The Chalk Girl

The whole squad buzzed with questions. How could she do that when every human instinct screamed run? And how she could just lie there while a damn train ran over her? The general consensus was that she might not be human, but she was alive, so what the hell.

Mallory was pulled from the trough between the rails, her clothes smoked and scorched by sparks from brake shoes and wheels. Her hair and face were coated with dust and smeared with oil from the undercarriage, and the back of her was covered with caked dirt and debris from the ground. Oh, how the neat freak must hate that. She was lifted high in the air by a whistling, hollering, real happy crowd and handed up to the waiting arms of more brother and sister cops.

When at last she stood on solid ground, Riker grabbed her and held on tight. He was probably crushing the life out of her, but he could not stop himself. He hugged her and cried and yelled, ‘My God, you’re filthy!’

And Mallory said, ‘So . . . you lost Willy.’

‘Hey, get outta the way! We got an OD here!’ Two paramedics made their way through the welcome-back- from-the-dead party, and an unconscious Toby Wilder lay on the stretcher they carried between them. Mallory left her tight family of cops to walk alongside the stretcher as Toby’s personal escort to the world up the stairs and the light of day.

FORTY

Normally I don’t suck at math. Today my father sees the failing grade on my test paper. He works his butt off for this family, he says, and I only have this one little job – school. How, he asks, can a kid be so smart and screw up this bad? I wanted to say, ‘Well, I’m a little distracted, Dad. I’m waiting for them to kill me.’ But what’s the point? He thinks I lied about the wino’s murder.

‘Be a man,’ he says. I tell him I can’t. I won’t live that long. And he smacks me. This is the first time he’s ever done that. But I don’t cry. I don’t even flinch. I’ve taken worse, and I tell him so. My father just stands there. So surprised. It’s like he’s the one who got hit.

And he’s the one who cries.

—Ernest Nadler

Toby Wilder had been hospitalized for his overdose, and his prognosis was good. The white shield, Arthur Chu, had earned his pay for the day by following Willy Fallon onto her getaway train to arrest her. And then the young cop had dragged his trophy prisoner into the squad room of Special Crimes Unit, where Willy had promptly lawyered up.

Mallory was pronounced fit for duty – only in need of some soap and a change of clothes. This was not the medical opinion of the emergency-room doctor, but Lieutenant Coffey had bought that lie. And it had been Riker’s privilege to see the lady home. Chagrined, he realized that she could have done without his help, his game of blackmail chess with the chief of D’s. As a hero cop, she could fail ten more psych evaluations and still keep her badge.

Riker wondered what a department shrink would make of Mallory’s apartment, where everything was black or white, all sharp corners and hard edges. There were no personal elements, nothing to say that a human being lived here – except for the sound of a shower running in the bathroom. On the glass coffee table, Mallory’s cell played rock-a-bye music to identify her caller, and Riker picked up the phone to have a conversation with Coco.

‘Naw, she’s fine,’ he said to the worried child. ‘You can’t believe what you hear on the news. Mallory can only be killed by a silver bullet.’

There was no sign of media interest in the grand-scale event going on at One Police Plaza, even though a gang of reporters had permanent roosts in the building’s pressroom.

Willy Fallon had been caught on a tourist’s camera while throwing a baby into the path of an oncoming train, and that televised video had upstaged a coup at the Puzzle Palace, where a press secretary was madly spinning today’s demonstration as a silent tribute to Rolland Mann, recently whacked by a bus, thus ensuring that it would be buried on the obituary pages of tomorrow’s newspapers. None of the reporters – with police-issued press credentials – thought to ask why all of the demonstrators were women.

Outside on the plaza, the afternoon sun was hot enough to melt lipstick.

Jack Coffey stood by the red sculpture near the street. The promenade was impassable. He had been summoned here by the chief of detectives. Both men watched the crowd of uniformed officers filling the plaza and much of the courtyard beyond the gatehouse to NYPD Headquarters. There were hundreds of them, tall and short, pretty cops and ugly ones, all packing guns – all of them policewomen. It was stunning and threatening and illegal as hell, but who could be called in to disburse them – the police? Male officers, who worked in the building, stood idly by the entrance, complacent prisoners.

‘This is why you don’t see any broads on patrol,’ said Joe Goddard. ‘They’re all here – except for the seven cops upstairs at Dr Kane’s hearing.’

Lieutenant Coffey had not been invited to the competency hearing, and neither had the chief of D’s. The orchestration of this event had bypassed the Detective Bureau. Failed psych reports had been leaked only to affected patrol cops – every female in uniform ever evaluated by Dr Kane – all seven of them labeled as sociopaths unfit for duty.

‘Go figure,’ said Joe Goddard. ‘A police psychologist who’s afraid of women with guns.’

Not so long ago, Jack Coffey had heard these same words from Riker. He should have listened then. And now? He fancied that he could hear that detective laughing at him. The lieutenant’s eyes traveled over the legion of cops awaiting the reinstatement of sister officers. Inside the building, every high-ranking official had a captive’s view from the upper floors. ‘I bet it’ll be the shortest hearing on record.’

‘You got that right,’ said Goddard. ‘But the hearing’s just a formality. Dr Kane was toast before these women showed up. That twit’s psych reports were shredded hours ago. All of them . . . Detective Mallory’s, too.’ The chief looked up to the high windows. ‘I talked to the computer whiz kids on the top floor. They can’t figure out who leaked those evaluations and organized this demonstration. All these cops think the orders came from their union. They didn’t. But the instructions were routed through a union computer.’

And now Jack Coffey learned that a hacker had used that computer to generate an automated mailing to every precinct. All of these women had received printed invitations to this party. And the sealed envelopes had been handed out this morning – by their own sergeants.

Joe Goddard rocked back on his heels. ‘We only know this was planned by a hacker with world-class skills . . . and she doesn’t leave tracks.’ The chief was not a man to waste words on rhetorical questions, and yet he asked, ‘You got any theories, Jack?’

‘Nope.’ Well, yeah. If he had to guess – at gunpoint – he might think that Mallory had ransacked the department data bank, looking for Charles Butler’s rebuttal evaluation – the one never filed. It had probably taken her all of three minutes to figure out why the chief of D’s was sitting on her failed psych evaluation. She had a natural gift for recognizing extortion potential. Lieutenant Coffey stared at his shoes. He had underestimated her so badly. And now she was gunning for Joe Goddard.

The chief of detectives was still waiting for a better answer – one that would probably come as a three- o’clock-in-the-morning epiphany: Mallory wanted Goddard to know that she had done this. Contrary to what the computer techs believed, there were footprints everywhere. This massive show of force, this overkill, was all Mallory, summoning hundreds of guns into play for one warning shot. Joe Goddard should not mess with her one more time – or there would be war in Copland. But that understanding would come later. Just now the man was tapping his foot – waiting.

‘No idea.’ Jack Coffey folded his arms. ‘Not a clue.’ And then, since they both knew this was a lie, he told the truth. ‘No one’s gonna look at one of my people for this – sure as hell not Mallory. She wouldn’t be caught dead at an all-girl turnout. There’s not one feminist bone in her body.’ She had no need of one. Only a rare and suicidal man might suggest that his detective was of better use barefoot and pregnant.