“You been playing detective?” Paula asked the little ME.
“I got eyes and ears.”
Paula glanced at Bickerstaff.
“I’ll go talk to the super,” he said, and lumbered out of the room.
“Crocker’s his name,” Potter said.
“Crocker,” Bickerstaff repeated without glancing back. “Like Betty Crocker.”
The ME stared at Paula.
“He does that all the time,” she said, “to help his memory.” She then added, “He’s about to retire,” knowing that probably had nothing to do with Bickerstaff’s memory method.
“Mmph,” was all Harry Potter said, nodding.
Paula went to the window where long sheer drapes were dancing rhythmically in the summer breeze. In the room’s other window an air conditioner was humming away. Who’d open one window on a hot night, then switch on an air conditioner in another?
“Was this window open?” she asked.
“That’s just how I found it,” Potter said.
Keeping her hands away from the brass handle, Paula gripped the wooden frame and lowered the window until it was almost closed. It worked smoothly and silently.
She was about to turn away when she noticed through the inner glass that a small crescent of glass had been neatly cut from the bottom of the top window. It was centered precisely over where the lock would be if the window were closed and secure.
“I’ll be damned,” Potter said, looking where she was staring. “The killer got in through the window.”
“And out,” Paula said, “seeing as the door was locked and had to be forced by the cop who got the call. Unless the killer had a key and locked the bedroom door on the way out.”
“If he had a key,” Potter said, “he probably wouldn’t have come in through the window. And anyway, he’d have no reason to lock the bedroom door behind him when he left.”
“You oughta be a detective.”
“So I’ve been told,” Potter said. “But not often.”
Two white-uniformed men appeared in the doorway. EMT had arrived to remove the body. The paramedics were both hefty guys with black curly hair, and could have been brothers.
“Okay to take that now?” one of them asked, motioning toward the dead woman.
“If she says so,” Potter said, pointing to Paula.
“Police photographer been here?” Paula asked.
Potter nodded. “Left just before you arrived.”
“She’s yours,” Paula told the paramedics.
“What kinda accent is that?” one of them asked, as they bent to their task.
“Cajun.”
“Alabama?”
“Louisiana.”
“Cajuns make great music,” Harry Potter said.
“Jumbalya,” said the paramedic.
“That’s food,” said the other.
“A song, too,” Potter said. He began to sing. It didn’t sound like singing.
“Yuck,” the paramedic said, working his gloved hand beneath the butchered body. “Crawfish pie.”
Harry Potter packed his instruments into his bag and said good-bye. Paula was glad he was finished singing.
As Sally Bridge was leaving her bedroom, Bickerstaff returned.
“Got the officers’ story,” he said. “And Crocker the super’s. And the doorman said nobody suspicious entered or left the building all evening.”
“Our killer came in through the window,” Paula said.
Bickerstaff raised his bushy brows. “No shit?”
Paula walked with him to the window and opened it wider, still careful not to touch the glass. They both looked down. Paula got dizzy up high and had to back away a few steps.
“Hell of a climb,” Bickerstaff said.
“But the street’s pretty deserted after midnight, and once the killer got a few stories up he’d be in darkness and nobody’d notice him.”
“But it’s damn near a sheer brick wall. How’d he climb it?”
“Maybe pulled himself up on some kind of line,” Paula said. She examined the windowsill for marks where a grappling hook might have been attached. The sill was unmarked, and nothing else in the room seemed to have been disturbed other than Sally Bridge.
“The super said she lived alone,” Bickerstaff said.
“I gathered.”
“She was a casting director. Even did some work on Broadway.”
“Really? She have a boyfriend?”
“She was between them, according to the super and the doorman. They both said she was always working and didn’t have much opportunity for romance. She used to joke about it, how she needed more time to meet interesting men.”
“She found time last night.”
“And she isn’t joking,” Bickerstaff said. “Or even slightly interested.” He nodded toward the bloody sheets. “Maybe because she’s on the rag.”
Police humor, Paula thought. She could live without it.
3
Retired NYPD Homicide Captain Thomas Horn didn’t have a hell of a lot more to do these days than eat toasted corn muffins, which was what he was waiting to do on a warm, gray Monday morning in the Home Away Diner on Amsterdam on Manhattan’s West Side.
Horn, still in his early fifties, had retired early because of what happened to the World Trade Center. He’d been on his way to interrogate the CFO of Jagger and Schmidt Brokerage at the firm’s office on the forty-second floor of the north tower. The man had almost certainly defrauded the firm’s clients of several million dollars, some of which was part of the police pension fund.
Since it was such a clear, beautiful morning, Horn had decided to leave his car where he’d parked it after pulling to the curb. He went into a jewelry store to look at gold hoop earrings for his wife, Anne. She’d said she wanted such earrings, and there in the store’s window was a sign stating they were on sale. HALF OFF HOOPY-DOOP EARRINGS, the sign had declared in large red letters. GOLD AND SILVER.
On impulse Horn decided to buy a pair. On impulse he decided to walk the rest of the way to the World Trade Center.
Horn spent more time than he planned in the store because there were already three customers ahead of him. Then the earrings he wanted weren’t on display and the jeweler had to go into a back room and locate them. These little things added up, changing his world.
Though he was in the store less than an hour, a lot had happened during that time. The earrings had saved his life.
After leaving the store slightly before ten o’clock, earrings in his suitcoat pocket, he’d strolled about a block when he saw several people pass him going the other way and knew from their faces and the way they were walking that something was wrong. He hadn’t suspected it was at the World Trade Center, but he picked up his pace.
From conversation overheard along the way, he learned that a plane had struck one of the towers. Now he began jogging