obviously did not indulge frequently in her bakery’s items. She looked at him with wide brown eyes and an expression that still denoted the horror of her discovery.
“Ms. Hannigan, I’m Detective Jude Crosby. I know you’ve already given the officers your statement, so I really just want to thank you for so quickly summoning help, and for all that you’ve done to assist us in the investigation.” She hadn’t really done anything—she’d screamed instinctively. But he had discovered that the right tone of questioning always produced more than dismissal or rudeness.
She nodded, seeming to get a bit of a grip. “Shall we have some coffee?” he asked her.
She looked nervously at the corner bakery. “I open. I gave the keys to one of the boys … but I guess no one is really going to be hungry around here for a while.”
He smiled. “They’ll be hungry,” he said. Don’t kid yourself, he thought. People will be converging to talk. When the crime scene tape is gone, they’ll be fighting each other to get in the street and photograph the position where the body lay.
“But come in … the police will clear this with your boss.” He nodded to Smith, who hurried on in ahead of him. He ushered Dorothy Hannigan to a booth at the rear of the bakery. Apparently, the boy she had given the keys to had gotten things going; customers were already in the shop, but other than Dorothy Hannigan’s white face, little gave away the fact that Jude was anything other than an ordinary customer. His suit was a good one, not that a homicide detective in New York made the big bucks, but he had a great apartment in Hell’s Kitchen, thanks to his father’s savvy with real estate, and it seemed, lately, that he lived to work. That meant decent suits—and suits that blended in well with the business attire in the moneyed district where he worked.
“So, Dorothy, please, tell me exactly how you came upon the body this morning,” he said quietly. He lifted a hand so that she would wait. Officer Smith had apparently seen to it that the owner, now in, was aware that his manager was helping the police; a waiter brought them two cups of coffee and quickly disappeared. She shook her head. “I saw … the body. It was barely light, you know. And there was no traffic—no, wait, there was one car, but it was in the other lane, and it just drove on by. You can only go the one way, you know.”
He nodded, taking a sip of his coffee.
She shivered suddenly. “I come off that subway every morning. I’m the only person who gets off half the time. That could have been me.”
He set a hand on hers. “She was killed late last night, Miss Hannigan. I don’t think this killer was looking to stalk victims in the morning—someone would have come. You saw how quickly the streets got busy.”
She swallowed audibly.
“Is there someone you can ride in with for the next week or so?” he asked her.
She stared at him. “You’re going to catch this freak in a week or so?” she asked. “Half the cases go unsolved, from what I’ve heard.”
“That’s a gross exaggeration, really. Half the murder cases we go out on are—well, sadly—domestic. And they’re solved,” he said.
“But—how? There are twenty million people on the island of Manhattan on a workday—that’s the statistic I’ve heard.”
“Give or take a million,” he agreed. “Please, that’s why I’m asking you—describe exactly what you saw.”
“I was walking down the street. I saw the car go by—oh, yes, of course. I saw the body in the middle of the street because of the headlights. The car just kept going. I was afraid it might have been an old derelict, passed out in the street. I have a little laser light I carry, and a whistle—I’m not stupid, you know—and so I shone the light and hurried out, hoping that nothing was coming barreling up Broadway. And then I saw her—and then I started screaming.”
“Did you see anyone else—anyone at all? A bum, a shadow … anyone?” he asked.
She shook her head. Then she sat straighter. “Wait—there’s old Captain Tyler.”
“Old Captain Tyler?”
She nodded. “A sad case. Everyone keeps urging him to go to a shelter, but he shows up back on the streets, begging. I mean, of course, God help us, we get a lot of homeless guys down here. But Captain Tyler is kind of sweet. He’s an older fellow, Vietnam vet.”
“Did you see him this morning?” Jude asked.
“I might have.”
“You might have?”
“There was a pile of rags and a sleeping bag at the entrance to the subway. I remember thinking that it might have been poor old Captain Tyler. But I didn’t disturb the pile.”
He nodded. “But nothing else? No one watching you?”
She shook her head. “No, not that I noticed.” She fell silent again. “I’m going to get killed on my way in to work one of these days despite my whistle, aren’t I?”
“Come in with coworkers, Ms. Hannigan, if there’s any way. I’ll talk to your boss. It’s prudent to be extremely careful until we know what we’re up against,” he said. “I’ve got to get my men looking for Captain Tyler. Can you give me a description?”
Tyler, according to Ms. Hannigan, was tall and thin, wore a shabby army-surplus jacket and dirty denim jeans, and had long white hair and a scraggly white-and-gray beard.
“He told me once he suffered from shell shock,” Dorothy Hannigan told him. “Sad, huh? Can’t hold a job, and his benefits don’t really keep a roof over his head.” She gasped. “He couldn’t have done this, could he have?”
“If you see him, call me. I don’t think, however, that shell shock, even after years, would suddenly turn a man into a vicious murderer. But when we find him, we’ll find out what we can. We have some truly wonderful psychiatrists with the department. They’ll be able to deal with him,” Jude assured her. As he spoke, his phone rang.
It was Norton, from headquarters.
“Assistant chief wants to see you, pronto,” Norton told him.
“I’m at the scene,” Jude told him.
“I know. I told him that you’d been dispatched by orders of the lieutenant. But he says that you’ve had time to do what you can do there, and that he wants to see you about a task force.”
“No other murders today, huh?” Jude asked dryly.
“Not like this. Film is already rolling. The news is shooting through all five boroughs, the country and the world like the spew from a geyser. Jack’s back. That’s what they’re saying. Anyway, he wants you in here, now.”
The twenty-first-century media was amazing, Jude thought. He barely knew anything about the crime, but rumor was running rampant, and he understood that One Police Plaza wanted this solved as quickly as humanly possible.
Two other murder investigations were open on his slate; this seemed to be the one that mattered. Naturally. The other two had also been stabbed, but one had died on the way to the hospital and one had been dragged out of the river.
