The Chalk Girl

‘According to your ViCAP questionnaire,’ said Riker, ‘there was sensory deprivation.’

‘Right,’ said Mallory, in the manner of being helpful. ‘Your perp sealed the victim’s eyes and his mouth – the ears, too – just like our case. Maybe that was a detail you held back from the press?’

As if to correct his partner, Riker leaned toward her to say his line on cue. ‘The reporters never got any details. There was no story.’

‘You’re kidding.’ Aiming for mock surprise, Mallory turned back to Rolland Mann. ‘How could you keep a thing like that away from the media? Oh, and one more thing. Your ViCAP entry doesn’t say what the perp used to seal the kid’s—’

‘Hold on.’ Riker took the patrolman’s notes from her hand. ‘I think there’s a line in here about that,’ he said, as if this might be news to her. ‘Yeah, here it is.’ He held up one page and addressed the acting commissioner. ‘Your perp used glue.’

That startled Rolland Mann, but now he lifted one shoulder in a shrug, as if that detail meant very little to him. ‘Yeah, it was glue. Heavy-duty stuff – you could use it to bond metal. But the glue never made it into the record. When my perp pled out in court, it didn’t even come up.’

The detectives were left to wonder how there could have been a trial for a homicide case that had been buried.

‘No one’s ever gonna hear about the glue,’ said Mann. ‘Is that clear, Detectives?’

‘Clear this up,’ Mallory said to him, dared him. ‘Why would anybody in the DA’s office pass up a detail like that one?’

‘Overkill. An assistant DA traded a confession for a plea bargain.’

‘And who was that ADA?’ Riker smiled. His pencil hovered over an open notebook page. When ten seconds had passed in stone silence, he raised his eyebrows as a prompt.

‘Cedrick Carlyle . . . No point in talking to him. He can’t tell you anything. My perp was a juvenile – sealed records.’ Rolland Mann dropped his copy of the Times in the trash basket by his desk. ‘So I don’t expect to read about that case in tomorrow’s paper.’ He pushed an old- fashioned videocassette across his desk. ‘That’s the kid’s interview. The tape doesn’t leave my office.’ He handed Riker a single sheet of paper. ‘And that’s the written statement. You don’t get to keep that, either.’

‘This confession isn’t signed.’ Riker handed it off to Mallory.

‘The signed version is in the sealed record,’ said Mann. ‘Officially, my copy doesn’t exist, and you never saw it. Clear enough?’ His hand rested on the telephone, an elaborate affair of blinking lights and long rows of names on labels for easy-access calls. ‘I push one button on my speed dial, and you’re both gone – that fast.’ It made him angry to see Mallory smile. The anger dissipated as he watched Riker silently writing a line in a notebook.

There could be no doubt that the detective was jotting down that threat, that clear act of obstruction. And then there was the lesser offense of exposing juvenile records without a court order. But the notebook line was only for show, to put Rolland Mann’s mind at ease about the possibility that Riker was wired for sound – and he was. Even without the protection of Joe Goddard, the two detectives were bulletproof today – all day.

Eyes cast down, Mallory read the unsigned confession of the accused, a boy named Toby Wilder, age thirteen. ‘A kid didn’t write this. I’m guessing you helped him with the wording?’

Rolland Mann’s silence lasted too long. ‘The boy brought flowers into the Ramble. I told him that would go over good with the judge. It showed remorse . . . and it made Toby look guilty as hell. So yeah . . . I helped him.’

Mallory rose from her chair and crossed the room to the plasma television on the far wall. She fed the videotape into the mouth of the old cassette player on the shelf below. The screen came to life, and there was Rolland Mann, fifteen years younger, with all his hair. In shirtsleeves, tie undone, he sat across the table from a schoolboy. Tears streamed down Toby Wilder’s face. Detective Mann was smiling, speaking softly, to bond with his child suspect.

Mallory picked up the remote control and clicked it to pause the film. ‘What about Toby’s parents? Why aren’t they in the room?’

