The Chalk Girl

‘They’re not,’ he said. ‘A few years back, I got these from one of the plumbing contractors. I helped him with a bad leak in the park zoo. I wear ’em when I got a real dirty job, like today.’ He removed one of his gloves to take the vehicle’s keys from her hand.

Mallory looked toward the trees that sheltered machine parts and heavy equipment. ‘You have a dolly around here for moving light loads – something you’d keep outside at night?’

‘Smaller stuff like that gets locked up. If you’d asked me yesterday, I would’ve said no.’ He led her away from the building and up a path to higher ground, passing a forklift that was missing some of its parts. A pole light illuminated a small machine graveyard, a place where motors and rusted metal parts littered the ground.

A dolly leaned against a birch tree. It looked like Heller’s demonstration model, buckled straps and all, but with one additional feature. A bracket was welded to the metal struts of the long handle, and it held a car battery – Coco’s black box.

‘It’s not one of ours,’ said the park worker. ‘No idea how long it’s been here. I found it when I was cleaning up today.’ He pointed to an area of thick undergrowth and shrubs. ‘It was lying under those ferns over there.’ He kicked one of the two wheels. ‘These tires got some wear on ’em, but they’re still good.’

‘They’re inflatables,’ said Mallory.

‘Right you are.’

They looked like the tires on Heller’s dolly. And she knew the treads on this one would match impressions found at the first crime scene. She stared at the park worker’s heavy gloves. ‘Were you wearing those when you moved this thing?’

‘Oh, yeah.’ He looked down at the discarded machine parts at his feet, some of them with ragged, rusty edges. ‘This is tetanus country back here. I’d be a fool not to wear gloves.’

When Mallory called Crime Scene Unit to come and pick up the dolly, it was no surprise to find that Heller was also working late tonight. ‘I don’t think you’ll find any fingerprints,’ she said to him. ‘The metal’s too clean.’ Unlike everything else in this part of the depot. And then she took some pleasure in needling him with the news that she could also identify the manufacturer of the car battery – without touching his useless carton of lists. ‘Child’s play,’ she said.

‘No, she didn’t trip over it in the park,’ said Heller to the rising young star of his department. ‘Now go get that fucking dolly.’

CSI John Pollard was halfway to the office door when Heller thought it only fair to give the man a warning, but only one – because he favored trial by fire. ‘Develop all the evidence, John.’

‘Did I miss something, sir?’ Pollard was smug, entirely too confident that he had missed nothing.

However, there was a flaw in this young man’s work. He had fallen in love with a theory of the crime, departing from the science to play detective. And, yes, he had missed something. ‘If you screw up, Mallory will eat you alive.’

John Pollard laughed on his way out the door. Evidently he also had his own theories about long-legged blondes with guns. He probably thought Mallory was . . . cute.

SIXTEEN

This morning, my parents go totally nuts, running through the rooms, screaming my name. Then my father finds me waking up on the floor of my bedroom closet. I don’t remember how I got there. Maybe I was hiding from dreams of Aggy the Biter or Spider Girl. Humphrey is never the stuff of my nightmares. That creep giggles and hits like a little girl.

But there I am in my pajamas and not quite awake – in the closet.

My father shakes his head and says, ‘What the hell is wrong with you?’

Well, I’ve already lost his respect, so I say, ‘I have a scary life.’

And Dad walks away.

—Ernest Nadler

After putting Coco to bed, Charles Butler spent the remainder of his evening restoring the broken spine of a rare volume. He sat at a cluttered table in the workshop adjoining his library. It was a small space crammed with glue pots, spools of thread, all the tools a bibliophile could want – and perfect peace. The solitary window was triple-pane glass to block out the noise of the street, and the walls were quite thick. Though, as a concession to his tiny houseguest, he had left the door ajar.

This was where he came to work out the knotty dilemmas of life – like Coco forming a bond that would damage her when it broke. For his own part, he had managed a professional distance; the child well understood the relationship of doctors, dentists and the like with their patients. That was not the attachment he worried about. Hours into his bindery project, the book was mended, but he had no solution to the problem of severing the tie between Coco and Mallory.

And then he heard the scream.

Heart in his throat, he ran out of the workshop, passed through the library and down the hall to his guest room. One outstretched hand preceded him through the door. A flick of the wall switch lit a bedside lamp that shared the nightstand with a large jar and its captive fireflies from the Ramble.

The child was frightened, and her thin arms raised up to him for a hug.

‘So you had a bad dream.’ He held Coco close and rocked her. ‘Do you remember what scared you?’

‘Yes!’ She wormed free of his arms and reached under her pillow to pull out a small device that looked rather like a cell phone.

But Charles had never seen one quite like it.

There was no pad of tiny numbers that would have posed some difficulty for Coco. Instead, there was a single large button that glowed when the child pressed it. The button plate was a lighter shade than the surrounding plastic, though, on the whole, this alteration had the seamless look of something manufactured by a machine – and Mallory might as well have signed the contraption. In fact, she had signed it. The big glowing button bore a capital M in the exact shade of the detective’s red nail polish.

Coco smiled, connected now to the one she loved best. ‘I had a bad dream,’ she said to the phone, and then she listened for a moment. ‘It was about rats and wheels . . . They both squeak . . . Yes, the delivery man’s wheels . . . Yes, all the way to the tree.’

Charles nodded, though these words had not been addressed to him. Sounds were a problem for Williams people. Lightning storms could terrify, while vacuum cleaners only caused anxiety. And what of the delivery man and his sounds – the noise of nightmares. Whatever Mallory was saying to the child, it had a calming effect. Coco lay back, smiling, eyes closing to tired slits.

Charles held out his hand, saying, ‘May I?’ She handed him the customized cell phone and then burrowed deep into her pillow. He put the phone to his ear. ‘Mallory? This isn’t what we agreed upon.’ His rules had stipulated no unsupervised visits by police, any police. ‘Covert phone calls are not exactly in the spirit of the—’

‘Put the phone back under her pillow,’ said Mallory. This was an order. ‘If you don’t, she’ll cry.’ And on that note of emotional blackmail, the connection was broken.

The child held out her hands to take the phone, and Charles gave it back to her, unable to cut this new tether to Mallory without causing more trauma – and tears.

The damage just went on and on.

And when – exactly when – had Coco received the one-button cell phone?

He had not taken his eyes off the detective from the moment of her arrival until their departure from the Ramble. Later – long after dark – had Mallory been watching from the street below? Had she seen the light come on in his workshop window? Yes. That would have been her opportunity to break into his apartment for a visit with the little girl.

There was not a lock in the world that could keep her out.

Charles walked to the bedroom door, reached out for the wall switch and turned off the lamp – but not the