The Chalk Girl

their vigilance for an hour – and he died. Exhaustion, grief . . . guilt. They stepped off the ledge to stop the pain.’ He turned to face the detectives. ‘There’s no mystery here.’

‘So whoever murdered their son – he killed the parents, too,’ said Mallory. ‘Can you put that in writing?’

‘Complicity in the suicide, yes. You’ll have my finding by the end of the day.’ Charles turned back to the wall. ‘Wouldn’t there be a policeman guarding a crime victim’s room?’

‘Twenty-four seven,’ said Riker. ‘But the cop’s only there for protection. We got no record of who went in and out of the kid’s room. Fifteen years ago, nobody knew Ernie Nadler was murdered in his bed. So nobody interviewed the only witness – the cop on duty when it happened.’

‘But you did?’

‘He’s a drunk,’ said Riker. ‘Soup for brains. The guy can’t remember squat.’

‘What about the nurse?’

‘We’ll look for her.’ Mallory pulled the nurse’s time sheet from the wall. ‘But what are the odds she’ll admit to stepping out of the room while somebody offed her patient?’

‘The parents only used that woman three times,’ said Charles. ‘Those are very rare windows of opportunity.’

‘I see where you’re going,’ said Riker. ‘We still got the cop who did guard duty on the kid. He’s in an interview room. But I don’t think he’ll remember making any phone calls to our killer.’

Now Mallory was taking a new interest in the nurse’s time sheet. ‘There’s a pattern of three dinner hours, the same time three nights in a row.’ She smiled. ‘Rolland Mann would’ve known about that. If the kid was improving, he’d want to know when his star witness woke up. He’d keep close tabs on everything – including this nurse. So he wouldn’t need a heads-up from the cop on guard duty.’

Eyes closed in sleep, Police Commissioner Beale lay on the hospital bed of the intensive care unit. The old man’s security detail had been stripped down to a single officer, who sat by the door on the other side of the busy ward – out of sight, out of earshot, the next best thing to not being there. Beale was so frail, half dead by the look of him. He could not last much longer.

Sooner was better.

Rolland Mann could have done without the old man’s job, but now absolute power was a prerequisite to contain the chaos of his unraveling life. He stared at the tubes running in and out of the patient’s every orifice. Beeping monitors of colored lights recorded the beats of a badly damaged heart and every breath.

So fragile – vulnerable.

THIRTY-THREE

I can see the pastor at my funeral one day. I can hear him say, ‘Little Ernie was a good boy, a fine boy. He didn’t have an enemy in the world.’ Then the old twit natters on about the mysterious ways in which God works to murder little children on their way home from school. And a ghost of me screams, ‘You jerk, there’s no mystery! I told EVERYBODY!’

—Ernest Nadler

Hours into a second shift, the nurse remained at the bedside of the heart patient, Police Commissioner Beale. The woman showed the wear of a long night into day, yet she continued to smooth the sheets each time the old man stirred.

‘You can leave,’ said Rolland Mann. ‘Get a cup of coffee. I’ll stay with him till you—’ His words broke off at the shake of her head.

She was not going anywhere. This point was made by her white shoes firmly planted and by her boxer’s stance. Had this woman sized him up? Had some intuition informed her that he was not to be trusted? No, it was more than that. The nurse glanced at her watch and then turned to a gap in the privacy curtain.

Waiting for reinforcements?

Beyond the curtain, he could see the police officer he had handpicked for this security detail. Nothing out of the ordinary there. The doors to the ward swung open, and another man in uniform entered the ward. The regular guard then walked out the door, leaving his post.

On whose authority?

The nurse raised her hand, hailing the new arrival, ‘Officer Wycoff?’

‘Yes, ma’am.’ The young policeman stepped inside the confines of the privacy curtain and faced down Rolland Mann. ‘I’ll need to see some ID, sir.’

‘What? I’m your boss.’

‘No, sir, that would be my sergeant. And he gets his orders from—’

‘Never mind.’ Rolland waved one hand to spare himself the litany of command ranks. He doubted that this idiot could tell him who had dared to countermand the orders of an acting police commissioner. The chief of police would never cross him; he was certain of that. His anxiety was climbing as he considered the mayor and wondered who had that little man’s ear today. Rolland pushed through the doors of the ward and walked down the corridor. He felt a constriction in his chest, the kind that came with fear. This linked to thoughts of Mallory, the whack-job cop. And, along her chain of command, he was led to the most likely adversary, Chief of Detectives Joe Goddard.

Rolland pressed the button to summon the elevator. Before the doors could open, he had formed a plan to transfer Goddard to the Criminal Justice Bureau, a place where out-of-favor chiefs were sent to be buried alive.

The unofficial investigation of Rolland Mann required a meeting in neutral territory. Riker had chosen a comfort zone for the chief of detectives, and now he waited for the man in the southwest corner of Washington Square Park.

Riker had loved this place in the summers of his younger days when it was open twenty-four hours, an all- night, all-day circus of jugglers and fire eaters and all kinds of freaks, boys and girls with guitars, loud boom boxes and mellow horns. Oh, and the smells – pastrami and hot dogs, women’s perfume walking by, cigarette smoke and marijuana. But years ago, a curfew had been imposed by a previous mayor, whose friends had complained that their little darlings were scoring drugs in the park. Teenagers smoking dope – who knew? Fences had gone up, and one more of life’s charms had been lost to nights in Greenwich Village. Now, on hot summer days, the vendors hawked odorless ice cream and sodas from look-alike carts with white-and-green umbrellas – so clean, so sterile.

This city was going to hell.

The sun beat down on the center of a small plaza defined by curved blocks of stone, tall trees and a circle of small tables footed in cement. Benches were bolted into the asphalt floor, but these seats were not for the weary. This corner of the park was a haven for chess hustlers. Riker moseyed over to a game in progress and flashed his badge. ‘Sorry, guys, I need your table.’

Both men obliged him too eagerly, rising to leave with wide smiles, a good clue that they were carrying drugs and maybe dealing, too.

‘Not so fast,’ he said.

They dropped their smiles, correctly guessing that their escape had been entirely too easy. But all the detective wanted was conversation. He showed them a cell-phone picture of Joe Goddard, and they gave up the chief of detectives as a regular in this corner of the park.

‘Yeah, he plays every Sunday,’ said the older man.

And his young friend said, ‘That motherfucker’s a real badass player.’

In the parlance of New York City, there could be no higher praise.

‘Well, this is my first game with the guy,’ said Riker. ‘Any tips on strategy?’

‘Hey, man, you got a gun, right? I guess that’s all you need.’

Enough said.

The detective cut them loose and settled down at the small table. The players and dealers at neighboring tables had already slipped away. He watched people strolling through this plaza entry to the park. It was no longer easy to tell the Village residents from the tourists and the NYU students. They were all wearing clothes from the