Carol O’Connell - Killing Critics

Now his reverie was broken. He was aware of Mallory standing beside him, waiting.

“The room in Koozeman’s old East Village gallery was smaller,” said Riker. “But it’s the same layout. The killer didn’t do them at the same time. Peter Ariel died first. Markowitz figured the perp laid in wait for Aubry.”

Mallory moved to the center of the room. She was reading from a yellowed sheet of paper. “Quinn had blood on his shoes.”

“Yeah, we all did,” said Riker, pulling out a cigarette to kill the phantom smell of blood and spoiled meat, urine and feces. “You had to be there. You can’t tell what that scene was like from the paperwork and the shots. Then Aubry’s father shows up. He’d been waiting for her in a coffeehouse three blocks west of here. Aubry was hours late. Her father called everyone she knew to track her down. She was supposed to meet Quinn at the gallery earlier that night.”

The sudden appearance of Gregor Gilette had been the last heartbreak of the night. The artist, Peter Ariel, had been bagged and placed in the meatwagon. They had put the parts of the dancer into another bag and were loading her onto the gurney. Turning away from the ambulance, Riker had seen the damnedest thing, a man running toward him, stumble-running, strewing red roses everywhere. They were lifting the gurney into the ambulance. The doors were closing as Gregor Gilette reached the vehicle, and he was pounding on the doors even as they closed, pounding to be let in, yelling, “ Aubry, Aubry !” Markowitz had pulled the man away from the ambulance doors, pinning his arms and holding him close. And then Edward Slope had tried his hand on a living patient with a merciful hypodermic to kill the father’s pain.

Mallory was only a little older than the rookie officer who had cried for Aubry Gilette. What would Markowitz think if he knew his kid was going into this black hole to finish what he had begun?

“I still want to talk to Andrew Bliss,” said Mallory. “What about fire code violations? He botched the roof staircase-that’s a legal fire exit.”

“I already thought of that. Somebody with influence got the commissioner of the fire department to look the other way. A lawyer from the Public Works Committee has a restraining order to prevent any interference with his free speech, so we can’t bring him down. And we can’t go up to the roof with a copter either. Blakely would find out you’re working the old case.”

“Well, there’s ways and ways.” She looked at her watch. “I’ve got that damn press conference in an hour. Did you make any progress on Sabra? Any idea where she might be?”

The woman was lying under a blanket of newspapers in an abandoned building on Essex Street. She had crawled through a basement window the night before and now lay dreaming late into the morning. It might as well have been night, for no daylight penetrated the window after she had replaced the boards, fitting nails to holes. A candle sat dark in a dish, burned to the end of its wick.

In dreams, her child stood on point in satin toe shoes, reaching up to a soft golden glow just above her straining fingertips. Suddenly, her soft red mouth formed the oval of a scream as the ghouls came dancing by her. Greedy mouths with yellow teeth sucked the wind from her throat. Clutching at the poisoned air, hand to her mouth, the child went reeling and running. And as she ran, she heard the sounds behind her of feet slapping floor, and sickly mucus noises. Phlegmy voices sang to her in a hellish choir. To her side the ghouls came dancing, eyes sewn shut, hands locked in prayer and grown together, skin merging into skin. Their mouths moved as one, making foul wind and words, weaving chains of obscenities. Then the child had lost her shoes, and through her tears, she could see her legs were gone.

The child’s mother opened her eyes in that dark and airless place, believing she was blind. Her hands were clenched together on her breast and she screamed out curses, damning God and all His minions, until the dead child’s brains said, “Hush, now. It’s only a dream is all.”

She slowly made out the dim contours of the tea tin on the top of the cart. The dead child’s brains crooned on, “It isn’t real, only dreaming.”

Sabra rose to a weary stand in sleep smells of used linen and dried urine.

Chief of Detectives Harry Blakely lit up a cigar in the close space of the hallway. His pasty white jowls jiggled as he rolled the cigar from one side of his mouth to the other. Draping flesh closed his eyes to gun slits, and the rolls of his chin obscured the knot of his tie. “The commissioner’s in a really pissy mood today, Jack.”

Lieutenant Jack Coffey could well understand that. He was looking through the glass window of the pressroom door. “I still can’t believe that FBI agent is here. Beale hates those bastards.”

“You know the routine, Jack,” said Blakely. “They need a little good press after that last hostage situation blew up in their faces. So we’re gonna let them put on a little dog-and-pony show for the reporters. The press just loves all that psychiatric bullshit on the killer profile.”

“The profile of a psycho, right? Christ, I can see the headlines now. ‘Crazed killer loose in Manhattan.’ They’re gonna blow the case all out of proportion, and you know it. I thought you wanted a quiet investigation.”

“Doesn’t matter now.”

Blakely exhaled a cloud of smoke, and Coffey stepped back to the wall, his usual position in all his dealings with this man. He could feel Blakely’s smoke all around him, stealing into his hair, his clothes, his skin. He knew the smell of Blakely would hang on him for the rest of the day.

“I think we might give this case to the feds,” said Blakely. “They really want it, and we have enough bodies to go around. They’re so pumped up on this profile, they tell me they can wrap the case in two weeks.”

“Why not give your own people two weeks? The Bureau has no jurisdiction.”

“Oh, officially the case will stay with NYPD. I thought I’d assign it to Harriman and let him work with the feds.”

“Harriman’s a worthless idiot. He’s just treading water waiting for his pension to kick in.” It was a fight for Coffey to keep the frustration out of his voice.

“Who cares?” Blakely’s smile was unsettling. “He only needs to show up for the collar and the closing press conference. The feds promised to kill the Oren Watt connection. So I did a little deal with ‘em. I’m gonna put Mallory on something else.”

“I’ll bet this isn’t Beale’s idea,” said Jack Coffey. “He hates feds with a passion.”

“Commissioner Beale has all the political savvy of a twelve-year-old girl. I hope you’re not suggesting that we actually let him run the police department.”

“He specifically asked for Mallory at this press conference. He wants her on this case. What’s he gonna say when he finds out you climbed into bed with the FBI?”

“How would he find out, Jack? All he knows about his own police department is what he reads in the papers and what I tell him. Beale promised to play nice with the feds today ‘cause I told him it might save the city a few million in lawsuits if they took the heat off Oren Watt.”

“How are you gonna tell Beale we’re giving the whole case to the feds?”

“I know how to handle him. I’m not worried about it. Now we’ve got another case we need Mallory on-computer fraud. We’re sending her out to Boston to follow up on a similar case. Boston’s cooperating. So tell her to pack her bags and drop off her case notes on my desk tomorrow morning.”

“I want Mallory to stay on this case.”

“That’s tough, Jack. I don’t think I owe you any favors this week. Here she comes now. Don’t tell her she’s being reassigned until after the press conference.”