LITMIR.BIZ

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the crime scene?” I asked.

      “To repeat myself, Ryder, I want you to haul your countrified ass to the station. Take a shower, use soap, and get your butt to –”

      Every time I interacted with Folger I felt like a puppet on steel wires. I was mentally worn, physically weary, tired of playing at the edge of the game. I hung the phone up.

      It rang immediately. Folger said, “I hope we got cut off by accident.”

      “You want something from me, you stop treating me like mule dung. I’m included in all meetings, get copies of all reports. Not just Waltz, me.”

      “No way, Bubba. It’s NYPD’s show, not yours. That means I deci—”

      I hung up and studied my watch. The phone rang fourteen seconds later. Folger affected a honey-drenched Southern accent, probably to keep from screaming.

      “Howdy there, Swee’pea. Ah’m sending a radio cah. You prob’bly know Koslowski by now.”

      Not bad, I thought, grabbing my jacket from the closet.

      I figured the doorman was getting tired of Koslowski parking half up on the sidewalk outside the front door, but there wasn’t much he could do about it. I jumped in the cruiser, slammed the door. Koslowski checked the rearview, stomped the gas, and we spun a perfect 180 into the street. He cranked on the music and light show and I watched our flashers bounce from glass-fronted buildings as the speedometer climbed. Koslowski cut between a bread truck and a cab. If there’d been another coat of paint on the cruiser, we wouldn’t have made it.

      Koslowski sniffed the air and seemed happier than last time. He raised an eyebrow. “Three times I pick you up. Three times a woman’s dead. Anything you want to tell me, Dixie?”

      “That’s one unlucky woman.”

      He paused, caught it, laughed. It knocked a bit off the wall between us.

      I said, “Listen, Koslowski, the other day when I wondered what you thought of Shelly Waltz, you told me –”

      He cut the wheel and we swooped around a Con Ed truck, orange traffic cones racked on its bumper. “Yeah, yeah, about Shelly and flying and unicorns and whatnot. I was just kidding with you. Kind of.”

      “How so?”

      He thought and dodged vehicles at the same time. I dared not look out the window.

      “What I was trying to say is there’s people that work stuck to the ground, which is about everybody, and a few people that don’t. They’re not as connected to the regular stuff.”

      “Folks like Shelly.”

      “Yeah. It’s like he’s so far up in his head, thinking, weighing things, that he’s in a place gravity doesn’t reach.” He paused. “I’m not making sense. I ain’t good with words.”

      “You’re doing great, keep going.”

      “Because Shelly’s alone up there with no distractions, he can look down and see how things really are. How they fit together. It makes him a real good detective, the best. But it also makes him alone. I guess that what I meant by Shelly flying through the sky.”

      “He flew at night, you said.”

      “Night’s a more alone place to be.” Koslowski braked, accelerated, braked again as if gathering momentum, then charged past a horse and carriage, getting wide-eyed looks from the passengers.

      “What about the unicorn?” I asked. “What did that mean?”

      He settled into the center lane, shot me a wink.

      “Hell, Dixie, I just threw that in for a mythical reference.”

      We arrived minutes later. There was a cluster of onlookers outside the scene and Koslowski pulled to the curb. I nodded, started to open the door.

      “Thanks for filling me in on things, Koslowski. When I get back South I’m gonna tell NASCAR about you.”

      He tapped my arm to stop me. “One more thing about Shelly. I think you’d like to know.”

      “What’s that?”

      “You know his face – sad, like he’s always coming from a friend’s funeral?”

      “Hard to miss.”

      “I knew him thirty years back. He’d walk into the cop bar, O’Hearns, where it was dark as a friggin’ tomb, and it was like someone let the sun in. Waltz was always smiling, laughing. He had a laugh so bright it was like dimes raining into a punchbowl.”

      “What changed?”

      “No one knows. One day he showed up with the face he wears now, and it never went away.”

      The ageing apartment building had four doors facing the street, two ups, two downs. There was enough of a crowd that three uniforms had to keep people back while a fourth strung yellow scene tape. Several women were crying and hugging one another. I didn’t necessarily take it that they knew the victim; sometimes people just cry and need comfort because they can’t believe the horror in their midst.

      I jumped from the car at the back of the crowd, pushed through as politely as possible, ducked under the tape and started up the walk.

      “Whoa, sport,” a burly uniform said, bringing his baton up to my chest. “Back it up.”

      “I’ve got to get in there, I’m –”

      “Get behind the line.”

      A whistle pierced the air. We both turned and saw Waltz on the porch, fingers in his lips. “He’s good, Bailey,” Waltz yelled, pointing at me and shooting a thumbs-up before going back inside the apartment.

      “Sorry,” Bailey said. I headed up the walk, stepping inside just as the ME’s people exited what I took to be the kitchen. Folger was in there, out of the way, leaning against a wall beside a print technician checking a latent. Waltz appeared at my side, wiping his face with a handkerchief.

      “What is it, Shelly? What happened?”

      “The kind of thing that makes me think about early retirement.”

      I saw the body on the floor just as the medical personnel were moving it to the compressed gurney. The face jammed in the belly was bright with blood. Gaping wounds rent her flesh, fierce dark slashes in stark contrast to her skin. The scent of blood and excrement was overwhelming.

      “Watch the goddamn blood, it’s everywhere,” one of the med techs said, bending to grasp the corpse. Dead bodies aren’t a tenth as maneuverable as they are in movies. They also fart, belch, gurgle, and slip from your hands at inopportune moments.

      “Count of three and up,” the tech said. “One, two … three!”

      Grunting in unison, the two techs lifted the body. A heel of the tech nearest me stepped backward into a scarlet pool and skidded sideways. He went down hard, dropping the body. The concussion popped the head free of the abdomen and it tumbled across the floor and bumped the gurney. The open belly wound vomited intestines.

      “Oh my God,” a young woman from Forensics said, grabbing her mouth and sprinting from the room.

      Someone moved in to bag the head and the body was finally placed on the gurney. I stepped outside and watched the onlookers part to let the ambulance take the body away. Bullard and Cluff worked the crowd, interviewing. I saw Waltz standing in the door of a Tech Services van, the height letting him scan faces in the crowd. He was looking for the face showing too much interest. Psychopathic killers loved to see the reaction to their handiwork. If there was a way to be at the scene, they would.

      Cargyle had driven the van, I figured, the kid leaning against its hood, one of his phones in his hand, the other to his cheek. The victim’s digs belonged to someone with a middle-class income and that almost invariably meant a computer. It would be Technical Services’ job

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