Ghosts

Ed McBain

GHOSTS

1

They might have been ghosts themselves, the detectives who stood in the falling snow around the body of the woman on the sidewalk. Shrouded by the swirling flakes, standing in snow three inches deep underfoot, they huddled like uncertain specters against the gray facade of the apartment building behind the slain woman. The two Homicide men who stood on the pavement with Detective Cotton Hawes were wearing black overcoats and gray fedoras. Hawes was hatless. His red hair shrieked into the monochromatic hush, echoing the blood that stained the woman’s clothing. There was a streak of white just above Hawes’s left temple, the memento of a scuffle while investigating a burglary; it seemed almost a wider patch of the snow crystals that glistened in his hair.

The Homicide detectives stood with their hands in the pockets of their overcoats. This was four days before Christmas, and the time was 7:00 P.M. Monoghan had not yet bought a present for his wife; neither had Monroe. The stores would be open till 9:00 tonight, and they had planned to go shopping the moment they were relieved at a quarter to 8:00. Instead, they’d taken the call from the Eight-Seven, and Christ alone knew how long they’d be here on the sidewalk with Hawes and his partner Carella, who was standing at the curb talking to the patrolman who’d been first at the scene.

“Musta been coming home with her groceries,” Monoghan said.

“Yeah, look at that stuff all over the sidewalk,” Monroe said.

“Wheaties,” Monoghan said.

“She eats the breakfast of champions,” Monroe said.

“Used to eat,” Monoghan corrected.

“Knocked her ass over teacups,” Monroe said.

“She’s got good legs,” Monoghan said.

The woman on the sidewalk seemed to be in her early thirties. She was a white woman, and she was wearing a plain cloth coat open over a white blouse, black skirt, and black boots. The front of the blouse, just under her left breast, had been slashed when the knife entered her chest. The entire left side of the blouse was drenched with blood. The skirt had pulled back over her thighs when she fell to the sidewalk. She lay on her back, arms and legs akimbo, one fist clenched, the brown shopping bags scattered around her, one of them torn, their contents strewn. The strap of a black shoulder bag had fallen loose to her elbow.

“Did you check her handbag yet?” Monoghan asked.

“I’m waiting for the techs to get here,” Hawes said.

“Guy who did it could be in Outer Mongolia, time the techs get here.”

“They’re on the way,” Hawes said.

“Did you call the ME?”

“I’m not new on the job,” Hawes said.

“Oh, he’s not new on the job,” Monoghan said to his partner.

“He’s old on the job,” Monroe said, and took out his handkerchief and blew his nose. He was coming down with a cold, and he didn’t need to be standing here in the snow with a smartass dick from the 87th. But in the city for which these men worked, the appearance of Homicide detectives at the scene of a murder was mandatory; the detectives who’d answered the squeal at the precinct would be handling the case and were required to file regular reports with Homicide.

Detective Steve Carella turned from the radio motor patrol car. He was a tall, slender white man with the casual stride of an athlete, and he came walking over slowly, seemingly lost in thought, his head bent. His eyes—squinted now against the falling snow—were somewhat slanted, giving his face a faintly Oriental look that intensified the semblance of deep, inscrutable meditation. Like Hawes, he was hatless. Like Hawes, he was wearing a plaid mackinaw over a woolen shirt and corduroy trousers; they had just returned from a fruitless warehouse stakeout when the call came in.

“Beat officer recognizes the woman,” he said. “She lives in the building right here, he doesn’t know her name.”

“I told your partner here to go through her bag,” Monoghan said.

“New regs call for the techs to do that,” Carella said.

“Fuck the new regs,” Monoghan said. “We’re standin’ here freezin’ our asses off, and you’re worried about the new regs.”

“You want to authorize it?” Carella said.

“I ain’t authorized to authorize it,” Monoghan said.

“Okay then, we wait for the techs. Meanwhile, I’d like to talk to the security guard. You want to listen in?”

“Better than standing out here in the snow,” Monoghan said.

“I’ll start the sketch, Steve,” Hawes said.

“Better get them crime scene signs up,” Monroe advised over his shoulder, and followed Carella and Monoghan into the building. The apartment complex was part of a citywide project to reclaim deteriorating slums. It rose in concrete and glass splendor on the outer fringes of the 87th, replacing half a dozen tenements that had previously squatted here. The security guard was a white man in his early sixties, Carella guessed, wearing a gray uniform with a yellow and blue Security Patrol patch on the left arm. He looked apprehensive and wary, as if the cops were about to blame him for something.

“I’m Detective Carella, 87th Squad,” Carella said. “These men are from Homicide.”

The security guard nodded and then wet his lips.

“What’s your name?” Carella asked.

“Jimmy Karlson.”

“Are you the regular security guard here, Mr. Karlson?”

“Yes, sir. Well, there are four of us—five, actually, if you count the one after midnight.”

“What are your shifts?”

“Six A.M. to twelve noon, noon to six P.M., six to midnight, and midnight to six. Four shifts. On the midnight to six, we’ve got an extra man patrolling the grounds with a dog.”

“What time did you come on tonight, Mr. Karlson?”

“Six. Well, actually a little after. I don’t have snow tires on the car, and I got held up by the storm.”

“Do you know we’ve got a dead lady outside?” Monoghan asked.

“Yes, sir, I do. The man who found her came in here to make the call, in fact.”

“Who was that?” Carella asked.

“I don’t know. He said there was somebody hurt on the sidewalk and asked if he could use the phone. Soon as he made the call, he walked off. I guess he didn’t want to get involved.”

“And what did you do?” Monroe asked.

“I went outside to see what it was.”

“Did you recognize the woman?”

“Yes, she lives here in the building. Esposito, Apartment 701.”

“What’s her first name?” Monoghan asked.

“I don’t know.”

“She married, single?” Monroe said.

“Married. Her husband should be home any minute, in fact.”

“Did you see anything that happened out there?” Carella asked.

“No, sir, I did not. The security desk is sort of off to the right here. I couldn’t have seen anything happening out there on the sidewalk.”

“Did you see Mrs. Esposito when she left the building?”

“No, sir, I did not. That would have been this morning sometime. She goes to work, you see, and she usually gets home just after I’ve come on—maybe ten after, a quarter after six.”

“Stopped to pick up some groceries, just like I told you,” Monoghan said to Monroe.

The patrolman Carella had been talking to just a few minutes earlier came walking over from the RMP car. He looked troubled. He hesitated before opening the glass door to the lobby, and then stamped snow from his shoes, and again hesitated before he said what he had to say, like a king’s messenger fearful of losing his head for bringing bad news.