didn’t say anything. Maybe she would let him drive back to the station.
She was a bit surprised to see that patrol cars had almost half the street blocked off, even though there were very few curious onlookers and not much in the way of traffic. The address in question was a six-storey tenement that Ruby had visited with Rita a few times in the past.
“Is this an actual residence or a squat?” Pasco asked her as they went up the chipped concrete steps to the front door.
“Both,” Ruby told him. She wasn’t actually sure any more herself.
The uniform standing at the entrance was a young guy named Fraley; Ruby thought he looked about twelve years old, despite the thick moustache he was sporting. He opened the door for them as if that were really what he did for a living.
The smell of urine in the vestibule was practically a physical blow; she heard a sharp intake of breath from Pasco behind her.
“Straight from the perfume counter in hell,” she said wryly. “Ever wonder why it’s always the front of the building, why they don’t take a few extra seconds to run to the back?”
“Marking their territory?” Pasco suggested.
“Good answer.” Ruby glanced over her shoulder at him, impressed.
There was another uniformed officer in the hallway by the stairs, a tall black woman named Desjean whom Ruby recognized as a friend of Rita’s. “Sorry to tell you this,” she told them, “but your crime scene’s on the roof and there’s no elevator.”
Ruby nodded, resigned. “Do we know who it is?”
Desjean’s dark features turned sad. “Girl about twelve or thirteen. No ID.”
Ruby winced, feeling acid bubbling up in her chest. “Great. Sex crime.”
“Don’t know yet,” the uniform replied. “But, well, up on the roof?”
“Local kid?” Ruby asked.
Desjean shook her head. “Definitely not.”
Ruby looked at the stairs and then at Pasco. “You can go first if you think you might go faster.”
Pasco blew out a short breath. “I’m a geek, not a track star.” He frowned. “Ostertag did tell you that, didn’t he?”
“Uh, yeah,” Ruby said, unsure as to whether he was kidding around or not. “Before we go up, one thing.”
“Don’t talk to you on the way?” He nodded. “The feeling’s mutual.”
She felt a brief moment of warmth toward him. Then the Dread overwhelmed it, crushing it out of existence, and she started up the stairs.
A uniformed sergeant named Papoojian met them just outside the door on the roof. “Kid with a telescope spotted the body and called it in,” she told them as they stood catching their breath. “I sent a couple of officers over to get a preliminary statement from him and his very freaked-out parents.”
“Kid with a telescope.” Ruby sighed. “I don’t know if that’s an argument for closed-circuit TV surveillance or against it.”
The sergeant looked up at the sky worriedly. “I wish the lab guys would hurry up and get here with a tent or we’re gonna have regular TV surveillance to deal with. I’m surprised the news helicopters aren’t buzzing us already.”
As if on cue, there was the faint sound of a chopper in the distance. Immediately, one of the other three uniformed cops on the roof produced a blanket and threw it over the body, then turned to look a question at Papoojian. Papoojian nodded an OK at him and turned back to Ruby. “If the lab has a problem with that, tell them to get in
Ruby waved a hand. “You got nothing to worry about. No ID on the body?”
The sergeant shook her curly head. “Except for a charm on her bracelet with the name
“There’s a name you don’t hear much these days.” Ruby looked over at the blanket-covered form. She was no longer panting from the long climb, but for some reason, she couldn’t make herself walk the twenty feet over to where the body lay on the dusty gravel.
“Hey, you caught that other case with the kid,” Papoojian said suddenly. “The dumpster boy.”
Ruby winced inwardly at the term. “Yeah.”
“They dumping all the murdered kid cases on you now?”
She shrugged, taking an uncomfortable breath against the Dread, which now seemed to be all but vibrating in her midsection.
Was this what she had been dreading, she wondered suddenly—murdered children?
It almost felt as if she were tearing each foot loose from slow-hardening cement as she urged herself to go over and look at the victim, Pasco at her elbow with an attitude that seemed oddly dutiful.
“Ever see a dead kid?” she asked him in a low voice.
“Not like this,” Pasco replied, his tone neutral.
“Well, it’s gruesome even when it’s not gruesome,” she said. “So brace yourself.” She crouched down next to the body and lifted the blanket.
The girl was lying face up, her eyes half-closed and her lips slightly parted, giving her a sort of preoccupied expression. She might have been in the middle of a daydream, except for the pallor.
“Well, I see why Desjean was so sure the girl wasn’t local,” Ruby said.
“Because she’s Japanese?” he guessed.
“Well, there are a few Japanese in east midtown, not many, but I was referring to her clothes.” Ruby shifted position, trying to relieve the pressure from the way the Dread was pushing on her diaphragm. It crossed her mind briefly that perhaps what she thought of as the Dread might actually be a physical problem. “That’s quality stuff she’s got on. Not designer but definitely boutique. You get it in the more upscale suburban malls. I have grandchildren,” she added in response to Pasco’s mildly curious expression.
She let the blanket drop and pushed herself upright, her knees cracking and popping in protest. Pasco gazed down at the covered body, his smooth, deep-gold face troubled.
“You OK?” Ruby asked him.
He took a deep breath and let it out.
“Like I said, kids are gruesome even when they’re not—”
“I think this is related to this case I’ve been working on.”
“Really.” She hid her surprise. “We’ll have to compare notes, then. Soon.”
He didn’t answer right away, looking from the blanket to her with a strange expression she wasn’t sure how to read. There was something defensive about it, with more than a little suspicion as well. “Sure,” he said finally, with all the enthusiasm of someone agreeing to a root canal.
Ruby felt a mix of irritation and curiosity, which was quickly overridden by the Dread. She couldn’t decide whether to say something reassuring or simply assert her authority and reassure him later, after she knew she had his cooperation.
Then the crime lab arrived, saving her from having to think about anything from the immediate situation. And the Dread.
At the end of the day, Pasco managed to get away without talking about his case. It was possible of course that he had not been purposely trying to elude her. After spending most of the day talking to, or trying to talk to, the people in the building, checking on the results of the door-to-door in the neighbourhood, looking over the coroner’s shoulder, and through it all pushing the Dread ahead of her like a giant boulder uphill, she was too tired to care.
She made a note about Pasco in her memo book and then dragged herself home to her apartment where she glanced at an unopened can of vegetable soup before stripping off and falling into bed, leaving her clothes in a heap on the floor.