‘The kid’s father ran out on him when he was eight or nine, and the mother waived parental rights. After the interrogation, a lawyer was called in.’ Mann’s chair swiveled from side to side as he stared at the image on the wide screen. ‘Then we had to give the kid a plea bargain. And that was pure charity.’

Mallory nodded, though not in agreement. She knew they had missed the fun part, the hours of questioning that had led up to a child’s taped confession. There would be no coercion in this segment of the interview, probably the only part that had been safe to film.

‘It was a good deal for Toby,’ said the acting commissioner. ‘The kid got four years in juvenile detention. Not bad for a charge of felony assault. You know he didn’t find that glue in the park. He had to bring it with him. The assault was premeditated. Real cold.’

Mallory clicked the play button.

On-screen, a young Rolland Mann was saying to the boy, ‘Okay, Toby, let’s say you and this other kid had a fight. He was a fag, right? He made a pass at you, and you hit him.’ The detective splayed his hands. ‘Hey, who wouldn’t? But then you got scared – thought you’d killed him. It ain’t so easy to tell if a guy’s dead or alive. I’ve heard of people waking up in the morgue. So I think a judge is gonna understand that part. When you strung the kid up in that tree – that wasn’t torture. You just wanted to hide what you thought was a dead body. Okay so far?’

The boy made no response. By the soft focus of his eyes, Mallory knew Toby Wilder had shut down. He saw nothing, heard nothing. The boy was barely there. She froze the picture again. ‘How high off the ground was the victim hanging?’

‘At least fifteen feet, maybe twenty.’

Riker removed his bifocals after reading the unsigned confession. ‘Nothing in here about the glue. What did Toby say about that – off the record?’

Rolland Mann threw up his hands, frustrated now. How many times did he have to explain this? Testy, he said, ‘I never asked Toby about the glue. And that was more charity. With the glue in evidence, he would’ve been tried as an adult. You see – the victim wasn’t dead when we cut him down. Now that was the lawyer’s selling point to make Toby go along with a guilty plea. The DA’s office agreed not to press murder charges if the victim died.’

‘So the victim was in bad shape,’ said Mallory. And that would explain the date on the death certificate supplied by the chief of detectives. ‘And it took him a month to die.’ There was no denial from the acting commissioner, and now she knew for certain that the boy had died from his injuries.

Rolland Mann’s younger self on the screen was saying to the boy, ‘So this is how it went down, Toby. You brought flowers into the Ramble ’cause you thought that little kid was dead . . . and you were sorry. And then you called the cops and led us to the body. You felt bad. You couldn’t stand the idea of leaving him there, all alone, strung up in that tree. Those flowers – that was like saying you were sorry. That looks good to a judge.’

Mallory had yet to hear the sound of the child’s voice, and now the taped interview was over. ‘Toby never admitted to anything.’ She rewound the tape. ‘Maybe I missed it.’ She clicked the rewind button and played it again. ‘His lips are cracked. Did you give him any water? Did you remember to feed the kid?’

Mann slapped the flat of his hand on the desk. ‘I didn’t torture him!’ He took a time-out for a count of ten seconds. Calmer now, he said, ‘If Toby wasn’t guilty, what was he doing in the Ramble? This was fifteen years ago – before your time, Detective.’ He turned to her partner. ‘Riker, you remember those days – the kind of scum who hung out there. Damn junkies even robbed each other, killed each other. So what would an innocent kid be doing in the Ramble – with a bouquet of flowers? And Toby led that park cop right to the crime scene.’ The deputy commissioner left his desk to stand beside Mallory. He took the remote control from her hand and froze the picture on the screen. ‘I agreed to meet with you so you wouldn’t waste time on Toby Wilder. It’s a solved crime. No link between my case and yours.’

Mallory faced the screen and its frozen image of a thirteen-year-old boy. ‘Any cop can make a kid cry. It’s almost too easy. If this was a solid bust, it should’ve been high profile. But it never made any headlines.’

‘And we have to wonder why,’ said Riker. ‘Maybe there was something hinky about your evidence. And what does it take to keep a thing like that quiet? How much influence—’