Blind Sight Read online

  The boy was real, but he would not live long.

  Neither would the dog. It was aging badly, its breathing labored. That mutt should have been put down years ago, but Iggy was resistant to change.

  —

  KATHY MALLORY disliked change of any kind. Riker watched her struggle with the new position of her desk telephone. A clerk had just moved it in order to set down a stack of files, and now Mallory was stalled, just staring at it. Or was this an act? Did she know her partner was watching her, waiting for her to put the desktop back in crazy-perfect order?

  Still waiting?

  She was the grand master of tension in all things, large and small. It pissed him off, and it fascinated him. Most mornings, hungover and sick, Riker was tempted to follow his old dream of alcohol poisoning by too much bourbon for breakfast, but Mallory was his reason for showing up to work sober and wondering what she would do to him next. He could also give her credit for keeping him alive during her childhood of driving him up the walls.

  On this morning, he reached across his facing desk to pick up her telephone and restore it to the corner position, neatly aligned with the edges of the wood.

  She rewarded him with a smile that said, Sucker.

  And now the day could begin.

  Detective Janos ambled past them, followed by three children—a gorilla leading a parade of baby ducks.

  —

  DETECTIVE JANOS had given some thought to this venue. The lunchroom of Special Crimes had a twelve-tier snack machine, a magnet for kids—but not these three. They were not in a candy kind of mood today, nor were they cheerful about escaping their morning classes. This was Jonah Quill’s hangout crew, nice enough kids, not a bratty bone among them, and this spoke well for their kidnapped friend.

  The room was warm, but the two boys and the girl had not removed their school blazers or even loosened their neckties. They sat up straight in their chairs, the very picture of well-behaved innocence—as if they already knew that they had been caught doing something wrong.

  “I know you kids talked to a dozen cops uptown,” said the detective. “But sometimes you remember stuff later on.” He looked down at his notes on their previous interviews. “So . . . your friend Jonah ditched school at the front door? Just turned around and left?” The trio of twelve-year-olds nodded in unison, which told him this question had been asked and answered more than once before.

  “Here’s the problem, kids.” They were liars. “The janitor saw Jonah leave school that morning. So I guess he made it through the front door, huh? Maybe I only think that ’cause he was last seen wearing a red T-shirt, jeans and sneakers. His school clothes were stuffed in his locker . . . and somebody left a note on the secretary’s desk.” He opened a manila file and plucked out his copy of the typewritten text. “This says Jonah was home sick on the day he disappeared. It’s got his uncle’s signature—but the uncle never signed it.” And this excellent forgery had provided all the weight necessary for a kidnap theory on day one. “We don’t suspect Jonah. Blind kids—they’re not much good at copying signatures.”

  The two boys were toughing it out, but the little girl with a thousand freckles cried. Janos, a sucker for little women in tears, handed her a tissue. So ladylike, the small redhead dabbed her face dry and then blew her nose—a great honking blow, not at all dainty, and the detective rather admired it. But Lucinda was not the prime suspect. Janos favored the smallest child, who would not meet his eyes, and now Michael, called Mickey, cracked wide open.

  “I did it! I had to. If Jonah didn’t show up for attendance, the school would’ve called his uncle, like, six seconds later. Mr. Quill’s a total freak for security.”

  “It was a very good forgery. That’s what I hear from our guy in Documents.” And this eased Mickey’s distress even before Janos said, “You’re not in trouble. So what did Jonah tell you about—”

  “I don’t know where he was going that day. I swear it.”

  “Okay, I believe you.” And the other two had ceased to squirm. He also believed all three of them when they said that Jonah had never mentioned Angie Quill. His best friends never knew he had an aunt? This fact was worth a quick line in the detective’s notebook, and he underscored it. Now, on to a fast game of show-and-tell. Holding up a wand of white fiberglass casing, Janos flicked his wrist to extend it to the full length of a white cane with smudge marks where it had been dusted for fingerprints. “How well does Jonah get along without—”

  “Most of the time, he keeps it in his knapsack,” said Garth, the tallest one, who already had the solid build of the man he could one day become.

