The Chalk Girl

only real shot at damage control.’

By the time she saw Goddard coming for her, it would be way too late. But Jack Coffey was right. Riker knew his partner would never go quietly. And if she had advance warning? He summoned up the biblical passage of the Pale Rider, placing Mallory in the saddle of Death’s horse – and hell followed after. ‘I won’t tell her.’

Coco reached under her pillow to pull out the one-button cell phone so she could say good night to Mallory. The connection was made, and now she covered the mouthpiece and looked up at Charles Butler. ‘She wants to know if you got the package.’

‘Yes, tell her it just arrived.’

This was conveyed to the detective on the cell phone. And then, in response to some question of Mallory’s, Coco said, ‘I don’t remember.’ The little girl’s eyes shut tight, and her head turtled into her pajama top. ‘I don’t think he said any—’

And, on this note of stress, the interrogation was ended. Charles took the phone and said, ‘Good night, Mallory.’

He remained with the little girl, distracting her from anxiety with a chapter from Dickens’s The Old Curiosity Shop, evidently not a thriller among youngsters. After only a few pages, Coco drifted off to sleep.

On his way down the hall, he rehearsed his next conversation with Mallory, a hard lecture on rules for dealing with fragile children. Stopping by the glove table, he picked up the box from the NYPD and opened it to find a videocassette. This would explain the earlier delivery of an old-model television set with a slot below the screen that would neatly fit this tape. The mechanism was so simple that this gift failed to include Mallory’s standard operating instructions for Luddites.

He sat down with a glass of red wine and played the fifteen-year-old film of schoolboy Toby Wilder and former detective Rolland Mann. He saw all the signs of trauma in the bone-weary child, whose head moved slowly, side to side – not in a gesture of defiance but one of bafflement. The boy never spoke, never voiced his only question, but asked with glassy eyes, How could this be happening?

A heightened sense of empathy had kept Charles Butler out of private practice, working one-on-one with patients. There were limits to what he could endure via other people’s pain, and now he felt helpless and hopeless, free-floating in a child’s angst. The psychologist had no trouble lip-reading Toby’s silent punctuation to every utterance by the detective in the final minutes of the tape. Over and over, Charles, in perfect unison with the boy, mouthed the word Mom.

And then the tape ended – too soon.

The telephone rang, and that would be Mallory. He picked up the receiver. There were no salutations. Before she could utter a single word to startle and amaze him with her prescient timing, he said, ‘You’re right, and you’re wrong. The tape wasn’t edited, but the interview did end abruptly . . . at a very odd moment. Rolland Mann was taking his cue from someone off-camera. You can see it in the lift of his head, a sudden break in eye contact with the boy. And you’re right about the time factor. The interrogation probably went on for hours before they started taping. The boy shows signs of fatigue to the point of exhaustion. But this is the odd part.’ Charles had no doubt that the child, heart and mind, was at the point of giving up and giving in. ‘Toby was broken. He was about to confess.’

TWENTY-ONE

Toby doesn’t always go straight home after school. Some days we follow him into Central Park. Phoebe and I always stop at the entrance to the Ramble. It’s dangerous in there, and we know that without being told. Even in the daylight, every rock and tree is a hiding place for trouble and pain, for the down-and-outs, the scary wigged-out people with nothing to lose. ‘They’ll cut you as soon as look at you.’ That’s what a cop says when he chases us away. But I’ve seen Toby Wilder dance into the Ramble.

—Ernest Nadler

If the city had a heart, and Riker doubted that, it would not be in this neighborhood of river views and promenades, where dogs were walked by handlers so that the wealthiest residents could live their whole lives up in the clouds of Penthouse Land.

Riker strolled down the sidewalk with Charles Butler, the only rich man he ever liked. Behind them, Mallory walked hand in hand with Coco, who was followed by the uniformed officer assigned to guard the material witness. The little girl sported a brand-new pair of designer eyeglasses with nifty red frames – a present from Mallory to replace the less stylish ones that Charles had bought. Coco scrutinized each face in the long procession that slowly moved toward the funeral home. In this single-file line that extended around the block, there were politicians that even Riker, an impolitic cop, could recognize.

Charles identified other important faces, those from the social register of New York bluebloods. ‘These people came because Grace was born a Driscol. Her late husband, John Bledsoe, wasn’t well regarded. I understand he walked out on his family, and then he drank himself to death.’

Smiling, Riker looked back at the long line behind them. He wondered how many of these high-minded people knew they had turned out to pay their respects to a dead child molester. ‘How did Coco take it when you told her Uncle Red died?’

‘Very well. I think she was relieved.’

‘Did you tell her about Granny yet?’

‘No,’ said Charles. ‘Maybe we’ll talk about that tomorrow. Mallory’s right. This funeral is good preparation. Coco’s never been to one before. We’ll just sit in the back row. I don’t want her to view an open casket. She has no real experience with death.’

‘You’re kidding me.’ Riker jabbed a thumb back over one shoulder. ‘That little girl knows fifty ways to kill a rat.’

The small party stopped in front of Harrow and Sons Funeral Home, a building that might pass for a century- old bank. Coco shook her head and told Mallory that she had not recognized anyone. And Charles wore a wobbly smile that asked, What? What just happened?

‘Oh, bloody hell!’ The man now realized that this procession of upscale mourners was actually a lineup of potential murderers. Child by the hand, the angry psychologist stalked off without another word. Coco waved back at the detectives until she and her guardian were around the corner and out of sight.

Mallory entered the building, and Riker stayed behind on the sidewalk to check out the early shots taken by a police photographer. Assured that they would have a complete record of every visitor, he climbed the stairs to be met by a young man in funereal black, who led him down a hallway of dark-paneled wood and velvet couches, one of them occupied by Mrs Driscol-Bledsoe’s companion, Hoffman. Seated beside this woman were two men in expensive suits. Riker recognized one of the suits as the lawyer who had collected Phoebe Bledsoe at the station house.

The detective followed his guide into a large room that could hold a hundred people, but only two chairs had been set out, one for Humphrey Bledsoe’s mother and one for his sister. Phoebe was on good behavior today, no nail-biting and no conversations with invisible people.

Riker’s escort confided that the rest of the chairs had been removed to discourage people from remaining for long. ‘The mother declined a religious service.’ Mr Harrow seemed very young to be scandalized by this, but it made sense to Riker. Sending up prayers for a pedophile was like begging for seven plagues upon your house.

The air was thick with the perfume of floral offerings. They were extravagant, as if each sender of a basket or a wreath feared being outdone by another. Central Park did not have so many flowers. At their center was the coffin, a grand affair of ornately carved wood. Humphrey Bledsoe’s hair had been restored to its natural red color, and there was no sign of the autopsy damage. The face had a creepy lifelike quality – and it smiled. On Coco’s behalf, Riker was inclined to spend a bullet to mess up that smile. Instead, he took up a post behind the chairs of Mrs Driscol-Bledsoe and her daughter. And now he watched his partner moving from one flower arrangement to another, admiring the blooms – while stealing cards of sympathy, acquiring a list of those most anxious to curry