The Chalk Girl

ELEVEN

Phoebe thinks Willy Fallon’s body looks like the exoskeleton of an ant. And Willy is quick like a bug, but I say no. I see her as Spider Girl. I see Willy in my dreams, a pinhead atop eight long legs, scuttling across my bedroom floor in the dark of night. And this image of her stays with me all through the day. Every day.

—Ernest Nadler

CSU investigators worked in the deep green shade of the Ramble, policing the ground around one of the hanging trees. They placed small yellow cones to mark the sites of found gum wrappers and cigarette butts. They had already removed a slew of rats shot dead by police officers. Every bullet spent had required a ballistics test and paperwork.

‘Damn cops,’ said a CSI, who concentrated on the holes in the bark of a tree, the only holes not made by gun-happy rat killers.

They all looked up from their work when a park ranger called out to them, ‘We found another one!’ The team of men and women followed him across Tupelo Meadow and into the woods. The ranger stopped and pointed upward. ‘Wait till the wind comes up.’ And now a mass of leaves waved aside to expose a green sack hanging from a high tree branch, well hidden from the flashlights of last night’s searchers. It was a rare thing to arrive ahead of police and rescue workers, who contaminated every crime scene.

All eyes were on the team’s newest member, CSI John Pollard, a small, well-muscled young man, who spent his free time mountain climbing. A tree should be easy. It was. Within a few minutes, he had made his way up through the leafy boughs and clouds of gnats to reach the burlap sack and its bulging load. On the ground, other CSIs gathered round the trunk, waiting for him to release the victim into their hands. But first, a nature photograph – click – a pristine shot of the branch untouched by ham-handed detectives. His fingers explored the outside of the sack. Its contents were stiff, unyielding.

No sign of life. No need to hurry.

He used a screwdriver to leverage the rope along the bough by a bare inch for one more shot. Click. There were no ruts or burns in the bark. The bagged victim had not been hauled up here by this rope. He found the loose end of it neatly coiled in a fork of the tree. Before he let the coil fall down to unravel into waiting hands – click – a picture of the slipknot that held the sack in place.

The rope dropped, and two CSIs pulled on it. The slipknot came loose, and the sack was quickly lowered through the tree limbs. As John Pollard climbed down, his eyes turned toward the ground, where his teammates were cutting into the burlap to preserve the rope’s closing knot, and he had a glimpse of jet-black hair and naked flesh – a woman.

Wilhelmina Fallon stirred after she felt the hands probing her. She came awake to pain in every joint of her body. Then came the elevator sensation of going down and down. Finally, she lay on solid ground and felt a breeze blow across her bare body as the rough material was pulled away. Pairs of hands worked on the ropes at her wrists and ankles, then wadding was plucked from her ears, and a stranger’s voice said, ‘It looks like wax.’ Another voice said, ‘Bag it.’

Ah, now she could hear – but she could not see, nor could she speak.

A lone hand touched her throat, and fingers pressed down hard. A woman called out, ‘I got a pulse!’

‘No, don’t touch that tape,’ said a man. ‘If she’s dehydrated like the others, you’ll peel the skin off her face.’

Others?

‘Wait for the paramedics!’

‘Here they come!’

Sirens. She heard sirens, running feet, and a new voice said, ‘Oh, sweet Jesus.’

One arm was pricked with a needle.

‘Nod if you can hear me,’ said a woman close by.

And Willy Fallon nodded.

‘Lady, I’m gonna cut a small hole in that tape across your mouth. Then I can insert a tube with water, okay?’

Willy nodded again. Oh, yes. Yes! Her mouth was flooded with a thin stream of cool water, and she swallowed, greedy for it, choking on it. She was alive.

Heller had always resented his promotion to commander of Crime Scene Unit – a damn desk job – and so he was a common sight in the field, observing his people at work. He stood beneath the newly discovered hanging tree, and he was pleased, but not because the latest victim had survived. This was the only pristine crime scene for the Hunger Artist. He turned to the man beside him. ‘Did you notify Mallory and Riker?’

‘Yeah,’ said the park ranger. ‘They didn’t even ask where the tree was. They just wanted the name of the hospital.’

‘Good.’ His technicians would have ample time to work the scene without those two underfoot, though the detectives could have done nothing to ruin his good mood. On the contrary, he planned to dampen their day. When he explained the mechanics of the crime, it was going to drive them both nuts. This thought put Heller in such rare high spirits he nearly smiled.

Like the other hanging trees, this one also had two screw holes drilled into the trunk just above the roots. He looked up into the thick leaves as he spoke to a veteran CSI. ‘What about marks on the branch?’

‘No rope burns on this one,’ said the woman. ‘John got pictures.’

‘Okay,’ said Heller, ‘cut out the screw holes.’

An appalled park ranger watched the CSU team cut a circular core sample from the tree trunk. ‘Why such a big chunk? That’s a lot of damage.’

Heller could have explained that he needed both screw holes in one piece of wood for tests and court evidence. Instead, he brushed his face, as if a bug had landed there, and the ranger took his meaning. There were no more protests from the tree lover when the team decided to saw off a branch as well.

Over the next hour, more equipment arrived. With a nod to the techs combing the ground around the tree, Heller made his way across a clearing to the site of an experiment. There he found his new CSI, John Pollard, a corn-fed boy from Ohio, experienced and solid on science. The only flaw in the youngster’s resume was the civilian status; he was a tourist in cop culture. Pollard had finished the last of three test runs, and now he loaded his equipment onto a hand truck outfitted with two oddball tires, a brand of inflatables to match tread marks found yesterday – one of the few bits of evidence they had not read about in the Times.

‘How’d it go, John?’

‘Very smooth, sir. But God knows there’s gotta be easier ways to kill people.’

One eyelid was pulled back, and Wilhelmina Fallon stared into a brilliant white light. She heard a small mechanical click, and darkness followed. As she drifted in and out of sleep, words were caught in snatches at first, and now whole sentences floated back and forth across her bed. She recognized the doctor’s voice when he said, ‘The sedative’s wearing off. Don’t expect much. She was hit on the back of the skull. The concussion wiped ten or fifteen minutes of memory.’

‘That’s three for three,’ said the voice of a woman.

And the doctor said, ‘Pardon?’

Another stranger, this one a man, said, ‘Three bop-and-drops. Blows to the back of the head.’

‘Gotta go. Don’t stay long, okay?’ A door closed on the departing doctor.

The strangers’ voices remained in the room. The door opened again, and feet walked in. There was no need to open her eyes. By their conversation, Willy knew all three of them were cops. She could even sort out the ranks by the deference the new voice paid to the other two. She ignored them, slowly waking to an inventory of soreness and pain from shoulders to ankles.