Carol O'Connell - Mallory's Oracle

Coffey looked up to see Charles Butler filling the doorway of his office. Butler moved across the room and folded his long self into the chair next to Mallory. While he was apologizing for being late, the man was suddenly caught short by the changes in the office. He was staring at the denuded walls which no one, cop or civilian, had seen in Markowitz's lifetime.

"You haven't missed much," said Mallory to Charles.

Coffey wondered what he was missing here. Butler shows up thirty minutes late, and Mallory, the punctuality freak, lets it go by? Where was the venom, the sarcasm, the glare of "Come hither, I want to hurt you"? He faced Charles Butler who had recovered from the mild shock of the redecorating.

"So, Charles. Wouldn't you think one of those old women would've come forward?"

"Oh, the seance ladies? I suppose it's possible they each assumed someone else would call. That's common group behavior."

"No," said Mallory. "They were playing Russian roulette."

Coflfey nodded, but he wasn't buying it. It didn't fit the image formed by the elderly women in his own life, and a little old lady was a little old lady. No, something else had frightened those women, scared them off the police, and he intended to find out what it was.

"I'm arranging police protection for all of them." The better to interrogate them without lawyers intervening.

"Turning into a real horse-race, isn't it?" said Charles. "How often do you get such a plethora of suspects?"

"Well," said Coffey, smiling, "we usually begin with the entire population of Manhattan and then whittle it down. Right now, I got Redwing."

"What about Henry Cathery?"

"We checked him out."

"I'm just curious. If he fitted the FBI profile so well, why didn't you concentrate on him?"

"I like money motives," said Mallory.

"So do I," said Coffey. "Every single one of those old women was loaded with blue-chip stocks. But then, so is Henry Cathery. He's worth a hell of a lot more than the dead grandmother."

"But you're dealing with a serial killer. Surely there's a mental disorder to consider, a pathology to the crimes."

"Hey," said Coffey. "If FBI headquarters were in New York, they'd have an entirely different set of profiles. New York City is another country."

"Coffey's right," said Mallory. "Now take cannibals, for example. Our last cannibal wasn't really hard-core."

"Yeah," said Coffey. "He was nothing at all like the Minnesota cannibal. The death was accidental. He just didn't know what to do with the body."

"Disposing of the head is always going to be a snag," said Mallory. "When we found a half-eaten head, the FBI sent us down the garden path with their psych profile."

"They never once suggested looking for a bank teller who was once a Boy Scout," said Coffey. "And as far as we knew, his parents were never cruel to him, and he had the standard complement of chromosomes."

With the attitude of only wanting to beat the dead horse one more time, Charles tried again. "But pure profit motive? No one would profit from all four killings. You think a sane murderer would kill four women if he only wanted one of them dead? Would a jury believe it?"

"A jury of New Yorkers?" said Coffey. "Oh, sure."

Mallory nodded in agreement.

"But don't you think the four-week cycles fit nicely with the pathology of a lunatic?" He looked from Coffey to Mallory. "No? But if you only considered the element of madness, it would still be an open field. I understand that Margot Siddon's alibi for the death of her cousin is a theater full of people who can't agree on the right year, much less the hour. No alibi for the Gaynor or Cathery murders. Her alibi for Pearl Whitman's death is Cathery, and he's none too committal. He's got his own alibi problems since Miss Whitman died. The medium we don't know about yet, but that's reaching. And Gaynor – "

"Gaynor? Charles, even if Gaynor didn't have Mallory for an alibi, I'm sure he could account for his time. His students make great alibis; they live on schedules; they're always watching clocks. We've got to check out his appointments for the office hours, but I don't think we're going to find gaps in his day."

"Didn't Henry Cathery also have a witness to account for his time? Pearl Whitman? How reliable was she?"

"So? What's the connection? You're not suggesting that Mallory is unreliable?" No, he could see that Charles wasn't about to suggest anything like that. Mallory was already tensing. Coffey could feel it across the desk without even looking at her.

"No, of course not," said Charles who probably loved his life as much as the next man, "but Gaynor was saved by a time constraint. No one would have an alibi for any of the murders if the women didn't die where they were found. Then it could be any of them."

"Nice try," said Coffey with no sarcasm. He really did like Charles. "But we have a lock on the crime sites. A forensic pathologist estimates the quantity of blood loss based on the victim's height and weight and the type of wound – if it's a quick kill, there's less blood loss. Then a forensic technician accounts for the blood at the crime site. The areas where the blood pools under the flesh line up with the position of the body. The first thrust gets a major artery. There's an awful lot of blood. No particles found on any of the bodies that were foreign to the site. Not even microscopic evidence to suggest they'd fallen elsewhere. So Gaynor's out of the woods."

"I'm not ruling Gaynor out," said Mallory. "Not him, not any of them."

"You're kidding," Coffey said. "What do you know that I don't?" Even as he asked the question he knew he was being suckered. She was playing with him.

"And what have you got, Coffey? Any little thing you want to share with me?" Her eyes were guns. They made him nervous, and he looked everywhere for something else to be looking at. When his eyes settled on Charles Butler, the man was smiling, and there was just a hint of sympathy.

"Fair enough," he said. Though he would not characterize any dealing with her as fair. She'd been born to the advantages of a quicker mind and a paralyzing beauty that had done something terrible and wonderful to him the first time they had met. Only Mallory could not see what a stand-out she was. That was the sad way of damaged kids. They grew up with distorted mirrors.

"We might have a new angle," he said, "now that Redwing links up to the victims. You'll like this one, Mallory, it's a money scam. When we started the surveillance on the square, we matched her description up with a rap sheet. We've got her under the aliases of Cassandra, Mai Fong and – "

"And Mary Grayling." Mallory was examining her nails. "And she's changed her base of operations. Your man has been watching an empty apartment all morning."

Coffey slumped back in his chair and stared up at the ceiling for a moment. If he killed her now, everyone would know.

He lowered his gaze to stare at her, always a mistake, and he got lost for a second in her pretty eyes. In the early days of working with Mallory, she'd given him stomach flutters each time he saw her. It took him years to realize that she was all stone – no heart and nothing but contempt for a man who could be reduced to a puddle of jelly at her feet. Not that he cared. Jelly had no self-respect.

"What else have you been holding out, Mallory? Any more bombs you'd like to drop on me?"

"Play nice," she said. "You give, I give."

"You give me everything you got, and right now, or I bust you for obstruction."

Well, that certainly made her yawn.

"Mallory, I've already got you cold for working a case off the books, violating conditions of leave, interfering with police business – "

"It's my business," she said, giving each word equal weight. There was no emotion to her when she was angry, only a narrowing of the eyes to warn the poor bastard in her sights. "He was my old man, not yours."