Charles nodded. ‘You think they conspired to hide the boy.’
‘Right,’ said Mallory. ‘They didn’t want the killer to know there was an eyewitness. That’s why no one could find Junior. He was shipped off to relatives out of state.’
A computer beeped to call for Mallory’s attention, and she sat down at a workstation to watch the text scrolling down her screen. ‘An hour ago, I found rapsheets for Rolf and Lisa Qualen, a husband and wife in Wisconsin. They were arrested for kidnapping a little boy, but the age doesn’t match Natalie’s son.’ Mallory scrolled down the single-spaced text. ‘One hell of a lot of material.’ She watched bundles of paper pouring into all the printer beds. ‘I’ve got a time problem here.’
Laden with Mallory’s printouts, Charles had retreated to the comfort of his own private office, a soft leather chair and a wooden desk from a less technical age. When he had finished speed-reading the last of the court documents, a trial transcript and attendant reports from social workers and police, he looked up at his audience. The weary detectives were pressed deep into a plush sofa. They were raiding delicatessen bags and awaiting his synopsis on the arrest and trial of Rolf and Lisa Qualen.
‘Mr and Mrs Qualen had a son named John, who drowned shortly before his eighth birthday, and that was a year before Natalie Homer’s murder. Two days after Natalie’s body was found, the Qualens abandoned their house in Racine, Wisconsin, and resettled in a small town a hundred miles away. That’s where they enrolled their dead son, John, in grammar school.’
‘Freaking amateurs,’ said Riker.
‘Hmm.’ Mallory finished her bagel. ‘Bad match for Natalie’s son. The dead boy’s birth certificate was off by two years.’
‘The school principal noticed that, too,’ said Charles. ‘He was told that the boy’s scholastic records were lost in a fire. Eventually, he located those records in Racine – along with a death certificate for the real John Qualen.’
‘So that’s when the cops were called in?’ This was Riker’s polite way of moving the story along, for it was not his habit to state the obvious. And now he glanced at his watch in yet another attempt at being subtle.
‘Yes,’ said Charles. ‘The police suspected kidnapping, but the Qualens wouldn’t cooperate with the investigation and neither would the little boy.’
‘Junior was scared,’ said Mallory.
‘That was the case detective’s opinion,’ said Charles. ‘The police had no idea where the boy came from. He didn’t match any reports on missing children. So they put him in foster care, and the Qualens went to trial. The kidnap charge was never proved, but they were found guilty of falsifying records, and that got them a stiff fine. The foster-care records were sealed, and the boy disappeared into the bureaucracy.’
Riker pulled out his notebook and pen. ‘What’ve you got in the way of case numbers?’
‘For the boy? There’s nothing attached to the court documents. Sorry.’ He held up a sheaf of papers. ‘This is a brief filed by the Qualens’ attorney. They tried to adopt the boy, but they weren’t even successful in getting visitation rights.’
‘That’s why I can’t find him,’ said Mallory. ‘Social Services saw the Qualens as a threat. So they changed Junior’s name again and gave him a new case number. We don’t even know what age they settled on.’
‘With what we got so far,’ said Riker, ‘we’ll never get a court order to open sealed juvenile records. And he’s probably out there right now stringing up another woman.’
‘Then we’ll know soon enough,’ said Mallory. ‘He escalated with Sparrow. This time, he’ll put on a bigger show.’
Riker’s kitchen was wrecked, drawers pulled out, cupboards rifled, and a slice of pizza was glued upside down to the linoleum where he had dropped it the previous night – or perhaps the night before. And he had not yet found the playground tape. Years ago, he had put it away for fear of breaking it after running it so many times.
He glanced back at the living room. Charles Butler sat down on the sofa, and a dusty cloud rose up around him. At the man’s feet, cardboard take-out containers and months of newspapers were loosely piled, as if set apart for recycling, a practice Riker had only heard about, and all the ashtrays were overflowing with stale butts. However, Charles was so polite, so well bred that no one would have guessed he was not accustomed to squalor.
At last the detective found the videotape and fed it into the VCR in the living room. He handed his guest the last clean glass (Riker’s own version of good breeding) filled with bourbon and a splash of water, then made his own drink a bit stronger and settled into a leather armchair.
‘A friend of mine confiscated the tape from a pedophile. The freak was cruising Central Park for victims.’ He turned to Charles and noted the sudden rigid set to the man’s jaw. ‘Relax. He never got near the kid. He could only catch her on film.’ Riker hit the play button on his remote control. ‘This is what really got Lou’s attention. The film was a few years old when we saw it for the first time.’ In the absence of children of his own, the pedophile’s video was Riker’s substitute for home movies.
The screen brightened to a clear summer day, and the show began with the close-up shot of a small blond girl in a dirty T-shirt that fitted her like a tent. Riker pressed the pause button. ‘Kathy’s probably eight years old on this tape, but you can see she’s been out on the street too long.’
He pressed the play button, but the little girl remained frozen on the grass at the edge of a playground. She tilted her head to one side, not yet committed to going or staying. The homeless child must have known that she belonged here with kids her own age. Perhaps she recognized a normalcy that had been ripped away from her. So here she was – looking to fill a need.
Doing the best you can.
Kathy came to play.
Charles Butler leaned toward the screen, spellbound by the beautiful little girl, a miniature Mallory. All around her the world was aswirl with action and sound, small feet running in packs and tiny screams of outrage and joy.
The solitary child hesitated another moment. Then, light stepping, cautious as a cat, she padded toward a row of swings, gray boards dangling from long metal chains. She took her seat among the rest, looking right and left with grave suspicion, and she began to swing in a small tentative arc. Now Kathy leaned far back to steepen the pitch and made a soft giggling sound at the wonder of flight. On the upswing, she soared above a line of cruel spikes atop an iron fence. An illusion of the camera made these spears seem close enough to impale her.
Fearing nothing from the hard ground below, she leaned farther back to make the swing fly higher. Reckless and grinning, she soared up and over the heads of wild-eyed women, mothers and nannies, their waving hands and their screams of Come down!
Riker turned to Charles. The man’s mouth was working in a silent prayer, Don’t fall.
Toes pointed toward the sun, she rushed up to the sky, laughing – laughing.
All the joy died when Kathy looked into the camera lens. Her eyes were suddenly adult and cold. Her hands let go of the chains, and she took flight; literally airborne, she flew out of the camera frame, and the screen went black.
Though Riker had watched this film a hundred times, his hand tensed around the bourbon glass. For him, the child was still flying and always would be – a tossed coin that could never land.