„I do like her,“ said Charles. „Can’t say I thought much of the rest of Nedda’s relatives.“ Though Bitty certainly deserved his pity.
„You know it’s a dysfunctional family,“ said Riker, „when the one you like the best is a mass murderer.“
Chapter 5
nedda’s body remained at rest, there was no anxious wringing of hands, nor was there any furtive sign of panic – though she was alone.
The new housekeeper, the latest in a parade of transient hires, was out grocery shopping, and Bitty was off on some errand. Nedda had no idea where her brother and sister had gone. Lionel and Cleo had simply walked out the door without a word to her. And why not? She was dead to them. One did not consult with the dead about the day’s plans. The sadness of this slight never showed in her eyes. She continued to behave as if she were constantly being observed from all quarters of every room and would not betray any emotion that might be noted or charted.
Poor Bitty.
Her niece must have had great hopes for the first family reunion. Nedda recalled the startled faces of Cleo and Lionel on the day they had visited the hospice. What a grand surprise that had been. Bitty had dramatically thrown open the door to the private room and exposed their long-lost sister, whom they had always believed to be – hoped to be – dead. True horror had set in after their barrage of questions which only a true sister could have answered. Finally, Cleo and Lionel had been convinced that Nedda was no grifter, no fraudulent heiress, and they had asked, almost in unison, „Why did you come back?“
Nedda’s joyful face had frozen into a fool’s grin, and she had been trapped in that expression until her brother and sister had quit the room. How mad she must have seemed to Bitty in that next moment. Anguished crying – foolish smiling.
Mallory turned her small tan sedan eastward into the center lane of Houston at the optimum time for the greatest flow of commuter traffic. Riker sat beside her unaware that anything was amiss in their relationship.
She braked to a full stop and killed the engine. Vehicles in flanking lanes whizzed by, the drivers craning their necks at the odd sight of her stationary car in the middle of rush hour when all New York motorists went insane en masse. The yellow cab behind her screeched to a halt, and a long line of cars behind that one were also unable to change lanes. Mallory only stared at the windshield, as if checking it for spots and bugs, unruffled by the song of the city – drivers honking, putting great feeling into their horns, leaning on them for maximum noise, and the rising lyrics of shouted obscenities. In peripheral vision, she watched Riker’s head swivel in her direction, silently asking, What are you doing?
„You’re holding out on me.“ She never raised her voice to be heard over the hell choir of honking and screaming, and this forced Riker to lean toward her, straining to hear every word.
Good.
She had his attention now. „When Pinwitty mentioned Humboldt’s name, I know you recognized it, but you didn’t get it from a book or a – “
„Oh, sure,“ said Riker. „I know all of Stick Man’s names.“
Bastard!
While she waited for him to elaborate on this little throwaway bombshell of his, the trapped cars were stacked up all the way back to a grid-locked intersection. The horns had doubled their number and volume, and now a new note was added to the mix. She could hear the angry, tinny slams of compact cars and the heavy-metal sound of trucks as drivers left their vehicles, intent on laying some blame and taking some satisfaction out of her hide.
Yeah, right.
But one glance at Riker told her that he was a believer in road rage. A traffic jam like this one could make killers out of the best-tempered nuns.
„So tell me something.“ Mallory’s words were slow and dead calm, as if she had all damn day for this conversation. „When were you planning to share all these names?“
An old man stood on the cement strip that divided the traffic bound east and west. The elderly pedestrian had no stake in this event, yet he was as outraged as any of the drivers gathering around her car. He shook his fist and mouthed toothless angry words that were lost in the fray. Other men were massing near the windows on all sides. Riker held up his badge, as if that would fix everything.
Mallory slowly turned her head to glare at him, to warn him. He had better start talking and fast. The people surrounding this car were murderously angry, and this was definitely not the time for one of his long-winded stories.
And so Riker told her a story.
Charles Butler sat at his desk, reviewing paperwork on the latest client of Butler and Company. This one was the most brilliant to date – and the most troubled. The teenager had dropped out of college, descended into profound depression, and continued his fall by dropping off the planet. Mallory had found a lead with an illegal perusal-for-profit of police reports on missing persons. She had then tracked the boy down to a hole in the swamp at the edge of the world (her euphemism for a motel in New Jersey).
During the employment evaluation, all the right answers had been provided for every question on the personality profile, and that had been a clue to a problem; no one was so well balanced. However, the first warning had been the boy’s rolled down sleeves on an unseasonably warm day. Mallory had suspected drugs. Charles had believed the sleeves would hide the scars of an attempted suicide.
He looked up from his reading and noticed his copy of The Winter House Massacre lying on the end table by the couch. So Mallory had decided not to read it after all. Wise. What a deadly bore was history in the hands of a bad writer. He turned back to the matter at hand, reading his business partner’s most recent research on their young job candidate.
She had turned up a history of no less than six therapists, thus explaining how the youngster had sailed through all the psychological examinations – practice. Charles read the headings for each of Mallory’s documents; all of them had been raided from hospital computers in the tristate area. She could not have gotten them by any other means. Even at one remove from theft, it would be unethical to read this material. And what would Mallory’s foster father have said of this – theft of confidential patient files?
That’s my kid.
And Louis would have said that with great pride.
Thoughts of this dead man linked up with the image of Nedda Winter skirting her ghosts on the staircase the night of the dinner party. He had never mentioned that to Mallory as an indication of a mind gone awry. If that held true, then he must count himself as a loon and a half.
The brown armchair beside the couch was the most comfortable seat in this office, and yet he never sat there. It was Louis’s chair even now. That good old man had sat in this room on many a night when sleep was impossible because his wife was dead. In a way, all of Louis’s stories of life with the incomparable Helen Markowitz had been ghost stories. Had she not come alive in this room? After a time, Charles had also come to grieve for Helen, though he had never met her. And he still grieved sorely for Louis. He missed that great soul every day.
And Charles could see his old friend, clear as day, seated beside him now, gathering up hound-dog jowls in a dazzling smile. And was there just a touch of pity in the old man’s crinkled brown eyes? Oh, yes. Only Louis could fully appreciate Charles’s predicament with Mallory’s purloined documents.
As the former commander of Special Crimes Unit, Inspector Markowitz had made such good use of his foster child’s skill with computer lock picks.
Charles looked down at the raided information, poisonous fruit from Mallory’s hand. Well, it was definitely in a good cause – life and death – if his suspicions about their client proved true. He read every line of the stolen data and discovered that each of the boy’s psychiatric examinations had followed police custody for a suicide attempt on Halloween. And what were the odds that he might forgo his yearly wrist-slashing?