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  ‘Oh God,’ Tos said in despair. ‘You’re going to come up with some theory.’

  Stryker grinned. ‘Actually, I’m not. Not yet. But it is interesting, isn’t it?’

  Tos shrugged. ‘I prefer ballistics and fingerprints; facts, not fancies.’

  ‘Then let’s check out the names in her address book. We don’t even know her maiden name, so it will be hard to tell who are relatives and who aren’t. Her husband was down as next of kin at the university, but until we find him we’ll have to do what we can.’

  They went back to Elise Mayhew’s office.

  As they were making another survey, Stryker suddenly stood still. ‘Oh, dammit to hell, the computer.’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘All the stuff we want could be on there,’ Stryker said. ‘I forgot to check back with whoever downloaded it. Some people keep everything on their PC – appointments, notes, the whole shebang.’

  ‘Do you think she would have kept a diary there?’

  ‘A diary is too much to hope for,’ Stryker acknowledged. ‘But the husband’s itinerary might be in there; her will could be in there, her insurance policies . . .’

  ‘No, they’re over here,’ Muller said from where he was going through the two low filing cabinets that flanked a big bookcase. ‘All nice and tidy.’ He pulled something out. ‘She left everything to him. No mention of anyone else, relatives, so on.’ He extracted another folder. ‘Not a very big insurance policy . . .’ He continued to survey bank records etc. ‘They had a lot in the bank, joint accounts, some savings, some investments. He’ll do all right.’ He paused, slowly straightened up with yet another folder, quite a thick one. ‘She was an orphan,’ he said in some astonishment. ‘Her maiden name was Avery – look at this.’

  Stryker came over. The clippings were yellowed and brittle, but the story was clear. Almost everyone in a small family named Avery was killed in a car accident in Michigan. The only survivor was a little girl named Elise. The man responsible, a drunken van driver, was jailed and – on the last clipping – they saw the little girl had been taken in to be raised by her maternal grandparents, Mr and Mrs Gunderson. The date on that clipping was just over thirty years ago. Elise had been eight.

  ‘Do you suppose they’re still alive?’ Tos asked.

  ‘I doubt it. Check out the address book.’ They did. But no mention of Gunderson or ‘Gran’ or ‘Grandad’ appeared. The address book was fairly new and there were no others in the desk.

  ‘So, just the husband – unless there are some cousins lurking somewhere,’ Tos said, closing the book. ‘Poor kid.’

  ‘She did all right,’ Stryker pointed out. ‘People liked her, she was smart and hard-working. The grandparents did a good job.’

  ‘And now look,’ Tos said. ‘Blown away.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know what else to look at,’ Stryker said. ‘I’ll talk to the Crime Scene guys again, see if they came up with hairs or fibres that weren’t hers. We’ll have to wait to get the husband so we can eliminate him or his fingerprints.’ He glanced at Tos. ‘You know, there weren’t any fingerprints on the doorbell, the door knocker, or the doorknob of the bedroom . . . none at all. Not even the dead woman’s.’

  ‘Wiped.’

  ‘Not suicide.’

  They looked at each other and simultaneously sighed heavily. Old partners, old communications. And a hard task ahead. Muller looked at them and felt very new on the job.

  SEVEN

  When they returned to the squad room after visiting the Crime Scene lab and talking to the computer techies, Stryker spotted Pinsky seated at his desk. Pinsky looked pale and dazed. And as they drew closer they could see that he was actually on the verge of tears.

  ‘Jesus, Ned, what’s the matter?’ Stryker asked, going over to him.

  ‘That kid,’ Ned managed to say, his voice thick with emotion. ‘That poor, dumb kid.’

  Stryker glanced at Neilson, who sat on the other side of the desk looking worried.

  He sighed. ‘You know that kid who kept trying to get in touch with Ned?’

  ‘What kid?’ asked Tos.

  ‘Name of Ricky Sanchez,’ Neilson replied. ‘He’s been calling Ned here and at home – he goes out with Ned’s daughter – but we’ve been so busy on this Mayhew homicide that Ned kept missing him.’

  ‘I forgot,’ Pinsky whispered. ‘I forgot.’

  ‘Well, they just reported finding him dead in an alley off French Street. We’re about to go down there . . . when Ned is ready. We only just heard,’ Neilson finished.

