The Chalk Girl

‘Careful, Detective.’

Mallory’s turn. ‘How long did the kid hold up before a lawyer got to him? Maybe eight hours? Ten? Any kid that age, innocent or guilty, should’ve broken, but not him. Before you started taping, he told you he didn’t do it, right? And you believed him. That’s why you kept your own personal copy of the interview. You knew this case could come back on you one day.’

‘That’s enough, Detective Mallory.’

Riker was on his feet, coming up behind Mann’s back. ‘I know why there’s nothing about the glue on that tape. The victim was hanging twenty feet in the air – an hour after sundown. Toby couldn’t see that detail from the ground. All he saw was a kid’s body hanging in a tree.’

Mann whirled around to face Riker, and now it was Mallory who stole up behind him, saying, ‘Toby didn’t even know about the glue. How could he?’

Mann turned full circle to gape at her, and Riker’s next words made him turn again.

‘Toby never saw the glue . . . so you never mentioned it. That’s the kind of detail you’d hold back to rule out crackpot confessors. But you didn’t want to rule out Toby Wilder.’

‘No,’ said Mallory, working the man’s blind side again. ‘You couldn’t risk him telling a story that wouldn’t match up with the evidence – the glue. What a good career move.’

They had worked him like a spinning ballerina, and now he shouted, ‘Stop!’

Stop the music.

Rolland Mann returned to his desk and sat down. He took a deep breath.

And break time was over.

‘The boy didn’t do it.’ Mallory stepped up to one side of his chair.

‘And you knew that,’ said Riker, from the other side. ‘Now you wanna kill the connection between your case and ours. You don’t want us digging around in your old business.’

Rolland Mann’s fingers curled around the telephone receiver. ‘Remember what I said about the speed dial? One phone call and you’re—’

‘You make that call, and we’ll have to return the favor,’ said Mallory. ‘It all comes back to the glue.’ She waved the patrolman’s personal notes. ‘And then there’s your ViCAP questionnaire. Fifteen years ago, you ran a search for a killer with a similar MO. That would’ve been a month after Toby confessed. You knew he was innocent.’

‘Here’s what I don’t understand,’ said Riker. ‘How did you get that kid in front of a judge when there was no investigation? We can’t even find an incident report.’

‘It’s like the assault on that little boy never happened,’ said Mallory. ‘What’ll we find when we run Toby Wilder’s name?’

‘A record of four years in juvenile detention,’ said Rolland Mann. ‘But you’d have to break the law to get that much. Juvie records are sealed.’

‘But not police reports on assaults. So how did you get that case on a court docket – a case that didn’t exist?’ And then she knew. Mallory stepped back from the desk. ‘You never got a signed confession, did you? Not for the Ramble assault. No, you got Toby to plead out on some other crime, right?’ Yes, she was right. His eyes were so much wider now.

‘And then,’ said Riker, ‘a month later, you ran that ViCAP search.’

Mallory held up the death certificate. ‘That was the same day Ernest Nadler died.’

Rolland Mann confirmed all of this by withdrawing his hand from the telephone. The mention of the child victim’s name had unnerved him.

Mallory pocketed the written confession as she crossed the room to stand before the old videocassette player. She pressed the eject button and pulled out the tape. ‘We’re taking this. I think you can trust us to be discreet.’

The detectives strolled out the door with their purloined goods.

TWENTY

Today I discover the terrible importance of surviving till class picture day.

They keep the yearbooks at the back of the school library. I take down the one for the year a girl jumped off the roof, and I look through the pages of students posed for headshots, looking for Poor Allison. No one remembers the family name. The only lasting impression of her is the yearly chalk outline on the garden flagstones.

Phoebe says I won’t find the chalk girl in that section. ‘It was her first year, and she didn’t live long enough for class picture day – so they tried to erase her.’ Turning ahead to the section of sporting events and other group pictures taken throughout the year, she stops near the end. ‘Here she is. They missed this one.’ Phoebe points to a photograph of a little red-haired girl standing with other kids. She’s the shortest member of the chess club. ‘Count them,’ says Phoebe. ‘Ten kids in the picture, only nine names in the caption.’

—Ernest Nadler

Riker sat in the passenger seat, staring at the rearview mirror, averting his gaze from the traffic violations of his tailgating partner. He could feel the shift of hard lane changes, but preferred not to meet the eyes of terrified motorists sharing this crowded patch of road with Mallory. Every car up ahead was threatened with a rearend collision. He touched his seat-belt clasp to be sure it was fastened. Oh, what the hell. The air bag would save him. He checked the side mirror one more time. ‘You were right. Goddard’s got nobody tailing us.’

‘This was always a closed game,’ said Mallory, ‘just the chief of D’s and Rocket Mann – and us.’

The car stopped for a red light, and Riker loosened his death grip on the rolled-up ViCAP questionnaire. ‘So the guy wipes out every trace of the kid’s assault – and then he makes a permanent record of the whole damn thing in the FBI database.’

‘It’s original,’ said Mallory. ‘Not your garden-variety blackmailer. And Rocket Mann was patient. He waited a solid month for the victim to die. Murder’s worth a lot more than an assault charge.’

‘Yeah,’ said Riker. If not for Mallory’s raid on ViCAP, the old FBI questionnaire would have stayed buried in the system. Mann’s blackmail victim only needed to know that it was there, and that it could be retrieved at will. Better than a bank vault. ‘So that poor kid who got sent to Juvie – he was just a scapegoat.’

‘He had other uses,’ said Mallory. ‘If the dead boy’s family asked for their pound of flesh, Mann only had to show them the interview tape – and maybe a booking sheet for Toby Wilder.’

The sealed records of Family Court resolved the problem of convicting Toby for a different crime. And Ernest Nadler’s parents would never know their son’s murder had been covered up for profit – the meteoric rise of a mediocre man, Rocket Mann.

Calling up CSI Pollard’s line on the Hunger Artist, Riker said, ‘The guy thought of everything.’ He removed the small microphone that passed for a tie clip. ‘Almost everything.’ Reaching into his breast pocket, he pulled out the recorder, the damning voice record of Mann’s interview.

‘We’re not sharing that with the chief of D’s,’ said his partner. ‘Not till our case is wrapped.’

‘If we hold out on him—’ The car lurched forward. Then it stopped short, foiled by gridlock, and Riker blessed his seat belt, else he would have lost his teeth on the dashboard.

‘Joe Goddard’s a fool for chess,’ said Mallory to the man who had taught her that game when she was eleven years old. ‘He’s a regular player in Washington Square Park. And he’s not bad.’

‘Good to know. So the chief looks six moves ahead. So?’ Oh, Christ! Now he understood why she wanted to hold something back – a bargaining chip. Joe Goddard had already made a move that gave two detectives power over him; he had bluntly spelled out a plan of conspiracy, a career ender for the chief of D’s if things went sour.

Mallory finished his thought. ‘You have to wonder how Goddard plans to keep us in line – and quiet.’ The car moved forward, but her head was turned to one side, facing her partner and not the windshield, a little act of terror that she saved for special occasions. ‘Here’s the problem. If the chief had some dirt on me, he would’ve spelled it