‘Yeah,’ said Geldorf. ‘A year after she got married, her sister stopped talking to her. But that wasn’t in the statements. How’d you know?’

‘It fits a pattern of spousal abuse. Forced dependence, isolation.’ Charles turned to Mallory. ‘Her husband may have knocked her around a bit during the marriage.’

‘Right again,’ said Geldorf. ‘That’s what Natalie told me.’

Mallory’s voice was all suspicion now. ‘You talked to her?’

‘Yeah, of course I did. Twice, sometimes three times a week.’

‘I think I mentioned the stalking last night.’ Charles walked toward the center of the wall and a cluster of papers. ‘These are samples of her complaints.’ He unpinned the paperwork and handed her five stalker reports.

‘The trouble started right after her divorce.’ Geldorf leaned down to pick up an envelope propped against the baseboard. ‘This is the rest of’em.’

‘And after she died?’ Mallory stared at the thick envelope. ‘All those complaints – no leads on the stalker?’

‘She never saw the guy’s face,’ said Geldorf. ‘The first time she came in, we thought she was just paranoid. I mean, sure, men were gonna follow her around.’

‘Because she was pretty,’ said Mallory, though not one image on the wall could have told her that. In death, Natalie was grotesque.

‘She was beautiful.’ Geldorf bent down to the carton he had brought in that morning. He pulled out a brown paper bag and removed a packet of photographs. ‘I didn’t think these belonged with the evidence.’ He held up one smiling portrait of a young woman with blond hair falling past her shoulders. Natalie’s eyes were large and blue.

Mallory folded the envelope of complaints under one arm, then carried the pictures to a clear section of wall and pinned them up with machinelike precision, each border exactly the same distance from the next. ‘A pro took these shots.’

Charles agreed. The lighting was perfect, and the subject’s pose was not candid, but artful.

‘The photographer was another dead end,’ said Geldorf. ‘That woman was older than I am now.’

Mallory had yet to open the envelope of complaints. She merely hefted its weight in one hand. ‘Natalie spent a lot of time in your station house. A lot of time. When you figured out that she wasn’t paranoid – what then?’

‘We went after the ex-husband and told him to stay away from her. He was a cool one. Never owned up to nothin’.’

‘And after the murder?’

‘We hauled him in for questioning. But he had an alibi for the time of death. He was in Atlantic City all weekend. That’s where

he was gettin’ married to the next Mrs Homer. Jane was her name. They never left the hotel room all weekend. That’s what the staff said. But how much would it cost to buy an alibi from a maid and a bellboy? And the statement from the second wife, Jane – that was worthless. Two days married, and that bastard had her cowed.’

Mallory was not listening anymore. She had discovered one of the stalker’s notes in a clear plastic evidence bag. She took it down from the wall and stared at a brief message penciled on thin airmail paper. The letters were painstakingly drawn in varying sizes and scripts.

‘All seven of’em say the same thing,’ said Geldorf. ‘We figured they were traced from magazines. No newsprint smudges on the paper. Natalie found ‘em under her door at night when she got home from work. Be careful,’ said Geldorf, as she pulled them out of the bag. ‘That paper’s really fragile, and you don’t wanna smudge the pencil.’

Charles expected Mallory to be annoyed with this lecture on the handling of evidence, but she only stared at the paper, transfixed by the words, I touched you today.

Geldorf never noticed her reaction. Hands in his pockets, rocking on his heels, he stared at the photographs of the murder scene. ‘That kid photographer who dropped his camera – he wasn’t the only one who got sick that night. There was this young cop – the uniform who found the body – I can’t remember if it was Parris or Loman.’

Mallory looked up from her reading. He had her undivided attention now.

Geldorf continued, ‘We couldn’t get him back inside the apartment again. An hour later, he’s at the station house, still batting off flies and stomping his feet to shake roaches out of his pantlegs. Well, there weren’t any bugs on him – not one – not then, but he could still feel them. Oh, and the stink. You can’t take a picture of that. But you know what I remember best? I could hear it outside in the hall when I was walkin’ toward that apartment. When I opened the door – it was so loud, so many of ‘em. Scared the hell out of me.’ He closed his eyes. ‘I can hear it now. The roar of flies – thousands of flies.’

Sergeant Riker entered the office, arms laden with the bags of a delicatessen breakfast. ‘Did I miss anything?’

Riker lured Geldorf down the hall to the office kitchen with promises of coffee and food. After settling the deli bags on the table, he fumbled with the wrappings, hunting for a bacon-and-egg on white toast dripping with heart-attack grease. He spread the packages on a red-checked tablecloth, the only bit of charm to survive the ruthless takeover of Mallory’s machine decor.

After writing down the delicatessen’s phone number, he handed it to Geldorf. ‘Lose this and you’ll starve.’ While he and Mallory covertly worked on Sparrow’s case, Geldorf would have to fend for himself. Charles would be no help in foraging for food around the office; on principle, the man ignored all kitchen appliances with control panels more complex than the dashboard of his Mercedes.

‘Deluthe should’ve made the deli run. What good is a slave if he doesn’t do errands?’

Geldorf grinned. ‘Mallory’s got him chasing down personnel files for all the cops from my crime scene.’

‘Well, that should keep him occupied.’ A whiteshield in training pants would have to stand in line all day long at One Police Plaza. But Duck Boy’s report would reinforce the fiction that they were working on Natalie Homer’s murder. He handed a paper coffee cup to the retired detective. ‘I hear you’ve been working cold cases for six years. You missed the job, huh?’

‘Yeah, I like to keep – ’ Geldorf was facing the kitchen door when he stiffened slightly, then sat up very straight. This was Riker’s clue that Mallory was standing behind his own chair. Obviously, she had been training the help again. Every time she entered a room, Duck Boy had this same conditioned response.

She laid a stack of paperwork beside his coffee cup. Riker leafed through the familiar forms of citizen complaints. Natalie Homer had been a frequent visitor to her local police station. This was a replay of Lieutenant Loman’s squad making a station house pet of Kennedy Harper.

‘There’s a big gap in the dates for these complaints,’ she said.

Geldorf nodded. ‘The pervert gave her a breather. Two weeks later, he was stalking her again, and he was escalating. That’s when he started leaving those notes under her door. And phone calls – no conversation, and no heavy breathing either. I think he only wanted to hear her voice.’

Riker fished through his pockets for matches and cigarettes. ‘Was the ex-husband in town during those two weeks?’

‘Oh, yeah. The guy never missed a day of work at the post office. But I knew he was guilty.’

After emptying the cigarettes from his crumpled pack, Riker hunted for one that was not broken. ‘So you never developed other suspects.’

‘What for? Erik Homer did it,’ said Geldorf. ‘If only the bastard hadn’t up and died on me. He had a heart attack a year after the murder.’

Mallory laid down another sheet of paper. ‘This is the ex-husband’s statement. There’s just one line about Natalie’s son. How old was the boy when his mother died?’

‘Oh, six or seven. The kid’s father had sole custody. After the divorce, she never saw her son again.’