  And the small forger chimed in. “Jonah mapped the whole school.” Mickey tapped his temple. “Mapped it in his head. He can find his locker in a hallway full of them. Never gets the wrong one.”

  “He’s good at tricks like that,” said the girl. Lucinda was so obviously Jonah’s girl. “First time you meet him, you can’t tell he’s blind. He fooled every substitute teacher he ever had.”

  The detective jotted down a note. “Does he do that all the time—pretending he can see?”

  “No,” she said. “And he doesn’t pretend for the subs. It just takes them a while to catch on. He doesn’t wear dark glasses, hardly ever uses the cane. And he’s got no trouble finding his way around the classrooms.”

  So . . . an independent kid. Janos tapped his pencil on the tabletop, wondering how to phrase the next question. “Would you say he’s a smart kid?”

  “Real smart.” Lucinda said this with a pride that brought out her smile.

  “But does he have a smart mouth?” By that, Janos meant a mouth that might get the boy killed if he ran it the wrong way.

  Oh, they knew what he meant. He could see by their eyes that they had followed his trainwreck of thought. The girl’s smile was gone, and she streamed the tears of a little widow. All three children slumped low in their chairs.

  —

  THE FAST SHUTTLE from anger to fear and back had worn him down and worn him out. In this moment, Jonah was almost comfortable with the threat of sharp teeth.

  He sat at the kitchen table, zeroing in on a wheeze, keeping track of the dog. Behind him a cupboard door opened. Then came a rattling shake to answer the question of how much cereal was left in the box this morning. Not much, but enough. It was poured into the bowl in front of him, and, by the peppering of little chinks on china, he correctly guessed Cheerios before he touched one. This had been his game with Uncle Harry, who sometimes swapped out the Cheerios for bran flakes—a crunchier pour.

  On the other side of the table, chair legs scraped back and forth as Cigarette Man sat down. No cereal for him, only coffee, strong coffee, a deep rich aroma, and—click—a smoke. “What was your aunt doin’ in that neighborhood?”

  “I was supposed to meet her there. We lived on that street when I was little. I guess she thought it was time for me to make peace with Granny.” Or maybe she had wanted him to see that the bogeyman was just an old lady. Not so big anymore. Not so frightening. “I guess I’ll never know what Aunt Angie wanted that day.”

  Because you fucking killed her!

  —

  SAMUEL TUCKER sprawled on the divan, happy as a dog only recently allowed to bed down on the furniture. This antique was the highly prized, personal property of His Honor Andrew Polk, as were other furnishings of this private office on the upper floor of Gracie Mansion.

  The mayor’s aide spoke to his cell phone, thanking his friend, his snitch, in the District Attorney’s Office. After goodbyes were said, Tuck waved the phone in a wide circle of Hurray! “The search warrant has restrictions. They’re treating the mansion as an expanded crime scene—not an investigation of you, sir. So they can examine computers on the premises, but they can only look at emails and print out what’s germane to the murders.”

  “Sweet!” Mayor Polk had finished shred
ding papers that had been scanned and copied onto a flash drive, a tiny one that could be walked out the door on a key ring. All the seriously embarrassing computer files and emails of his first and only term of office had been deleted from the computer. The tired politician sagged in the chair behind his desk. “Tuck? You’re sure they can’t get at this stuff?”

  “What you erased? They could—if the police took your laptop to Tech Support. But they can’t take it anywhere. You’re perfectly safe.” He checked his watch. “You have time to catch a nap, sir. They won’t be here for hours.” Without leave from his employer, Tuck put his feet up on the antique divan, and he was not yelled at to get off the furniture.

  —

  MILK STREAMED into Jonah’s cereal bowl as Cigarette Man said, “I didn’t mean for you to wake up in that room with the bodies. Never had to figure a dose for a kid before. Tell me what you remember about that day.”

