Carol O’Connell - Crime School

‘A hero bigger than life. Your words, Riker. Well, he was Wichita’s hero, too – always had been. The boy loved the man. So you might wonder – did Wichita deliberately draw too slow? Or did he lose that gunfight in his own mind before he drew his weapon? Perhaps, at the end, he still believed that Sheriff Peety was a great man, the better man. Maybe that’s how the sheriff won… Or maybe it was a suicide.’

‘Thanks, Charles. That might drive me nuts for another fifteen years.’

‘Happy to return the favor.’

Riker recognized his own twisted signature in this exchange, and he smiled with the grace of a good loser. ‘Okay, you get one free question. Anything you want. Shoot.’

‘You said Kathy was posthumously charged with arson and murder.’

‘Right.’

‘Though she didn’t die, and she didn’t kill anybody. But I’ve still got a corpse and a fire. Does this have anything to do with why Mallory hates Sparrow?’

‘Yeah.’

Charles waited for the rest of the explanation. And he waited. Now the two men engaged in a contest to see who could outcreep whom with the most insipid smile.

Riker broke down first. ‘Okay, this is the deal. It took me a long time to piece this story together. You can’t repeat it to anyone. And when I’m done, you’ll wish I never started. Kathy Mallory’s death is gonna drive you crazy till the day you die.’

‘Word of honor, I’ll never tell.’

‘Charles, are you sure you understand? When you know the truth, you have to eat it.’

‘Agreed.’

‘Some of it’s guesswork.’ Only two people knew the real story. One was a gifted liar, and the other was a dying whore with a scrambled brain. ‘Fifteen years ago, Sparrow did a drug deal with a really scurvy character. She was trading stolen VCRs for heroin.’

‘The VCRs that Kathy stole?’

‘Yeah. So the hookers told you about the great truck robbery? Well, I’m guessing the drug dealer picked the location for the meet, a place with boarded-up windows and no back door. No neighbors either. The buildings on both sides were torn down, and this one was due for a midnight demolition.’

‘Pardon?’

‘The owner was planning to torch the place for the insurance money. He had accelerants stashed on every floor, kerosene, paint thinner. But that came out later – after the fire.’

‘The fire that killed Kathy?’

‘That’s the one. I figure this dealer – ’

‘Frankie Delight?’

‘Yeah.’ Riker wondered what else Charles had pieced together with the help of the Hooker Book Salon. ‘Frankie was gonna double-cross Sparrow. So he would’ve been the first one to draw a knife.’

‘The one that made that huge scar in Sparrow’s side?’

Riker nodded. ‘And she won that fight, but she left her knife behind. I’ve got a witness who saw it buried in Frankie Delight’s dead body. An ambulance picked up Sparrow three blocks away.’

‘And Kathy?’

‘She saw the whole thing. Another whore can place the kid in Sparrow’s hospital room the next day – one real tired little girl. And that’s when Kathy was sent back to the crime scene to get the murder weapon.’ This was the picture Riker wanted out of his head – that child pulling a knife from a corpse.

‘Lou and me, we’re in the car when we hear a call on the radio. A dispatcher’s sending all available units to investigate a puddle of blood on Avenue B. We would’ve blown it off, but then another call placed a little blond girl at the same address – following a blood trail into an empty building. We got there just in time to see the flames. That’s when Kathy came out the front door. One look at us and she runs back inside – back into the fire.’

‘But that’s not – ’

‘Not normal? No, you wouldn’t expect a kid to do that. But she was carrying a knife with Sparrow’s initial on the hilt and probably a good set of prints. If the kid was caught near Frankie’s body with the murder weapon, her favorite whore would go to jail.’

‘So she ran into a burning building, knowing she could die?’

‘Naw, we never figured that – not for a second. This kid had a world-class survival instinct. Lou figured she was heading for the roof, maybe counting on a fire escape.’

‘Could Kathy have staged her own death?’

‘That was one theory, and she was that smart. But there was no fire escape. That morning, the owner sold the iron for scrap. We tried to follow her into the building. Then the first explosion blew out the boards on the downstairs windows. Cans of kerosene and paint thinner were goin’ off like bombs. And now, there’s no way in, no way out.’ He recalled the open doorway as a wall of fire. Flames had boiled out of the ground-floor windows like the tail burners of a rocket. ‘I thought the building was gonna take off and fly away. The back door was boarded up. The firemen didn’t even try to break it down. All they could do was contain the blaze to one building.’

Riker slapped his hand on the bar. ‘Bang, bang, bang! All the accelerants were blowing up in sympathetic explosions – all the way up to the top of the building. Then the roof went up in a ball of fire, and we knew the kid was dead… Well, I did.’ It had taken more than Armageddon to convince Lou Markowitz.

‘The fire marshal showed us the kid’s shoes – proof that she made it up to the roof. They were still laced, blown off her feet in the final blast. One shoe was clean, thrown clear. The other one burnt black. The arson team figured she was at the center of the last explosion, and they didn’t expect to find her in one piece.’

‘So Kathy was presumed dead?’

‘Well, they didn’t know her name. All they had was one of her books, half fried… and her shoes. Later, a snitch tied the western and the kid to Sparrow. Two cops showed up in Sparrow’s hospital room and told her that Kathy was dead.’

‘Except that she wasn’t.’ Charles ticked off the points on his fingers. ‘Boarded windows, no back door, no fire escape, no neighboring roof. How did she escape?’

‘Kathy wouldn’t tell. She never will. She knows it still drives me crazy. Damn kid never misses an opportunity to get even.’

‘With a concussion,’ said Charles, ‘she might not remember.’

‘But that won’t explain how she got off the roof alive. Who knows? Maybe she flew. That was Sparrow’s favorite theory.’

‘I like it. If a shoe can be thrown clear, why not a little girl? With something soft like garbage bags on another roof – ’

‘No, Charles, we checked. No soft landing. And remember, this building was an island – twenty feet to the next roof. We caught Kathy that same night – no cuts, no bruises, not a mark on her. If you think about it long enough, it’ll give you a headache.’

‘All right.’ Charles covered his eyes with one hand. ‘You thought she was dead, but that was the night you found her -which suggests that you were still looking for her.’

‘Right.’ Riker slapped the mahogany. ‘We were in this same bar, me and Lou.’ He looked up at the television set mounted on the wall. ‘Watching TV. The lead story was a little girl with green eyes who loved westerns. The kid was famous for two minutes on the news.’ And she would have gotten more air time if a city garbage strike had not stolen her thunder.

‘Suddenly the place gets real quiet. I turn to the door, and there’s Sparrow. Well, this is a cop bar, and she’s lookin’ every inch a hooker. Just begging for a twisted arm and a short flight through the front door. I tried to get rid of her. Junkies are always messing with your head, and Lou was in a bad way. I didn’t think he could take anymore. But now I see the blood leaking through her clothes and a hospital bracelet on her wrist.’