  ‘I think I talked to the kid myself,’ Stryker said. ‘The other day he called. He seemed worried.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Ned confirmed, taking a deep breath. ‘He was worried all right. And look where it’s got him. I should have listened. I should have taken a minute, Jesus, just a minute or two to get back to him. I should have realized it was more than just a little worry. Maybe he’d still be alive.’

  ‘You couldn’t know,’ Tos said.

  Ned looked up angrily. ‘That’s just it. I could have known if I’d taken the time to find out. But oh no, I had to go chasing around being the big homicide dick . . . well, the “dick” part is true enough. This kid was calling out for help . . . and I didn’t listen. Not hard enough. Denise will never forgive me. Shit, I’ll never forgive myself.’ He stood up. ‘Let’s go. I want this case and I’m going to have this case.’

  ‘You’re too involved, Ned,’ Stryker protested.

  Ned turned and gave him such a look that Stryker actually stepped back. ‘Let’s all go,’ he suggested. ‘You blew him off too, didn’t you?’

  ‘I offered to listen,’ Stryker said. ‘T could hear he was unhappy.’

  ‘He didn’t know you from Adam,’ Ned said. ‘Why should he talk to you? I was the one he knew. I was the one he turned to. And I let him down. We all let him down.’

  ‘Now, listen.’ Neilson put a hand on his partner’s arm.

  Ned pushed past him. ‘Let’s go,’ he said.

  Stryker looked after him. ‘Fineman will never let him stay on the case.’

  ‘I really don’t think that will make any difference,’ Neilson said. ‘I’ve never seen him like this. I mean, I haven’t known him for all that many years, but this has really hit him bad. It’s kind of scary.’

  ‘He’s upset, he’ll get over it,’ Tos said comfortably. ‘It just got to him, that’s all. We all have weak spots and Ned has a big conscience. He feels too much.’

  ‘Look who’s talking,’ Stryker muttered as they followed Pinsky out to the cars.

  The alley was surprisingly neat for an alley off French Street. A building was being renovated and the area was being kept fairly clear by the builders. Rubbish was contained in large cardboard bins or dumpsters and there was almost no litter between them. The surface was pitted and rough, but looked as if it had been swept recently. The fact that a dead body was lying there seemed even more shocking as a result. A long line of blood snaked from beneath the tarp the patrol officers had used to cover the body and drained neatly into a manhole. Even in death, Ricky Sanchez seemed socially responsible.

  Pinsky stood over the body, rocking slightly back and forth. After a minute he nodded to one of the uniforms and the tarp was pulled back. Ricky Sanchez had been killed with blows to the back of the head. One hard blow had shattered his skull, either the first blow, or the last, depending on whether the assailant had just wanted to bring him down or had wanted to make sure once he was down. Nearby lay the probable weapon, a length of pipe, already bagged and marked. They could even see where it had come from: the builders’ dumpster, half filled with plumbing bits and pieces, outside the building undergoing renovation. Which might indicate it had been a spur-of-the-moment murder, the killer grabbing whatever was at hand to strike the boy down.

  Pinsky knelt beside Ricky and re
ached out a hand to touch the side of his face. ‘Sorry, kid,’ he whispered.

  Neilson, Stryker and Tos were busy talking to the patrol officers who had found the body, and pointedly ignored Pinsky’s turmoil. ‘It looks like a straightforward mugging, Lieutenant,’ the patrol cop said, consulting his notebook. ‘No wallet, scrapes where his watch was dragged off and ditto some kind of ring.’

  ‘So when was he found?’ Tos asked.

  ‘About an hour ago,’ the patrolman answered. ‘The builders found him when they started work this morning. We found his ID – hell, it was pinned to his jacket – and called it in. If it weren’t for that ID we wouldn’t have known who the hell he was.’

  Under his ski jacket Ricky was wearing green surgical scrubs. A plastic hospital ID was just visible fastened to the left breast pocket. He lay on his side in what is commonly called the recovery position – but he was never going to recover.

  ‘I wonder what the hell he was doing down here?’ Neilson said, looking around. French Street was probably the least salubrious street in town. Lined with cheap bars and shops specializing in porn, it was the main drag for the homeless, the alcoholic and the drug abuser. It was patrolled more regularly than most areas, but to little avail. Cunning was the common feature of its regular inhabitants – clocking the patrols and timing their crimes was the least of their worries. It was a punishment patrol – you got busted down to French Street. As the citizens went, so went the police. Right to the bottom. But the patrolmen who had found the body were young and seemed eager. They had put up Crime Scene tape immediately and had been talking to the gathering crowd. A head start for which the detectives were grateful.

