The Chalk Girl

‘Somebody had to identify that body while it was still fresh,’ said Mallory, ‘still here.’

‘We keep scrupulous logs on visitors,’ said Slope. ‘But the computer will only show you a list of people who made positive IDs. And no one did – not in this case. We still don’t have a name for your dead wino.’

‘What about the sign-in sheets for visitors?’ said Riker.

‘Fortunately, we never throw anything away,’ said Edward Slope. ‘Now, if you give me a year, I might find those sheets in a storage facility in one of the outer boroughs – assuming the paper isn’t completely rotted away – or covered with mold – maybe eaten by mice.’ He said this last part purely for the entertainment of his assistant.

The detectives were gone.

Mallory held a fax sheet of names and dates close to the blind attorney’s ear. And Anthony Queen could hear her crumple it into a tight ball. ‘The funeral home gave you up, old man.’ She bounced the paper ball off his desk to make him flinch.

‘According to Graves Registration,’ said Riker, ‘Toby’s mother was buried upstate in a family plot. There were two burials that day – Susan Wilder and that wino Toby killed.’

‘He never killed anyone. He was innocent.’

‘Spoken like a true ambulance chaser,’ said Mallory. ‘A year after the kid’s release, he gave you a coffin number to claim the body for burial. Toby got that number from a toe tag when the wino’s corpse was still in the morgue. There’s no other way he could’ve picked the right pine box in Potter’s Field. And he brought flowers into the Ramble – to the exact spot where the man’s body was found. How did that kid know where to put the flowers if he didn’t kill the wino?’

The old man made no denial. Though Riker could come up with alternate explanations, the lawyer could not. Now, that was interesting. ‘So you always knew.’

‘No. I didn’t,’ said Anthony Queen. ‘I gave the coffin number to a funeral home. They claimed the body, not me.’

‘I stand corrected,’ said Riker. ‘You didn’t want to know.’

‘Toby waited until his mother died,’ said Mallory. ‘That’s when the wino’s body was claimed. Toby didn’t want her to know the murdered man was Jess Wilder. That’s the name he had engraved on the wino’s tombstone. You let that kid plead guilty to murdering his own father.’

Anthony Queen appeared to be in shock – if the blank stare could be believed. He seemed not to notice that the detectives had walked out of his office. They were standing in the reception room when Riker looked back to see the lawyer lay his head on the desk. Was this an act of sorrow – or just an act? He made a mental note to ask Coco if rats could feel remorse.

Mallory and Riker stood before a cork wall in the incident room, pinning up the evidence that flowed from Toby Wilder’s flowers.

Other detectives wandered in after no success in canvasing Ernest Nadler’s old neighborhood. They had been following up on the death certificates for the boy’s parents, who had died soon after losing their son. Fifteen years later, the building super had changed, and so had many of the tenants. The last man through the door, Janos, had struck gold, and now he tacked a yellow sheet of lined paper to the wall.

Riker donned his bifocals to read the small, neat handwriting. It was a witness statement, written and signed by a resident of the murdered boy’s apartment building. ‘Mallory, listen to this. It’s about Ernie’s parents. The neighbor, Irene Walters, says, “I never knew Ernie was missing. I did know he was seriously ill, but not the details. His parents were never home. Always at the hospital with Ernie, days, nights, all the time. I tried to see the boy once, but the policeman who guarded the door would only allow immediate family. Well, I guess a month went by.

‘ “I came outside one morning, and there were people gathered on the other side of the street. They were all looking up at my building. I remember hearing sirens when I crossed the street. I turned back, and there they were. Ernie’s parents stood on the ledge outside their window. They were holding hands. They were always holding hands whenever I saw them out walking. And there was no fear at all when they stepped off the ledge – like they were just out for a stroll in the sky. It seemed to take forever before they hit the sidewalk. And that’s when I knew their little boy had died.” ’

Coco took on the scale of a doll as she sat on Detective Janos’s massive lap and recited the list of poisons favored for killing vermin. Charles Butler walked down the hall to the incident room, where he was wanted. He looked back once to see Janos, that most excellent playmate, extending his hands to illustrate a measure, no doubt describing the biggest rat he had ever seen.

