‘How did she die?’

‘No one ever knew. That was part of Louisa’s mystery. Some people said Malakhai had killed her. Other rumors had her shot for a spy. It was all very romantic. When I was your age and younger, I was in love with Louisa.’

‘So you were as crazy as Malakhai.’

‘I suppose I was. And you’re right – Malakhai had gone insane. It’s truly amazing what people will do for love -to keep it, to kill it, or avenge it. And some people even die for it.’

In the distraction of his compartmentalized brain, Charles speculated on what Amanda had done. ‘Cut it out of me,’ she had said to the surgeon, she who loved children. She had cut out the child that was barely begun. ‘So I gather,’ said the finished child who stood before him now, ‘that falling in love is not the bright side of growing up.’

Charles smiled. ‘The love of a child also leads to pretty strange behavior at times. The things people will do for their children.’

‘Or to their children.’

‘Yes, there’s that too.’

Amanda, why did you cut your baby away from you? Now he dragged his brain back to the case at hand. Had Justin been abused? Was that the link Mallory saw in the boy? There was something between them.

And he had his own common cord with the boy: Justin Riccalo did not have the conversation of a child. So he too had been raised among adults and shunned by the children who would have provided him with the bad habits and speech patterns of the normal boy which Charles had never been either.

He located the old record turntable, leaned down and blew away the worst of the dust. Now where were the records?

Ah, there they are.

He pulled the crate of old record albums out from under a table, sat down in the dust, and began to sort through them. The boy hovered over him, always in motion even when he was standing still.

‘So Justin, when the pencils aren’t flying, how do you get along with your stepmother?’

‘I don’t know her very well.’

‘I had the idea that your stepmother had known your father for quite a long time.’

‘I think they worked together once. I’m not sure. I think my real mother was alive then. I didn’t know her very well either.’

‘Pardon?’

‘I was at school most of the time. I started the usual progressive school crap when I was four. My parents realized that farming me out to after-school programs was more cost-effective than a nanny and less paperwork. Some nights I don’t get home till eight or nine o’clock. How did Malakhai make those people believe Louisa had touched them?’

‘The audience did it to themselves. They only had to know she was among them to complete the illusion, right down to imagining the tactile sensations.’

‘You think my stepmother is filling in the illusions? But the pencil – ’

‘The pencil was not her imagination. But after the trick is done, the imagination takes over. In Malakhai’s act, all the real magic was in Louisa’s music.’

Charles slid the record out of its ancient cover, and with the practiced handling of the audiophile from the age of dinosaurs and turntables, he slipped it on to the spindle.

Justin sat down on the backs of his heels. Nervous energy made it seem that he was set to spring, to push off from the cement floor and into flight. ‘You can get that on CD, you know.’

‘So you said. Hush. Listen.’

The volume was set too high. When the music rose up in a tidal wall, the large room was dwarfed by it, too small to contain it. Charles lowered the volume to a normal setting, but the concerto was undiminished, Louisa’s raw talent defying laws of physics to increase the power of her music in the lower registers of sound. This was truly magic.

And now Charles was lost again in childhood memories of Louisa in the blue dress with the red stains. The bloodstain turned his thoughts back to Amanda Bosch and the events of last night. Louisa and Amanda became entangled in his mind. Out of old childhood habit, his eyes closed as the music rolled over him, for Louisa was always created in darkness.

Justin’s stepmother had described the music well. It was haunted. Someone did move through the music, and in the empty space – this time she was crying.

Before the music could swell up again on the other side of the void, he opened his eyes and looked down at the boy, who was doubled over. Justin’s hands were pressed to his ears.

What do you hear in the void, Justin?

And now Charles was also frightened.

Amanda Bosch was standing over the boy.

She was rounded out in all three dimensions of his self-induced delusion, wearing the bloodstain on her brown blazer and the wound at the side of her head. She was reaching down to the boy curled at her feet.

Charles’s hand flashed out to knock the needle off the track. The record made a screeching noise as the needle tore across its surface, ripping the vinyl skin and ending its song.

Amanda was gone.

Well, if it isn’t the homicide dick to the rich and famous.

Riker grinned when he saw Detective Palanski, a beanpole in a black leather jacket and dark glasses. Palanski must think he was a damn movie star, wearing his shades indoors. The detective was sticking his pointy finger in the face of Martin, a uniformed officer with orders to keep everyone away from Jack Coffey’s office.

Well, no hotshot from the West Side was gonna take that from a uniform, said the jabbing finger in Patrolman Martin’s face.

It didn’t register with Palanski that Martin was a decade younger, more athletic, that he was squaring off, planting his feet like a boxer, not liking the finger in his face, not liking it at all. The young patrolman was holding his own bit of turf with a confidence lent him by Jack Coffey, who was in the habit of backing up his people. To his credit, Coffey had even backed Mallory when she was dead wrong.

Riker walked up to the duel of ‘I outrank you’ versus ‘I don’t give a shit’. He tapped Martin on the arm and nodded him away. Martin backed off to the door of Coffey’s office and folded his arms. Palanski turned on Riker with the wrath of an unnaturally tall nine-year-old. ‘My captain wants to know why your lieutenant is keeping this homicide case – the stiff in the park. You got no officer involvement.’

‘You don’t know that,’ said Riker, pulling out a cigarette and searching from pocket to pocket for matches.

Could Palanski have gotten wind of the Coventry Arms angle? Yeah, that was it. Now that the case was high profile, he wanted it back to cover ass on the botched job at the crime scene. There was no other explanation for a cop asking for more work when there was no shortage of dead bodies and open cases.

‘The stiff wasn’t Mallory,’ said Palanski. ‘I know that much.’

‘But you didn’t know it when you rolled the body.’ Riker lit his cigarette and let the barb sink in. He knew it had to be Palanski who leaked the premature identification to the press. Information was currency in New York City, and he figured Palanski was too ambitious and on the edge of dirty, if not gone over. He dressed too well for a cop supporting a wife, an ex-wife and two kids. Riker only supported the bottle, and he could not afford the pricey salon where Palanski had his hair, not cut please, but styled.

‘So, Palanski, if you thought it was Mallory, maybe the perp did too.’

Palanski lowered his sunglasses and leaned into Riker’s space. ‘You’ll have to do better than that, Riker. I’m not buying it.’

And wasn’t it just a little strange that Palanski had been the first one on the scene when Amanda Bosch was found? A quick check of rosters had confirmed that the man was off duty that morning. Palanski must believe that uptown territory of wealth and fame was his own private preserve.

‘I could have Mallory talk to you if you like,’ said Riker, smiling amiably at this man whom he loathed.