Carol O’Connell - The Man Who Lied To Women

‘Was I?’ Amanda’s pacing stopped for a moment. ‘She never moved the entire time a child was being tortured. She played dead.’

‘She might only have been paralyzed with fear. There are no facts to support – ’

‘Logic and facts have failed you, Charles. You had a qualified medical examiner as a witness to the film. She was playing dead. Where did she learn that? Maybe she’d had some practice witnessing another bloody murder. Maybe that’s what happened to her mother, and to Justin’s mother.’

He rolled over to face her, this woman who was not there, yet he kept his eyes closed. ‘Amanda, this is ludicrous. Justin’s mother died of a heart attack. That’s a fact. Now the aspect of child abuse makes more sense. That’s what Mallory would see in the boy. She would recognize the signs of an abused child. Even Mallory could not divine a murder through the boy’s eyes.’

Strains of the concerto meandered through his brain. He recited the Greek alphabet in a whisper. The music fled; Amanda remained to pace the floor around his bed. Her footsteps were heavier now. He opened his eyes to faint moonlight and the stronger light of street lamps pouring through his bedroom window. He turned his face to the opposite wall, where his ultimate nightmare was moving across the wallpaper. Amanda had learned to cast a shadow.

She had been unsuccessful in her efforts to bully the maid. Perhaps it was true that Betty Hyde was not at home this morning. And neither was Eric Franz answering his telephone. But the judge was in, and so was Harry Kipling.

She picked up the plastic evidence bag and held it up to the camera to visually record the chain of evidence written on the seal, and then the breaking of the seal. She pulled out the cap gun and set it down on the table in the front room.

Back in the den, she ran a test of the camera equipment which had just made her visual record of the evidence. On her way to the front door, four gilded wall mirrors caught the swift passing reflection of her T-shirt, shoulder holster and jeans. She was pulling on the new brown cashmere blazer, a twin to the garment Amanda Bosch had been wearing when she died. The tailor had reproduced it exactly. Not that most people would appreciate the detailing.

She had been tempted to re-create the cigarette burn on the sleeve, but the ghost of Helen Markowitz wouldn’t let her do it. And Helen would have been the first to comment on the bulge the gun made in the line of the blazer. Mallory stopped at the mirror in the foyer, checking the giveaway bulk with a critical eye.

She called the cat to her, and it came. She snapped her fingers, and the cat made a leap into her arms and nuzzled her neck. She looked back to the mirror. No, it wouldn’t do. The squirming cat wouldn’t hide the bulge of the gun unless she killed it first and pinned it on like a furry corsage.

She dropped the animal on the floor at her feet, shrugged off her blazer and removed the shoulder holster. She slid the gun into the drawer of the small table beneath the mirror. Putting the coat on again, she snapped her fingers for the cat.

With no self-respect, no pride, Nose jumped back into her arms.

She made her way down the hall, wondering that doors didn’t open to inquire about the racket of purring. She stopped at the door to Judge Heart’s apartment and knocked. It was a repeat of last night; the chain had apparently been replaced. The door only opened a crack. The judge was staring at her.

‘I want to see your wife,’ said Mallory.

‘Go away.’

‘I could be discreet or not. Up to you. I want to see that she’s all right. I want to see her NOW!’

The door closed to the sound of the newly installed chain slipping off the latch. Now the door was opening, and the judge was calling out, ‘Pansy! Pansy!’

Pansy Heart entered the room. Her face showed only the damage of the previous night and no fresh marks.

‘Just checking,’ Mallory said, turning to go. She stopped and looked back over her shoulder at the judge. ‘I know what you did, and I’m going to get you for it.’

Judge Heart’s face was in rage shades of red as the door slammed.

When she knocked on the next door, one flight up, the Kipling boy opened it. There was no leer on the boy’s face this time. He stepped back to make room for Mallory, and she walked in. Harry Kipling was seated at the table. He looked at the cat and rose quickly to his feet, but not quickly enough.

A Springer spaniel was bounding across the carpet and heading for the cat, jaws wide and joy in his eyes.

The apartment was still, with no current of air or sound to indicate an animate being, not even a cat. Then, the quiet of no-one-home was broken by a pair of feet crossing the foyer and dragging a shadow along by the heels.

The intrusion was short-lived, for the revolver lay in the first drawer opened. The gun metal gleamed for the moments between the drawer and the dark of a bag. Stepping softly, the thief quit the apartment.

When Mallory slammed the door behind her, the Kipling boy was yelling, ‘Look what she did to my dog!’

Mallory returned by way of the stairwell. The door to the Rosens’ apartment was open. Could she have been that stupid?

This time, the cat didn’t cry when she dropped him. He was even prepared for the fall. Nose had grown accustomed to this game of holding and dropping. He padded away, yawning.

She opened the drawer of the table by the door.

The drawer was empty; her Smith & Wesson revolver was gone.

Nothing else had been disturbed. The cap gun lay on the table where she had placed it.

What now? She couldn’t call in for backup and admit she’d lost the gun. Neither Coffey nor Riker would let her live that one down. A rookie would not have lost her gun.

A crash came from the direction of the bedroom.

She passed through the kitchen and slipped a wine bottle into her hand. Now she entered the bedroom. The cat was standing over the remains of a broken lamp. There was no mystery to the breakage. A fringe of the lamp shade was tangled in the cat’s paw.

But there was still the problem of the gun.

She picked up the phone and dialed Charles from the bedroom. ‘I’m in a big hurry, Charles. Go to the center drawer in my desk and get the old Long Colt. And bring the box of ammo with it. You’ll have to turn off the…’ She lowered the phone at the sound that may or may not have been the cat. Now she set the receiver back on its cradle to stifle Charles’s loud repeated ‘Hello?’ coming from the mouthpiece.

She left the bedroom, quickly, silently gliding down the short hallway to the den. She flipped the array of switches for the cameras, backup tapes and audio.

She entered the front room to find the cat crawling under the couch and Harry Kipling standing in the center of the room. The cap gun was lying on the coffee table.

How much time would it take Charles to get to her with the real gun?

‘You left your door open,’ said Kipling. ‘That was careless.’

She had meant to make his access easy, but she had planned to have a gun in her hand when he came through the door. It was an odd moment to be thinking of Riker’s I-told-you-so grin. Too late for backup, and Charles was miles from here.

The cameras were rolling.

There was time to wonder if Coffey would catch her in this screw-up, or if she could lie her way out of it.

Max Candle’s knife lay on a shelf of the bookcase behind Kipling. Had he seen it? Originally, she had planned to steer him to it, so he would have a weapon in his hands in the event the cameras should catch her blowing away a taxpayer. But that plan had been contingent on having a gun in her own hand. And where was he hiding her gun?