Carol O’Connell - Find Me

Child, thy name is Paradox.

Yet a common cliché was the first thing that came to mind, for here before him was the living illustration of someone larger than life; her sense of presence did not recognize the boundaries of her body. Her eyes were cold, and so was her stance, arms folded against him. The girl’s face was set with grim suspicion, and this was merely what she allowed him to see. At their previous meeting, that lovely face had been an impenetrable mask, and he had been able to discern nothing from it. Now he realized that Mallory was putting him on notice: she knew that he could tell her more, and, before they parted company-he would.

Though he saw every individual as a unique creature in the world, some of Detective Mallory’s q u alities sounded familiar warning bells. He could sense the tight control that checked her desire for expedient mayhem; she dwelt forever in that moment before the taut string snaps. He knew how truly dangerous she was-and she gave him hope.

“We’ll want some privacy.” Paul Magritte smiled and waved in the direction of his car on the other side of the campground. “I’ll tell you what I can.”

Oh, no, Mallory corrected him, but only with her eyes and the subtle inclination of her head. Silently she said to him, You’re going to tell me every damn thing you know.

Charles was behind the wheel again and crossing the state line into Missouri.

“We caught a break,” said Riker, returning the cell phone to his shirt pocket. “Mallory checked in with Kronewald. She turned up an old grave down the road. Another hundred miles and we can close the gap.”

“If she stays put,” said Charles.

“And if she doesn’t, we can outrun her.”

Miles ago, Riker had resolved his friend’s conundrum of time and distance relative to Volkswagens. He had blamed the computers that processed Mallory’s c redit-card purchases of fuel between New York and Chicago. “A computer glitch. You can’t t rust those damn machines.”

Charles seemed unconvinced, though he was usually the first in line to damn technology. But he did not pursue the problem. Instead, he picked up threads to another disagreement begun over dinner. “About that wall of telephone numbers in her apartment. I don’t t hink Mallory isolated herself to make all those calls. What if she made her connection to Savannah Sirus before she stopped showing up for work? That might’ve triggered the isolation-that first contact.”

Riker’s resistance to this idea was slow to wane. Miles down the road, he waved one hand to say maybe. The detective’s own theory was that the Job had derailed his young partner, or, more precisely, her work on a homicide squad had finished what was begun when she was only a wildly damaged child.

“Chicken and the egg,” said Charles. “Which came first, missing work or making phone calls? You could find out, couldn’t you? Check with the telephone company? Just ask them for the date when Mallory first called Savannah’s number. That wouldn’t have to go through NYPD, would it?”

“Okay.” Riker pulled out his phone, and his attitude made it clear that he was only humoring Charles. After identifying himself for the New York operator, the detective seemed almost bored as he waited for the records on Mallory’s home telephone. And then his expression changed. He thanked the operator, ended the call and closed his eyes. “Mallory made a lot of calls to Savannah. But her first contact was months ago-just before she started missing days from work. How did you know?”

“Everyone has a hobby,” said Charles. “Mallory’s is just a bit outside the norm-she makes phone calls. You said she was doing that as a child. I rather doubt that she ever gave it up. She’s compulsive that way. She had to work through all her numbers until she had a resolution. Given the numerals in a long-distance number, minus the four that she started with- oh, and then you have changed area codes and new ones. So, factoring in all the possible combinations, well, I doubt that she’d run out of telephone numbers anytime soon. That reinforced my theory of the calls as an ongoing thing-maybe a binge activity. Any sort of stress could set it off. Over the years, she’s probably tried many more numbers than the ones you saw on her wall.”

Riker lifted one hand like a traffic cop-stop-too much information. He liked his facts in small fragments that covered no more than a line in his notebook.

Mercifully, Charles cut to the summary. “She had a houseguest for three weeks, but what did Mallory do with the rest of her time? Do you know when she bought the new car?”

“A few months ago.”

“After the first telephone call to Miss Sirus. That’s when Mallory started laying plans for a road trip. Savannah’s hometown of Chicago was a likely destination long before Gerald Linden died. Detective Kronewald’s crime scene was simply in Mallory’s w ay when she passed through town. Adams and Michigan is the official starting point for Route 66.”

“Okay, you’re right,” said Riker, rubbing his eyes, wondering what else he had missed for lack of sleep. And now he had a headache-and a heartache. He reached into the liquor store sack, his idea of a first-aid kit, and pulled out a cold beer to kill the pain.

Following Paul Magritte, Mallory walked between hot coals in cook-stoves and bright flames of burning wood. She heard the humming, the same four notes, over and over, and turned to see the two children huddled on the blanket before an open campfire. Mallory hunkered down beside them, her eyes on the little girl when she asked, “What’s that song?”

The boy moved closer to his sister, and the hum was muffled as he enfolded her in his thin arms and held her close to his breast. Mallory turned her focus to him-interview subject number two. “What’s the name of that song?”

“My kids don’t t alk to strangers,” said a voice from behind her.

The detective rose to a stand and turned around to see the father. He was staring at his son and not liking that wary look in the child’s eyes.

Paul Magritte made the formal introduction to Joe Finn and his children, Peter and Dodie.

Mallory looked down at the girl as she spoke to the father. “Those four notes that Dodie hums-you know the song?”

“No, lady, I got a tin ear. I only know she hums when she’s uneasy.” And it was clear that he laid the blame for this on Mallory.

His face bore fight scars from cuts to the eyes and jaw, but, by stance alone-legs apart, fists at his sides-she knew she had made the right call back at the diner. Boxing was Joe Finn’s t rade, and he had taken a lot of punishment to feed his family. What might he do to protect them? Angry now, he moved between Mallory and his children, wordlessly telling her to go.

Mallory lingered a moment longer, for this man must understand that she did not take orders from civilians. Lessons learned from Markowitz, a lifer in Copland: “Better to take a beating, Kathy. Don’t ever embarrass the Job.” And now, in her own time, she moved on.

Charles Butler scanned the road ahead for signs of gas and lodging. “So we can definitely rule out the idea that she was just badly in need of a vacation.”

“Yeah,” said Riker. “This is definitely not about Mallory joyriding into springtime. She’s hunting solo, and she’s coming apart.” He counted up some of the early warnings for Charles-but not the worst of them. “One day, the little punctuality freak was late for work.”

And that had been the beginning of her slow good-bye. There had been a string of days when she had come in late-if she came in at all. And then she had ceased to answer phone calls, e-mails and knocks at the door. The squad’s commander, Lieutenant Coffey, had put it down to burnout. Other detectives in the squad had ceased to call her Mallory the Machine, for this was something human that they could connect with-lost time and down time, lying awake in the night with the shakes and odd thoughts that could not be driven off except by booze or pills or by eating the gun, muzzle to the mouth, top of the head blown off, so quick-all gone. Drowning cops were never pressured; they were watched over, and that had been Riker’s job from the distance of the curb outside her building. By long tradition, burnout cops were clocked in and out so that docked paychecks would not pile on more anxiety.