The Chalk Girl

thought, for she was a woman who prided herself on good horse sense.

‘I can assure you,’ said Charles, ‘Williams children are blood relations to their parents. It’s a problem of two missing chromosomes, not magic. She’s merely a little girl, and they never would’ve found her if not for you. I hear you also saved Coco from a pedophile.’ He leaned forward to cover her hand with his. ‘You did a wonderful thing today.’

This did nothing to brighten her mood. She turned in her chair to stare in the direction of the child’s room down the hall, as if she could see what lay beyond walls and a wooden door. ‘You gotta wonder if fairy stories began with kids like that one.’

‘An interesting idea.’ And now Charles Butler was newly intrigued with all things regarding fairies – or that was the excuse he offered when he invited her to stay with him until she felt right with the world. And did she see through this ruse? Well, of course – yet she stayed. The hour was late when Mrs Ortega told him the final fairy tale handed down through the Irish side of her family, and then a car service was summoned to take the lady home.

Charles never heard the door open and close. It was thirst that had awakened him in the small hours. He came to the end of the hallway and came fully awake, surprised to see that a wingback chair had been moved into the foyer, where it now faced the only entry to his apartment. By the dim light from the hall, he approached to find Mallory asleep in the chair.

Though he had known her for years, he could not set eyes on her without loosing a flock of crazed butterflies in his chest cavity. And this happiness of the moment coexisted with pain, the concomitant symptoms of a one- sided love affair. He was a realist on this matter. In the aftermath of Mrs Ortega’s night of fairy tales, he borrowed one from his own days in the nursery, and he substituted young Beauty’s Beast with himself, a hapless man with the face of a clown.

He reached out to pull the chain of a nearby floor lamp. It came to light in bright-colored stains of Tiffany glass, and now he saw the revolver that lay across Mallory’s lap. According to Riker, the rest of the force carried clip-loaded Glocks, and it was the detective’s theory that his partner favored the old .357 Smith and Wesson because it was scary in a way that a semi-automatic never could be. It was a damn cannon of a gun, so Riker said, and Charles agreed.

Her fingers were loosely closed around it so that she might shoot the first person through the door. He listened to her steady breathing, the sound of deepest sleep, and he thought to gently lift the weapon from her hand – just as a safety precaution. Her grip tightened, and he promptly gave up on this idea, so startled was he to be looking down the barrel of the gun.

And then her eyes opened.

She lowered the revolver and fell back into sleep. And Charles thought to breathe once more.

Miles away, another woman was awakening, but she could not open her eyes. They were taped shut, as was her mouth. Wilhelmina Fallon could hear nothing, not the rumbling of her empty stomach or any sounds that might help to identify her place in the world. And how long had she slept? Was it day or night? She ceased to strain against the bonds of hands and feet. The only other tactile sensation was the feel of rough material against her naked skin. Her body’s lack of hard support fueled an idea that she was suspended in space – that she might drop to earth at any moment, and this image chained back to an old memory of Ernest Nadler.

Oh, no. Oh, please no.

If she could have screamed, she would have.

This is the Ramble! The Ramble! The Ramble!

SIX

On the way home from school, I quote Phoebe a line from a comic book. ‘If I can defeat my demons, I can be the hero of my own life.’

And my father will love me again.

Phoebe thinks my comic-book philosophy will be the death of me. She says, ‘Remember Poor Allison.’

‘The jumper?’

And Phoebe says, ‘Maybe the girl thought she could fly.’

—Ernest Nadler

Privileged New Yorkers had high windows in the tallest buildings facing Central Park. Those who were still awake could see trees lighting up in a moving line, a glow worm slowly rolling across the Ramble as policemen in tight formation shined their flashlights up into the leaves. Cadaver dogs had proved useless for bodies in the sky. A sergeant called out to his officers, calling them back to the station house to wait for daylight.

High above a group of retreating searchers, Wilhelmina Fallon, not yet a cadaver, awakened stone blind. Thirsty, so thirsty. Hungry, too. And all the way crazy, she strained to hear.

Silence only.

Muscles weakened, she gave up the struggle against her bonds. The panic ebbed away, and so did the cramps in her belly. Dehydrated and disoriented, she made friends with delusion, and in her waking dream, she drank great tumblers of ice water. In the real world, her body was consuming itself in a ruthless effort to survive. Life was everything. Life was all.

It was morning in her mind, where an imagined table was laden with food, glorious food.

The aroma of fresh-brewed coffee was heady. An old-fashioned percolator bubbled on the front burner, and batter sizzled in the frying pan.

Mallory made an odd picture of domesticity, flipping pancakes while wearing a large gun in her shoulder holster. Cooking was a skill she had learned from her foster mother, Helen Markowitz, and kitchens were her favorite rooms. This one was large, with warm ocher walls and a high ceiling. Charles Butler’s appliances only looked a hundred years old; they were custom-made to blend with an era where the Luddite felt more at home. It was a peaceful place where even New Yorkers lost their cautious edge; and this was why Mallory favored kitchens over interrogation rooms.

The door in the hall closed. Charles Butler was gone. And now the detectives could begin.

Coco had finished breakfast, and she idly ran one finger around her empty plate. ‘Rats like fruit and vegetables, but pancakes – not so much.’ She went on to explain why hungry rats were attracted to the faces of sleeping infants. ‘Babies smell like milk, and the skin around their mouths tastes like milk. If you wash a baby before you put it in the crib, it won’t get eaten.’

‘Good to know,’ said Riker, not even slightly put off his feed. Between bites, he smiled at the little girl. ‘Tell us about Uncle Red.’

The child drew up her legs, hugged her knees and rocked herself. ‘He had red hair like mine. He said it ran in the family.’ She stood up to take a short walk around the table for the third time this morning.

If Charles Butler had been present, this would have been the signal to stop. He would not permit questions that agitated her. And so the psychologist had been sent outside on the errand of buying newspapers that Mallory could have easily retrieved from her laptop computer.

The detective filled the child’s glass with more orange juice to lure her back to the table. When Coco returned to light on the chair, she perched there on the edge – a tentative visitor.

‘So Uncle Red’s hair turned from red to brown,’ said Mallory. ‘When did that happen?’ She rephrased this for a child with a skewed sense of time. ‘After you got into Uncle Red’s car, did you stop anywhere on the way to his place?’

‘We stopped for food.’ Coco went on to describe the giant statue of a clown that greeted junk-food customers at a rest stop on the road. He was as tall as a mountain, she told them, and then she gave the statue lines of dialogue. But now she stopped mid-sentence, reading impatience in Mallory’s face.

‘So tell me,’ said Riker, whose patience with children was endless, ‘was that when Uncle Red dyed his hair? At the restaurant? Maybe he did it in the men’s room?’

‘No, his hair was still red when we stopped at the drugstore. I fell asleep in the car. When I woke up, we