The Chalk Girl

‘I bet you can.’ Mallory bent Dr Kemper over the table and handcuffed him while her partner did the honors for Dr Woods. ‘We’re all going downtown.’

In the watchers’ room, the rows of raised seats held five detectives and their commander. Lieutenant Coffey was flanked by the chief medical examiner and an assistant district attorney with a yellow bowtie. In the lighted room on the other side of the one-way glass, Mallory and Riker sat at the table with Dr Emily Woods, and the detectives were playing a brand-new game: Bad Cop, Bad Cop – Abandon All Hope.

‘Kiss your medical license goodbye,’ said Mallory to the hospital pathologist. ‘The best you can do is turn state’s evidence. That might keep you out of jail.’

Jack Coffey stared at the glass as he spoke to ADA Cedrick Carlyle. ‘Dr Woods told us you gave her a green light to do the autopsy at the hospital.’

‘Well, I didn’t.’ The man straightened his bowtie and then fussed with imaginary lint on his suit. ‘I never —’

‘Oh, yeah?’ All heads turned to Detective Gonzales, the dubious voice in the dark at the back of the room. ‘I sat in on Dr Kemper’s interview. He backs up the lady doc. He says the word came down from you.’

‘Clearly a misunderstanding.’ Ignoring the minion in the back row, ADA Carlyle addressed the lieutenant beside him. ‘But no real harm done. I told the hospital administrator there wouldn’t be a homicide investigation for Ernest Nadler. The case was solved – closed. As you know, the prime suspect confessed.’

‘For killing the wino,’ said Coffey, ‘not the kid.’

‘We only needed one charge to put Toby Wilder away. His plea agreement stipulated that the assault on the child would be dropped, and he wouldn’t be charged with a second murder if the Nadler boy died. The judge had no problem with it.’

‘Well, I got problems with it,’ said Coffey. ‘I got ten autopsy pictures of a kid with no hands – but no crime- scene photos. Whose call was that?’

‘When the police found the boy, he was all in one piece. I believe the assault was originally written up as some sort of prank.’

‘A prank?’ Incredulous Detective Janos sat directly behind the ADA, and now he leaned forward to breathe in Carlyle’s ear. ‘The kid was left hanging in a tree for three goddamn days – no food, no water.’

In the back row, another detective said, ‘Ernie was strung up with wire around his wrists. No circulation. We know his hands were already turning black when they cut him down.’

‘Necrotic tissue,’ said Dr Slope. ‘The boy’s hands were amputated in the hospital. So even if Dr Woods was dead drunk on the job – and that’s probably true – she had to notice that Ernie Nadler was a crime victim. Her idiot boss couldn’t have missed that detail, either. Apparently it was your idea to do the autopsy in the hospital.’

‘Looking back,’ said ADA Carlyle, ‘I can see where they might’ve gotten the wrong idea from our conversation. Of course the boy’s body should’ve gone to the Medical Examiner’s Office. No question. That was a huge screwup by the hospital. But Dr Kemper and Dr Woods hardly fit the description of criminal conspirators. It’s just an act of gross stupidity.’

‘Well, thank you for clearing that up,’ said Jack Coffey.

Chief Medical Examiner Edward Slope leaned back in his front-row seat. ‘That won’t get Woods and Kemper off the hook. The little boy was showing signs of improvement in the week before he died. He was on the mend. The prognosis was good . . . and his heart was sound. According to the bloodwork, he managed to beat off the infection from the necrotic tissue. So that didn’t kill him, either.’

The lieutenant reached out to knock on the glass, alerting his detectives to get on with the good part. On cue, in that other room under the bright fluorescent lights, Mallory made a rolling motion with one hand, a signal for Dr Emily Woods to repeat the highlights of her earlier rehearsal interview.

‘There was another autopsy report,’ said the pathologist. ‘What you read – that was the amended version. I found hemorrhaging in the boy’s eyes. The attending physician told me it was caused by medication. Dr Kemper agreed. He made me redact that line. Why complicate things, he said.’

‘And you just went along with that?’

