“Mallory, that’s an Irish name, isn’t it?” Patrolman Ross asked Sergeant Kelly. The two policemen were walking along the quiet street toward their black and white squad car at the curb about a half block from the Mallory apartment.
“Sure it is,” the Sergeant said. “A good old Irish name which probably accounts for that kid’s imagination.” He shook his head. “But those weren’t imaginary tears.”
As the two men reached the car, they saw the light above the dashboard phone blinking. The sergeant lifted the receiver, pulled it through the open window on the driver’s side and said, “Sergeant Kelly, Car 219.”
“Sergeant, I’ve got a call for you on a civilian loop,” a police dispatcher said, “I’ll patch it through.” The connection was made and the voice said, “We’ve located Sergeant Kelly. Go ahead, Central...”
“Sergeant, this is Jim Taylor at the Philadelphia airport.”
Sergeant Kelly frowned at the phone, startled by the tension in the clerk’s voice. “Yes, what is it, Mr.—”
“Goddamn it, Sergeant, did you have some information that we didn’t? Did you know something about that—”
“Now hold on,” Sergeant Kelly said. “Just settle down. What are you trying to tell me?” He heard people shouting in the background, the sound almost drowning out Taylor’s voice. “Speak up, man! Speak up!”
“It’s down, I tell you. Almost before I hung up talking to you, we got the flash. Flight 61 disappeared from the Pittsburgh radar screen...”
“What does that mean, Taylor?”
“Flight 61 from Detroit to Philadelphia crashed about a minute later, ten miles north of Harrisburg.” Taylor’s voice suddenly rose sharply. “It broke up and burned, with everybody dead. While we were talking about it...”
Sergeant Kelly felt the sudden, uneven stroke of his heart. “Jesus, Mary and Joseph!” he said softly, and looked up through the autumn-bare trees to the lighted windows of the Mallory apartment.
Chapter Two
When it was subsequently confirmed that Daniel and Monica Mallory had died in the crash of Philadelphia-bound Flight 61 — along with crew members and sixty-seven other passengers including a senior United States congressman and a team of Japanese trade experts — the judicial and welfare systems of Pennsylvania moved into action, speedily and humanely, to provide for the Mallorys’ only child, four-year-old Jessica.
She was taken that same morning by a juvenile court departmental car to a living facility, where she was given breakfast and a brief medical examination. Then she was mildly sedated and put to bed in a ward with a dozen other youngsters waiting to be processed and assigned to foster homes throughout the city.
A social worker by the name of Elizabeth Scobey was assigned to prepare a case history on Jessica Mallory and her parents. Miss Scobey was a practical, no-nonsense person in her early forties, with short, shiny brown hair, a stocky figure that was nonetheless firm and quick and active. As a rule she wore pants suits of durable double-knit in subdued colors, and her bustling, nervous energy complimented her customary expression, which was one of amiable severity. Miss Scobey’s eyes were by far her best feature, warm and dark and lively, glinting on occasion with humor. She had never married. The one young man who had shown attention to her some years ago (he had been a clerk in the city amusement tax office) was drafted in the early days of the Vietnam War and married a Southern girl he’d met during his basic training in Georgia.
Perhaps because of this lack of a family outlet for her warm-hearted emotions (her black cat, Morticia, could only absorb a fraction of it), Miss Scobey had a limitless reservoir of love and sympathy for the orphans and the neglected children assigned to her custodial files.
Elizabeth Scobey worked in an office in the center of the city. From her desk she looked out on Philadelphia’s ornate and gingerbread City Hall with the figure of Benjamin Franklin perched on top. Past that gray and intricately structured edifice, she could see — on good days — the green expanse of Fairmount Park, and on superb days, with the wind coming off the river like sparkling wine, the black drives twisting through the park all the way to the great white and columned art museum.
On this crisp, late fall day, Miss Scobey sat at her desk studying the information she had obtained by a routine court order on Jessica Mallory and her parents. The couple had had a joint checking account at the Penn Central Bank, with a current balance of four hundred and sixty-seven dollars. In the Mallory apartment there were modest wardrobes of clothing, as well as toilet articles, toys, and children’s books, and a neat stack of unpaid bills which Miss Scobey found in a kitchen drawer — the usual dry cleaning, market and drugstore bills, and last month’s phone bill for fifty-odd dollars.
Miss Scobey had been impressed and touched by the bright travel posters. It seemed such a brave attempt to provide a sense of color and space in the modest apartment.
In the child’s room, a plank of unpainted wood had been placed across two filing cabinets to form a desk. On this makeshift desk were sheets of ruled notepaper covered with what she assumed to be the late Daniel Mallory’s handwriting, some sort of scientific work apparently, symbols and equations which meant nothing to Miss Scobey.
In one of the filing cabinets were two framed diplomas. Daniel Mallory had earned a degree in physics from the University of Pennsylvania, and his wife, Monica, née Griffith, a bachelor’s in classics studies from Bryn Mawr. Daniel had been twenty-eight at the time of his death, and Monica, twenty-six.
In the same drawer she found Jessica Mallory’s birth certificate. Clipped to it was a handwritten promissory note, dated five years earlier. It was an IOU made out to Monica Griffith in the amount of two thousand dollars and signed in a bold, flourishing script: Boniface.
The IOU was not notarized, so Boniface, whoever she or he might be, Miss Scobey reasoned, was someone Monica Griffith must have known and trusted — possibly a relative.
Miss Scobey tapped her pencil against the top of her desk, a rhythmic gesture of frustration. The puzzling thing about the case of Jessica Mallory was that there had been no response so far from friends or next of kin. Usually the exact opposite was true. A tragedy of this sort (and, of course, the crash had been covered by the newspapers and networks) usually lent a spurious but therapeutic celebrity status to children orphaned so cruelly and suddenly. In most cases the phone calls with offers of succor and support would start immediately. A grandparent in the Midwest. An aunt and uncle in Toledo. A cousin in the armed services. Bonds of blood were stronger than steel, Miss Scobey believed, and they were strongest in just such emergencies.
But not in the case, it would seem, of little Jessica. Two weeks had passed since the death of her parents, and she was now living with a foster family — fine, solid people named the Farrs. Yet in that two weeks, no one had called to inquire about Jessica. No one on the face of the earth seemed to care what might have happened to the little girl. And this not only puzzled Miss Scobey; it angered her. Because somebody should care.
What was fueling Miss Scobey’s impatience and exasperation in this particular case was her conviction that Jessica Mallory wasn’t alone in the world. On one of Miss Scobey’s visits to the Farr foster home, Jessica had indicated as much. Standing at the windows of her small, pretty bedroom, she had pointed out into the shadowy street. “I am waiting for him,” she had said quite clearly, but Miss Scobey’s practiced, tactful questions couldn’t elicit any more than this single, unexpected statement. “I am waiting for him...”