‘What if he didn’t come to work last night? Now there’s a thought.’ The personnel director glanced at the broken glass wall of the nightwatchman’s office, then looked away. ‘Maybe it’s not his blood in there. You know, an old man like that, he could be at home right now, lying in his own bed, maybe – Oh, God. He could be having a heart attack. Can you send somebody over to his apartment? We must cover all the bases.’ He raked one hand through his sparse hair. ‘Yes – all the bases.’
‘Of course,’ said Wang. ‘I’ll send a cop to check it out – real soon.’ Or maybe never. This errand would hit the bottom of police priorities this morning. The more important business was a look at the store’s files. All the employees had been photographed, and this was the only helpful information Winetrob had given him so far – or so he believed.
Gently, Detective Wang helped the civilian to his feet and led him to an elevator that would carry them up to the personnel office. Later, Arthur Wang would wish that he had prioritized in a different fashion and paid closer attention to Winetrob’s wacky ramblings, his hopes and fears.
When Deluthe had finished Janos’s chore in the payroll department, he had been loaned out to Arthur Wang. Now he was posted at a secretary’s desk outside the office of the personnel director. He had made short work of the first fifty photographs in the stack of employee files, and the man from Kennedy Harper’s crime scene was not among them. More busywork. He glanced toward the open door. The senior detective was inside, drinking coffee and making notes on his conversation with Mr Winetrob. Wang noticed him and called out, ‘Find anything?’
‘Nothing yet, sir.’ Deluthe closed another folder.
Arthur Wang walked to the door and tossed a file on the secretary’s desk. ‘That one goes in your stack. Put it back in alphabetical order, okay? When you’re done, report to Riker.’
Deluthe opened the file of the nightwatchman and stared at the photograph. His eyes drifted down to the name, that vital clue to the man’s place in the file cabinet. The line below it was a familiar East Village address. And now, with utter disregard for the alphabet, the young detective jammed the folder into the center of the large stack and left his job unfinished. He had more important things to do.
In the back office of Butler and Company, Mallory was on the phone, terrorizing a clerk at the Odeon, Nebraska, Police Department. ‘So what if your computer is down? What does that – Look, all I need is a photograph… Yeah, right… I told you that an hour ago… So pull it out of the hardcopy… Then fax it! Now!’
Fortunately, there had been no computer problems at the Nebraska Department of Motor Vehicles. Charles was looking at a monitor and their only likeness of the scarecrow. The image was not very good, but most license photographs were less than professional quality.
After relocating in Nebraska, Susan Qualen’s cousins had changed their family name, and the boy they had harbored was called John Ryan. No doubt the cousins had called the boy by his initials, J.R. for Junior, the only name he was accustomed to.
Mallory sat down at the workstation. ‘It’ll probably take them an hour to figure out how a file drawer works.’
‘Bad luck,’ said Charles. ‘How do you suppose ordinary people like the Qualens became so adept at changing identities?’
‘Nothing to it. Idiots get away with it all the time.’ She stared at her monitor screen. ‘The scarecrow must’ve picked up another alias when he came east. He’s not in any local databases. You know what that means?’
‘He’s been planning this killing spree for three years?’
‘No, I think he only planned one murder.’
‘The man who killed his mother?’
Mallory nodded. ‘In Nebraska, Junior was a small-town cop in uniform. Probably never got near a major investigation. So he comes to the big city. Figures he can find his mother’s killer in a day – and without any help from us.’
Charles agreed. And when the boy failed, his last resort was forcing NYPD to do the job for him.
‘The scarecrow hates police,’ she said. ‘He’s very clear about that. So tell me, why would he become a cop?’
‘Perhaps he had control issues.’ Charles suspected that this was why Mallory had joined NYPD, but he could not complete this twinning image of her and the scarecrow. ‘It’s an interesting choice, isn’t it? His emotional problems must have been very tightly contained while he was a police officer. The deterioration probably started after he moved to New York.’
He looked up to see Lars Geldorf standing just inside the door. Some tenant must have buzzed him into the building. Charles was unprepared for the change in him. The old man had aged another decade in a day.
Ignoring the unwelcome visitor, Mallory looked down at her keyboard. The retired detective walked a few steps into the room, then seemed at the point of falling down. Charles picked up a chair and rushed toward him, but the man waved him away and remained standing.
Lars Geldorf s eyes were fixed on Mallory. ‘I heard about that poor woman – Stella Small. You think the copycat hangings are my fault, don’t you? If I’d done my job right twenty years ago – ’ His shoulders sagged, and he braced himself with one hand pressed flat on the cork wall, then turned his defeated eyes to Charles. ‘I think I will take that chair.’ He sat down and waited out Mallory’s silence. It was clear that the old man would not leave without a word from her.
She continued her typing, occasionally looking his way, annoyed that he was still here. Her eyes trained on the keyboard, she said, ‘I can’t discuss details of an active case. You know that.’
‘Yes,’ said Geldorf. ‘I know.’
She could have killed the old man with only a few words, but she kept silent, and Charles saw this as the potential for kindness. Growing up in Special Crimes, she would have seen many of these old men coming and going, haunting police stations as confused ghosts, unable to come to terms with the end of things.
Mallory was done with Geldorf now, and he could make no mistake about that. The conversation was over, and yet he continued his vigil. After a time, his presence began to wear on her. She pushed her chair back from the workstation and swiveled round to face him. ‘So you want me to tell you what you got wrong? Is that it?’
Yes, that was what he had come for. He had to know.
She strolled to the cork wall and what remained of the old murder case, then ripped down a sheet of paper. ‘This is your report on the hanging rope and the duct tape. It’s real short. ‘Common items. Untraceable.’ Wrong. The rope belonged to the building handyman. I got that information from the landlady’s granddaughter.’
‘The handyman was out of town when – ’
‘On a family emergency. I know. That’s why he left his toolbox in the hall. The landlady promised to take care of it for him. But before she could drag it back to her apartment, the killer found it and stole the rope and the tape. If you’d talked to the handyman, you might’ve gotten a print from the toolbox.’
Geldorf had no comeback for this, but he would not look away from her.
She ripped two more sheets of paper from the wall. ‘And then there’s the locked door. Locked when the landlady called the police. Open when the first cop showed up on the scene.’
‘I caught that,’ said Geldorf. The light was back in his eyes, and he rose to a stand as he defended himself. ‘That door was never locked. It was stuck. The landlady was old, pushing eighty. Tiny woman, no muscle. It was a hot night in August – and muggy. Wood swells in the damp and the heat. The door was stuck, not locked. And she admitted that when I – ’