LITMIR.BIZ

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smell of drying blood had made him throw up. Since then, he’d been more careful.

      “I hear he was a psychiatrist,” he said to Gentry.

      “Right. In private practice. His office area is through there,” he added, gesturing in the direction of a hall that ran off the far corner of the living room.

      “Forty-five years old, according to his driver’s license.” This time, Gentry gestured toward the coffee table. Its surface was clear except for a drugstore photo envelope sitting at one end and a wallet at the other.

      “Wallet was in his bedroom,” he said as Travis focused on it. “One of the techs brought it out.”

      The M.E. turned toward the body again and continued giving them details. “Killed last night between about nine and midnight. Four .38-caliber wounds to the chest from close range. Died almost instantly. Nothing indicates he was trying to defend himself.”

      “So he probably knew the killer. Had no concern about letting him in, then got taken by surprise.”

      “That’s how I read it. Oh, and from the angle of the entry wounds I’d say the perp was quite a bit shorter than Parker. Probably not more than five-seven or -eight.”

      “Possibly female, then,” Travis said to Hank. “That could explain why the vic was taken by surprise.”

      He nodded. “A .38’s a lady’s gun.”

      “By the way,” Gentry said, “there’s a contact-in-emergency card in his wallet.”

      Travis picked up the wallet, flipped through it and removed the card.

      Originally, “Adele Langley” and “Mother” had been printed on the next-of-kin and relationship lines. That information had been scratched through and replaced with “Celeste Langley” and “Sister.” The phone number had been changed, as well.

      Absently, he wondered whether the mother had died or if Parker had just decided the sister would make a better contact.

      “Langley, not Parker,” Hank said, peering at the card. “Mother must have remarried before she had the daughter.”

      “Hey, you should be a detective,” Travis told him.

      He grinned. “Yeah, well, guess we’d better send a uniform to the sister’s and let her know what’s happened. Give me that number and I’ll get an address to go with it.”

      As Hank took his cell phone from his pocket, Travis handed him the card. Then he walked over to one of the techs and asked if they’d come across an address book.

      “Uh-huh. There’s one in the end table.”

      “Good. If it hasn’t already been checked for prints would you mind doing that right away? I’d like to take it with me. And there’s got to be an appointment book in the office. Same thing with it. Oh, and if there’s a Rolodex, it, too.”

      “Sure.”

      “Thanks.”

      He’d have to call Parker’s Monday appointments and cancel them, then get one of the support staff to do the same for the rest of the week.

      The apartment would remain a restricted crime scene until they were sure they had everything they needed. And he didn’t want any patients showing up, expecting a session, and finding yellow tape and an officer outside the door.

      After glancing around the room and seeing nothing else that grabbed his attention, he headed back across to the coffee table and picked up the photo envelope. The label on it was dated a year ago; the snapshots looked as if they were from a family gathering of some sort.

      On the back of each picture, in the same neat printing as on the next-of-kin card, were the names of the people in the shot.

      There were three of Parker with the same older woman. Printed on them was “Me and Mom.”

      After flipping past a few more pictures, Travis paused at one of “Mom” standing beside a much younger woman—an attractive blonde.

      “Not bad,” Hank commented, finishing his call and sticking the phone back in his pocket. “But her hair’s too short.”

      Travis turned the photo over. It bore the words “Mom and Celeste.”

      “The sister,” he said, just as the officer outside the door opened it and called, “Detectives?”

      “Yeah?” Hank said.

      “Got a minute?”

      Through the doorway, Travis could see a second uniform in the hallway—clearly dying to tell them something.

      “There’s a guy who’s been staying with a friend in 501,” he began before they’d even stepped out of the apartment. “He came home around ten last night. And when he got off the elevator a woman was in the hall here, hurrying for the stairs. He’d never seen her before, but like I said, he’s only a visitor.”

      Travis glanced toward the staircase at the end of the hallway. Few people on the fifth floor of a building would choose the stairs over an elevator. Not unless they were trying to avoid being seen.

      “Did your guy have any idea which apartment she’d come from?” Hank was asking.

      “No.”

      “Would you mind checking that out for us?” Travis said. “See if anyone on this floor had a female visitor last night. And if they did, get an ID and ask what time she left.”

      “Sure. But I already know nobody’s home in a few of these apartments.”

      “Well, get answers where you can. And if nobody on five can tell you who she was, we’ll want to ask all the occupants about her. How good a description do you have?”

      “Not very. The guy only saw her from the back. But he figured she was in her twenties or thirties and...” The officer checked his notebook. “She looked ‘stylish.’ I don’t know how he could tell that from the back, but it’s what he said. She was average height, with short blond hair, and was wearing a gray trench coat. Had a big black purse slung over her shoulder. Or it might have been a briefcase with a strap. He wasn’t sure.”

      Travis barely registered the last sentence. His mind had caught on the “short blond hair.” He turned to Hank, reading his own thoughts in his partner’s eyes.

      There were probably half a million young women with short blond hair in New York City. Even so, instead of sending a uniform to notify the sister they’d go themselves.

      * * *

      CELESTE REREAD THE SENTENCE a third time. There was something decidedly awkward about it, but she couldn’t quite figure out how to fix it. Finally, she gave up and set her pencil down on top of the manuscript.

      She just hadn’t been working up to speed lately—a serious problem when publishers always wanted a fast turnaround. However, past nine-thirty at night was definitely time to give up.

      After switching off the desk lamp, she wandered from the spare bedroom she used as her office to the living room and stood staring down at the street, wondering how long it would be until she began to feel human once more.

      Months yet, her friends had warned her. Probably a year before she was her old self again. She’d been close to her mother, so she couldn’t expect to just bounce right back to normal.

      Aunt Nancy had even suggested grief counseling, but that simply wasn’t her. She’d always coped with her problems on her own.

      Telling herself that things could only get better, she absently watched a black Mustang pull up in the No Standing zone outside her building’s entrance.

      The two men who climbed out were both tall, dark...and, yes, she’d give both of them handsome, too. They were somewhere in their thirties, and the driver put her in mind of Alec Baldwin.

      That thought had

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