The Chalk Girl

Now she recognized the new voice. After the tape had been removed from her eyes and mouth, this policeman had taken her statement in the emergency room. He was answering a question for the other two cops, saying, ‘Naw, she’s fine. That tube in her arm isn’t feeding her meds. It’s for vitamins.’

‘Christ,’ said the other man. ‘It looks like she’s been starved for a week.’

And this one must be a detective.

‘No, sir,’ said the man with lower rank. ‘More like twenty-four hours, give or take. She could remember a TV show from yesterday. Must’ve been on the skinny side before she got strung up in the Ramble. Starvation chic. That’s what the ER doc called it. Your vic was naked when they cut her down. No ID yet.’

And the female detective said, ‘You didn’t get a name while she was conscious?’

‘No, ma’am. She started screaming. That went on for a while before they sedated her.’

‘So the lady was in a lot of pain?’ asked the other detective.

‘No, sir. I think the doc knocked her out for being a bitch. It was that kind of screaming.’

Willy repressed a smile. Just above her, she could smell stale tobacco trapped in clothing when the male detective leaned over her and said, ‘Hey, Mallory, didn’t this woman used to be somebody?’

Bastard.

‘Society pages,’ said the one called Mallory, moving closer. On the other side of the bed, a discreet trace of very good perfume warred with the tobacco smell of the man. ‘But mostly tabloids.’

‘Oh, yeah,’ said the other detective. ‘Willy Fallon, party girl and queen of drug rehab. Doesn’t look so good now, does she?’

Oh, really? Willy’s eyes opened by slits, and one hand snaked out from beneath the sheet to grab the man’s crotch. With his soft parts firmly in hand, she administered a light, threatening squeeze, a warning not to move – not to breathe. Her voice was hoarse when she asked, ‘What’s your name?’

He looked so surprised. They always did. This one had the classic frozen stance for hostage testicles. ‘Lady, don’t do it.’

‘He’s a cop,’ said the woman. ‘Let go of him. Now!’

Willy turned her head on the pillow to see a tall green-eyed blonde. She glared at the woman’s linen blazer. ‘Either you stole that from my closet . . . or we have the same tailor.’ Oh, shit. It looked better on the cop.

And now – another surprise.

The blonde snatched up Willy’s free hand and bent back the fingers to bring on sudden pain, the kind that came with bright points of light, with shock and awe and the patient’s agonized scream of ‘You fucking bitch!’ The man’s testicles were freed as the blonde’s silently implied condition of ending the torture. But Willy was still yelling obscenities after her wounded hand had been released.

The cop called Mallory pulled a notebook from the back pocket of her superb designer jeans. Pen to the open page, her words were frosty when she said, ‘So, Miss Fallon, now that you’re awake —’

‘You bitch! You cunt!’

‘—can you think of anyone who might want you dead?’

‘I can make you wish you were never born!’

The man pulled back Mallory’s blazer to expose a gun in a shoulder holster. ‘My partner can shoot you,’ he said. ‘She wins. Now answer the damn question.’

The blonde seemed almost bored when she asked again, ‘Who wants you dead?’

‘Tough one, huh?’ The man smiled. ‘Just give us your top ten.’

The patient recited an automatic response, a phrase oft repeated on the occasions of drunk driving and possession of recreational drugs. When she was done, the detectives could only stare at her, and the uniformed officer said, ‘Huh?’ This was the first time these words had elicited any surprise from the police.

Willy raised herself up on one elbow. ‘Didn’t you hear me, you morons? I’m invoking my right to remain silent. No more questions till my lawyer shows up.’

The male detective answered his cell phone, said ‘Yeah?’ and then turned to his partner. ‘Heller’s got something.’

The detectives quit the room, trailed out the door by the cop in uniform.

Well, that was easy.

Willy reached for the device that hung from her bedstead. So familiar from her days in drug-rehab facilities, this was a remote control for running nurses until they dropped. Oh, but first she must call a lawyer. Yes, that was rule one, impressed upon her when she was child – when her parents still cared if she lived or died.

What the hell was the name of that stupid assistant district attorney? Had she ever called him by his right name? No. When she was thirteen years old, she had alternated between Bowtie Boy and You Jerk.

TWELVE

Phoebe and I are always the first ones into the dining hall. When the doors open, we run like crazy so we can grab chairs at the end of a corner table, a safe place with two walls at our backs. We call it the Fox Hole. Everyone else calls it the Losers’ Table. Even losers new to the school know to come here. They see kids in glasses or braces, the lumpy, shapeless ones and the pencil-shaped uncool, and every loser says to himself – These are my people.

Toby Wilder walks in. Phoebe’s eyes shine. And there are other girls with shiny eyes, here and there, all around the room. He definitely has power over women – but he doesn’t care. Toby sits down to lunch in his Fortress of Silence. Everyone wants to hang with this kid, but no one bothers him. Phoebe and I watch him from the Fox Hole. We all know our places.

—Ernest Nadler

The private office of the man who ran Crime Scene Unit was a cluttered repository of weird dead things in glass jars and catalogues of arcane knowledge. Riker and Mallory had been kept waiting – and wondering how much trouble they were in – and how were they going to dig their way out?

Heller lumbered into his office and glared at each detective in turn. Sizing their necks for nooses? No hellos were offered. He opened a desk drawer and pulled out a photograph of two holes in tree bark. ‘This is what we started out with. Screw holes in trees . . . after we read about the trees in the newspaper.’

Apparently all was not forgiven. Riker turned his head toward the sound of squeaky wheels. The new hire, CSI John Pollard, entered the room, pushing a hand truck that fit Coco’s loose description of a delivery man’s dolly. The long struts of the handle extended up from a square of metal between two wheels. A large cardboard carton sat on this low platform, held in place by buckled straps.

‘That box holds a simulation of the murder kit,’ said Heller. ‘My guy’s the same weight as the heaviest victim. John, sit on the box.’ The CSI perched tailor-fashion on top of the carton, and his boss secured him to the dolly with straps. ‘Now you got a rolling weight of just under two hundred pounds.’

Riker eyed the hand truck with its load of box and man. ‘Could a woman move that thing?’

‘One way to find out.’ Heller turned to Mallory. ‘Give it a shot.’ And then he walked out the door, unconcerned that this might give her a hernia.

She tipped back the hand truck and wheeled the carton with the ride-along CSI out of the office and down the hall. If this caused her any strain, Riker saw no sign of it. They entered a room of bare walls and a clean, steel table. This was a thinking-man’s lab with no visual distractions – and no noise. Heller could gut detectives in here all day long, and no one would hear the screams.

John Pollard, freed from his bindings, began to unload the carton, and Riker shook his head – no, no, no! – as a jumble of equipment accumulated on the long table: a bag of screws, a cordless drill, a metal plate, a socket wrench, a pulley – and a winch? Attached to the winch cable was a