These people were creeping him out.
This time, Bitty was not faking. She had fallen into a natural state of sleep, and there was no conversation between Charles and Nedda, neither of them wanting to disturb her rest.
But now the patient stirred, eyes opening to smile at her aunt. „I knew you’d come.“
„To the rescue?“ said Charles. „So you knew you were in trouble tonight.“
„I must have taken too many sleeping pills.“ All the signs of a lie were there, eyes shifting away from his, fingers fidgeting on the blanket, so uncomfortable in this falsehood.
„You’re not sure?“ He smiled to say never mind. „I heard your messages on my machine. It seems like you knew what was happening, but you waited for Nedda. Why not call an ambulance yourself?“
„I wasn’t thinking very clearly?“
Perhaps she had not believed that her family would have opened the door to an ambulance. That was one possibility, the one that Kathy Mallory would have liked best.
Mallory sat in the hospital lounge, facing Cleo and Lionel with the clear understanding that they were a unit. What they had suffered as children might have formed that weird bond. Or it might have developed while they were murdering their little sister, the only Winter child still unaccounted for. Bitty Smyth’s near death had expanded the possible scenarios for Sally Winter’s disappearance.
Where would two children hide a little corpse? Not in the hat closet that had so intrigued Mrs. Ortega. Children did not wall up bodies. They buried them as they buried family pets. The dead girl would have taken up no more ground than a good-size dog.
Child’s play.
Brother and sister sat together with the same body language, arms folded, eyes level and calm, meeting her gaze and awaiting the inevitable interrogation. She let them wait. Sheldon Smyth seemed sober now. The old lawyer was tensing, also bracing for an onslaught of questions. His brow was lightly filmed with sweat, though the hospital lounge was cool and dry.
This old man was going to be so easy to break.
She could watch the works of his brain churning behind his eyes, trying to anticipate her first question, heart racing. All three of them were waiting for her, wondering when she would begin the inquisition. The three of them were leaning slightly forward, expectant crows on a wire.
Mallory stood up and turned her back on the trio, then crossed the lobby in tandem with her partner – and without a single word spoken.
The documents raided from the Smyth firm gave Mallory’s private office at Butler and Company the look of a temporary warehouse, but one located in that other dimension where Chinese puzzle blocks were born.
She was stacking cartons of varied sizes to form an enormous cardboard cube at the center of the room.
While she explained that the outer shell was made with as-yet unread documents, Riker admired the walls of her structure from all sides. It was a maniacally efficient use of space, and very disturbing to a man who tossed discarded beer cartons into the corners of his apartment so he could readily discern the empties from the partially emptied.
Riker wrecked her perfect symmetry by dragging a carton out of formation.
An hour later, he was sitting on the floor, almost done, gently laying out the last of the brittle pieces of paper from the middle years of the previous century. These canceled checks bore the signature of the guardian, James Winter, and they were arranged in the order of their dates. „If Sally Winter didn’t die of natural causes, we can rule out Uncle James for the killer.“ He looked up at his partner. She was engrossed in Pinwitty’s book and paying no attention to him. „Aren’t you going to ask me why?“
„Hmm.“ Mallory turned another page.
Riker had finished working backward in time to lay out the last check. „It looks like James skipped town before Sally died. All the signatures in this group were traced. Every one of them exactly the same. I guess the Smyth firm didn’t want to break in a new guardian so they kept him around on paper. But these forged checks are still making payouts for doctor’s visits and home nursing for the kid.“
„I never thought James Winter killed Sally.“ Mallory held her place, marking the page with one finger as she closed the book. „This text is unreadable, but the pictures are interesting. Were there any prints on Stick Man’s ice pick? There’s nothing about it in this book or your grandfather’s notes.“
„Who knows? I told you, all the evidence boxes were robbed, gutted for souvenirs. That ice pick disappeared fifty years ago.“
One long red fingernail tapped the book cover. „So how did Pinwitty get a photograph of the pick?“
„What? There aren’t any photographs in that book.“
„Then Charles’s copy must be a revised edition.“ Mallory opened the volume and showed him the clear picture of an ice pick in an evidence bag. „You can even read the detective’s signature on the label.“
Upon their second visit to Martin Pinwitty’s one-room apartment, the first thing the detectives noticed was an elaborate profusion of flowers, exotic blooms well beyond the author’s purse.
„It’s a sympathy bouquet. My mother died yesterday.“ Pinwitty rushed to the stove and began a lame attempt at hospitality, lighting a flame under his teakettle.
This time, the detectives did not feel obliged to eat stale pastries and drink cheap swill. Riker turned off the gas burner. „Just give us the ice pick, and we’ll go.“
Pinwitty’s lips parted as if to scream.
Riker was holding up the book, and it was opened to the picture of the murder weapon in an evidence bag. „This pick.“
„I bought that photograph. I never actually had the – “
„No,“ said Riker, „you don’t wanna lie to a cop.“ He flipped through the pages of the picture section. „You took all these shots yourself. Cheaper that way, right? Your publishers even gave you a photographer’s credit.“
„I don’t have the pick anymore.“
„Yeah, you do,“ said Riker. „The Winter House Massacre is your whole life. Once you had that pick, you’d never let it go.“
„My mother’s illness was very costly. I had to sell off a lot of things.“
Riker shook his head to let the man know that he was not buying this excuse. „You would’ve sold your mother for medical experiments before you sold that pick.“
Pinwitty was backing away, when he made eye contact with Mallory. He turned back to face Riker, finding him less threatening – a mistake – and now the author made a little stand of sorts. He straightened what passed for a spine and thrust out his chin, what there was of it. „The pick is mine. I bought and paid for it.“
„Well,“ said Riker, „that makes my job a lot easier. You just admitted to buying stolen goods. Give me the pick or we tack on a few more charges.“
„Statute of limitations,“ said the author. „I bought it more than seven years ago.“
„You got me there, pal. I can see that I just don’t watch enough cop shows on television. So I guess all we’ve got on you is concealing evidence in an ongoing case. No, wait a minute. If you broke the seal on the bag, we can add tampering with evidence. And then there’s my personal favorite, obstruction of a homicide investigation.“ He stepped toward Pinwitty, and the man fell back into a chair, startled to be suddenly sitting down and looking up at the detective’s angry face. Riker put his hands on the padded arms of the chair and leaned into the author’s face as he explained the worst of this man’s crimes. „And you’re pissing off my partner.“
Riker pointed to Mallory, who was seated in a chair next to the sympathy bouquet, idly ripping the heads off of flowers.
The chief of Forensics personally returned the ice pick to Mallory and Riker. More accurately, he dropped the pick on his desk blotter and threw the paperwork in Riker’s direction. The big man leaned forward, voice icy, saying, „You told my people this was a rush… for a fifty-eight-year-old homicide. You bastards. I’m up to my eyeballs in work, and you come in here with this crap.“