‘Admitted what? That she was old? That you confused her? She never recanted her statement, and you didn’t make any notes on that conversation. And what about Natalie’s son? You never talked to him.’
‘What the hell for? What good would it do to torture a little boy. He’d just lost his mother. When you’ve been on the job a little longer – ’
‘Natalie came to you for help, and you just strung her along, you and your buddies. After she died, you built your case around the easiest target, an innocent man.’
‘I was right about the ex-husband!’
‘No, you botched that too.’ She paused a moment, waiting for him to challenge her, but he said nothing. ‘And twenty years later, here we are, cleaning up the mess.’
Geldorf shrank down to his chair. His gaze lowered to the floor at her feet. She had won. He was finished.
Mallory hunkered down beside his chair and looked up at his face. If she had been a cat, Charles might have seen this pose as a prelude to a lunge, but he hoped for something better from her. For a moment, he believed that she planned to soften her words with some comfort for a vulnerable old man.
How foolish was that?
‘Listen to me.’ She gripped Geldorf s arm to shake him from his stupor of pity. He stared at her red nails, startled, as if she had just extended claws.
Mallory’s half smile said, I’m done playing with you. ‘Here’s the best part, old man. This killer might be a cop. So go home and lock yourself in. If the police come knocking, don’t open that door. It might be one of your mistakes coming back on you. Scary, huh?’
Arthur Wang finished telling the forensic expert about his conversation with Winetrob. He had intended it as a humorous story to break the tension in the nightwatchman’s basement office.
‘Sorry, Arty. Winetrob was right.’ Heller pointed to the red smears on the cement floor. ‘That’s not the watchman’s blood. I called the hospital to check for broken skin on the victim. When they removed Stella’s shoes, they found cuts on her soles and glass fragments in the wounds. I got a partial footprint off one of the shards – real small, a woman’s print. This is her blood.’
One of Heller’s technicians nodded, saying, ‘And Winetrob was right about the watchman not showing up for work tonight. The security camera has a record of everybody who uses the employee entrance. He’s not on the film.’
‘But the watchman isn’t on vacation,’ said Wang. ‘I checked.’ ‘Then maybe Winetrob’s right about the heart attack, too.’ Detective Wang produced a long piece of stiff paper sealed in an evidence bag. ‘So who’s been using the old man’s employee card? Somebody punched in on the time clock last night.’
Heller turned to his assistant. ‘Maybe the watchman’s still here. Call out the cadaver dogs. We’ll do another sweep of the store.’
Mallory ended her call with the Wisconsin detective, then turned to Charles. ‘The scarecrow was planning murder when he left Nebraska. There’s nothing wrong with the police computers. The damn clerk didn’t want to tell me she couldn’t find the records. The file was deleted from the computer. The hardcopy is missing too – prints, photos, everything.’
‘Did the police talk to the relatives?’
Mallory nodded, then turned back to her computer monitor.
‘They had to wait for a warrant, then they tossed the cousins’ house. The only New York address they found was Susan Qualen’s. Her cousins haven’t heard from Junior in three years. They had a falling-out. They finally told him his mother’s killer got away with murder. A bit late. When he came to New York, his Aunt Susan added her own poison.’ Mallory’s fingers flew across the keys, entering new parameters to narrow her search. Her eyes were riveted to the screen. ‘Where are you hiding?’
‘Maybe he doesn’t live in New York,’ said Charles. ‘It’s only a few minutes to New Jersey on the subway.’
She shook her head. ‘He’s living in the city. Deluthe saw him at Kennedy Harper’s crime scene thirty minutes after we found the body. Either he works for NYPD, or he was picking up local radio calls on a police scanner. He’s here.’
‘I suppose that makes sense,’ said Charles. ‘His aunt said he came home, and that would be the East Village.’
‘No,’ said Mallory. ‘Erik Homer had sole custody. Natalie never saw the boy after the divorce – not till the day she died. The scarecrow’s home was always uptown with his father.’
‘But his father was a bully,’ said Charles. ‘And he’s dead now. The boy never lived with his stepmother, so he wouldn’t think of that place as home anymore. Natalie was the parent he adored, the one he still obsesses about.’
Mallory abruptly stopped tapping keys.
Detective Janos listened to the theory on the missing nightwatch-man, then nodded. ‘Yeah, we know. Another guy was filling in for him.’
Heller’s assistant glanced at the store’s daytime security guard, then said, ‘Can we take this outside?’
Janos followed the man out the door of the manager’s office. When he returned, Riker was still watching the same videotape for the tenth time. ‘This is crap.’ The image was too dark to make out details finer than the profiles of shadows punching in on the employee time clock. ‘No clear shots of anybody.’ Riker glanced at the store’s daytime security guard. ‘I know, it’s not your fault. You’re sure this is the only tape of the new watchman?’
‘Yes, sir. It rewinds every three days. So yesterday it – ’
‘Yeah, yeah,’ said Riker. And that would explain the grainy images. The camera had clicked once every three seconds. The shadowy figure had the jerky motion of an old silent film. ‘The time stamp on this video is too early for his shift. And why doesn’t he punch in?’
‘He’s got his own time clock in the basement,’ said the guard. ‘No idea why he’d show up so early.’
Riker waved one hand to tell the guard that he could leave. ‘Janos? What’s happening?’
‘The regular watchman wasn’t scheduled for a vacation. And his payroll checks are getting cashed.’
Riker stared at the man on the videotape. ‘So maybe the regular watchman pays this guy out of pocket.’
‘That fits. Nobody’s got a name for him.’Janos read notes made from interviews with store employees. ‘We talked to a stockboy who does a lot of overtime. He says this new guy showed up one night, and nobody questioned it. He had the old man’s keys on his belt and a security card to unlock the office door. That’s the only place where you can turn off the alarms.’ He looked up from his notebook. ‘But the glass wall in the office was broken. So our perp wasn’t the guy with the keys.’ He turned to the man on the screen. ‘Not that guy.’
‘Okay,’ said Riker. ‘What about the regular watchman?’
‘I’m on that.’ Arthur Wang entered the room, a very worried man. ‘Couldn’t reach him by phone, so I sent a uniform to knock on his door. The place doesn’t stink like a ripe corpse. But that’s all the cop could tell without going inside. He interviewed the landlord. The apartment’s been sublet.’
‘Works with the vacation theory,’ said Janos. ‘Still, it’s worth a look inside. The old guy might’ve left something to give us a lead. Let’s get a warrant and toss the place.’
‘It’s in the works,’ said Arthur Wang. ‘So now we wait another forty minutes. The chicken-shit DA doesn’t want to wake up a judge for a warrant.’
‘No judge is gonna sign that warrant,’ said Riker. ‘Not unless that uniform forgets he talked to the landlord. The sublet angle is a paperwork nightmare.’ He looked at Wang, and both men smiled in unison.
‘But what if we don’t know about the sublet tenant,’ said Wang. ‘Let’s suppose the cop forgot to mention it when I talked to him.’