‘No. I knew medication didn’t cause the hemorrhaging. Sometimes these clowns forget that I’m a doctor, too. A doctor – not a lawyer. That assistant DA – I forget his name – a little jerk with a yellow tie. He said the case was settled.’ She splayed her hands. ‘Settled? Well, I knew that was wrong. This wasn’t a damn traffic violation.’

‘You thought it was murder – but not from the injuries,’ said Riker. ‘The kid’s eyes were bloodshot.’

‘Hemorrhaging,’ said Mallory. ‘A sign of suffocation. Any pillow would do the job, right? So you were ordered to cover up a murder. And that didn’t bother you?’

This was pure theater. In real life, this pathologist was a drunk and a hack who lacked even the store of forensic details that might have been gleaned by watching television. When Jack Coffey had sat in on the woman’s earlier, uncoached interview, Dr Woods had only found it odd that the administrator would ask her to redact the words petechial hemorrhaging. Unfortunately, she had not found the requested alterations odd enough to save her original report.

‘Lucky she kept the original report,’ said Lieutenant Coffey. On any other day, it would be worth his job to deceive an assistant district attorney, but he was allowed to lie to a suspect all day long. ‘Kemper and Woods are looking at conspiracy charges. The kid was definitely killed in the hospital.’ He unfolded a sheet of paper. ‘We’re gonna exhume the body.’

A neat trick, since the boy’s corpse had been cremated.

Carlyle’s hands tightened on the armrests of his chair. Apparently he had not been privy to this detail. And that was predictable. The disposal of victim remains would not even make a footnote in a prosecutor’s records. By the dim lights of the watchers’ room, the lawyer strained to read the exhumation order signed by the chief medical examiner. It was all there in black and white – so it must be true.

Coffey smiled. Oh, yeah. This man was a believer. The ADA had that Oh-shit look on his face. Perhaps it had finally dawned on the lawyer that he was the real interrogation subject, but the lieutenant would not leave this to chance. He leaned closer, lowering his voice. ‘Carlyle? Is there something you’d like to tell me?’

The lawyer looked up. On the other side of the glass, the interrogation room was empty. The show was over. He did not argue when the lieutenant took him by the arm and led him to a chair in that room. Four detectives leaned against the walls. And then they were joined by the rest of the squad. Riker and Mallory were the last to walk in the door. The detectives all moved in unison to surround the lieutenant and the lawyer. The shoe shuffling ended abruptly, and all that could be heard was the tick of an old-fashioned pocket watch borrowed from Mallory.

Ten seconds. Twelve. Thirteen, fourteen.

Interrogator and suspect faced one another across the table in a contest. Jack Coffey would not be the first one to speak.

‘Things seem to have gotten out of hand,’ said the lawyer.

‘Somebody got away with murdering Ernest Nadler,’ said Coffey. ‘And you helped with the cover-up.’

‘Nobody got away with anything. The killer was locked up in Spofford.’

‘For killing a wino, not a little boy.’

‘It started with the wino! Don’t you get it? It was always about the wino. You should talk to Rocket—’ Carlyle shook his head and waved one hand to erase that nickname from the air. ‘Rolland Mann will back me on this. The Nadler boy was strung up and left to die because he saw Toby Wilder murder that wino. There’s no chance he identified the wrong kid. They went to the same school. And there were three other witnesses. They all named Toby as the wino’s killer – and fifteen years later, all three of ’em get strung up in the Ramble. Toby is the Hunger Artist. He was getting even for—’

‘Screw the Hunger Artist,’ said Jack Coffey. ‘We’re not working that case today. Toby was locked up when the Nadler kid was murdered in his hospital bed. Care to spin that one for us, Counselor?’

‘All right,’ said Carlyle, as if this might be a reasonable invitation. ‘What if those other witnesses lied about Toby and the wino? My theory works even better that way. Suppose Ernest Nadler knew they lied? Maybe he threatened to lay the blame on those three kids. Now let’s say Ernie’s little classmates came to visit him in the hospital.’

Coffey pushed back from the table. ‘So you’re telling us kids murdered Ernie