Coffey put his hand on Riker's shoulder. "You're on babysitting detail again. Mallory doesn't go anywhere. You got that?"

"Yeah, Lieutenant. I can handle it."

"If you need to get some sleep, have the doctor sedate the shit out of her first. You got that, too?"

"Yeah."

"Could I have her house keys?" asked Charles. "If she's going to be here for a few days, she'll need some things from home. The nurse gave me a list."

"No problem. And thanks for the help, Charles." Smiling, he shook Charles's hand and held onto it a fraction of a second too long. "Was that old bio on the Soho murder any use to you?" Coffey was not smiling now.

So Riker had thought it worth mentioning to Coffey. And now Coffey was waiting on Charles to give him an explanation.

"Yes, thank you," said Charles.

The young policeman's brain was not so quick as Mallory's, but worked as well in its own time. Suppose he did give Coffey his explanation? What could Coffey do about it?

Nothing.

What Edith had done he could never prove. But one day soon, he and Coffey must talk. It had to end.

CHAPTER 11

Charles dropped the duffle bag, spilling out Mallory's toothbrush, hairbrush, robe and slippers onto the hall carpet. He wore the slack-jaw expression of a man who had just seen a ghost. And he had.

He walked through the open doorway into the den and met Louis Markowitz. The man inhabited this room as surely as if Charles could see him in the body. Louis was at work all over the back wall, and he was as messy as he had been in life.

Charles's memory recreated one section of the den's cork wall as it had appeared in Louis's office before he was murdered. The mental photograph agreed with half of this wall. The second half of the wall was also pure Louis Markowitz in style, but the man had been two days dead when the first of these photographs had been taken.

He pulled aside an overlay of paper on the right side of the cork. Photos and papers were more neatly aligned on the next layer. On the bottom layer, every bit of paper was machine-precision straight. Layer by layer, the beautiful machine had gone awry until she had captured her father's method of order passing for chaos.

On Mallory's side of the wall, an early layer of clutter held the background check on Margot Siddon. She had rejected Margot in favor of the medium on the next layer. Henry Cathery and Jonathan Gaynor were off to one side in separate categories. He pulled the photographs of Redwing off the board, eliminating the clutter of the red herring.

"Louis, talk to me," he whispered to the other side of the wall.

The bulletin board began to speak. A handwritten note jumped out at him, and credit reports, early 1980s stock transactions, and bank records. This was all Louis had to work with when he tailed the murderer to the scene of Pearl Whitman's death in the East Village. Was it the murderer he was trailing? Why had they all assumed that?

Mallory's side of the board had more financial data on the top layer, including the US Attorney's probe of Edith Candle and Mallory's probe of Edith's computer. Financial statements dominated both sides of the wall with the money motive. Father and daughter were holding to the same portrait of a killer: sane but evil.

At horrific speed, he read Mallory's neatly typed and incredibly detailed surveillance notes. The medical examiner's reports he took no time with, ripping them from both sides. He accidentally knocked loose the pin which held a plastic bag to Markowitz's section. It drifted to the floor to cover the pile of rejects. The beads from Anne Cathery's necklace were also sent to floor.

Now, with all the extraneous clutter gone, he knew why and how, but not who. Pearl Whitman tantalized him, as she must have done to Markowitz before him. But it was Samantha Siddon who finally gave up the killer's name.

Riker was the first thing Mallory saw when she opened her eyes. In her estimation, he was not a pretty sight. She thought his eyes were redder if that was possible.

His gray, unshaven face collapsed into a smile of relief.

"Hi, kid. How're you doin'?"

"Mallory to you. I feel like I've got a hangover."

"You know, this reminds me of the time you had appendicitis. You were just a little squirt."

"Riker, what's – "

"I went down to the hospital to sweat out your operation with Lou and Helen. Lou said I'd missed the best part. When the emergency-room nurse pressed down on your appendix, you kicked her in the gut, he said. I laughed till I cried."

"What's going on, Riker?"

"You remember anything about last night?"

"Redwing." She sat up quickly, too quickly. "Oh Christ, my head hurts. You got her?"

"We got her for assault and five or ten other counts. Coffey adds on a new one every time something occurs to him. The last thing I saw on his list was "No dog tags". He's on a damn mission."

"Where's the boy?" She pulled off the bandage which covered the needle dripping fluid into her arm.

"He's in Juvenile Hall. Don't mess with that needle or I'll call the nurse. You won't like that. She's bigger than you and meaner."

"I have to get out of here." She pulled out the needle and rubbed the hole in her arm. "Where's my stuff?"

"Not so fast, kid. You don't go anywhere, you got that? Don't give me any grief, Kathy."

"Mallory."

"This is personal, kid, not business. But I can make it business. You stay put, or I book you."

"What charge?"

"A stolen Xerox machine."

"Okay, you win."

"Naw. That was too easy, kid. You forget who you're talking to."

"I only want to go home."

"You stay here for the duration."

"I'll stay home for the duration. I'll go nuts if I have to stay here. At least at home I've got my computer."

"And Lou's bulletin board."

"That too."

"You're too weak to go anywhere."

She threw back the covers and swung her bare feet over the edge of the high hospital bed. She landed on the floor, sitting unceremoniously on her backside with a new pain to contend with.

"I told you so," said Riker.

Three women had chimed the warning bells, but they had charitably overestimated him. Bells or no bells, the village idiot was always the last to know his house was on fire.

There had been a warning of sorts toward the end of his mother's life. "You must never break Edith's seclusion, Charles. Remember that." And then his mother was gone. And later, when her remains were going to the ground, he was handed a telegram at the graveside, a message of condolence and an invitation to tea. His mother had said nothing about invitations to tea.

Then Mallory had tried to warn him, and how he had thanked her for that. Henrietta had not even tried, wise woman, but tripped the alarm in trying to work around him. One day, if he was to survive this life, to pick up on all the warning bells, he must get a woman of his own, and maybe a white cane and a seeing-eye dog as well.

Raindrops pocked the windows of the cab. Forked lightning lit up the streets and lifted the gloom of overcast for an instant before menacing the earth with a clap of thunder. The cabby was driving through the rain with laudable caution and no speed at all, not realizing that the house was on fire.

"Look here," Charles said to the driver I'll pay you ten dollars for every red light you go through."

"Oh, you crazy Americans," said the driver, whose name was made up entirely of consonants.

Charles pushed a twenty-dollar bill through the slot in the bulletproof glass.