Both faces turned to Nedda. They were almost twins in expressing the horror of publicity.
She shook her head and stood with them in cold silence, the natural state of their every reunion, until a movement in one of the many mirrors caught her eye. Nedda turned around to see her niece slowly coming down the grand staircase, hesitating now, eyes wide and wondering if it was safe yet. Bitty had never outgrown a child’s stature and a child’s issues, the cowering deference to her mother and her uncle. And yet, one day, brave as any knight, this tiny woman had marched into a hellhole and plucked Nedda out of it, soul and all.
„Hello, dear. Kiss, kiss,“ said Cleo in lieu of actual affection for her daughter. „I’ve decided that we ‘11 have a small dinner party tonight. I think I can arrange for the frog prince to come.“
Bitty’s feet were frozen in place on the last step, and one hand drifted to her heart, as if her mother had shot her there.
„Yes, dear,“ said Cleo. „Your beloved Charles Butler. Won’t that be nice!“
Bitty nodded meekly, then turned away from them and crept back up the stairs.
Lieutenant Coffey was enjoying a rare hour of calm. Two homicides had been closed out before noon, a banner day. There would have been three cases closed by now if Riker and Mallory had only cooperated. But they were both exhausted and badly in need of a rest. They had logged more overtime than anyone else on the squad. And this was how Jack Coffey rationalized his irrational behavior of the morning, allowing them three days to work a bogus case.
Red Winter, my ass.
When he stood up to stretch his legs, he saw the wadded balls of paper he had tossed on the floor. Sooner or later, he would have to uncrumple them. He gathered them up and smoothed the pages out across his desk. Next, he picked up Mallory’s report. He had the time to read it now, but his eyes could not move past the address for the crime scene. She had included the landmark credit with the formal name of the property. Miss Winter was not just another taxpayer with a common surname. She lived in Winter House.
The lieutenant stole guilty glances at the glowing computer screen only a few feet from his desk. The cold-case file would not be there, not a case dating back to the forties. Almost against his will, the chair slowly wheeled toward the computer workstation. He typed Red Winter’s name into the search engine and came up with a selection of several hundred Web sites. After weeding out the sellers of books, videotapes and memorabilia, he settled upon a site for true-crime junkies.
Colorful.
Bloodred skulls marked every selection on the menu, and the Winter House Massacre was listed near the end of this alphabet of bones. When the screen changed again, he was staring at the famous nude portrait of a child with long red hair, and he could see that she had been tall for her age, all out of proportion to the surrounding furniture. Civilians and cops who knew the case had always called her Red Winter. Here, her true name was given as Nedda, the same as the woman – a tall woman – who had stabbed Willy Roy Boyd. Riker had guessed her height at five ten or eleven, and Mallory had placed her age at seventy. Nedda would have been a twelve-year-old girl in the year that Red Winter had disappeared.
No, no, no!
It was easier to believe that he was being set up for an elaborate pratfall. And how many bets were being made on him this time?
Though his blinds were not drawn and the door was not closed, no one disturbed him. His people had sensed that he was best left alone as he sat there staring at a blank space on the wall. From time to time, the men would approach the glass of the goldfish bowl to see if the position of the boss’s body had changed any. And now Jack Coffey gave them a little thrill. His head moved slowly from side to side as his chair rolled back and away from the computer.
It seemed that two of his detectives had found the lost child, Red Winter, the most enduring mystery in the annals of NYPD. And he had only given them three days to expose Stick Man and break the case of the century.
Chapter 3
RIKER WAS TELLING HIS PARTNER A STORY TO DISTRACT HER from a favorite sport of near-death adventures in traffic, and so the tan sedan rolled safely down Madison Avenue.
Mallory pulled up to the curb. Legal parking spaces were impossible to come by in midtown, but bus stops like this one were plentiful. She cut the engine. „Why did they call him Stick Man?“
„The lead detective on the Winter House Massacre – he named the freak.“ Riker stepped out onto the sidewalk. „There’re only two or three cops who’d remember why he picked that name, and they’re in nursing homes.“
He paused to light a cigarette, striking three matches in the wind. Impatient, Mallory slammed her car door, and still he took his time, exhaling a cloud of smoke as he walked toward an office building at the middle of the block. „One of the Winter kids was holding a crayon drawing when they found him. It was a stick figure, no detail. You know the way kids draw, and this litde boy was only four years old. There was one small hole in the paper and some blood from the stab wound to his heart. So the lead detective – Fitzgerald was his name – he framed the kid’s picture and hung it up in the squad room. At first, only the cops on the case knew how important that drawing was.“
„So Fitzgerald thought the boy drew a portrait of his killer?“
„Yeah“ said Riker, „and, in a way, he did. There were thirty detectives assigned to the massacre. They worked it for a solid year, and they never had one lead to flesh out a suspect. You see? The kid’s drawing of a stick man fit the case. It hung on that wall for years. It drove them all nuts.“
He stopped and looked up at the sky, as if he gave a damn about the weather. He was wondering how much of the story he should hold back. In Mallory’s puppy days, when he was still allowed to call her Kathy, she had loved his grisly cop stories, the more blood the better – but never ghost stories. Eventually, he would have to tell her that Stick Man’s killings had begun in 1860.
And then she would have to shoot him.
„My grandfather didn’t work the case,“ said Riker, „but it was all he ever talked about.“ And it was all that Granddad had really cared about. The old man had made a science of ice-pick wounds that spanned a full century. But Mallory did not need to know that, not yet. And now that they had reached the address of Willy Roy Boyd’s attorney, the story hour was over.
The two detectives pushed through the glass doors of the rat maze, floor upon floor of lawyers’ offices stacked up to the moon. Riker flashed a badge at the security guard who wanted to stop them from using the penthouse elevator. They stepped inside a carpeted box paneled with mirrors and lit by a tiny crystal chandelier. It was a style that New Yorkers would call piss elegant. The elevator doors closed and they rode upward through the tower of law firms, aiming for the most expensive one. Riker was looking forward to this meeting, and he had no plans to restrain Mallory’s enthusiasm for payback.
They exited at the last stop and breezed on by a young woman at the reception desk, paying no attention to her as she called after them, asking if they had an appointment. The next woman to ask this question was a more formidable brunette, whose desk stood guard before a lawyer’s door. The secretary spoke only to Mallory, or, more accurately, to Mallory’s clothes, the silk T-shirt and tailored blazer, money on the hoof that blended well with the luxurious surroundings. The brunette made it clear that Riker’s suit really ought to have arrived on the delivery elevator at the rear.
Mallory’s clothes leaned over the desk and said, „We don’t need an appointment.“