„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.
What had the house done to the intruder?
„My father doesn’t even know I have this stuff,“ said Riker. „You stole it from him?“
Riker shook his head. „I came by it the night Gran died. That old man literally worked this case right up to the end. He had coroners’ reports from six states, patching time lines and murder contracts together, but nothing after the date of the Winter House Massacre. So, it’s twenty years later, and the trail is as cold as it ever gets. That’s when Gran figures Stick Man must’ve died back in the forties, the year of the massacre.“
„Well, he was only off by two years,“ said Mallory, examining her nails, „if Nedda killed Stick Man in Maine.“
„Yeah. Too bad the Maine police weren’t on Gran’s radar. He might’ve closed out the case.“ Riker knew she was wondering when this family saga would finally end. He was always trying to connect with her on some human level, forgetting who and what he was dealing with.
„Your dad,“ she said, prompting him for an explanation of why this door was closed to them.
„Okay,“ he said. „Now remember, Gran and my dad worked this case together for years – from the day my grandfather retired until he died. Well, Granddad was always pumped. Dead or alive, he wanted to bring Red Winter home. All those nights at the kitchen table, looking at clues and kicking around ideas – that was the only time my father’s old man ever talked to him.“
And this family custom of stone silence had carried into Riker’s generation.
„The only time Dad was really happy was when he was rilling the kitchen with cigar smoke, emptying a whiskey bottle with my grandfather and talking shop. So it was hard to understand what Dad did when his old man died. That was the night my father brought home a twenty-two-year-old autopsy report on the second fortuneteller, the one who died after the Winter House Massacre. After Granddad read it, he got all excited. He couldn’t get the words out. He stood up, hugged my dad – for maybe the first time ever – then fell across the kitchen table dead.“
„Later that night, my mom was out on the porch, waiting for a hearse from the mortuary. And Dad was in the kitchen with his father’s corpse. I can still see him on the floor, crawling around on hands and knees, picking up all the papers that scattered when Gran had his heart attack. After my father had the whole file all bundled together, he dropped it into the garbage can and never talked about the case again.“
The files young Riker had rescued from the trash still bore faint stains of what the family had dined on that night.
„As much as your dad couldn’t stand the sight of that file,“ said Mallory, „that’s how much he loved your grandfather. It was just too much pain. That’s why he tossed it in the garbage can.“