Well, she would call the police.
And say what?
I hear noises in my house? My burglar alarm isn’t working?
The night of the break-in, she could not remember having the luxury of time to question what she should do next. Nedda looked down at the ice pick in her hand.
She could do it again.
Riker stood on a chair to reach the box at the back of his closet. He hoisted it down and dropped it on the floor at Mallory’s feet. „I was just a kid then. Every night after dinner, they’d spread all this stuff on the kitchen table. Mom called our kitchen the murder room.“ He lifted the box and carried it to his own kitchen table. „The earliest cases date back to the eighteen-hundreds, but they all used Stick Man’s signature. They ended in the forties, the year of the massacre.“
Somewhat mollified by Riker’s hasty disavowal of a ghost story, Mallory asked, „How many generations of hitmen?“
„Three.“ He sat down at the table and opened the box. „The first one was a crazy little bastard in Hell’s Kitchen. He worked for the Irish gangs. Started when he was only thirteen. Back in those days, they called him Pick. What really spooked the locals was the daylight killing. He ‘d walk up to a guy on the street at high noon and just do him on the spot.“
„Too crazy to worry about witnesses.“
„Right. And who wants to make an enemy of the neighborhood nutcase? So everybody knew who he was, even the local beat cop, and nobody talked.“
Riker pulled out a handful of yellowed papers and photographs, diagrams and scraps of paper with notes in faded ink. He tapped a picture cut from an ancient newspaper and preserved in laminate. „This is his mother. Smart lady. She was the broker for all his jobs. And – surprise – she read tarot cards. That was her front for the murder contracts, and she never did one day in prison. Well, her son was nuts, and I mean a real standout kind of crazy. But the mother paid off the cops when they started asking questions. Then one day, there’s a new commission to investigate police corruption, so the cops run out and pick up her son just for show. That closes a few dozen homicides in an afternoon, and the department really shines in the morning paper.“ He grinned at Mallory. „Don’t you love this town?“
„That’s when Pick died?“
„The first time? No, not yet. After the arrest, he was committed to an asylum. And that’s where he hooks up with his replacement – an orderly named Jay Holly.“
Riker had covered every inch of the table, laying out his files in stacks of a dozen folders, each one another death. „You won’t find this stuff in police reports or history books. Pinwitty’s research was pathetic next to Granddad’s.“ He found a mug shot from a New Orleans Police Department and handed it to Mallory. „That’s Jay Holly. He did a deal with the fortuneteller.“
„Wait – she put out a contract on her – “
„Her own son? Yeah. Her crazy son was too dangerous to keep alive. It was just a matter of time before his mother was tied to the murders.“ Riker shuffled through more papers, producing a list of assets: expensive homes and purchases beyond a fortuneteller’s means. „But the old lady didn’t wanna give up a good income. So she hired Jay Holly to kill her son in the asylum. Pick was smothered with a pillow.“ He pushed an old copy of the death certificate across the table.
Mallory glanced at the date, then picked up a column cut from a yellowed newspaper. „And five days after that, there’s another ice-pick murder. All right, I get it. She pays Jay Holly to make her dead son look like an innocent man. Now the old lady’s in the clear, too.“
„Yeah.“ Riker placed another file in front of her, another death. „And then – “
„The next day, she’s back in business,“ said Mallory, „as the new hitman’s broker. But the cops don’t bother her anymore.“
„My grandfather would’ve loved you, kid. Yeah, that’s the way he figured it. Jay and the old lady did real well, until she died – of a stroke. More likely it was murder. There was no autopsy. Granddad figured that must’ve been the first instance of the pick in the eardrum. Another fortuneteller took over the same storefront, and this one was young and good-looking. Then Jay Holly got caught in New Orleans. That’s where he hooked up with our guy in a holding cell.“
„Humboldt.“
„Yeah, but that wasn’t his real name.“ He handed her another sheet. „These are Humboldt’s aliases. He did time all over the South for fleecing women out of their savings. A real charmer. The last lady withdrew the charges. So Humboldt was about to get out of jail around the time Jay Holly was taken into custody.“
„They share a cell – they do a deal.“
„Yeah. So now Humboldt knows the style. The day he gets out of jail, there’s another ice-pick murder, same MO, and the cops release Jay Holly. Then Holly dies, but it’s not an ice-pick kill. Humboldt’s smarter than that. Jay Holly was found dead on a barroom floor. He’d been poisoned, and the cops had no leads on the man he was drinking with that night.“
„Humboldt goes back to New York and uses the same fortuneteller for his broker.“
„Right. And he keeps this one alive for a long time. She was an old woman before he murdered her in the police station.“
„Twelve days after the murders at Winter House.“ Mallory drummed her fingernails on the table. „And your father keeps working on this?“
„No, he stopped the night my grandfather died.“
„You think he could help us?“
„No, I could never ask Dad to do that. It’s a long story.“ Mallory’s face was a study in grim resignation.
There was no need to touch the light switch for the cellar. From the top of the stairs, Nedda could see shards of broken glass clinging to the socket of the hanging bulb. The last time she had visited the cellar, it was to help one of the housekeepers replace a biown-out kitchen tuse, and then her own head had cleared that bulb by only a few inches. So the intruder must be a tall one, over six feet.
The new housekeeper was also tall, but Nedda had no illusions about finding the woman down there on some innocent errand. However, this might explain why an intruder had dared to come in by the front door. He must have been watching the house. He would have seen them all leave and go their separate ways, perhaps mistaking the housekeeper for herself. And then, he must have heard approaching footsteps and fled for the cover of the basement.
Nedda raised the pick high. And, because she was afraid, she gathered dead brothers and sisters around her. Mrs. Tully, an animated corpse of formidable girth, led the procession down the cellar stairs.
Just like old times.
The kitchen light petered out beyond the bottom step. There would be a flashlight on top of the fuse box to her left. But now she saw the bright rectangle of an open door on the other side of the basement. Whoever had broken into the house was long gone. Beyond the threshold, ten steps led up to the backyard and escape. A breeze called Nedda’s attention to a high window. Its heavy wood frame was propped open with a stick. This was how the intruder must have gained entrance. As she drew close to the window, dead brothers and sisters walked with her, lending comfort. All of them looked up to see a field mouse at the window, testing the cellar air, nose high, whiskers twitchy. Its small pink hands were almost human as it gripped the wooden sill. The tiny creature was half in, half out. And, though the wind had ceased and there was no visible agency to move the propping stick, the stick did fall. The slamming wood frame broke the back of the mouse. Its mouth opened wide and, in surprise, it died.
Mrs. Tully laughed.
Nedda, in concert with the children, moved back from the window. By the good light of the open door, this small audience of the dead and the living could see wet drops of blood on the steps leading up to the backyard.