Carol O’Connell - Killing Critics

Now Riker sat in Markowitz’s favorite chair. Helen had wanted to throw it out. To save it, the old man had dragged it down here to his basement sanctuary. He had never been able to throw anything away. Once she had chided him about that, but today she was counting on it.

Riker was bent over an open cardboard carton. “Your old man’s filing system really sucks.” He reached into the box, his fingers raking through the mess of match-book covers, notepaper, one cocktail napkin, three dinner napkins, and all the assorted materials that would take the scratch of a pen or pencil. He read some of the notes and shook his head. “I’ve known Markowitz forever, but his shorthand still throws me. It could take a year to wade through this, and another year to make sense out of it.”

“We’ll just separate the critical notes by the dates. He dated everything.” Mallory pulled up a small wooden chair which had been her own when she and Markowitz spent the rainy Saturday afternoons of her childhood in the golden age of radio, sipping cocoa and listening to the opening lines of The Shadow- Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men ?

Riker held up one paper napkin, yellowed with age. “This might be worth something. The date is right. Listen to this. ‘Weight twelve pounds, four ounces with bone. Started twelve-oh-five a.m. Finished twelve forty-five a.m. Time out to rest, five minutes. Time out to send the kid back to bed, fifteen minutes. Dull now. The next one would take longer.’ Now what’s that about?”

She took the napkin from his hand. The date was four days following the murder of the artist and the dancer. How old had she been then? Twelve? She looked at the time and the reference to the kid. Herself? It couldn’t be. She had never been allowed to stay up that late.

Suddenly she remembered exactly when Markowitz had written that note. She looked up to the basement ceiling, as though she could see into the kitchen on the floor above them.

All those years ago, she had left her bed and gone down the stairs, minding the steps that made the most noise. She went stealing through the rooms of the dark house, hours beyond a child’s bedtime. Young Kathy had been heading for the kitchen, tantalized by the knowledge of half a pie at the back of the refrigerator. Food was never begrudged in this house. Food was love. But being caught out of bed so late on a school night, that was another matter.

She had come upon Markowitz standing at Helen’s chopping block and working over a leg of beef with a meat cleaver. So intent was he on his hacking, he never heard the small bare feet on the tiles as the child slipped into the kitchen behind his back. She retrieved the cordless electric meat carver from a drawer, making no sound until she switched it on and the metal came to life in her hand, motor buzzing, the serrated blade working back and forth.

Markowitz had whirled around in a near pirouette, so graceful for a man his size, excess weight hanging around his belt as a tribute to Helen’s cooking. He had been shocked to see the child standing there in her pajamas. There were sweat stains under his arms, and his face was flushed with unaccustomed exertion.

“ Kathy, I swear I’m gonna hang a bell on you. ”

And then he had thought to look at the kitchen clock, wiped his hands with a dish towel and scribbled a note on a white paper napkin. He smiled down at her and ruffled her hair. When he smiled, she smiled. It was an uncontrollable reflex, even when she was angry with him, and sometimes it drove her nuts that he could make her do that against her will. She recovered her solemnity quickly and held out the meat carver.

He had thanked her for it, and agreed that yes, the electric knife would be a lot faster than the cleaver. Then he read her mind and pulled the pie from the refrigerator and set it on the kitchen table. He poured them each a glass of milk, and they sat down together in companionable silence for a few bites.

“ So, what’s the deal with the meat ?” the child had asked, nodding toward the chopping block with some suspicion. Not counting this slice of pie, she knew all food came from Helen’s hand, not his.

“ Don’t talk with your mouth full ,” he said.

When she had demolished her pie to the last crumb, Markowitz motioned her to stand, turned her around and gave her a very gentle push in the direction of bed and sleep.

Now Detective Sergeant Mallory sat under a bare lightbulb in the basement, staring at the notes on the age-yellowed napkin. She handed it back to Riker.

“These are the old man’s stats for the time it took to cut through the meat and bones of Peter Ariel and Aubry Gilette.”

Morning came with rude bright light, which penetrated the tender, pink membranes of his eyelids. When Andrew Bliss opened his eyes, he wondered if the bedroom ceiling didn’t look rather like the blue sky, replete with fleecy clouds. He rejected this as impossible and closed his eyes again. But now there were car horns in his bedroom as well, and they played havoc with the fragile nerve endings behind his eyeballs, where his brain was fermenting in yesterday’s wine. Unaccountably, his hair hurt, but he would think about that later.

He pushed aside a layer of down quilts, which he instantly recognized from Bloomingdale’s Domestics display. Memory was stealing up on him. He looked around at the cables and the tall pipes, the black ductwork and vents, the surrounding buildings, and the mountains of stolen goods.

Of course.

In a salute to recovering memory, he slapped his forehead. He instantly regretted that. Holding his poor, freshly injured head, Andrew murmured an apology to it as he began to rise.

On your feet now, one leg next to the other. Good boy, you remembered.

He was attired in striped silk pajamas. A matching robe was laid out on an armchair. How had he gotten that heavy chair up to the roof? Ah, well, in the manic phase nothing was impossible. The door of Bloomingdale’s roof was set high in a narrow shaft of brick standing twenty feet above the rooftop. The exit was sealed with industrial tape and bound by a heavy chain. The metal stairs leading from the door and down to the roof had been ripped away and twisted outward to hang in the sky as a staircase to nowhere. A second roof exit, resembling a storm cellar, was set into the ground. Half of this door had been barricaded with two steel beams and six large wooden cases topped by a pile of designer raincoats. The door handle was clear of debris, but useless.

Well, haven’t I been thorough. But why?

It was a mercy the espresso maker from Housewares was already plugged into the roof cable. He could never have found the electrical outlet this morning, certainly not before a cup of coffee. He switched it on and smiled feebly when the red light glowed.

While the espresso machine was busy, he surveyed his new domain. Bloomingdale’s roof was an island, one city block square and bounded by heavily trafficked streets on all sides. Ah, paradise. The potted palm tree in the corner might have been some idea of homage to other island exiles with a preference for sweaty tropics.

The espresso machine ceased its gurgling. When he looked down, he noticed the bullhorn plugged into the same outlet. What had he planned to do with that? And the binoculars? Or might this be something he had already done? He picked up the binoculars and adjusted the lenses in time to see a pigeon magnified to the proportions of Godzilla. Startled, he nearly dropped the glasses. He was unaccustomed to nature in the raw. He refocussed the lenses on the street below, and the next sighting was no less shocking.

Oh, the clothes, the clothes these people wore. How did these idiots manage to commit so many really criminal offenses in a single outfit? Had they not eyes to see?