Carol O'Connell - Mallory's Oracle

She turned her back on him and tacked up Redwing's shot. "You interviewed Gaynor with Markowitz, didn't you?"

"Yeah."

"Notes?"

Riker flipped through his notebook, a dog-eared dangle of pages. "Windmill," he said, marking the note with one finger.

"Huh?"

"It's the way he moves. He makes a lot of gestures, sprawly, all arms. So, Markowitz and me, we're walkin' through the lobby with this guy, and his arms are wavin' all over the place while he talks. We pass by this group of little old ladies and they scatter like crows."

"They were afraid of him?"

"Naw, it wasn't like that. You gotta be careful with old people. They break easy. So I guess he makes them a little skittish is all, arms waving in the breeze, never looking to see where he's going."

"Like a scarecrow."

"Yeah, I like that." He scratched out windmill and wrote in scarecrow.

"What did Markowitz think of Gaynor?"

"I'm not sure. Markowitz spent the whole time pumping him for free professional advice."

"Gaynor's a sociologist not a shrink."

"Yeah, but he did an article or a book or something on the elderly. Markowitz was getting into the territory, you know? This was early days, only ten hours into the second kill."

"What did he tell Markowitz?"

"Nothin' I had notes on. Old people's role in society, that kind of crap. Markowitz thought it was real interesting. I didn't."

"What's Coffey's angle these days?"

"He's got me running background on the Siddon kid." He pulled a videotape from his jacket pocket. "You wanna see the latest interview? I got her on tape."

She took the tape from his hand, fed it into the mouth of the VCR and pushed the play button.

Margot Siddon appeared on the screen only to be ejected ten minutes later, and before the interview concluded. Mallory tossed him the tape.

"I've seen her around the park. I don't know any more than the surveillance team would. She hangs out with Henry Cathery sometimes. Most of the time he just ignores her, won't even unlock the park gate for her. He'd rather play chess than talk to girls."

Mallory stood in the fourth-floor hallway by Martin Teller's apartment and stared down at the neat stacks of books and magazines, a vacuum cleaner, a copper tea kettle, and a portable electric fan assembled outside his door. These were not castaway items to be put out with the trash; this, according to Charles, was where Martin, the minimalist artist, stored everything which was not pure white.

She glanced at the door across the hall from Martin's. She had been forbidden to terrorize Herbert of 4B. Reluctantly, she turned back to Martin's door at the sound of four locks being undone. Three of the locks were shiny new metal in contrast with the landlord's lock which was close to twenty years old by the make.

The door opened, and she was silently invited into the apartment by the barely perceptible inclination of Martin's hairless head. Minimal Martin had also done away with unnecessary eyebrows. His white shirt, bulking out around the bulletproof vest, the white pants and socks all blended him into the white walls. The front room had the look of a vacant apartment freshly broken into. The windows were bereft of curtains, and the walls were bare except for the small collection of stamp-size artwork mounted one on each wall. Each tiny bit of art was a faint pencil line.

She preferred minimalist art over every other school; it was neat and clean and hardly there, no garish colors, nothing to think about, less work.

The doorless closet in the front room contained the minimum amount of clothes which were also white and, hence, invisible in these quarters. Square white pedestals passed for chairs and were indistinguishable from the square white pedestal which was his breakfast table laid with one white dish and a single egg. Mallory had no view into the bedroom, but she could hazard a narrow mattress on the floor, covered with one doubled-over white sheet.

A bulletproof vest seemed like such a complicated addition to these rooms and to Martin.

"Martin, I'm curious about the writing on the wall in Edith Candle's apartment."

Martin merely stared, not at her but towards her, like a blind man listening for a clue as to her position. He showed no signs of a pending response. She moved into alignment with his gaze and smiled. A worry line made inroads in his brow which, for Martin, was tantamount to an emotional outburst. Perhaps Martin had a truer perception of her than most people, who took her smile for a smile.

"The writing on the wall, Martin?" She rose up on the balls of her feet with anticipation, further prompting the man only with her eyes. If she pressed him too hard, he might walk off into some autistic dimension and close the door behind him. And so she waited on him.

And waited on him.

Nothing.

Oh, of course. She hadn't asked a solid question, had she?

"Could you tell me what the writing was?"

"Red," said Martin, after she had counted off thirty seconds.

She stopped smiling.

Over the past month, she'd had occasion to observe this artist in the streets and the halls during his infrequent contacts with the humans who also lived on his planet. Martin made people nervous for all the minutes it took to determine that he was odd, but harmless.

"Yes, red lipstick, but what did the writing say?"

She smiled again to worry him into a faster response. She didn't have all damn day for this crap, did she?

"Thick lines," said Martin.

The man was a badly lip-synced foreign movie with unrelated narrative. A ghost of Helen Markowitz automatically corrected the grammar of her next thought.

You can kill him, but you may not.

There was no more forthcoming. He was only standing there, not waiting, not anticipating, only occupying space. Well, he was still a man, wasn't he?

"Could you tell me what the words were?" Mallory asked gently with a low sultry voice that pulled his eyes into hers by invisible silk strings. Martin broke the strings abruptly and turned around to face the wall. He had spent his words, said the back of him. He had none left.

Behind her own back, her hands were balling into fists. She kept the fists out of her words. "It's an interesting building, isn't it, Martin? I mean the way the tenants tuck in their heads when they slide past each other in the halls. It's like they all know what's in each other's closet and under the bed. A little mutual embarrassment. A little creepy, wouldn't you say?"

His head dropped an inch. Considering who she was dealing with, she could read much into that inch. She sat down on one of the white pedestals and stared at his back, willing him to turn around. She was not at all surprised when he did turn to face her. His senses were that acute. She weaved more silk into her voice.

"There's not much turnover in this building. That's strange. New York is such a transient town. I wonder what keeps you all here. You were here when George Farmer attempted suicide ten years ago. The next tenant to leave was the one who used to live across the hall from Charles. He just disappeared one day, packed up and left no forwarding address. He abandoned his security deposit and fifteen years of interest on it. What makes a man do a thing like that?"

Martin's eyes collided with hers and rolled away in pain.

She held up both her hands, palms-up with a question.

"You think he saw the writing on the wall?"

Martin turned his back on her again. His head shook from side to side, not to a negative response, but as though he were shaking the words from his head.

She'd gone too far.

She rose to her feet and moved slowly to the door. As she opened it, Martin said, "Be careful. You will not know the hour nor even the minute."