The Chalk Girl

the wall of the building.

The shadow cop turned his lenses back to the gate, and now he noticed the padlock and chain. That was new. Two plump, white hands reached through the bars. The padlock was undone, the gate swung open, and a woman stood at the mouth of the alley. He recognized Phoebe Bledsoe from her picture on the wall of the incident room. She carried a plastic trash bag out to the curb.

Willy Fallon stepped away from the wall, hands outstretched and fingers curling into claws as she stole up behind the other woman.

Arthur Chu wanted to shout out a warning, but Detective Mallory would kill him for breaking cover. And so every civilized thing his mother had ever taught him was suppressed.

Phoebe Bledsoe was bending down with her bag of trash when Willy Fallon knocked her off balance with a shove. The falling woman crashed into the cans and knocked them over like dominoes, one hitting the other, and she let out a cry of surprise just before hitting the sidewalk. And there she lay sprawled in garbage.

The last can to fall was filled with metal window blinds. The clatter on the sidewalk was so like the clang of being slammed into lockers at school. Phoebe saw the back of a skinny woman and knew it was Willy before her assailant said, ‘You were there, too. You’re next.’ And the X was dragged out in a hiss.

Her old schoolmate walked away, transforming in comic-book fashion as she passed in and out of the lights of street lamps. Ernie’s world of monster mutants was more real than Phoebe knew – and now, in mind’s eye, she watched Willy quick-scrabble down the pavement on eight spider legs.

Limping on one sore ankle, Phoebe shut the gate behind her and secured it with the padlock. She made her way to the end of the alley just as the telephone rang in her cottage across the garden. The answering machine had been turned off after the last message from Willy, and the ringing continued. Upon entering the cottage, she stared at the telephone, as if waiting for it to explode. So many rings. Did the caller know she was home, just standing there – afraid? She picked up the receiver, but her mouth had gone dry, and she said nothing.

After a while, a man’s voice said, ‘Phoebe?’

It was Rolland Mann.

‘What do you want?’

‘I’m still concerned about your safety,’ he said, ‘and your . . . involvement. Did the detectives ask you about Ernie Nadler’s death? Do you think they know?’

‘Know what?’

‘Don’t you remember?’ he asked in his talking-to-idiots voice. ‘When that little boy was strung up and left to die in the woods, you waited three days before you told me where to find him.’

THIRTY-SIX

Tonight, I listen from the hallway while my parents sit at the kitchen table with Detective Mann. He tells them I made the whole thing up, and the autopsy proves it – kids didn’t murder the wino. He says I only ratted out my classmates to get even with them for bullying me at school.

My father nods. He’s seen the evidence of bullies – the marks they left on my body. He believes the detective. Mom cries. She believes him, too.

I have lost everything.

—Ernest Nadler

Elderly Mrs Buford bent down to fetch her morning Times, eager to read the next episode of the Ramble murders. The saga of the Hunger Artist had become her new soap opera.

The door across the hall opened, and she braced herself. The neighbor woman’s husband had done morning paper duty for the past few days. Such a creepy fellow, he had interfered with the digestion of her breakfast. But now – oh, thank God – she saw Annie standing on the threshold.

What a relief. Rolland Mann had apparently not done away with his wife after all.

Well, now they could resume their old morning ritual, cordial exchanges of hellos and comments on the weather. Or maybe not. Mrs Buford noticed the suitcase. ‘Going somewhere?’

Escaping, perhaps?

Annie nodded.

‘Have a lovely time.’ The old woman closed the door only to open it a minute later at the sound of weeping. Annie Mann had traveled only a few steps from her own door before she crumpled to the floor beside her luggage. She sat huddled against the wall.

Mrs Buford belted her robe and bustled across the hallway with the shush of fuzzy pink slippers. Bending creaky knees, she knelt down beside her fallen neighbor and took the woman’s hands in hers, rubbing the cold, clammy flesh till it warmed, till Annie’s breathing was less of a struggle, and the sweat of her brow ceased to roll into her eyes. The younger woman fumbled with the catch on her purse and spilled a dozen pharmacy bottles across the carpet.

‘I’ll get you some water so you can take a pill.’ Mrs Buford had no sooner entered her own apartment than she heard the ping that announced the arrival of the elevator. When she looked out the door, it was a great surprise to see two uniformed policemen in the hall – a greater surprise for Annie Mann, who slumped over in a dead faint. And perhaps that was for the best. Poor woman. She never could have left the building fully conscious. One officer picked up Annie’s wallet from the spilled contents of her purse. He nodded to the second man, who carried her limp body to the elevator, leaving the suitcase behind. A young blonde knelt on the carpet, scooping the pill bottles back into the fallen purse. How odd.

Well, in any case, Annie had made her escape.

Of course, Mrs Buford had imagined this scene a hundred times, but she had always envisioned the husband in police custody – not the wife. She was about to close her door when a voice called out, ‘Wait!’ She poked her head into the hall once more and saw the long-legged blonde coming toward her – closer, closer. Oh, my, what strange green eyes.

The young woman showed her a gold badge and a police identification card that made her a detective. A detective! How exciting. As the blonde restored the badge to a back pocket of her jeans, her blazer fell open on one side, and now a very large gun was on display in a shoulder holster.

Oh, this was simply marvelous. Mrs Buford was fairly giddy when she said, ‘Tell me it’s murder.’

‘Yes. Yes, it is.’

The old woman rose up on her toes, all atingle with anticipation, and when the young woman asked, ‘Wanna play?’ Mrs Buford replied, ‘Could I?’

Coco perched on a desk near the stairwell door and lectured Detective Gonzales on the terrible importance of toilet-seat locks. ‘The rats can get in that way. They swim up through the water in the toilet bowl. But if the seats are locked down, they just swim round and round till they drown.’

The lieutenant stood with Mallory and Riker on the squad-room side of the window, watching the action in the next room through the blinds. Via an open intercom, the three of them eavesdropped on a conversation between the people inside the not-so-private office, where the two civilians were on a first-name basis now, Annie and Charles.

The lady was not what Jack Coffey had expected, not the pretty trophy wife of a political up-and-comer. She looked so ordinary – if he discounted the fact that she was terrified.

Annie Mann held tight to the arms of her chair, so afraid that she might lift off into space. Despite the fear, she smiled when Charles Butler did. This new expression transformed her. No longer plain, she was all warmth and charm personified. Magnetic. It was almost a magic act. But the illusion was short-lived, and she shifted back into panic mode, eyes darting everywhere, on the lookout for danger in the corners of the room. And now she panted like a dog.

Charles perused the pharmacy stash from the woman’s purse, then selected a bottle and handed her a single pill. She popped it in her mouth and chomped it like a candy. When she was calm, he left her alone to join the