Carol O’Connell - Winter House

Someone turned off the radio.

Seconds passing, listening for footsteps.

The door flew open. Clean air rushed in – and life itself – with the sound of heavy boots pounding toward her, flashlights blinding her. Eyes closing again, her body collapsed. Hands were lifting Nedda’s body off her back, then helping Mallory to rise, feet off the ground, strong arms enfold- ing her, carrying her out. She looked down to see the small fire by the door. It was nested in a hubcap. Another pair of boots sent it flying.

Outside, gulping air, lungs burning, searing, eyes opening, almost blind for the stinging tears. A fireman set her down on the sidewalk, yelling, „Where the hell is that ambulance?“

More firemen were dropping from the truck and running toward the house. And one carried Nedda Winter to the ambulance as it screamed up to the curb. No one but Mallory saw the small ball of feathers drop from the old woman’s coat pocket. The bird thudded to the sidewalk, weakly fluttering its wings. It rolled off the curb and into the gutter.

Slowly, Mallory was bending down to this lame creature, reaching for it, when a fireman gripped her by the shoulders. Unable to speak, she pointed upward toward the door, then found the words, coughing, wheezing, to tell him there was someone else alive in there. Someone had turned off the radio. He shook his head, not making any sense of this, then let her go. Her knees buckled, and more hands were reaching out, breaking her fall, as she slumped to the ground and lay on her side. She opened her eyes to see the bird a few feet away from her face. It was struggling to breathe.

She watched it die.

Mallory was rolled onto her back, and her face was covered with a plastic mask attached to a tank of oxygen.

A raggedy man knelt on the ground beside her. „Sorry about your hubcap,“ he said, as a paramedic covered his shoulders with a blanket.

She recognized him as the derelict who had used Bitty Smyth’s cell phone to call out the fire engines. Beneath the blanket, he was shivering in shirtsleeves. To fuel his little signal fire, he had burned his coat.

The corridor was filled with detectives from Special Crimes Unit. Riker knew that most of them had already pulled a double shift, yet they were pumped, jazzed on coffee and busy hammering firemen and paramedics, doctors and nurses for information, taking statements, doing paperwork and biting down on stale sandwiches from the hospital canteen. They were tying up loose ends and taking care of business – all for Mallory – one of their own. Every single one of those beautiful bastards had responded to the call of an officer down.

But she would not stay down.

Dirty and tired and stinking of smoke, Mallory was still working her case. Detective Janos, a brutal-looking man the size and shape of a refrigerator carton, hovered near her, sometimes stealing up behind her to gingerly replace the blanket around her shoulders each time she shook it off. The rest of the squad was giving her a wide berth. Had she been any other cop, they would be slapping her on the back, swallowing her up in bear hugs, and there would be a disgraceful exhibition of tears in the eyes of grown men. This scene of human warmth, tears and joy, was what Riker had wanted for Mallory.

What a fantasy that was.

One, she had no use for human contact; and, two, she was busy.

The case was all but wrapped. The only enduring mystery of the night was a skinny little bum who roamed the halls, carrying soda cans and bags of potato chips – and wearing Mallory’s leather coat. He never strayed far from her, his only source of change for the vending machines. The bum approached her now, and she mechanically dipped into her pockets to give him more quarters.

Her face was a bare inch from the glass window in the door to the intensive-care unit. Riker joined her there. Together, they watched Charles Butler bow down to the patient on the bed, holding Nedda’s hand so gently as he strained to catch her words. A doctor and two nurses were also in attendance and showing grave concern.

Detective Mallory was persona non grata among these tender caregivers. Never mind that she had walked through fire to save this woman’s life.

That’s my Kathy.

She was always on the outside looking in, but she never whined about her lot, and he had to love her more for that.

In one hand she clutched a paper bag. Mallory called its contents evidence – Riker called it a dead bird. The kid was clearly not herself tonight. She was entirely too patient as she waited her turn at the elderly patient on the other side of the glass.

She faced Riker, asking, „What’s the body count?“

„One less than we figured. Bitty’s father was there all right, but he didn’t die inside the house. Looks like old Sheldon was the first one out the door. What a man, huh? A couple of patrol cops found him a few blocks away. He was dead. Looks like a heart attack.“ Riker held up a yellow pad lined with fountain-pen dollops of ink amid the flourishes of a witness’s old-fashioned penmanship. „We got this statement from an eighty-year-old priest. You’ll like it. It really classes up our paperwork for the night.“

For this special occasion of wrapping a case, he donned the reading glasses that he never wore in public and read the priest’s observations on the death of Sheldon Smyth. „ ‘The poor man was terrified, as if the devil himself was after him. And he even smelled of smoke. Chilled me, it did. So he was running to beat the devil, all in a sweat from hellfire, when he clutched at his chest. His eyes rolled back to solid whites. Blind he was – and dead. I’m sure of it. That was the moment. Yes, it was. And here it gets strange. I swear to you, he was still running – stone dead – maybe three steps before he dropped to the ground.’“

Riker quickly pocketed his spectacles. „It’s enough to make the fire a mitigating factor in his death. So, if you like Sheldon for hiring Willy Roy Boyd, we’re done. We’ve got three dead. Four if we count that little skeleton in the trunk. Bitty loses both her parents and her uncle in one night. I wonder what she’ll do now?“

„Maybe she’ll grow,“ said Mallory.

Riker shrugged. It was a good thing that Lieutenant Coffey had broken the news to Bitty Smyth. Mallory was no good at this part of the job, whether the newly made orphans were forty years old or four.

„There was someone else in that house,“ she said. „You know who it was?“

„No, kid. Everybody’s accounted for. The body count squares with what Bitty told us. Nobody else was in that house.“

„Then who turned on the radio?“

Oh, back to that again. „The firemen never found – “

The ICU door opened, and Charles stepped out into the corridor. One look at his eyes and anyone could see that he was destroyed. Riker turned away. Charles’s strong personal attachment to Nedda was something he had never foreseen.

And the damage of this night just went on and on.

„Mallory,“ said Charles, „she wants to see you. But before you go in… she doesn’t know about Lionel and Cleo. That was my decision. So, please… you can’t tell her they’re dead. It’s just too much, too cruel. Nedda’s already in a world of pain. And I think she knows that she’s dying. She won’t take the morphine until she’s spoken to you.“

Mallory did not have all night to wait for him to finish. The ICU door was closing on her back.

Lieutenant Coffey made room for Charles Butler on the bench by the nurses’ station, then turned back to the chore of editing his senior detective’s report. He drew thick black lines through all the passages that incriminated – damned to hell – District Attorney Buchanan, who had dragged his heels on the protection order for Nedda Winter. The woman was not expected to live through the night; but Riker’s career was ongoing, and Jack Coffey planned to keep it that way. One more line was crossed out, and Detective Riker’s pension was saved.