Carol O’Connell: The Man Who Lied To Women

‘Ah, just a minute, Mallory. We were asked to evaluate the psychokinetic activity, not the family history.’

‘You’re kidding, right?’

‘Right. Lunch?’

‘There’s nothing in the office fridge.’

No, there wouldn’t be, now that he thought of it. She had trusted him with a shopping list. He had used the back of it to jot down two telephone numbers, and used the whole of it to mark his place in a book, but he had forgotten to use any part of it for shopping. ‘Let’s go to my place.’

They walked across the hall and into the apartment that was his residence. Here, an eagle-eyed Mrs Ortega saw to the contents of the refrigerator out of pity for the shopping-disabled Charles. Today the cleaning woman had left a note on the refrigerator door, attached by a magnet. It was a diagram of the kitchen showing all the war zones where she had set traps for the mouse. He felt sorry for the rodent, so great was his confidence in Mrs Ortega.

Mallory was ensconced at the kitchen table. The kitchen was his favorite room. The walls were lined with racks of spices and agents for tenderizing flesh, and instruments for torturing vegetables, slicing, dicing and boiling them in oil. He was now in the process of covering the table with refrigerator finds. Mallory was picking over plastic containers, packages of meat and no less than five colors of cheese, and putting together original creations of sandwich mania. On his final trip back from the refrigerator, he offered her a new discovery in pickle labels.

‘You were happier in Special Crimes, weren’t you?’

‘When Markowitz was alive,’ she said, opening the jar and sniffing, then approving the contents with a nod. ‘Working with Coffey isn’t quite the same. If I go back, I’ll be stuck in the computer room forever. He was really pissed off the last time I saw his face. He’ll never let me out in the field again.’

‘I thought this suspension was just a formality.’

‘It is. When you shoot a perp, you’re relieved of duty while the Civilian Review Board investigates the case.’

‘But you didn’t kill the mugger, and he did beat and rob that old man.’

‘Coffey’s got a different way of looking at things.’

‘So you don’t want to dissolve the partnership?’

‘No, it never occurred to me. But that doesn’t mean I won’t go back to Special Crimes when my suspension is over.’ And now she checked her watch and reached up to turn on the small television set on the kitchen counter. It was time for the news, and she did like to keep up on the city’s death rate.

‘But there are department regulations against moonlighting, aren’t there?’

‘Yes, there are.’ And what of it, said her eyebrows on the way up.

The news show was reporting the daily carnage with a video window on the Death Clock of Times Square. As the statistics of the dead were read by the newscaster, the numbers on the giant public bulletin board changed before an audience of a thousand cars and pedestrians, and the millions more who preferred to view cheap spectacle on television.

‘I hate that thing,’ she said, watching the change of electronic digits which kept the national score of death by guns.

‘The Death Clock? But, Mallory, I thought you of all people would appreciate computerized death. It makes homicide so neat and efficient.’

She said nothing. Her face shut him out, resolving itself into a cold mask. This was his only clue that he had erred. Why did he persist in the belief that he might ever learn to anticipate her? Who knew what went on inside of Mallory? And how could he not go on wondering?

Charles was staring at the television set, but his mind had strolled across the hall to the office where she stored her computer toys. Of course, keeping the partnership had its practical aspects. Here she had freedom from the supervision of anyone who might recognize her equipment as the electronic equivalent of burglary tools.

‘This word just in,’ said the news broadcaster, calling Charles back to the kitchen and the moment. Now he was looking at Mallory’s face on the television screen.

‘We have a bulletin,’ the broadcaster was saying. ‘A police officer has been murdered in Central Park. The victim is Sergeant Kathleen Mallory, daughter of the deceased Inspector Louis Markowitz who gave his own life in the line of duty. Details of the murder are being withheld pending further investigation.’

Charles looked across the table at the living, solid, three-dimensional Mallory as though he needed to verify her existence, needed to be sure his eyes were not in error before he could doubt the veracity of television. Suppose she had not been with him when he heard the news?

They watched in silence. Much channel changing told them other news programs were also carrying the story.

And now the phone was ringing in concert with the doorbell. The first of the condolence calls, he supposed. Mallory went off to answer the door as he picked up the phone.

‘Hello?’

‘Charles, this is Riker. Don’t you ever pick up the messages on your answering machine?’

‘Riker, is this about the report on Mallory’s death?’

‘Yeah,’ said Riker. ‘I’m calling from the Medical Examiner’s Office. We’ve been trying to track down Mallory all day. Is she there? Could you put the little corpse on the phone?’

Mallory walked back into the kitchen, followed by Dr Henrietta Ramsharan of apartment 3A. Henrietta’s dark hair fell soft and loose around the shoulders of her denim shirt. She wore her after-hours faded jeans and the confusion of the eyes which came from having the door opened by a dead person.

Lieutenant Jack Coffey was sitting at his own desk, but the desk was in Inspector Markowitz’s office. Though Louis Markowitz was dead, the old man would always be in command of the Special Crimes Section, and this would always be his office. Jack Coffey counted himself lucky that the paychecks were made out to himself. But just now, he was thinking of Markowitz’s daughter, Kathleen Mallory.

Palanski’s report was sitting on his desk, replete with the crime-site preliminary faxed over from the West Side precinct. The fax photos were dark, but the light hair shone through the grainy shadows, and he could make out the outline of the slender body in the familiar jeans, running shoes and blazer. He only waited on the positive identification from a friend of the family to complete the report.

No doubt Sergeant Riker would pull the pin after this one. Markowitz’s death had hit the man hard. Mallory’s death would be too much.

Coffey turned off the lamp and braced his hands on the desk, as though a man of thirty-six needed this solid crutch to rise to a stand. He stared at the bulletin board on the back wall of the office and wondered if a little water on his face might make him feel less dead.

Who could get so close to her that the bastard could hit her that way? No one. It could not be.

But the evidence was sitting on his desk in black and white, and her pretty face was all over the television on every channel. And when he found the cop who leaked it to the media, one head was gonna roll.

Ah, Mallory.

If he could have her back for a few minutes, he would risk the sarcasm and the look that would neatly snip his balls for caring if she lived or died. Sucker, her eyes would say. He could almost see her standing there. He even imagined that he could smell her perfume. It was time to go home where the bottle was. He turned.

‘Oh, Christ!’

He grabbed at the door frame and missed, too slow with shock to fall immediately and catching himself on the second pass at something solid, which was the chair. His stomach shot up and then slammed back to where it belonged.