The Chalk Girl

‘Riker, they gotta find that little girl. There’s something wrong with her. Or maybe nobody raised her right. She just walks right up to strangers. And you know that creep wasn’t the only pervert in the park. Where’s Mallory? Why didn’t she come?’

‘Lieutenant Coffey nailed her little hands to a desk.’ For the duration of a probation period, his young partner was not allowed to leave the SoHo precinct during shift hours, not even to forage for food north of Houston, the demarcation line.

The tired child stood in a copse of sheltering trees and watched the frenzy in the meadow. A man in coveralls plugged one end of a thick hose into a hole in the ground and then entered the meadow, the heavy coil unrolling behind him. The nozzle end was pointed at the rats when he waved to another man. And now a strong blast of water from the hose scattered the vermin. Policemen in dark blue uniforms moved toward the bloody mess on the grass, and they knelt down beside it as more people ran toward them, bearing a stretcher.

Traveling in the wide circle of a lost child, Coco had come back to this place by an accident of wandering. She wandered on.

After minutes or hours – the concept of time eluded her – she came upon the lake again, though not by intention, for she had only the sketchiest idea of geography. She stood by a railing and peered through the thick foliage to see a familiar fat orange ribbon of fencing strung around the water’s edge. Continuing on her aimless way, she kept close to a low stone wall that led her to another landmark. There were many drinking fountains in the park, and they all looked alike, but Coco recognized this one by the dead bird in the basin. The tiny brown carcass had attracted flies; their buzzing was loud and ugly. Hands pressed against her ears – stop it stop it stop it – she left the pavement and ran down a path into the woods, her thin arms spread wide, aeroplaning, feet flying. Farther down the path, another marker for the place of red rain was found by chance born of panic.

Don’t cry don’t cry don’t cry.

Coco slowed her steps to catch her breath. She walked over a trampled section of wire fence and into thick brush. Low branches reached out to make scratchy noises on her blue-jeaned legs. She stood on the thick root of a tree and hugged the rough bark of the trunk. Looking for love and comfort, she stared up into the dense leaves and called the tree by name.

The tree was silent. The child melted down to the ground and curled up in a ball.

TWO

They’re not monster size, but adults are afraid of them. Not Dad, of course. My father doesn’t believe in monsters. And he doesn’t believe in me.

—Ernest Nadler

The detective closed the door to the lieutenant’s private office, perhaps sensing that his boss’s voice was about to rise a few octaves – a good instinct.

‘Let Mallory out of her cage? Are you nuts?’ The commander of Special Crimes Unit raked one hand through his light brown hair. A few years shy of forty, Lieutenant Coffey had a bald spot at the back of his head. It was his only outstanding feature and a reminder of what stress could do to a man. ‘It’s not like it’s the first time she’s done this.’

‘And she’s not the first cop to walk off the job with no goodbye,’ said Detective Sergeant Riker.

However, this man’s partner was the only one ever to fight her way back from desk duty, that graveyard of damaged cops.

But that was last time.

‘This time is different!’ Whoa. Deep breath. In a lower voice that would not slip under the doorsill, Jack Coffey said, ‘She was gone for three months, and I still don’t know why.’

Riker shrugged this off. ‘Since when does a cop have to explain lost time?’

Lost time? For most detectives that meant taking a walk around the block to clear their heads when the job got too crazy. But Mallory had taken a drive around the lower forty-eight states of the country, an area of six million square miles – not quite the same thing.

‘The department shrink won’t sign off on active duty.’ Lieutenant Coffey retrieved a psychologist’s report from his wastebasket and handed it to Riker. ‘Cut to the top of page three – where Dr Kane says she’s dangerously unstable. I’ll tell you why that got my attention. Your partner is so good at beating psych tests.’

‘And I’m sure she aced this one.’ Riker tossed the report on the desk. ‘Dr Kane’s afraid of women – especially women with guns. That quack probably wets his pants every time he sees her.’

‘You knew what was in her psych report before I did. She told you, right?’ Jack Coffey held up one hand to signal that a bullshit denial was unnecessary. Mallory could pick the locks to any data bank, and those computer skills had been sorely missed. In her absence, his detectives had been reduced to begging for warrants.

Closed venetian blinds covered a window that spanned one upper wall of his private office. The lieutenant lifted a long metal slat for a covert view of the squad room and his youngest gold shield. He was not the only one watching her. Other cops were stealing glances. Were they wondering if they could work with her again? These days, she could jack up the anxiety of any room just by walking in the door, and that had to stop.

Going by mere appearance, she was unchanged, still wearing silk T-shirts and custom-made blazers. Even her blue jeans were tailored, and her running shoes cost more than his car payment. Mallory would wear money if she could, flaunting the idea that she might be on the take, though he suspected her of being semi-honest. Her blond curls were styled the same old way, framing a porcelain mask with a cat’s high cheekbones. So pretty. So spooky. And what did that damn haircut cost?

And why didn’t she fight back?

As a condition of reinstatement, he had humiliated Mallory by making her handmaiden to the squad. For the past month of probation, she had done all their grunt work without complaint, filling out reports and filing them, making phone calls and tracking down leads for other detectives, tethered all the while to a desktop computer. She daily took this punishment with no sign of reproach, not so much as the arch of an eyebrow.

So how did she plan to get even with him?

And when might that happen?

The lieutenant watched her sort paperwork – busywork – and he knew those neat stacks would line up precisely one inch from the edge of her desk. Her other name was Mallory the Machine, and this worked well with the unnatural color of her eyes – electric green. Sorting done, she just sat there. So still. So quiet. He could not shake the idea that she was spring-loaded.

Jack Coffey was a man in a perpetual state of waiting.

She turned his way to catch him staring at her like a common peeper.

The metal slat snapped shut as he backed away from the window. ‘I don’t make the rules.’ He turned around to face Mallory’s partner. ‘No fieldwork till she gets a pass from a shrink.’

‘Got it covered.’ Detective Riker reached into his pocket and pulled out a twice-folded wad of papers. ‘Charles Butler signed off on her. She’s officially sane.’

As if that could make it so, simply because Butler had more Ph.D.s than God did. ‘Does Charles know why she walked off the job?’

‘That might be in here somewhere.’ Riker unfolded the new psych report and scanned it – as if its contents might be a mystery to him.

Right.

Jack Coffey snatched the papers but never even glanced at them. He knew everything would be in order, and this new psych evaluation would trump Dr Kane’s bad review. Mallory’s personal psychologist had better credentials than any department shrink, but the poor hapless bastard had one unfortunate weakness: Kathy Mallory. If she were barking at the moon, Charles Butler would just assume that she was having an off day. ‘Not good enough,