  ‘We’re not that far from the hospital,’ Tos said. ‘Maybe he was taking a short cut.’

  ‘Even from here it looks like a hell of a blow,’ Stryker said, looking over. ‘Took some strength.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Neilson agreed. ‘Got to be a man.’

  ‘Women work out now,’ Tos reminded them. ‘You should see them down at the gym, they got muscles bigger than mine, some of them. It could have been a woman. He might have turned his back on a woman easier than a man.’

  ‘He’s not very tall,’ Tos observed. ‘Not much in the angle to tell us how big the assailant was.’

  They were all being very precise, trying to ignore Pinsky’s emotions, to remain distant, professional, neutral. But it was hard, because they felt for Pinsky, they felt for the kid and they felt guilty themselves. Not that they had anything to feel guilty about; it was just a generalized guilt engendered by Pinsky’s personal agony. Although things like this occurred every day, they knew damn well they shouldn’t happen, that they should be preventing crime more than solving it, that there were gaps in the department, in their own lives, in society, allowing things to happen that shouldn’t. They felt the guilt of omission, the helpless guilt that was inescapable but all-pervasive in a situation like this. Other homicides they had been investigating were problems to be solved, quite separate from themselves, a challenge, a duty, the kind of thing they were trained to do, did every day. But this one was going to be different, because of Ned and his pain. Otherwise it looked all too common.

  The ME arrived then. Bannerman as usual – he loved to get out of the morgue when he could. He glanced at them and then at Pinsky, who was still kneeling by the body, and raised an eyebrow.

  ‘He knew the kid,’ Stryker explained, that far and no further.

  ‘Shame,’ Bannerman said. He went over and put a hand on Pinsky’s shoulder. Pinsky looked up, saw who it was, and slowly stood up and stepped back.

  The others waited a moment, then ducked under the tape and joined him.

  ‘He worked at the hospital?’ Bannerman asked over his shoulder after looking at the plastic ID badge on the body. ‘Was he an intern or what?’

  ‘He was a pre-med student. He had a part-time job as an orderly in the ER. It was a great chance for him; he got to observe a lot, understand things he might be up against himself one day, understand routines and procedures.’ Pinsky took a deep breath. ‘He tried to save his dad when he was shot. Kept him alive until the paramedics arrived, but he couldn’t do enough and the old man died right on their own front lawn. It kind of marked him.’

  Stryker frowned in puzzlement and Neilson explained the old shooting of the boy’s father some years before. Stryker vaguely remembered it, then, and nodded.

  ‘That made him want to train,’ Pinsky said with an air of wanting to explain why the boy was different. ‘It was going to take him a long time, but he was determined and he would have done it, too. He really would.’

  ‘Look, Ned, we’ve got to get on with this,’ Stryker said. ‘He was robbed. It looks like a straightforward mugging. Wrong place, wrong time. I’m sorry . . . but it wasn’t your fault. It’s just one of those things.’

  ‘But the kid was worried,’ Pinsky protested. ‘It’s got something to do with that. It has to.’

  ‘Ned, he was robbed. The mugger probably didn’t even realize he’d killed him.’

  Pinsky shook his head. ‘He was worried. Maybe scared. He talked to me once about something he felt was wrong, maybe even illegal, something he wondered if he should report on or not. He wasn’t very clear, he was playing it very close to his chest. He was afraid he’d be called a whistle-blower and that it would affect his own career, because people don’t like tattle-tales, especially in the medical profession. You know, doctors are supposed to stick together, that kind of thing.’

  ‘Cops, too – but that’s not always a good thing,’ Stryker said gently. ‘That’s why we have IAD, damn their sneaky hides.’

  ‘That’s exactly what he meant,’ Pinsky said with almost a smile. ‘See? You hate tattle-tales, too.’

  ‘Sure. But I know they keep most of us in line, aside from our own sterling qualities of honour and professionalism,’ Stryker said with heavy irony.

  ‘Was it to do with doctors?’ Tos wanted to know.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ Pinsky admitted. ‘Although he did say he might be destroying someone’s career, come to think of it. If he was right, that is. The problem apparently was that he wasn’t sure he was right.’