  “I remember getting on a downtown bus. . . . Not much after—”

  “That’s a long trip for a blind kid. You live way uptown, right? Anybody come with you? Maybe your uncle?”

  He knows where you live with Harry, said Aunt Angie. He must’ve read it in the paper . . . or maybe you’re on TV. If he thinks someone came with you the day I died, well, that’s a problem.

  “I don’t need help to get around. I’ve got my cane and a cell phone with a GPS that talks to me.” But now his phone was missing from his pocket, and he had only the memory of a dead woman’s voice for guidance.

  “Sorry, kid. That phone went out the car window. I never saw no cane. I guess you dropped it somewhere?”

  Was this a trap? “I can’t remember.”

  “Nothin’ between the bus ride and wakin’ up in that room?”

  He’s looking to tie up loose ends, said Aunt Angie, before he—

  —kills me? Jonah’s hand shook. The spoon dropped into his bowl. Milk splashed on his skin. The pit bull’s toenails were clicking across the kitchen tiles. The dog was excited, panting.

  —

  THE CRIME SCENE UNIT was not due for another hour. Samuel Tucker passed through the back gate at the jog in the brick wall. Best to cut through the park and avoid reporters camped out on East End Avenue. He strolled along the woodland path to emerge on the sidewalk a block from Gracie Mansion.

  The mayor’s dirty paperwork, condensed to a small flash drive, dangled from his key ring, and a letter of lawyer’s instructions was safely tucked into a breast pocket. His current errand was a visit to Andrew Polk’s attorney, who would vault these goods beyond the reach of the police.

  Oh, happy day. He would never fly coach again—only millionaire class all the way.

  Tuck put up one hand to hail a taxi, and—almost magic—one materialized at the curb. His life was truly charmed from now on. The yellow cab carried him off and away, though the driver had not yet asked for a destination. As the car rounded the corner, Tuck reached into his breast pocket for the envelope that bore an address line for the lawyer’s firm.

  Why were they slowing down?

  He saw the detective on the sidewalk, and she was wearing another beautifully tailored blazer. What was her name? Mallory. The car stopped, and he saw her up close, too close, as she slid into the backseat beside him.

  Up front, the cabbie removed his sunglasses and smiled in the rearview mirror. Tuck recognized the crinkled, hooded eyes and the voice of Mallory’s partner when the man said, “Hey, pal. How’s it goin’?”

  A rhetorical question.

  Everything had suddenly gone into the crapper, and he was already saying goodbye to his job.

  —

  IGGY CONROY watched the boy’s two-handed search of the tabletop to find the sugar bowl.

  The kid’s shakes had passed off, and now, hands steady, three heaping spoons of sugar were sprinkled over the cereal. It occurred to Iggy to repeat his mother’s automatic snap that too much of that crap would rot a kid’s teeth, but this one did not have long to live—maybe today and tomorrow. It hung on a phone call. “I can almost see her as a nun. It makes sense. Angie was never into the game.”

  The boy’s spoon was suspended in the air above his cereal bowl. “What game?”

  The kid never knew his aunt was a hooker? “Life,” he said, “life out here in the world with the rest of us. No safety net—that hairy game”—instead of the game she had played with the men. With her eyes shut. With the lights out. “How long was she in that monastery?”

  “Five years before she took her final vows. That’s when she got married to Christ.”

  Iggy sat very still. His cigarette went out.

  The kid tensed up. He always did that when things got too quiet. And now, maybe just for the sake of some noise, the boy asked, “Do you go to church?”

  “No,” said Iggy, “not since my mother died. That was nine years ago. I used to take the old lady to mass on Sundays. She was a good Catholic. Me? Not so much.”

  The kid looked down as he dipped his spoon into the cereal, acting like he had eyes that worked, and he was good at this. “Did you ever make confession?”

  What? Where was this going? “I used to,” said Iggy. “But not for a long time now.”

  “I never did. I was too young to make confession the last time I was in church.”

  “Little kids got nothin’ to confess.”

