So Riker had found Mallory.
“You know, ma’am, I’m not surprised that you’re upset,” said Riker, very sure of himself now. “Sleepy little burg like this. Now back in New York, we take this kind of thing in stride. We got a thousand fugitives on the loose, and every one of them would cut your throat for spare change. Things move faster. It’s a deadly place to live.” He leaned toward her and smiled with the artful suggestion of a dare. “You gotta be quick.”
Augusta returned Riker’s smile and inclined her head slightly to acknowledge that the rules had changed. They were onto a new level of gamesmanship. Knives and guns had not yet come into play – but they might.
“You only think New York is dangerous, Detective Riker.” She removed her glasses. “We got five varieties of poisonous snakes, and deadly spiders. Our alligators are longer than two New Yorkers put together, and you can throw a saddle on the average mosquito.”
“In New York, we got rats that could run on a racetrack at Belmont. We got a gridlock of automobiles from Harlem to the Battery, and two rivers full of dead fish and murdered taxpayers.”
Augusta slapped one hand flat on the table. “We can outpollute you and outkill you. You seen the chemical plants along the river? We got those cancer factories on a signed legal contract with Satan and his elected minions. And it didn’t cost us one extra cent to have ‘em poison the wind and the water. Ain’t that a deal and a half? We don’t accept corruption here – we demand it. All you’ve got, Riker, is a little pissant island with a bad traffic problem. I know all about New York City.”
“Miss Trebec, I think I’m in love.”
“Then you must call me Augusta.” She smiled with exquisite insincerity, a second cousin to flirtation.
Riker melted a bit. Admiration was in his eyes, but that did not prevent his closing shot. “You’re tough, Augusta, I’ll give you that. So when Mallory came to the door, you just chucked a rock at her, and she ran off right?”
Riker sat back in his chair and lit a cigarette. The room was so quiet, his burnt match made an audible ping against the glass ashtray, landing among the butt ends of her cheroots. “I need to talk to Mallory. It’s important. Tell her that.” He blew a cloud of smoke into the air and stared at the door to the next room, as if he could see Mallory standing on the other side.
Augusta lightly drummed her fingers on the table. “I don’t think she’d come here. I like to believe my reputation for ruthless brutality precedes me. But if I do see her, I will certainly shoot her for you.”
“She can reach me at the hotel in the square.”
“Or the sheriff’s office,” said Augusta in the tone of an accusation.
“Yeah, there too. But I wasn’t planning to mention this little conversation to the sheriff,” said Riker, his light sarcasm implying that he could do some damage if he wanted to.
“I have no secrets from the sheriff,” said Augusta, clearly unimpressed. “I’ve had one or two occasions to swat his bottom and wipe his runny nose. So maybe I’ll tell him myself. Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t stop to think. Would that create a problem for you – if Tom thought you were holding out on him?”
Riker rose from the table and made a mock bow, graciously conceding the win to Augusta. Then he did something so out of character, Charles was startled. Riker leaned across the table, took up her hand and kissed it.
Charles walked outside with him. “Looks like you’ve met your match.”
“Yeah, she’s something.” Riker glanced back at the door between the staircases. He put one hand on Charles’s shoulder and led him farther away from the house. His tone was more confidential now. “I had a look around that chapel – your friend’s studio? Charles, would you say the little guy was fixated on Mallory and her mother? Maybe dangerously fixated?”
“That’s absurd. He’s a very gentle man.” A man who kept a grisly list and cheerfully entered into a plot to torture residents of Dayborn, but still, a gentle soul. He shook off Riker’s hand. “I can’t see Henry killing – ”
“Ease up, Charles. I’m just asking. If you were thinking straight, you wouldn’t be looking at me as the enemy. You know it and I know it. This is Mallory’s work.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about. I haven’t spoken to her since you came to town. You think you know her so well, and here you are maligning her on – ”
“Yesterday, you asked me if I knew she could play the piano. I heard her play once. It was a surprise party for Lou Markowitz. The musicians had gone home, and so had the families. It was only cops in the hall, and the party wasn’t slowing down any.”
Charles knew he was being softened up, suckered into a warm moment of shared intimacy. But Riker told stories so well, he fell for this, time after time.
“So Lou calls out, ‘I want music.’”
This was when life was still good to Louis Markowitz. His wife, Helen, had not yet been killed by the cancer. Louis was a family man with a cop for a daughter. His father and grandfather had been cops, and that tradition was going to continue. The old man was in high spirits that night. “He wanted the party and the music to go on and on. He was standing by the piano, yelling, ‘Can’t any of you bastards play?’ ”
Mallory sat down at the piano and began a child’s study piece. “It was a tune my niece played when she was taking lessons. Just a simple little song, pretty and sweet. And now a hall full of drunken cops quiets down – no noise at all – only the music.”
But what Riker remembered best was the look on Louis’s face. He had raised her from a child of ten and never knew she could play the piano. She had always been so secretive about her past. But that night, Mallory played for him. This was a gift for her father. It was an elegant gesture, for she only played that one time, only played for him, and never again.
“Lou Markowitz really pissed me off when he got himself killed. Now I’m afraid for his kid. I lose a lot of sleep worrying that she’ll spin out of control if there’s nobody to care about her and keep her grounded. I know how you feel about her, Charles, and so did Lou. I think her old man was counting on you to give his kid a little ballast in the wind. But you screwed up. She’s here to hurt a lot of people, and you’re helping her.”
“That’s unfair, Riker.” It was unfair, wasn’t it?
“I was at the hospital last night. I wanted to see the deputy, but he couldn’t have visitors. You remember that woman who crawled out of the cemetery yesterday? Her name was Alma Furgueson. They were bringing her in the door as I was leaving. The ambulance driver told me she slit her wrists.”
“My God.” Charles kissed his soul goodbye as it was edging away from him, trying to avoid association by proximity.
“They got her to the hospital in time. She’s gonna pull through. But what if she’d died? You came real close to killing a woman for Mallory. How much further will you go?”
How far was he prepared to go for Mallory? Oh, straight down to the center of the earth, where he imagined hell must be. He anticipated being barred from heaven because of what he had done to Alma.
Before he could answer to Riker, the sheriff’s car came spinning out of the trees and across wet ground from the direction of Henry’s cottage. It stopped in a wide lake in the grass and spun its wheels, then freed itself and pulled to a stop twenty feet from Riker and Charles. The car was splattered with mud and fresh scratches from low branches.