Pssst.

She saw nothing amiss. Riker prided himself on never stumbling in the daylight hours. There were no new spills on his suit, nothing more recent than his interview with Daisy, and that splash of bourbon had dried long ago. He sat on the chair next to hers and peeled the wrapper from a roll of mints. ‘Did I miss anything?’

‘No. We’re still waiting to hear from Tech Support.’

Pssst.

The detectives around the tape player walked away from the machine, allowing the recording to play out at full volume, and still the suspect’s voice was subdued.

‘ – a woman has been murdered in the East Village – ’

It was an empty monotone, lacking the bravado of a man on a quest for fame, and one more motive died.

‘ – name is Kennedy Harper – ’

The mechanical tone almost qualified as a speech impediment, or that was the excuse offered by technicians at One Police Plaza. They had not yet fixed the suspect’s home state.

‘ – you can find the body at – ’

This man, so adept at theatrical staging, was so bland in his recital of bare facts – a death, a name, an address.

Pssst.

Mallory was fleshing out the portrait of a killer whose emotions were dead, not the type for a thrill kill. He was a tidy man, well organized. A man with a plan? She stared at the scarecrow on the back wall. What the hell do you want?

‘We got it!’ Janos hovered in front of a computer monitor and read the pertinent details as he scrolled down the screen, ‘The scarecrow is from the Midwest. They’re still trying to nail down the state. The techs say he wasn’t calling from a cell phone or a pay-phone. And the ambient sound might be from an early-model humidifier or an automatic plant mister.’

Jack Coffey entered the room and shut off the tape player. ‘Listen up!’ All conversation stopped and every pair of eyes turned his way. ‘Riker’s witness, Miss Emelda, is worth her weight in gold. Our perp was the old lady’s man in the tree – the guy with a Polaroid camera.’

He held up two plastic bags, each containing a small box with a Polaroid logo. ‘These film cartons were left at both crime scenes, and they weren’t left by accident.’ He held one higher than the other. ‘And the box we found today has a twenty-year-old expiration date.’ He tossed the bags on the table. ‘Kennedy Harper died six days ago – that’s official. Six days and twenty years ago, another hanging victim was found.’

The lieutenant turned to face Mallory. ‘It was an anniversary kill. And now we have a solid connection to the Cold Case file.’ He pointed to Janos. ‘You’re the primary on Kennedy’s case. And, Desoto, you got Sparrow.’

Mallory watched Riker’s face go gray. His eyes were all the way open now, and his head was shaking from side to side, silently saying, This can’t be. How could he lose Sparrow’s case to another detective? He was rising from his chair when she caught his sleeve and pulled him down.

‘If we can’t get Sparrow back, we’ll work her case on the side.’

Was he hearing her? Yes, he was nodding.

Jack Coffey had finished handing out assignments to the others, and now he stood before Mallory and Riker. ‘You guys are working the Cold Case file. We got a copycat, and I wanna know where he got his information.’ The lieutenant paused, correctly reading Mallory’s expression of ennui. ‘You’re not baby-sitting Geldorf. Use that old man. Just keep him the hell out of Special Crimes.’

Lars Geldorf was hoarse from explaining and explaining, then shouting in exasperation. His opponent was a small, wiry woman with dark Spanish eyes, a deeply suspicious nature and a mission to clean Manhattan. She pulled a mop from her rolling cart of cleaning supplies and said, once more, ‘I’m gonna do Mallory’s office now.’ Nothing would stop the intrepid Mrs Ortega, certainly not this old man – gun or no gun.

The retired detective informed her that this room could not be cleaned until his case was wrapped. He distrusted all civilians, and she should understand that it was nothing personal. Charles intervened, suggesting that, since it was so late in the day, Mrs Ortega could skip this room. The cleaning woman countered with ‘Mallory’s orders, not yours.’ And eventually, the matter was settled.

Mrs Ortega ruled.

But Geldorf was adamant that Charles remain in the room until ‘that – that woman was done. Then, with great dignity, he left the office with his relief watcher, a young detective with unnatural bright yellow hair.

After the door slammed behind them, Mrs Ortega plugged in her vacuum, then shook her head, saying, ‘Damn, that baby cop’s got one bad bleach job.’

Charles nodded. ‘It’s interesting, though. Perhaps he’s making some kind of statement.’

‘Yeah, like – look at me, my head glows in the dark.’

‘Exactly what I was thinking.’ Charles turned his attention to the cork wall. Where should the giant cockroaches go? Well, the only place for them was underneath the maggots. Where else?

The carpet was spotless when Riker strolled in. He nodded his hello to Charles, then flashed a big smile for the cleaning woman. ‘Hey, how’ve you been?’ He was genuinely happy to see her, though she used him for verbal sniper practice each time they met.

She glared at a spot on Riker’s suit, singling it out from all the other stains, then stopped her work to clean him with a bottle of solvent and a cloth, as if he were any other object in her path. ‘Next time you drink crummy bourbon for lunch, mop it up.’

Charles’s nose was larger, but Mrs Ortega’s was truly gifted. However, she was not an olfactory savant. She had not identified the alcohol by scent, nor discerned that it was stale, not fresh, and neither had she found the bouquet a bit wanting – a lesser brand. This was only a parlor trick. Cheap bourbon was Riker’s habitual choice, and the spill might reek, but it was dry, suggesting a drink earlier in the day. After erasing the evidence of his on-duty imbibing, she went back to dusting the shelves and muttered, ‘My tax dollars at work.’

‘Mallory’s on the way,’ Riker said to her back. ‘You got fifteen minutes.’ The detective also knew her soft spots, and now Mrs Ortega’s duster doubled its speed. She would not want Mallory to walk in while there was still a dust mote at large.

‘You never finished the story,’ said Charles. ‘What happened to that Indian girl after she – ’

The man shook his head to say, Not now, then quickly glanced at the cleaning woman. When Mrs Ortega had packed up her cart and gone home, Riker was still uneasy as he continued the unfinished tale. ‘The Wichita Kid got away. When the next book opens, you find out the Indian girl is dead.’ He sagged back against the wall, and his face turned toward the open door.

Keeping an eye out for Mallory?

Yes, and he was also telegraphing the terrible importance of the books, which had nothing to do with plots and everything to do with a recent murder and a child who loved westerns.

‘Sheriff Peety’s horse crushed the girl’s skull,’ said Riker. ‘So he broke off the chase and carried the body back to her village. Wichita never found out that the girl died to save him. He just went on loving her for the rest of the book.’ The detective was about to say more when something caught his eye, a folded newspaper on the desk. His left shoe began to tap in a steady rhythm, though he was not given to nervous mannerisms.

The newspaper belonged to Charles. He had finished the detailed account of a hanged prostitute and noted the similarities to Natalie Homer’s murder. However, the most startling lines described the crime-scene floor awash in water from a fire hose. Given the time of night and the degree of dampness in a paperback western called Homecoming, he now knew how the book had gotten wet. It was possible that the detective had innocently dropped it in the water, but the man’s uncharacteristic anxiety suggested that the truth was even more out of character than Riker telling lies and drinking on duty. Though Charles suspected the book had been stolen, all he would say to his friend was ‘Tell me how the story ends.’