‘Yeah, but in their version, you shot the poor bastard’s legs off. Then you pistol-whipped him and shot him some more. But they knew he was still alive ‘cause they saw him try to crawl away from you. Bless their lying little hearts.’

‘I need something to rattle a suspect.’ Mallory stood before the rear wall of the incident room, pinning another array of photographs to the cork surface. ‘We have to wrap Natalie’s murder tonight.’

Understandable. Come the morning, every fact of the scarecrow’s death would be public knowledge. ‘All right,’ said Charles. ‘There were two stalkers. Only Natalie’s killer would know that.’

She said nothing aloud, but he knew that smirk so well. Yeah, right.

‘It’s a matter of style,’ he said, undaunted. ‘The first stalker was the ex-husband. I’m sure Lars was right about that. So perhaps he could be forgiven for – ’

No. One look at Mallory and he knew that forgiveness was never coming from that quarter. Charles unpinned one of the stalker notes and held up the aged yellow paper. ‘Erik Homer was a wife beater, short on patience. I don’t see him spending hours tracing individual letters of magazine script – just to make this beautiful for Natalie. Rather artistic, isn’t it?’ He read the words to her, ‘ „I touched you today.“ More like poetry than a threat. Not Erik Homer’s style. When he met his second wife, the stalking ended, and Natalie had no more use for the police. That explains the two-week gap in her complaints. It was the second stalker who left her these notes, who loved her – and killed her.’

‘All right, I’ll buy that.’ Mallory stepped back from the wall to give him a clear view of her rogues’ gallery, five men as they had appeared twenty years ago. Lars Geldorf s portrait came from a newspaper archive. Head shots of two other detectives and one patrolman were made from Mallory’s computer enhancements of the crime-scene Polaroids. And another patrolman’s picture was taken from a personnel file. ‘Next problem,’ she said. ‘We know the perp was a cop, but which one?’

‘How can you be sure it was one of these men?’

‘Because one of the uniforms called in the hanging as a suicide -and three detectives showed up.’

Apparently Mallory was picking up cryptic bad habits from Riker.

‘Just guessing,’ said Charles. ‘You don’t usually send so many detectives out for a suicide call?’ What was he missing here? He stared at the pictures of the men in suits. ‘So you’ve narrowed it down to these three because they all signed off on Natalie’s stalker complaints? Is that it?’

‘No.’

Of course not. Miles too easy.

‘You’re right about one thing.’ Mallory pinned up a portrait of Natalie Homer smiling for her photographer. ‘He loved her. He was obsessed with her. She was the prettiest thing he ever set eyes on.’

And you are beautiful. Had he ever told her that? No, never.

‘But he was nothing special,’ said Mallory.

Far from special, far from beauty.

‘Not in her class,’ said Mallory. ‘All he could do was watch her and follow her. He probably figured she’d laugh if she knew how often he thought about her – about the two of them – together. She was unapproachable, unattainable.’

As far away as the moon. You would never -

‘He was my best suspect.’ Mallory tapped Lars Geldorf s photograph. ‘The old man has an attachment to Natalie that just won’t die. He was on the top of my list.’

‘Was,’ said Charles. ‘And now?’

‘When Natalie’s son looked through that bathroom door, if he’d seen a detective in street clothes, he wouldn’t have known the hangman was a cop.’

Though relieved that Lars was no longer in her sights, Charles’s good logic held sway. ‘You’re not forgetting that Junior saw that man a second time – two days later outside the crime scene. The boy had to know that all the men in that room were police.’

‘Three detectives turned out for a suicide call,’ said Mallory. ‘And it wasn’t the address that got their attention. One of the uniforms gave the victim’s name. No patrol cop was ever dispatched to Natalie’s apartment while she was alive. I checked. She always made her complaints at the station. You read Deluthe’s interview with Alan Parris. The uniforms were in that room for two seconds before they shut the door and called in the report. They saw a scalped corpse on a rope. It was bloated with gas and maggots, face wrecked beyond recognition.’

‘But they knew it was Natalie,’ said Charles. ‘They knew that was her apartment.’

‘One of them did.’ She tapped the photographs of the uniformed officers. ‘Can you tell Loman from Parris?’

‘That’s easy,’ said Charles, though he knew neither man on sight. ‘Loman is the only one in the crime-scene photos. Parris wouldn’t go back inside that room. Oh, I see. They are rather alike.’ Even Lars Geldorf had confused one for the other. Both in their early twenties, the patrolmen had the same regular features, dark hair and eyes beneath the brims of their caps. ‘When the boy was in the hall with Alice White, that second encounter should have reinforced his identification. But he saw two men in uniform.’

‘It’s the uniform he remembered best,’ said Mallory. ‘If the boy couldn’t tell them apart, how do we – ’

‘I suggest you flip a coin,’ said Charles, for logic could not take him everywhere.

Riker leaned toward the window by his desk in the squad room. News vans on the street below were double-parked at the curb. A few men with microphones assaulted the police entourage surrounding and concealing the wounded detective, whose head was covered by a white helmet of bandages. The rest of the reporters were looking up at the second-story windows, mouths open like dogs waiting to be fed. ‘Nothing like a good hungry mob to jack up the fear.’

When Officer Waller and his partner came through the door, they were supporting Ronald Deluthe on both sides. Nursemaids could not have been more tender than these large men slowly walking him across the squad room and watching his face with grave concern. The dividing wall between detectives and uniforms came down when one of New York’s Finest was wounded in the line of duty.

An angry rope burn circled Deluthe’s neck, exposed stitches ran down one cheek like a dueling scar, and the dislocated shoulder was covered with a sling supporting his left arm. Riker saw the dead-white face as a sure sign that the boy had not taken any recent medication to block the pain.

Had that been Mallory’s idea?

The wounded man’s honor guard was dismissed. Riker did not want the uniforms to see what would happen next. When the stairwell door had closed behind the departing officers, Mallory undipped a pair of handcuffs from her belt and manacled Deluthe’s good hand to the one that dangled from the sling.

CHAPTER 23

Jack Coffey sat at the table beside the lockup cage. He had used a pencil to jam the sash of the only window, and now the small room was hot and airless as he entertained the East Side lieutenant with a story about the three Stellas’ reunion. ‘So this theatrical agent – real scary, like a nun gone psycho – she’s got Stella Small an acting job on a soap opera. But the mother and grandmother plan to take the girl home to Ohio.’

‘Good idea.’ Harvey Loman’s feet tapped the floor as his eyes strayed to a clock on the wall. He seemed mildly crazed by this tale that went on and on.

‘Well, the poor kid’s been through hell,’ said Coffey, pleased with the other man’s agitation. ‘And she’s knocked out with sedatives. So the agent leans over the hospital bed and smiles with real sharp little teeth. She says, „Up to you, baby doll. It’s a three-year contract with the hottest show on daytime TV.“ Now the agent acts real concerned. She says, „Oh, sorry, hon. Would you rather be buried alive in Iowa?“ Then Stella’s mother chimes in, „We live in Ohio.’„ So the agent says, „Yeah, yeah,“ like there’s a difference.’