‘I understand your love of the money motive.’ For this was her father’s influence at work on her; Markowitz had loved this motive best. ‘But the man is blind?’

‘Charles, I always took you for the politically correct type. I hope you’re not suggesting that blind people are too handicapped to kill right along with the rest of us.’

‘A blind man would never have returned to the crime scene. He’d have no way to know who might be watching.’

‘Suppose he panicked and did the murder, and then an accomplice came back and cleaned up after him?’

‘Seriously?’

‘No. I don’t think a blind man did this. You’re an expert on gifts. Tell me about the gifts that come out when a man loses his sight.’

‘Oh, that’s a myth,’ said Charles. ‘The blind do not have more acute senses of smell and hearing, if that’s what you mean. They merely have fewer distractions without the sense of sight. And there’s more dependence on the other senses, so they tend to pay more attention to them. Does he have a Seeing Eye dog?’

‘Yes. Everyone in that building has a dog.’

‘It is true that blind people are less likely to walk into plate-glass walls – the cane or the dog prevents that. A good dog will also watch traffic and lead the blind away from obstacles. The dog is the truly gifted partner in the relationship.’

‘What about a really good adaption to blindness?’

‘Well, some people do make an art form out of it. They look directly at you when you speak to them, trying to create the illusion of being sighted.’

‘Eric Franz doesn’t do that. But he does come across as the bastard child of Sherlock Holmes and Mrs Ortega with his acute senses bullshit. And he can find his way across a crowded room without touching anyone with his cane.’

‘Interesting.’

‘I think so. So I’m keeping him. Now I’ve got a blind man, a wife beater, and a beauty-and-the-beast combo.’

Charles stared at his hands. He had his own beauty-and-the-beast problems. He looked up to the antique mirror by the couch. No, his own story would be beauty and the clown. Her reflection moved behind his own. That incredible face did not belong in the same gilded frame with his own ridiculous ensemble of features. And if he didn’t get to the barber soon, his longish wavy hair might take on the character of a clown’s fright wig.

He turned to face her, and waved one hand toward the door near her chair. ‘Would you mind opening the door for Henrietta?’

And only now, the buzzer sounded.

Mallory stared at him. ‘One day, you must tell me how you do that.’

‘When Henrietta’s working, she’s nearly as punctual as you are. She’s joining us for lunch.’

Mallory opened the door to the psychiatrist from apartment 3A. Today Henrietta was dressed in her work clothes, a neat tailored suit and soft pastel blouse.

Charles left them to the business of the park murder and wandered into the kitchen. The cat followed him, knowing this was the place from whence all food flowed. Mallory had stocked the office refrigerator anew with all the makings of sandwiches. He pulled out a tray neatly prepared with every imaginable condiment, cheese and meat.

Henrietta walked into the kitchen as he was bending down to feed the cat a piece of pastrami. In the last twenty-four hours he had learned a lot about the cat’s likes and dislikes.

‘Hey, Nose, how are you?’ asked Henrietta.

Charles looked up. The cat did not.

Ten minutes later, Charles and Henrietta were seated at the kitchen table, drinking coffee to the music of purring which originated at Mallory’s feet. Mallory stood at the chopping block on the counter, slicing cheese. She looked down at the cat and seemed to be weighing the knife in her hand against the cat’s potential value.

Charles turned to Henrietta and asked, ‘Can you explain why the cat is so attached to Mallory? Nose won’t dance for me, and I’m the one who’s been feeding him.’

‘Does the novel tell you how the cat was trained?’

‘No, I just assumed it was food.’

‘Nose may have been trained with pain, and it could also be tied to visual cues. What happened to the cat’s ear?’

‘I didn’t do it,’ said Mallory, setting a plate of four varieties of cheese on the table alongside the rest of the sandwich makings. ‘It happened when Nose was loose on the street. The vet said the cat was otherwise well cared for.’

Charles nodded. ‘If the female character in the novel is Amanda Bosch, I don’t see her allowing the cat to be tortured.’

‘Her lover trained the cat to dance in four days,’ said Mallory.

‘If we can believe the novel,’ said Charles, to his immediate regret. Mallory didn’t like that. He could feel the tension crawling toward him from her side of the table. He filled Henrietta’s coffee cup. ‘The novel was started over a year ago. Signs of abuse might be gone by now.’

‘Then, most likely the cat dances to avoid pain.’ Henrietta was loading her sandwich with pastrami. ‘It’s like child abuse. The child may cling to the abusive parent. That’s why I wondered about the cat’s ear. Mallory bears a general resemblance to the victim. She’s probably triggering a memory.’

Charles took a string of beef from his own sandwich and dropped it into Nose’s open mouth. ‘But surely the cat knows its owner from Mallory.’ The cat returned to its steady occupation of shedding fur on Mallory’s jeans.

‘Animals can respond strongly to visual cues,’ said Henrietta. ‘I got my own cat from an animal shelter. I was walking by the cage, and the cat went berserk, paws reaching through the wire, crying nonstop. They told me the cat did that every time a woman with long dark hair walked by. So I went there for a dog and came home with a cat. It was instant love. Same as with Mallory and Nose.’

‘What else is in the novel?’ Mallory asked, pushing the cat away from her with one leg, love apparently always being one-sided with her.

‘Nothing that would isolate one of your three suspects,’ said Charles. ‘He doesn’t particularly like women, though he likes to make love to them. I don’t suppose that helps much. I have no idea what the lie might have been. There’s no clue in the manuscript.’

‘All three of the suspects could fit the profile of liars,’ said Mallory. ‘And they’ve all got something at stake. Judge Heart has a career to consider. Other nominations have failed because of reefers and illegal nannies. If she dug up something in his background, it wouldn’t have to be much to cost him the appointment. Harry Kipling has a rich wife and a brutal prenuptial agreement. Eric Franz was with his wife the night she was killed in the traffic accident. He might have had something to do with that.’

‘So what have we got?’ asked Charles. ‘A novel we can’t use in court and no physical evidence. There was nothing else turned up at the park site?’

‘Heller’s the best. If he can’t find another forensic detail, no one can.’

‘Well, there’s the cat,’ said Charles. ‘But, unless you think we can train Nose to bite the suspect on the leg in open court, the cat is worthless.’

‘No it isn’t.’ Mallory was staring down at the animal with an expression that gave her nothing in common with animal lovers. ‘I can use the cat and the book to flush him out. The tricky part is where I get him to incriminate himself.’

‘Any confrontation with this man is dangerous to you,’ said Henrietta. ‘If your theory is correct, he’s demonstrated his willingness to kill in order to protect himself.’

Mallory seemed unimpressed. ‘So? The perp I’m dealing with doesn’t have the nerve of the average psycho. It was a one-shot crime to cover another crime – all fear and panic.’

‘You can’t know that,’ said Henrietta. ‘It doesn’t matter that the murder wasn’t premeditated. He may have killed her a thousand times in his fantasies. He may be someone who knows her only as a service person, a maintenance man. And you can’t tell a sociopath from his appearance or public behavior. This man may very well have a dangerous pathology and still pass for a normal member of the community.’