The Chalk Girl

The lady laughed, and Riker found that weirdly refreshing.

‘Your son kidnapped a little girl.’ Mallory waited a beat and then added, ‘But that doesn’t surprise you, does it?’

‘Actually . . . no.’ Mrs Driscol-Bledsoe opened her purse and pulled out a business card. ‘Just tell my lawyer where to send the money – whatever the child needs.’ Her tone was dismissive, and she held out the card with an air of Just take it and be on your way.

Mallory did not accept the card. She never even glanced at it. The young detective’s left hand went to her hip, a move that drew back her blazer for a glimpse of the gun – just a subtle reminder of who was in charge of whom. ‘Is that how you usually handle your son’s victims? You just pay them off?’

‘Guilt doesn’t work on me, Detective.’ The door to the ICU opened, giving the woman a glimpse of the pink curtain around the bed of her dead son. ‘Monsters are begot by monsters.’ Her smile was gone when she turned her face to Mallory’s. ‘You might do well to remember that.’

The mayor’s aide crept up behind the society matron, and he covertly nodded to the detectives, silently urging them to believe this.

Charles Butler puffed out his cheeks to make a great show of holding his breath while Coco slowly buttoned her cotton shirt. This bright pink garment was no hand-me-down apparel. It was brand-new, a gift and a bribe from Mrs Ortega, the sworn enemy of Velcro fasteners. The cleaning lady stood behind the child and anxiously worked invisible buttons in the air with her own hands, as if to offer encouragement via black magic.

The last button on Coco’s shirt was done, much applause followed, and the child looked up from her labors, quizzical. ‘Is this going to take forever every day?’

‘No,’ said Charles. ‘But fine motor skills will always be a bit of a problem.’

‘Because of my Williams syndrome.’ She had read all the literature that he could find on the subject, and he had answered her many questions, but the child’s conversations always ran back to rats, the staple of her interactions with everyone.

‘Your progress with buttons is amazing.’ He gave her his most foolish smile, a guarantee of a smile in return. Children loved clowns.

‘Next,’ said Mrs Ortega, ‘we do shoelaces.’

Or maybe not.

Coco fled to the music room. Apparently tying shoes was akin to a far mountain that could not be scaled today. Things to do. Songs to play. Sorry. A moment later, a delicate sonata wafted out to them.

‘I watch her little fingers flying over those piano keys,’ said Mrs Ortega, ‘and I just don’t get it.’ Tired and defeated, the cleaning lady flopped down in an armchair and turned her eyes to the adjoining room. ‘How can the kid do that – when she can’t tie shoelaces?’

‘Her brain is wired differently. It’s a mystery. Ask any neurologist. But I think you can blame her grandmother for the lack of bow-tying skills. I’m told the woman knew she was terminally ill. So the problems of buttons and laces were resolved with Velcro, and all the time she had left was invested in Coco’s strengths – music and reading.’ In Charles’s opinion, the grandmother had made an excellent choice.

However, his cleaning lady was not so impressed.

‘Laces are important, too,’ she said, ‘when you’re eight years old.’

‘Right you are. But that’s a job for a physical therapist.’ Based on his evaluation of Coco’s motor skills, the problem of tying shoelaces could not be resolved in a few dedicated hours. It might take weeks or months to work through it. Or she might never learn.

Charles failed to hear his front door open, and Mallory’s hello from the hall was all but lost below the ripple of piano keys. But Coco heard it. She came flying out of the music room, aiming her little body like a cannonball, and now the young woman was prisoner to the child as tiny arms locked tightly around her. The detective absently stroked the little girl’s hair in the manner of petting a dog.

Mallory’s brain was also wired differently, also a mystery. And she always confounded him, as she did now when she lifted Coco high in the air and said, ‘Buttons! Did you do them all by yourself?’

‘Yes!’ Grinning widely, the child sailed over the moon with joy; so happy was she to be with the one she loved best.

Charles Butler could hear warning bells in Mallory’s gentled voice. Another thing that would cost him sleep was the way she smiled at this child. The homicide detective had a limited repertoire of such expressions: one smile said, I’ll get you for that, but this one was worse; it was the smile that said, I’ve got you now.

Phoebe Bledsoe hurried through the school’s back garden and down the flagstone path to enter her cottage on the last ring of the telephone. She set her grocery bags on the desk as the answering machine picked up the message.

And a woman’s voice said, ‘It’s Willy Fallon. Your mother won’t take my phone calls. You tell her I’ll be paying a visit real soon.’

Phoebe reached out to the machine and erased the call. Her hand trembled with a shiver from the sudden exchange in her veins of ice water for blood. Willy had always had that effect on her as a child. In some respects, school days had never ended. Dead Ernest appeared – a companion to stress – but he could not speak; if she was sliding into shock, then so was he.

Before both legs could fail her, Phoebe sat down in a chair facing the window that looked out across the garden. Had the shade trees grown taller? No. Those great oaks and elms were old when she was very young. Even the flowers remained unchanged, the same colors from one planting season to the next. Without the play of children or a wind to move the leaves and blooms, her view of the school and its garden had the frozen quality of a snapshot taken fifteen years ago.

Of course, today there was no sign of Ernie Nadler’s blood on the wall. That was different.

FIFTEEN

Phoebe wants to be a teacher when she grows up. I can’t believe it when she tells me this. Teachers don’t see bruises or blood. They don’t hear the screams. Why, Phoebe, why? And her answer? She says, ‘That’s why.’

—Ernest Nadler

The muggy air was thick, and the sky was still light in this evening hour. Detective Mallory cut the engine on the small park vehicle, saying, ‘This is the best spot. Lots of bugs here.’

Coco wore new eyeglasses, and she was looking upward, grinning. ‘I can see the leaves on the trees!’ Previously all the greenery had melded into a solid color for the nearsighted child. She climbed off Charles Butler’s lap to step out on the path. At the sight of tiny flying lights, the little girl ran off down the trail to chase the lightning bugs. She grabbed the air and missed and reached out again.

‘I don’t think she’ll catch one.’ Charles smiled as he unfolded his tall body to stand by the cart. ‘She’s never done this before. But it was a wonderful idea for refining motor skills.’ Though he knew that Mallory had suggested it only to lure the child back to the scene of three hideous crimes, claiming that the Ramble was the best place in the world to hunt these insects. On the predictable upside, the child did not know one wooded area from another.

Mallory rounded the cart to stand beside him and watch Coco’s failed attempts to snatch bugs from the air. ‘I say the kid catches one. She’s stubborn.’

‘Indeed.’ And so was his cleaning lady, the taskmaster of buttons. One day Coco would also learn to tie shoelaces, but probably not anytime soon. And bug-catching might also be a bit beyond her abilities just now.

Charles and Mallory followed the child down a path of lush green shadows. Here and there were lamps reminiscent of the gaslight age, but they had not yet been turned on. The way was lit only by insects with magical taillights that blinked on and off. Coco ran ahead of them, hands outstretched to reach a firefly on the wing. Failing in this, she veered off in pursuit of another one lower to the ground. A slow-flying lightning bug hung in the air, and