipped me. You were the ME investigator on all three scenes. Who did the notes implicate? What embarrassing details were in them? Suicides just love to unload before they cross over. I imagine you’ve carted out other souvenirs, maybe a few photographs of married men? Love letters? What else? In the case of the judge’s mother, you obstructed a homicide investigation. You kept quiet about evidence of murder. Palanski showed up because you called him in. You had to. No way you could hand him the old lady’s body. So now I’ve got the two of you in the same room of a dirty operation. But this time you covered up a murder.’
‘No, it was battery maybe, but not homicide. And the battery wasn’t all that recent. She had a split lip, but it had healed some. Maybe it was a day old. And there was a bruise on the side of her face, but it was at least two days old, and that didn’t kill her either. Her own doctor was there. You can ask him. She did die of natural causes.’
‘But the marks would’ve been embarrassing to the judge, right? So Palanski shows up, and he takes over and works the judge. Am I right?’