The tall psychologist entered the room lined with cork. One wall was decked with photographs of autopsied bodies and Toby Wilder’s musical score – blood and song. The rest of the space was dedicated to pages of text, maps and diagrams. Detectives in shirtsleeves stood in clusters, examining a wall of documents.

Charles walked toward the only woman. His relationship with Mallory was so at odds these days. He approached her now like an awkward teenager bent on asking a pretty girl if she might like to dance with him – or spit on him – one of those two things. In lieu of hello, the young detective tapped a sheet of paper pinned to the cork, and he turned his head to read an eyewitness account of two people stepping off a ledge to their deaths.

‘Somebody’s going to pay for that,’ she said. ‘We need a psychological autopsy.’

‘As court evidence? But Edward’s staff does that sort of thing, and probably with much more—’

‘Naw,’ said Riker, coming up behind him. ‘It would take weeks to get the final report from Slope’s people. You can do it faster.’

Mallory led him to the place where hospital records papered the wall. And he knew this was her work, this neat precision that other people could only manage with a ruler and a carpenter’s level. This section was devoted to medical charts, bills and accounting sheets for the care of a child, age eleven. ‘We can’t even find the boy’s ashes,’ she said. ‘This is all that’s left of the Nadlers’ son.’

Charles strolled down the wall, trying not to be too obvious about reading at light speed with all these eyes on him. To the casual observer, he might be only browsing as he took in every word, the whole grim hospital history of a little boy who had lost his hands and then his life. Upon reaching the end of the papers, the end of the boy, he turned to the two detectives.

‘I’ll tell you what’s not here. According to the neighbor’s statement, the parents spent all their days and nights at the hospital. So I’m sure they were given a room and a bed near the intensive care unit – a common practice. The Nadlers probably slept in shifts so one of them could be with their son all the time.’

He backed up to the sheet that transferred Ernest Nadler from intensive care to a private room. ‘The boy was out of danger for the last week of his life, but I know the parents still stayed with him, day and night. This is a suite – very expensive – a second room and a bed for the mother and father. They didn’t want Ernest to be alone when – if – he should come out of the coma. I’m certain of that. The amputated hands – no parent would want a child to face that horror without them.’

He walked to the end of the wall and tapped three papers. ‘These statements didn’t come from the hospital. They’re from a private nurse – a freelancer.’

‘Huh?’ Riker checked the exhibit numbers against the list on his clipboard. ‘You’re right. That paperwork came from a storage locker with the Nadlers’ personal effects – and their unopened mail.’

‘Well, this is the saddest part of the story,’ said Charles. ‘By the time the boy was stabilized and on the mend, the parents must’ve been exhausted. They hired a private nurse to sit by the bed – just a few hours here and there. By this time, the parents were in desperate need of a break – some fresh air, a quiet dinner outside of the hospital – something normal. And during one of these rare absences – while the nurse was on duty – their little boy died.’

Riker stepped closer to read the time sheet for the nurse’s last shift. ‘Nobody caught that. We’re still plowing through all this stuff.’

Charles walked back to the beginning of his tour and stood before the witness account of the double suicide. ‘These two people were drained by an emotional roller-coaster ride. According to the patient charts, their child was improving. They were looking forward to bringing him home. And then, with no warning, their son died. I know they blamed themselves. Guilt always follows a death in the family. But there’s more to it than that. You see, they didn’t just leave the boy to a common sitter from a temp service. They hired a registered nurse, the best watcher that money could buy. And why? Because they’d spent a solid month in that place. They would’ve heard all the stories, all the things that might befall a helpless child left to the vagaries of the hospital staff. But they left him – dropped