The Chalk Girl

Riker broke off the tip of his pencil. ‘Okay, a mental case. You were helping her.’

‘Oh, no. Aggy was helping me. She worked in the mission kitchen six days a week. Never late, not once in almost two years. When she didn’t show up one day, I got worried. The next day, I filed a report with the police.’

‘So she’s been missing for a week,’ said Mallory. ‘Did you go to her apartment? You didn’t give her address in your report.’

‘I had no idea where she lived, but I know she wasn’t homeless. Her clothes were always clean, and she had spending money.’ He pulled a snapshot from his back pocket. ‘This was taken at our last Christmas party. She’s the one in the middle.’

Riker studied the image of Aggy, so busty before Dr Slope deflated her by removing the breast implants. ‘Do you know who her friends are?’

‘I’m her friend.’ Mr Albert shrugged to say he couldn’t name another one. ‘She’s a bit off-putting – incessant praying and that odd thing she does with her teeth. But she knows a lot of homeless people. When she’s not working in the soup kitchen, she carries around baskets of sandwiches and gives them out to panhandlers. Some of the street people call her Saint Aggy.’

The two partners were late to join the rest of the squad assembled in the incident room, where every wall was lined with cork from baseboard to ceiling molding. The front wall was covered with Riker’s messy mosaic of autopsy pictures and crime-scene shots. On the floor was the carton of lists to track down items of the murder kit, but this CSU box remained sealed, and now it was kicked into a far corner by the angry commander of Special Crimes, who called it ‘Useless crap!’

The energy in the room was climbing. Detectives filled half the folding chairs, notebooks out, pencils ready, waiting for the boss to get on with the show. Other men milled around, and some gathered by the pinned-up array of maps and diagrams for the Ramble. That patch of the cork wall was Mallory’s work. Each paper was equidistant from the ones surrounding it; her thumbtack style had machine precision. She sat at the back of the room, alone.

Jack Coffey took his place behind the lectern. ‘Listen up!’

Most of the men took seats, but some remained standing, and Mallory was still alone, flanked by empty chairs – as if she had picked up some contagious disease on the road during her lost time.

‘This wasn’t a spree attack,’ said the lieutenant. ‘We got space between each one of the Ramble hangings – three to four days.’ He pointed to the carton at the back wall. ‘Don’t waste time chasing down Heller’s crappy leads. If we get a suspect who keeps pulleys and winches around the house – great. Otherwise, screw it. CSU’s a dead end. We concentrate on the victims.’

And now it was Riker’s turn to address the squad. His back was still turned to them as he pinned up pictures of the Hunger Artist’s surviving victims, Humphrey Bledsoe and Wilhelmina Fallon. Last, he added the mission photo of the dead woman, known only as Aggy. ‘Okay, guys.’ Every head turned his way. ‘This is what we got so far. A comatose pedophile, a bitch socialite, and a dead saint with a boob job. Theories? Any?’

FOURTEEN

Twice a week, when Humphrey’s in therapy, I go over to Phoebe’s house after school. If her mother’s not there, we bounce off beds and couch cushions, flying high – like freaking superheroes.

When Phoebe’s mother is home, we tiptoe everywhere. We are mice.

—Ernest Nadler

Comatose Humphrey Bledsoe’s organs were failing, one by one.

The patient was in a delicate limbo, tubes running in and out of him, machinery breathing for him, and the next twenty-four hours would be a critical period. This was the medical opinion of the young policeman in charge. Officer Wycoff continued to screen everyone approaching the pink privacy curtain around the hospital bed. Three people stood before him now, seeking an audience.

They had come to the intensive care ward with the blessing of the mayor, or so said the mayor’s aide, a slight, nervous man who did not figure into the police chain of command. And so the young officer was unimpressed. One member of the visiting trio was a sour-faced woman with sturdy, ugly shoes and a severe black suit to match her close-cropped hair.

The mayor’s aide gestured toward the other woman, the tall redhead who reeked of money with her pearls and silk and very high heels. She appeared to be only ten years older than his patient, but the man from the mayor’s office insisted, ‘This is Mr Bledsoe’s mother.’

Hands on hips, the young policeman barred her way, saying, ‘Prove it, lady.’

She seemed to find this amusing and cheerfully handed over her wallet, hardly the picture of an anxious family member. Wycoff narrowed his eyes. Could this woman be more suspicious? According to her driver’s license, she was fifty-two years old, and only half her surname matched the patient’s.

Mrs Grace Driscol-Bledsoe was allowed beyond the privacy curtain on a limited passport: Officer Wycoff would only permit a half-hour visit. She patted his arm as she passed him by, saying, ‘This won’t take a minute, my dear.’ True to her word, it took only seconds for her to bend over the hospital bed and speak a single word in the ear of her comatose son.

‘Die,’ she said.

And, obediently, he did.

As the society matron sailed off beyond the curtain, the monitors sounded alarms, and the officer yelled, ‘Code blue!’ A crew of nurses rushed a crash cart to the bedside, and there were charged paddles held high with repeated shouts of ‘Clear!’ before each electrical shock was administered, but the dead man could not be brought back.

Moments later, the bad mother was arrested near the elevator and handcuffed by the young policeman. Nobody screwed with his patient. And why was she laughing? The officer reached into his shirt pocket and withdrew the card with a case detective’s cellphone number.

‘Wycoff is my new favorite cop,’ said Riker.

The detectives stepped off the elevator and strolled down the hall. Outside the door to the intensive care ward, a young policeman awaited them with his prisoner. The smiling redhead in pearls and handcuffs fit Officer Wycoff’s description of the grieving mother. And the mayor’s aide had been aptly described as a yappy lapdog in a suit. But Mallory focused on the dark-haired woman, who would not stand out in any company – if not for the small, black-leather bag hanging from a shoulder strap. It was a miniature version of a doctor’s Gladstone.

Officer Wycoff read Mallory’s mind and said, ‘That one never got near my patient.’ He consulted his notebook stats gleaned from driver’s licenses. ‘Alice Hoffman, forty-five years old – same address as my prisoner.’ He turned from the drab brunette to the elegant redhead. ‘And this is Grace Driscol-Bledsoe, age fifty-two.’

The mother of their late crime victim was close to Riker’s age, but his skin was creased, and hers had been ironed by a first-rate plastic surgeon. And there were other indicators that she had buckets of money. Her eyebrows were perfectly defined arches that seemed to ask, If I knew who you were, would I care? And Riker flashed her a smile to say, You bet your ass, lady.

‘She’s not a suspect,’ said the mayor’s aide, scrunching up his face. ‘Oh, this is too much!’ He listed the lady’s good works as the director of the Driscol Institute, a charitable foundation, and then he demanded that her restraints be removed. ‘This instant!’ And when that failed, he went on to make the pompous determination that death by suggestion was not murder. ‘Hardly the crime of the century.’

Though the aide was annoying, both detectives concurred with the amateur legal opinion, and the cuffs were removed. Grace Driscol-Bledsoe flicked one hand at the mayor’s man, and he backed up to the wall to stand beside the other minion, Miss Hoffman.

Mallory stepped up to the mother to do the honors. It was her turn to say the customary words for moments like this. ‘We’re sorry for your loss.’