‘Not good news, I take it.’ Charles started the engine.
‘Natalie’s sister left town in a big hurry.’ Riker nodded toward the men in uniform. ‘And those two clowns just stood there and watched her drive away – with a suitcase.’’ His head lolled back on the soft leather upholstery. ‘They keep changing the rules on me, Charles. Apparently, if you can say the word lawyer three times without interruption, the cops have to let you go. My fault. I used the word detain instead of arrest.’
‘Bad luck. Sorry.’ The Mercedes pulled away from the curb.
‘Yeah. And I was really looking forward to scaring the shit out of that woman.’ Riker fell into a black silence until the great arches of the Brooklyn Bridge loomed up on the road before them.
Charles sensed there was more to the detective’s dark mood than a lost witness. How else to account for this sadness? When the car stopped in traffic, he turned to the man beside him. ‘Is there anything I can do to help?’
‘Yeah, there is.’ The detective stirred, then sat up a bit straighter. ‘I’ve been thinking about the Wichita Kid and that wolf bite.’
This was highly unlikely, but now Charles understood that the real problem was none of his business. ‘You want to know how – ’
‘Naw, here’s my best guess. I figure there’s a one-in-a-million chance the Wichita Kid could survive rabies without a vaccine.’
‘That’s actually true, but I don’t think Jake Swain was aware of it when he wrote the book.’ As they crossed the bridge, Charles launched into the story of Sheriff Peety’s travels from town to town, hunting an outlaw infected with rabies. ‘So he’s chatting up all the local doctors along the way when he meets one who’s heard the story of the rabid wolf that bit – ’
‘Hold it,’ said Riker. ‘Don’t tell me. The sheriff finds out that the wolf never had rabies in the first place. Am I right?’
‘Right you are. He discovers that someone else was bitten by that same wolf and survived. The animal actually had distemper. Looks the same as rabies, lots of frothing at the mouth, but it’s not transmissible to humans. However, the wound wasn’t cleaned properly, so Wichita suffered a massive infection – fevers, hallucinations – but no symptoms of hydrophobia.’
The detective politely raised one eyebrow, though he seemed to have lost interest. After a few moments of silence, Charles said, ‘You’ve had news from the hospital. Your friend – ’
‘Yeah.’ Riker turned his face to the passenger window and its view of the open sky over the water. ‘Her one good kidney is failing.’
And even Jake Swain could not have written an escape for Sparrow. However, pressed by deep concern for a friend, Charles now came up with the next best thing – an emergency epiphany. ‘There was an eyewitness to Natalie Homer’s murder. Does that cheer you up?’ The car came to a standstill in heavy traffic halfway across the bridge. Riker turned around to face him with a look of surprise, successfully distracted from pain.
Charles changed gears as the traffic moved forward again. ‘My theory works nicely with the problem of the locked door.’
The detective turned back to face the passenger window, his way of saying, Oh, that again.
‘Bear with me. Previously, I assumed that someone used a key to open Natalie’s door before the police arrived. But my witness wouldn’t need a key – not if he opened the door from the inside.’
‘And here’s the flaw,’ said Riker. ‘That would mean your witness was in the apartment for two days – watching a woman’s body rot.’
‘Yes. Now back up a bit. The night she died, Natalie was cooking a meal for two. She had no friends, and she was on bad terms with her sister. So the dinner guest was her son.’
‘Interesting,’ said Riker, which was his polite way of saying that it was not at all interesting. ‘So, before Erik Homer goes on his honeymoon, he leaves the kid with his ex-wife? No, Charles. This guy was a control freak. After the divorce, he never let Natalie see that kid, not once. This can’t work.’
‘Why not? Erik Homer was getting married again. He had a new woman to control. And this baby-sitting arrangement would be for his convenience. That’s what makes it work. And no one ever interviewed the boy. We don’t know where Junior was for two days in August or anytime after that.’ Charles could see that Riker was not buying any of this. ‘Only a small child would have stayed in that room with the body. The boy wouldn’t want to leave his mother. Dead or alive, she was his whole world.’
‘Let’s see if I understand this.’ Riker’s voice was strained in an effort to quell the sound of condescension. ‘It was a studio apartment. No place to hide a kid, even a small one. But Junior managed to – ’
‘Riker, all over the world, mothers tell their children to wash up for dinner. It’s a universal thing. The boy was in the bathroom the whole time that man was killing his mother.’
‘It was August,’ said the detective. ‘No air-conditioner in Natalie’s place. Rolling blackouts. The lights were off half the time. The stove burner was left on. More heat when – ’
‘Yes, and after two days, the little boy’s survival instinct overcame trauma, and he left the apartment. This explains the unlocked door. Also, it very neatly explains your contrary reports of the boy’s whereabouts. The father sent him away. Erik Homer didn’t want the killer to find out that his son was a witness.’
Charles and Riker were still at odds when they entered the back office of Butler and Company.
Mallory never acknowledged them. She was deep in conversation with her machines, speaking to them with keyboard commands. They responded with screens of data and papers pouring from the mouths of three printers. She sat with her back to the discordant men and the mess on her cork wall. Her vision was thus narrowed to a sterile field that hummed with perfect harmony.
Charles rounded the computer workstation and saw the cold machine lights reflected in her eyes. He looked down at the thick cable that fed her electronics through a dedicated line of electricity, and he played with the idea of accidentally kicking the plug from its socket and disconnecting her that way.
Riker rapped on the top of the monitor, and when this failed to get her attention, he said, ‘Charles thinks he’s got an eyewitness to the murder of Natalie Homer.’
‘Hmm. Natalie’s son.’ Mallory never lifted her eyes from the glowing screen. ‘He’s the one who unlocked the door to the crime scene. But I don’t know what name Junior’s using these days, so we’ll just stick with the scarecrow.’ She smiled at her computer, as if it had just said something to amuse her. ‘And now we’ve got a game.’
CHAPTER 13
Charles said a silent goodbye to Louis Markowitz. His old friend’s personality was being erased from the cork wall by layers of lopsided pictures and papers.
Mallory walked along the cork wall, ripping down reports and sending tacks flying through the air. Photographs of fat black flies hit the floor where they mingled with enlarged cockroaches and smiling portraits from Natalie Homer’s actress portfolio. Given that Mallory was a pathologically tidy creature, Charles thought this might qualify as a loss of control, a display of temper, though she never raised her voice when she said, ‘So Natalie’s sister got away.’