The old woman’s head tilted at an odd angle and her eyes were suddenly vacant, as if the detective had just turned her off with the same switch used to shut down the machine.
„Tell you what,“ said Mallory, rising from the table, „you think about it for a while.“ She ripped her long tract of paper free of the polygraph. „I have to review my readings. Maybe you’ll feel better when I get back.“
Riker was quick to disillusion Charles of the idea that Mallory was showing the woman any kindness. „Welcome to hell.“
„You have to stop this. She’s poisoning that poor woman against her whole family.“
„Can’t. It’s a big mistake to get between Mallory and a case. And we’re so close, Charles.“
„Close to what?“
„The only good result from a polygraph exam is a confession.“
„Confession to a mass murder? I’ll never believe that.“
Mallory stood in the doorway. „Maybe the killer was breaking in an apprentice. Does that make it a little easier to believe?“
„A twelve-year-old girl?“ Charles shook his head. „I don’t think so.“
„New York has a criminal class of children,“ said Riker. „Adults use them for robberies ‘cause the kids are too young to do time. They make the perfect little perps, and sometimes they carry lethal weapons.“
„And sometimes they kill people,“ said Mallory. „Now take that dead man on Nedda’s rug the other night.“ The detective was watching the glass window on the other room. „She killed that man in the dark. No hesitation marks. She just did him without even thinking about it. I say she’s had some practice.“
„She was protecting herself and Bitty.“
„And then,“ said Riker, „there’s history – the one you won’t find in Pinwitty’s book. There were three generations of hitmen with the same signature as the Winter House Massacre – so they had apprentices.“
„And,“ said Mallory, „the apprentices killed the masters. The ice-pick murders stopped when Nedda was a little girl, when she killed Humboldt.“
Charles’s attention was riveted to Nedda, and she was looking his way by chance. Was she searching the mirror side, seeking him in the looking glass, wanting an ally, needing a friend? „You can’t go on with this. I know what you’re doing. You’re cutting this woman’s legs out from under her. After you strip her of family support, the only one she’ll be able to turn to is you.“
„She’s safer with me than her relatives,“ said Mallory. „The one crime nobody expects me to care about is the death of Willy Roy Boyd. He was a piece of scum, but he was my piece of scum, and that’s the case I’m working here. Somebody hired him to kill a woman that night – probably Nedda. She’s key to everything. So I torture her a little and she lives… or I can let her go and watch her die. Pick one.“
„Find another way,“ said Charles. „This has to stop right now. You can see how fragile she is.“ And badly wounded. Indeed, Nedda had just been flayed to the bone of psyche.
Mallory returned to the interview room, but not to end the interrogation. She started up the machine again, and Nedda lifted her head, slowly, sadly, to face her interrogator.
„Let’s get back to the man you stabbed the other night.“ Mallory turned the machine on again. „Do you think your relatives hired that man to kill you?“
„No, of course not.“
„You don’t think they’re capable of murder?“
Nedda shook her head.
„Somebody hired him to kill you. Think about it, Nedda. Your brother and sister are always out of town when something happens. How many people knew you were back? And what happened to your baby sister? We can’t find any school records for Sally Winter. You think she lived long enough to go to school?“ Mallory looked down at the machine. „You’re heart is racing, Nedda.“
„Stop it!“
„Maybe they committed the perfect murder. That little girl was – “
„Detective Mallory, please stop.“
„Now, the attempt on your life – that was a total screwup. But what about your baby sister? What do you suppose they did with her body? Don’t you care? We can’t find any trace of her dead or alive.“
Nedda’s hands rose to her head, warding off the words, her head making small jerking movements, hands rising like white fluttered wings, playing bird to Mallory’s cat.
The detective pushed her chair back from the table. Her work was done. She could roughly predict the moment when Charles Butler would come barreling through the door. Oh, and here he was now. Such a gentleman, and so angry.
Mallory joined Riker in the observation room. They watched the ongoing show from the dark side of the glass. Charles removed all the mechanical devices that had bound Nedda Winter to the chair and the machine.
„She’ll talk to Charles.“
„Yeah,“ said Riker, „but I’m not sure there’s anything left for her to tell.“
Her partner had been against this idea of replacing the niece with a brand-new confidant for the old woman, but he had come up with no better plan.
Nedda preceded Charles as he quit the interview room, slamming the door behind him, loud as a gunshot. Mallory, his unintended target, tensed every muscle in her body. She turned to face Riker, but he looked away, not wanting to meet her eyes anymore. These small things, the slam of a door, the turn of Riker’s head – they would remain with her for the rest of the day as a portent of things to come.
She was always losing people.
Edward Slope strolled up to the SoHo police station, and a uniformed officer rushed to open the door for him, though the younger man had no reason to recognize the chief medical examiner, a rare visitor in this precinct. Dr. Slope’s austere presence and excellent suit always commanded instant respect.
As he approached the front desk, he wore his eyeglasses riding low on the bridge of his nose, not caring that his vision was blurred. The doctor had finished a morning’s pro bono work at the free clinic two blocks away, and he had seen quite enough for one day – homeless people dying of old age in their thirties and forties.
Impaired vision or not, he could never have missed the physically imposing figure of Charles Butler – no more than he could fail to notice a Ko-diak bear in his shower stall. The man stood on the other side of the wide room, a head above the police officers gathered here and there in loose groups of twos and threes. Charles was deep in conversation with a tall white-haired woman and a child with pointed ears.
Well, that was interesting.
Dr. Slope raised his spectacles the better to see the latter as a more mundane person, a very small woman with a pixie haircut and ears that were disappointingly normal.
Ah, and now he had attracted Charles Butler’s attention. Dr. Slope had never before seen this man angry. Charles had always impressed him as the most congenial of oversized humans, one who seemed embarrassed when he dwarfed other people. Well, this was a sight to behold, the wide-shouldered giant marching toward him with such grim resolution, hands curled into fists – and all the surrounding policemen seemed to agree. Their heads were turning, sensing trouble. So impressive was Charles that, all about the room, hands were lightly resting on guns.
Chapter 7
WHEN RIKER FOLLOWED HIS PARTNER INTO LIEUTENANT Coffey’s office, the chief medical examiner was waiting for them. The pathologist was not a happy man, and neither was their lieutenant.
Dr. Slope fixed his eye on Mallory, reprimanding her with a cold stare, and Riker had to crack a smile. This was a reminder of her kiddy days when the doctor had suspected her of some new criminal act each time they met. Slope’s worst grievance against her was cheating at poker on those nights when Lou Markowitz had been on midget duty and taken his foster child along to the weekly penny-ante game. By Lou Markowitz’s account, his daughter had regularly cleaned out the doctor’s pockets, and this had set the tone for Slope’s relationship with Mallory down through the years.