The Chalk Girl

‘Not that long.’ Charles picked up a large stack as if it weighed only ounces, and he carried it down the hall to the front room, unwilling to leave Coco and Mallory unchaperoned. He set the journals on the coffee table and sat down in line of sight with the piano.

Riker’s load was lighter by half, but he felt the strain of seldom-used muscle when he placed his stack beside the taller one.

The psychologist’s eyes scanned the printed word as fast as he could turn the pages, faster than anything passing for speed-reading. His face had the deep red flush of embarrassment, and that was understandable. This man was shy about any evidence of freakishness – his giant brain and even his tall stature. He always seemed apologetic when looking down at someone of average height. Being closely observed while reading at the speed of light – that must be humiliating.

Gallant Riker turned away to watch the singing piano players, and his feet tapped to the beat. Without turning his head, he said, ‘So you know this Dr Fyfe pretty well.’

‘No, only by name and a bad reputation.’ Charles held up one of the publications. ‘Years ago, this journal sent one of Fyfe’s papers for peer review. It was a case study on an eight-year-old boy. The idiot fed a child unwarranted drugs. Then the reviewer – a real psychiatrist – looked into his background and discovered that Fyfe wasn’t licensed to prescribe an aspirin. The article was evidence of illegal traffic in drugs – he bought them on the street. But it was a charge of child endangerment that got him suspended the first time.’

‘The first time? How many—?’

‘Three suspensions.’

‘What does it take to get your license pulled?’

‘You’d have to kill someone on the ethics committee. That would get their attention. As a provision of reinstatement, Fyfe wasn’t allowed to work with children anymore. But that would’ve been too late for Phoebe Bledsoe. Would you like a tutorial on psychodrama?’

Riker rolled his eyes.

Charles smiled. ‘It’ll only take a minute. It’s that simplistic.’ He pointed to the empty armchair beside Riker’s. ‘Imagine, if you will, that the source of your anxiety sits there. Now you speak to it. You pour out your heart, all your angst and fear. It’s a game anyone can play. There’s a drama school on the Lower East Side that uses it for a class exercise.’ Charles picked up another journal and resumed his page turning, stopping suddenly. ‘Here we go.’ He slowed down to read at a speed close to that of a human being.

And Riker listened to the music from the other room, the never-ending song of crazy. What was Mallory playing at?

When Charles was done with the article, he closed the journal. ‘The child mentioned here was eleven years old. Her therapy began a month after the death of a classmate.’

‘That’s our girl,’ said Riker.

Charles turned his eyes to the music room, distracted by the song begun again. ‘Fyfe’s patient was suffering from nightmares and a fear of being left alone for any length of time. She was unresponsive to a standard talking cure. So Fyfe introduced her to psychodrama, and he helped it along with twice-weekly doses of a psychotropic drug. Now that’ll really mess up a child’s brain. Then, as if the little girl didn’t have enough problems, she became delusional. Did I mention that Fyfe is an idiot? He could’ve confused delusion with a coping mechanism or a rich fantasy life.’

‘You mean the invisible playmate?’

Charles nodded as one finger ran along a line on the open page. ‘Here, Fyfe says her delusion took the form of the dead classmate, but the girl wouldn’t say any more than that. No feedback at all. She only listened to an empty chair.’

‘The mother says Phoebe’s listening to her inner critic.’

‘That’s pop-psychology, but there might be a kernel of truth . . . if this little girl felt some responsibility for the boy’s death. That also fits with her silence during therapy sessions. Children are geniuses at keeping the secrets that eat them alive.’

‘You think she’s nuts? Could Phoebe have killed the invisible kid?’

If that had not come out quite right, the psychologist was too polite to say.

‘No idea.’ Charles laid the journal down. ‘If this is a portrait of Phoebe . . . if the behavior is ongoing, I can only confirm that Dr Fyfe sent her to live in a private hell, locked up with a dead child – and she’s still there.’

In the next room, the song of crazy ended.

TWENTY-FOUR

Phoebe’s brother isn’t in school today. She says he can’t come back till Mr Carlyle fixes his last mess. Girl trouble, she says. Humphrey’s got a thing for little girls.

And all this time, I thought her brother wanted to be a girl. But who is Mr Carlyle? Maybe he’s Humphrey’s therapist?

‘No, he’s only a toady,’ says Phoebe. One night a week, her house is full of toads, her mother’s pets.

You can’t make this stuff up.

—Ernest Nadler

One day, years ago, while Mallory was being fitted for a cashmere blazer, Riker had wandered into the tailor shop – and the tailor had asked him to leave, concerned, and perhaps rightly so, that stains on the policeman’s crummy suit might be infectious to Mallory’s fine new threads.

Her partner was not a stylish man.

But she knew Riker held strong opinions on bowties – like this bright yellow one around the scrawny neck of Cedrick Carlyle, one of many assistant district attorneys, and perhaps the one with the smallest office. Prior to the last renovation, this cramped space might have been a storage room with a copy machine where the desk was now. The little man behind that desk was the joke candidate of election years, best remembered for his trademark yellow bowtie. In Riker’s fashion philosophy, bows should be reserved to the pigtails of little girls or the collars of tiny dogs hatched from peanut shells.

ADA Carlyle was pouting, eyes fixed on the keyboard of his laptop computer. He had yet to acknowledge that there were two detectives in this room that was too small for one visitor. So Riker, perhaps realizing that he had been way too polite, rephrased their inquiry on the old Ramble case of fifteen years ago. ‘We’re here about the railroad job you did on Toby Wilder.’

The lawyer stopped typing for a moment, puzzled, maybe undecided as to whether he should bark or roll over. But then the little man continued his two-finger keystrokes.

This was not the response Mallory had hoped for. She wanted his watery gray eyes to spin around in their sockets.

Carlyle never looked up from the laptop screen when he said, ‘You’ll have to come back later.’ He waved one hand toward the door, as if they might have some trouble finding their way out of this closet. ‘Next time, make an appointment.’ In the hierarchy of the justice system, an assistant district attorney should trump a cop.

But not today.

‘This is a homicide investigation.’ Mallory leaned over the desk and slammed down the lid of his laptop. ‘We outrank everybody today.’ There was only one extra chair, and it was piled with papers. She swept them to the floor and sat down.

Following suit with the swipe of one hand, Riker cleared a seat for himself on one corner of the desk, sending books and pens crashing to the floor – just a touch of violence to set the proper tone. ‘We don’t like the way Toby Wilder’s case was handled.’

This got the little man’s rapt attention. Mallory liked that. She liked it a lot. There was no protest, no righteous indignation. Carlyle had probably lived his whole life avoiding confrontation – until now. She leaned forward to lie to him. ‘Rolland Mann said the bogus confession was your idea.’

The prosecutor wiped his palms on his sleeves. A sweaty act of guilt? And now he whined, ‘You can’t blame