  “How does it work? With you and the priest in the—”

  “The confessional? Well, you tell him all the crap you’ve been up to. The priest gives you a string of Hail Marys to say, and, presto, you’re clean.”

  The boy raised his eyes from the cereal bowl. His spoon made little circles in the air while he considered this. And now, in the tone of talking sports or weather, he asked, “How many Hail Marys for killing a nun?”

  10

  On the ground floor of the SoHo station house, the prisoner in handcuffs and a bow tie stood accused of lying to police. Samuel Tucker did not balk at this or the next offense, obstruction of justice. And so, just for the hell of it, Riker tacked on a few more. There was no evidence to support any charges, but that posed no problem. The District Attorney’s Office would never hear about this arrest.

  When Riker was done reading the list of constitutional rights from a Miranda card, Tucker did not have all the signs of a recent lobotomy. His eyes were glassy, and his mouth hung open—but he did not drool.

  “Do you understand your rights?” No, Mallory could see that this question was too difficult, and so she said, “Just nod,” and Tucker did.

  Riker removed the cuffs and gave the mayor’s aide a pen. When the signature line at the bottom of the card was pointed out to him, dazed Tucker signed it—thus waiving his right to an attorney—which might not be all that clear to him.

  Good boy.

  Now for the sanctioned robbery by cop, their suspect’s pants pockets were emptied by Cantrell, the uniformed officer in charge of property, a man one year away from retirement. A key ring clinked into a metal tray, and the officer moved on to the higher pockets.

  Tucker’s voice was small, almost a squeak, when he asked, “Don’t you need a search warrant?”

  “No!” Officer Cantrell had explained this a thousand times to hookers and gangbangers, rapists and now this sniveling idiot. “We can’t put you in lockup till we confiscate your weapons.” He held up the key ring with a flash drive now in plain sight of the detectives. “Keys can be used as weapons. You get ’em back after the arraignment—if you make bail.”

  “That shouldn’t take long.” This was Mallory’s first lie of the morning. “You get one phone call. Maybe you’d like to call Mayor Polk and tell him where you are?”

  That suggestion scared him witless, speechless. He could only manage a shake of his head to say, Hell no!

  Mallory watched the officer pull a sealed envelope from Tucker’s breast pocket. “
Oh . . . just think of the paper cuts. You’d better log that, too.” She turned to face the mayor’s aide, saying, “That’s standard,” while calling his attention away from the officer, whose expression said that keeping prisoners safe from the threat of paper cuts was not standard protocol, and damned if he was going to log—

  “Hey, Cantrell? Never mind that,” said Riker. “If the guy’s not lawyering up, this might be a waste of time.” The detective picked up one of the large property envelopes and dropped in the key ring and the letter. Handing it off to his partner, he said, “Just hold on to that, okay?” With one avuncular arm wrapped around Tucker’s shoulders, Riker turned him away from the table for a word in confidence. “I get it, pal. You’re worried about your job, right? Maybe I can fix it so the mayor never finds out you were here. Tell you what—we’ll go over what we got on you. If there’s nothin’ there to make the charges stick, you can forget the arraignment. Then—if you want—we can just burn the paperwork on your arrest. Sound like a plan?”

  Tucker’s face lit up to say that this was a very good plan indeed.

  “I don’t have time for this,” said Mallory. “Here.” She gave her partner a sealed property envelope, not the same envelope but one that had the convincing bulge and jingle of her own key ring. “If everything shakes out, just give it back to him.”

  —

  A GORILLA may sit wherever he chooses, but the polite Detective Janos remained standing until Samuel Tucker selected a chair at the table. When they were both seated and facing each other, the detective smiled, though this was only reassuring to children, who were more inclined to liken him to something they could pet. Adults found his first show of teeth to be frightening.

  A folded newspaper and a fat manila file hit the tabletop with a thud. Oh, dear, did the suspect find that jarring? “We got people crawling all over the mansion right now.”

  “Yes, the Crime Scene Unit,” said Tucker, answering a question never asked, so eager to be helpful—to get this over with—to get the hell out of here.