‘Right, but – ’

Mallory held up a sheet of paper. ‘This is the accident report. He did give them a plate number, but it was the wrong plate. And they didn’t pick up the hit-and-run driver until 7:00 am. The driver was parked outside of his own local garage, sleeping off the drink, waiting for the shop to open so he could have the dent removed from the fender. There was still blood on the car. A meter maid caught him.’

‘But Arthur described – ’

‘And did he tell you the part about the little silver Jaguar? It was a gray Ford. Nothing like a Jag, but it makes a better story for the money.’

‘He saw a fight between the Franzes.’

‘Across the street? I don’t think so.’ She selected another sheet of paper from the file. ‘This came off his optometrist’s computer. Arthur does fine for the first twelve feet – without his glasses. So all you’ve really got is a case of the blind contradicting the blind. But even if Arthur’s vision had been 20/20, it probably would have been the same story. Any cop could have told you eyewitnesses are the least reliable evidence you can have. If your case hangs on a witness, you’re dead meat in a courtroom. And the testimony you have to pay for is the worst. I don’t think you’d make it as a detective. Don’t give up your day job.’

‘I’ve been had, haven’t I? You steered me into Eric Franz to keep me away from Kipling, didn’t you?’

‘You’ve got the judge’s head, and you’ve got an exclusive story on Amanda’s murder. So you don’t have anything on Eric Franz. Two out of three isn’t bad.’

‘I owe you one, Mallory.’

‘You owe me a lot more than that. If you’d printed any of that crap on Franz, you’d be in the middle of a lawsuit and looking for another job.’

Out on the sidewalk, Eric Franz stopped a moment to talk to her. He lowered the dark glasses and stared at her as a sighted person would do. His face looked sleep starved and pained.

‘I understand we have some business to transact. I gather the computer messages were yours? You’ll be contacting me again?’

‘No,’ said Mallory. ‘We have no business, you and I. I don’t think we’ll ever meet again.’ She pulled out her shield. ‘I’m only a cop, and you didn’t break any laws.’ None that she could prove. He was just a little crazy. Charles could explain it better – he was good at guilt.

She had neglected to mention to Betty Hyde that the doorman had been wearing glasses that night. Arthur had only made all the mistakes of the average eyewitness with good eyesight.

The doorman had seen the lights of the oncoming car shining on Eric’s face. In that bright light, the doorman would have seen the proximity of the man who watched his wife cut down in the street. Like Cora, Arthur had witnessed a murder without realizing it.

But it was not the cold-blooded murder that good cases could be built around. It had been a crime of passion just as surely as if he had caught her in bed with another man and shot her dead. There were moments in everyone’s life when they should not have a gun in their hands. She had understood the moment of the kill. Eric Franz had been presented with two thousand pounds of speeding metal. And for lack of a warning, Annie Franz had died.

Mallory watched the faux blind man walk away with his dog. She would always wonder what it was like to live in that charade of darkness, unable to leave it for an unguarded hour. It had crossed her mind to finesse him into a breakdown, but what would be the point? What fresh hell could she have added? And what for? The man was doing his own version of hard time.

Markowitz would have let Franz walk away. She wasn’t sure how she knew that, but she knew.

EPILOGUE

Jack Coffey had seen the tape version of Judge Emery Heart attacking a reporter. Who had not? It had run continuously on all the news channels for the past five days.

At that moment, the real live version of the judge was cooperating nicely with Internal Affairs. The judge was singing to IA and the DA, ratting out Palanski for an extortionist, and supporting the allegations of an ME investigator.

The exhumation order for the body of an elderly woman was the currency for the judge’s testimony. Exhuming the judge’s mother would not have led to a murder charge according to Mallory and, unlike Riker, Coffey did trust her – now and then.

And with only the prompt of a photograph from the ME’s office, Palanski was confirming that the judge was a woman beater. Palanski was also taking revenge on his ex-partner in extortion, the ME investigator who was sitting in yet another room, happy in the ignorant fairy tale that immunity as a state’s witness might protect him from a charge of tax evasion. It wouldn’t. Once the trial was over, the treasury agents would be waiting for him in the wings, their mouths hanging open and sloppy with saliva. And when Palanski finished a long sentence for extortion, the T-men would get him too.

And nowhere in this chorus of singing rats was there any trace of the music director. One day he would teach Mallory to trust him, and then he would ask her how she had pulled that off- and she would tell him to go to hell.

Coffey looked down at the snapshot in his hand, the one which had so frightened Palanski. It was an innocent picture – a sweet kid with wavy tumbles of carrot colored hair. She was standing in front of a Christmas tree in the chief medical examiner’s home. The protecting arm of Doris Slope was draped across the girl’s shoulders. The photograph had come to him with a brief, cryptic note from Dr Edward Slope and no mention of Mallory.

He lit a match under the photograph – per Slope’s request. Now Special Crimes was completely out of the loop, and Mallory had never been in it.

Later in the day, when Riker caught the news on Palanski, he would only know that Mallory had held out on him.

Well, everybody held out. Everybody lied.

He and Riker would never discuss the possibility that Mallory had brought down another cop. She had covered her tracks, always one person removed in the chain of evidence.

And in his hand, awaiting his signature, was the final paperwork to wrap up no less than three homicides. It was a rare, sweet day.

Like Malakhai’s delusion, his own had required him to be faithful to the logic of his creation. Amanda would not come back again; he knew that. She was a woman who loved children.

How mad was he? He touched the button to the CD player, and the real and solid music which Mallory had given him swelled up and out from the center of his consciousness. His eyes were cast down at the desk, and his head slowly bowed. When the music ended, he sat quietly in the gloaming, the after-dinner hour when the office shadows were the deepest.

But now, in sidelong vision, he saw the woman taking shape in the darkness, coming to life for him, walking toward him into the light.

Mallory.

She sat on the edge of his desk and waited until he lifted his face to hers.

‘Justin is going to a funny farm for the very rich. I thought you’d want to know.’

‘You think it’ll do much good?’

‘No. I think he was born that way.’

‘Still, he’s only a child.’

‘A killer.’

A child.

‘What did the district attorney think of your camera work?’

‘He was thrilled. Two killers, and three murders on one roll of tape. What a saving for the taxpayer.’

He couldn’t make out her face in the gathering darkness, but thought she was smiling.

‘The Civilian Review Board might think I shot the cat,’ she said. ‘But they haven’t charged me yet.’

He smiled too, though against his will and against his state of mind.