Carol O'Connell - Mallory's Oracle

"You talked to the janitor?"

"Yeah, he's pretty shaken up. He has another job, and wants us to be cool about that if we ever meet up with the management company that runs the building. Anyway, he gets home from the second job around 11:15 and walks down the stairs to the door. And it's dark. The light bulb burnt out a while ago. But there's plenty of light from the street, so he takes his time about replacing it. Anyway, he sees the pile of canvas in one corner of the stairwell while he's turning his door key. So he's all ready to get bent out of shape 'cause he figures a tenant tossed something there for him to get rid of, like his doorway is the local dump. He picks up the canvas, and at first, he doesn't know what he's looking at."

Coffey looked down on the same notebook that Riker was reading from. There were four words on the page.

"Was there anything in the apartment to give us a line on next of kin?"

"There's only one relative, a cousin. You want me to send a squad car to pick her up?"

"What's the woman's name, again?" Coffey asked.

"Margot Siddon," said young Officer Michael Ohara, last of three generations of uniformed policemen. "She's a second cousin of the victim."

"Where'd you put her?"

"She's in Markowitz's office."

"Ohara, Markowitz doesn't have an office here anymore."

"Right," said Ohara, but without conviction. "She's in your office, Lieutenant."

Sergeant Riker moseyed after Jack Coffey, who was doing a slow burn that showed in a red stripe between his hairline and the white strip of his shirt collar. Riker smiled at his shoes as he followed Coffey into Markowitz's office.

Riker didn't believe he would ever get used to the redecorating. The walls were hung with one normal-size bulletin board and two prints of the racehorses which were Coffey's only passion in life – outside of good-looking babes.

Margot Siddon was no babe, in Biker's estimation. She sat in a chair by the desk and sipped coffee from a paper cup. She drank as though half her face was shot with Novocaine. The muscles on the left side of her mouth were frozen. She could make no expression that was not a smirk. The scar on her cheek was a faint marker for the nerves which must have been severed with the flesh.

According to Biker's notes on the law firm of Jasper and Biggs, she was about to inherit a fortune, but Horace Biggs, the executor, was on vacation in Rome. Morton Jasper, pissed off to distraction at being disturbed so late, could not or would not say with any certainty that she was the sole heir.

Margot Siddon didn't look the part of an heiress. Her hair was stringy and her shoes were scuffed imitation leather. Even with the layers of clothing, the black dress, the faded tapestry vest and the flimsy shawl, she was slender by her silhouette. Legs with well-defined calves thrust out in front of her. However small her body mass, Riker would bet it was solid muscle. He guessed that dancers worked out everyday. Her real weakness was in her face: the small eyes, the chin that almost wasn't there.

Coffey was making introductions.

"We've met," said Biker. "Miss Siddon's a friend of Henry Cathery, grandson of the first victim. She was in Cathery's apartment when Markowitz interviewed him."

The exasperation on Coffey's face said, "It might have been nice if you'd mentioned that earlier."

Riker took his chair at the back of the office. He was positioned to one side, facing Coffey and a bit behind Margot Siddon. He pulled a leather notebook out of his pocket and flipped back to the interview notes made at the Cathery apartment.

"So you and Mr Cathery are friends," said Coffey.

"We knew each other," she said, making a distinction there. "I visited Cousin Samantha once a week. The Catherys lived in the same building. After Henry's grandmother died, I used to drop in now and then. He was devastated by her murder. He depended on her for everything. He wasn't managing very well after her death."

Riker nodded to Coffey. That much was true. At the top of his interview notes for that date, he had underscored the words 'victim/nanny'. The grandmother had obviously been Henry Cathery's caretaker. Without her ministrations, the boy's flesh and laundry had gone unwashed. He had been on his own for a full month before Markowitz had interviewed him. His grandmother's homicide had only become the property of Special Crimes after the second death made it the work of a serial killer. As he recalled, the apartment the kid had once shared with Anne Cathery had the smell of a cleaning woman's recent visit, but the woman's chores had not involved cleaning the boy. Body odor had been noticeable despite the floral air-freshener.

"I helped out with small things," Margot Siddon was saying to Coffey. "I made sure he was eating regularly, things like that."

Riker nodded again when Coffey glanced his way. The next words underlined in his notes were 'Margot Siddon – new nanny'. The day the girl had opened the door to Markowitz, she had a clean pair of jeans and a man's shirt draped over one arm. There had been no doubt about who was in charge. Henry Cathery had never answered a question from Markowitz without looking first to the girl. And when the answers were slow in coming, she had answered for him. She was not only the dominant one, but Henry even gave the impression of being the frailer of the pair, though he was above average height and weight, fleshy in the face and gut.

"I'm not even sure that Henry knew where the groceries came from," Margot Siddon explained to Jack Coffey. "I suppose he wondered why the refrigerator wasn't full anymore, but he didn't know what to do about it."

Riker scanned the word groceries. Right, the groceries had been delivered to the apartment ten minutes into the interview. Henry Cathery had given her a wad of cash to pay the delivery boy, and then she had left them for a few minutes to put the perishables in the refrigerator. Acts of charity, Riker had supposed at the time, though he didn't take the girl for the good-mother type. But they were two lonely kids, both outside the mainstream in their quirks.

He looked at the last note he had made on the day of the Cathery interview. It was written in the car after the interview was over and they were heading back. Markowitz had mentioned that the girl never gave Henry Cathery the change for the groceries. Riker had written 'Parasite' and underscored it.

The lighting in the Cathery apartment had been subdued. Under these brighter fluorescent lights of NYPD, Riker noted that Margot Siddon's clothes were not fashionable grunge dressing, but merely old. The elderly and wealthy cousin had not been generous with the girl.

Done with her coffee, she set the cup on the desk and folded her hands in her lap. There was a pressure on the fingers to keep them there, behaving themselves. Her less disciplined legs crossed and recrossed at the ankles.

Coffey was extending his condolences on the death of Margot Siddon's cousin. The interview went on for another twenty minutes, and Coffey glanced Riker's way several times to let him know he hadn't missed the detail that half an hour passed before Riker thought anything had been said that was worth writing down. There were those impatient looks of 'Don't needle me' in Coffey's eyes. But Riker's pen only hovered over the page.

"No, she didn't have any enemies," said Margot, accepting the photograph from Coffey's hand and nodding. "Yes, that's Samantha. Was it a serrated knife?"

"What?" Lieutenant Coffey leaned forward as though he hadn't heard her right.

"The knife that killed her. Was it serrated?"

She set the photograph down on the desk. It was a head shot for identification purposes. A white towel had covered the wound to the throat. The face was unmarred and seemed at peace, only sleeping.