  Stryker took a deep breath and laid his hand on Pinsky’s arm. ‘Look, Ned, you’re just upset. There’s no connection here. It’s obviously a street crime and we’ve got other—’

  ‘No,’ Pinsky contradicted. ‘I let him down. It’s not just a mugging. There’s more. There has to be.’

  ‘No there doesn’t,’ Stryker said firmly. ‘People worry all the time . . . and people get killed for no reason at all. It was random, it was chance. He was in a bad area, wearing a decent coat – it’s a wonder they left that. And his shoes.’

  ‘Well, there you are, then,’ Pinsky said.

  ‘It needn’t have been a homeless – could have been a druggie,’ Tos said. ‘Didn’t need shoes – just money for his next fix. Maybe he saw the ID, maybe . . .’ He paused and turned to the patrolman. ‘Any keys on him?’

  The patrolman checked his notebook again. ‘No, no keys.’

  ‘Then somebody better notify the hospital – he might have had keys to drugs cupboards, stuff like that,’ Stryker said.

  ‘I’ll do that,’ Pinsky volunteered. ‘I want to look around that hospital.’

  Stryker shook his head. ‘No, Ned. Leave it.’

  ‘How can I?’ Pinsky asked. ‘He turned to me and I let him down.’

  Stryker glanced at Tos. ‘No, Ned. Neilson can go to the hospital. You go home.’

  ‘His mother works in the mayor’s office,’ Pinsky said stubbornly. ‘I need to tell her.’

  ‘A secretary?’

  ‘Hell, no, much more high-powered. Personal assistant to the deputy mayor,’ Pinsky said carefully. ‘She’s a smart cookie, is Mrs Sanchez. The whole family . . . what’s left of it . . . is smart.’ His voice
was bitter. ‘The father was a lawyer. Ricky was going to be a doctor. He has a younger brother who is some kind of computer whizz and a younger sister who is going to be a concert violinist, or so he says. Said. But they’re going fast, the Sanchez family. We’d better move quickly while there’s still someone to talk to.’

  Neilson hit him gently on the shoulder. ‘Take it easy, Ned.’

  ‘Yeah, sure,’ Pinsky murmured, looking away to where they were loading the body into the ME’s van. Suddenly he stiffened. ‘Denise,’ he murmured and seemed frozen, appalled.

  ‘OK, look, I’ll do the prelim report. I’ll go to the hospital,’ Neilson said encouragingly. ‘You go talk to Denise, she’ll really need you.’

  ‘If she’ll talk to me at all,’ Pinsky said. ‘She’s bound to blame me for not taking Ricky more seriously.’

  ‘No point in blaming anyone,’ Stryker told him. ‘It won’t accomplish anything, Ned. The kid was mugged. Move on.’

  Pinsky looked at Stryker for a long time, his lean face unreadable. Then he turned and went back to the nearest car, his tall figure slumped, his head held low.

  ‘He’s taking this too hard,’ Tos said. ‘It’s not healthy.’

  ‘He had a relationship with the boy,’ Neilson said. ‘Since the boy lost his father, he’s talked to Ned. Leaned on him a bit, I think. So in a way it’s like Ned has lost a son. Well, a stepson, maybe.’

  ‘I didn’t realize they were that close.’ Stryker was surprised.

  Neilson gave half a laugh. ‘Well, apparently Denise takes a long time getting ready to go out on a date, so they had plenty of time to get acquainted. And Ned caught the case of the father’s shooting, brought the neighbour to court, got a conviction. The boy was grateful. He was only about fifteen at the time . . . rough time to lose your father.’

  ‘Any time is a rough time to lose a parent,’ Stryker said. He had lost both while in college, a car accident far away in England, a sudden wrench, the end of his own life in a way, for he’d had to abandon any hope of a law degree. His lively and adored parents had been antique dealers, never wealthy and with minimal life insurance. They always said they were grasshoppers, never providing for the future. In that, they had been prescient – their future never came. Stryker had become a cop out of a need for money and a need for justice. Practising law remained a dream, further away every year, for all his desultory night courses. He was a good police officer and even now was not certain he would have been as good a lawyer. Play it as it lays, he said. But he remembered the pain. ‘Or to lose a child,’ he added. It would take them about fifteen minutes to get downtown to the mayor’s office, where they would have to tell Mrs Sanchez her boy was dead.