Carol O’Connell: The Man Who Lied To Women

Mallory stood in the doorway. Her gold hair was back-lit by the office lights beyond the door, and coming up behind her was a fluorescent, washed out Riker.

‘I know,’ said Mallory. ‘You thought it was me in the morgue.’

‘Well, Mallory,’ said Riker, ‘he did and he didn’t. The lieutenant heard you were dead, but he knew you’d be back after sundown.’

Riker ambled into the office behind Mallory and tossed his report on the desk. One beverage and two different types of food stains graced the front page.

Coffey was staring at the report and looking for his voice as she sat down in the chair by his desk and stretched out the long legs that went on forever. Riker dragged another chair up to the desk, pulled out his notebook and leaned over to flick on the lamp. On the rear wall, Mallory was casting the reassuring shadow of a living woman.

Coffey lowered himself into his chair. He was fighting down the gut flutters, one hand resting on his stomach, as though he could kill the internal butterflies by smothering them this way. ‘The corpse was wearing a brown cashmere blazer that was tailored for you, Mallory.’

Riker looked at his notebook and nodded to her. ‘That was confirmed by your tailor on 42nd Street. According to Palanski’s report, you’re the guy’s most memorable customer.’

‘Can you explain the blazer?’ Ease up, Coffey told himself. She was not a suspect. Softening out of the interrogation mode, he added, ‘It’s the only lead we have.’

‘You’ll find Riker’s cigarette burn on the left sleeve,’ she said, and not softly at all. ‘I got rid of it.’

‘You trashed it?’

‘No. I gave it to Anna Kaplan, Rabbi Kaplan’s wife. She collects clothing for the homeless.’

He looked down at Riker’s report, reading through the orange sauce stains and one stain that damn well better not be beer. ‘According to the ME’s report, this is the body of a well-nourished female in her mid-twenties. No indication that she was homeless, no head lice, no bedbugs.’

He left out the feeding frenzy of maggots and beetles that would help to determine the time of death in the scavenging cycle of insects.

‘So?’ Mallory shrugged. ‘Talk to Palanski. See what else he botched besides the ID on the corpse. What have we got so far?’

Her question was well within the purview of a crimes analyst. He needed her back. How to get through this without antagonizing her. without falling into the inevitable round of one-upmanship which she always won. He scanned the lines of Riker’s report.

‘We know she had an abortion within ten days of death. The first wound was a frontal assault to the head. He was facing her. That could mean it was personal, someone she knew. Outside of that, we’ve got nothing,’ said Coffey. ‘No witness, no weapon.’

‘It was raining yesterday morning,’ said Riker, tapping the early homicide report on the corner of Coffey’s desk. ‘The rain would have washed away any physical evidence. If Heller couldn’t dig it up, it wasn’t there. The weapon could have been a rock, and that rock is at the bottom of the lake if the perp has half a brain. And that’s assuming she was killed in the park. We know the body was moved after death.’

‘We don’t have an officer involvement,’ said Coffey. ‘If you’ve got nothing more to add to this report, I’m bouncing it back to the West Side squad tonight.’

Mallory sat well back in her chair, eyes half-closed, looking nearly harmless. ‘With no prints, it’ll take them a month to ID that body – maybe longer or never. It’ll be a low priority case. So, if the park was only a dump site, they’ll never find the kill site. They’re gonna blow it.’

‘I suppose you could do it better and faster?’ And yes, he could see that was exactly what she thought.

‘You want me to?’

‘I want you to go back to your damn computer room.’

‘I’m still on suspension, and I’m considering a better offer.’

Mallory rose from her chair, and in the next instant, he was looking at the back of her as she walked out of the room.

‘You know she’s right,’ said Riker, leaning over in his chair, checking the door to be sure she was gone out of earshot. ‘The West Side dicks will lose it. The perp’s gonna get away with the murder.’

‘It happens. Nothing I can do about it.’

‘Give this one to Mallory.’

‘Her job description is crimes analysis and computers, not fieldwork.’

‘But she has worked in the field.’

‘Unofficially, and only because I had a shortage of warm bodies. If she wants to make it official, she has to go through the paperwork and put in some time with a partner. Now who could work with her? And you’re forgetting this case is another precinct’s headache.’

‘Well, technically it’s still the property of Special Crimes. Why not give it to Mallory? Just give it to her, close your eyes and don’t ask her a lot of questions.’

‘Like Markowitz did?’ When she broke six laws a day, breaking and entering other people’s computers, cutting corners, bypassing time-consuming channels and warrants – proving invaluable. ‘I should just let her run her own private police department? Is that the idea, Riker?’

‘Yeah.’

‘But Markowitz didn’t want her to work the field. He all but padded the walls of that computer room. He spoonfed her every detail of a case.’

‘I always thought he was wrong in that,’ Riker lit a cigarette without asking if Coffey minded.

Coffey minded, but bit it back. He’d grown accustomed to this game they played, needling within parameters that stopped just short of insubordination. And he had not yet thanked Riker for failing to call in the false ID from the morgue.

‘All this time, she could have been learning fieldwork so she could survive out there,’ said Riker, exhaling a blue cloud of smoke. ‘Now it occurs to me that she’s got her own way of surviving, and it might be a better way. It’s a waste of talent to keep her in the computer room.’

‘It was letting her out of the computer room that got her suspended.’

‘That was a righteous shoot.’

‘You know better than that, Riker. If she’d killed the perp, I’d have no problem with that. But Mallory wanted to play with him.’

‘Whose call is that? Are you telling me that pack of idiots on the Civilian Review Board ruled against her?’

‘The Review Board commended her on restricting her use of force to shooting a gun out of a man’s hand. But then, they’re civilians, aren’t they? I’m the one who’s got a problem with the shooting. The perp aimed a gun at Mallory. She should’ve put that bullet in his heart. But if she’d just killed him, where would be the fun in that?’

No comeback, Riker?

Coffey mentally scratched one point for himself, but the big score would be in getting the last word. ‘Now I’ve got a backlog of cases, and she’s not replaceable on the computer. That’s it.’

Coffey shuffled the papers on his desk, and then bowed his head to read them. Had a more sensitive human been sitting in Riker’s chair, he would have recognized this signal of dismissal. He was still seated when his superior looked up from the paperwork. Coffey’s glare was wasted on Riker, who seemed preoccupied with his own thoughts.

‘Riker, catch up to Mallory and tell her the suspension is terminated.’

Riker nodded but remained entirely too comfortable in his slouch to be going anywhere very soon.

‘If you don’t give Mallory something more interesting, she’ll walk,’ he said, spilling out his words with the smoke in an economy of effort. ‘She’ll keep the consulting partnership with Charles.’

‘That setup is illegal as hell, and it’s gonna stop or I’ll take her badge,’ said Coffey, trying the lie out on Riker first, and wondering how Mallory would take it.