Mallory's Oracle Read Online Free PDF

policy it was. Doctors did not practice on members of their families; this was no different. She had seen the wisdom of policy. She had deferred to him in everything. He liked that. He liked it a lot.
    â€˜And get her badge and her gun,’ Blakely had warned him. ‘You don’t want her out there armed and working solo.’
    Commissioner Beale had mentioned the badge and gun, but she apparently had not heard him. Her eyes had gone all soft and distant. He reminded himself that she had buried her foster father only a few hours ago. She was so pretty, so vulnerable. He didn’t bring up the business of badge and gun a second time. Everything was going so well. Why spoil it? This after all was one of his most trusted officers.
    Wasn’t she?
    â€œIs this a rent-controlled apartment, Sergeant? Do you mind my asking the rent?”
    â€œNo rent. I own it. Markowitz made the down payment for me when I moved out of Brooklyn. He wanted me to live in a doorman building with good security.”
    And Markowitz had probably helped with the mortgage payments and the maintenance fees. The man had certainly been on the force long enough to accumulate a nice little savings account. No, no reason to get the badge and the gun. Markowitz was as clean a cop as NYPD ever had, and this young woman had been raised by him in the best tradition of New York’s Finest. Well, good enough.
    Later in the day, when he would explain to Chief of Detectives Harry Blakely that he had left Mallory armed and dangerous, Blakely would roll his eyes but say nothing.
    Â 
    Lieut. Jack Coffey closed the door behind him and slowly sank down in the overstuffed chair in Markowitz’s office. A small bald spot on the back of his head was reflected in the window behind him. The glass ran the length of the upper portion of one wall with only the interruption of the door. The window looked out on the bustle of officers and clerks in the Special Crimes Section.
    The two adjacent walls were pure Markowitz, camouflaged to blend with the mess of paperwork on his desk. Floor-to-ceiling cork panels held notes on matchbook covers, duty rosters on computer printouts, surveillance and arrest reports, memos—the paperwork collage of a command position in a growing department. The decor of clutter was very like Markowitz. The entire room had been an inside-out, flattened-out model of the man’s mind. He had been a lover of detail, a collector of images, a squirreler of bits and jots of data.
    However, it was the back wall that held Coffey’s attention. It was stark naked. Before the funeral, it had been covered with cork and papered over with photos, handwritten notes, news clippings, copies of statements and everything else pertaining to the Gramercy Park murders that would take a pin, the thousand details of the priority case.
    He could pull most of the same information off a computer disk, and all the physical evidence was under lock, available at a call, but it would not be quite the same. The back wall had been the last available repository of Markowitz’s brain. It was weird to see even one clear foot of space in the paper storm of this office, and now he was looking at a whole damn wall. He’d been raped.
    He turned to his sergeant, who was looking down at his own scruffy shoes.
    â€œHow did she get it out, Riker?”
    â€œSo you think it was Mallory?”
    â€œCut the crap.”
    Riker said he never saw her take down the cork, and he hadn’t. But he never mentioned that he had walked behind her through the department, past twelve occupied desks at the top of a shift, down the corridor packed with uniforms, and past the garage security guard, as she carried a long, thick roll of cork under one arm and a desk blotter under the other, with a calendar wadded in her purse and God knows what else. It was a big purse. But she had not been able to manage all that and the Xerox machine, too. Riker had carried that out for