Holiday Grind

this stretch, and the few commercial businesses I’d passed were shuttered. Uneasy on this desolate street, I was about to throw in the towel and abandon my search when I spied a familiar sight a little farther up the block: Alf’s bright green Traveling Santa sleigh!

For a moment, I was elated. Then I saw that the green sleigh was parked alone on the sidewalk, its red wheels propped against the curb, white powder piling up on its surface.

Okay, this makes no sense.

Under the weak glow of a streetlamp, I could see that the cash box was still on Alf’s little cart. The box was really a round plastic container about the size of a large soup pot. The top of the container was molded to look like a pile of presents, and it slid into a much larger plastic case on the sleigh that was shaped to look like Santa’s big red bag. Pedestrians threw their cash donations through a small hole at the top of the cash “present” box. Because it was removable from the sleigh by a hidden handle, Alf always brought the plastic cash box into the Blend with him. He never let it out of his sight. So there was no way he’d leave it unguarded on the street like this.

Alarmed now, I approached Alf’s sleigh along the slippery sidewalk. The structures on this street were mostly brick, their ground-floor windows either curtained or shuttered, emitting little light. The sleigh had been left at the mouth of a narrow alley between two seven-story apartment buildings—twin century-old warehouses that had been gutted and remodeled into high-priced lofts.

Reaching the sleigh, I finally saw that Alf’s plastic cash box was broken open, only a few coins left inside. More coins were on the ground, making little round sinkholes in the snow. There were footprints in the powder— two sets of prints. Both led away from the sleigh, into the alley. Only one set of footprints came out again. They continued down the sidewalk in the direction of the river.

Those can’t be Alf’s footprints, I decided. Why would he head toward the river and leave his sleigh behind?

I decided to follow the other tracks of footprints in the snow, the ones leading into the shadowy alley. I had to make sure Alf wasn’t lying at the end of those prints, hurt, bleeding, even unconscious.

I couldn’t see much as I moved toward the narrow passage between the buildings, just a gunmetal gray garbage Dumpster. But as I moved farther in, I realized the alley eventually opened up into a snow-covered courtyard.

“Alf?” I called. A wind gust suddenly howled, swallowing my voice. I called out again, stronger this time, but there was no reply, no movement.

I dug into my pocket and pulled out my keychain flashlight. The beam was weak, but it was better than the dingy dark. I stepped forward, paralleling the two sets of snow prints that led into the alley. Both sets of tracks were larger than my own small boots, and I took care not to disturb either one.

As my flashlight beam glanced along the white surface, a flash of cheery red color suddenly made me stop. I pulled the light back and saw the Santa hat.

“Hello!” I shouted, more urgently than before. “Alf! Are you here?”

Again no one answered.

I stooped to pick up the hat, and that’s when I saw the shiny black boots. They were sticking out from behind the gray Dumpster.

For a moment, I stood still as a gravestone, staring at Alf’s boots, vaguely aware of St. Luke’s bells ringing the hour. The church wasn’t far—not physically—but in that frozen flicker of time those clear, innocent, beautifully pure peals sounded as if they were coming from another world.

A second later I was down, kneeling over my red-suited friend sprawled in the snow. “Alf, can you hear me? Alf!”

He couldn’t. Choking back a scream, I realized Alfred Glockner was dead.

Four

In the frigid air, my breath was still forming little pearl-colored clouds. No steam was coming from Alf’s lips or nose because there was no surviving the gaping hole in his chest or the amount of lost blood pooled around his body.

Despite the clear evidence, I went through the motions, checking for any way to help him. I played the flashlight across his wide, unfocused eyes, looking for a reaction. There was none. His wrist had no pulse; neither did his neck.

I pulled out my cell and dialed 911. The call was answered immediately by a female operator who took down all the information. She told me to remain at the scene in order to speak with the investigating officers. Finally, the woman asked if I wanted to stay on the phone with her until the officers arrived.

“No,” I said. “I need the line.”

I was still kneeling, the cold, wet snow soaking through the legs of my jeans. I didn’t care. I hit speed dial. When I heard the reassuring timbre of Detective Mike Quinn’s gravelly voice, I started ranting—only to realize I was talking to his prerecorded message telling me to leave my name and number. When the tone sounded, I took a breath.

“It’s Clare. Call me back as soon as you have the chance...”

I was tempted to say more, but Mike was on the job now. If he wasn’t picking up, there was a good reason. He could very well be at a crime scene of his own.

After getting the commendation last spring for taking down a major West Side dealer of prescription drugs—a case I helped him solve—his superiors asked him to continue heading up the “OD Squad,” the nickname for a city- wide task force recently formed out of the Sixth Precinct to document criminality in cases of narcotic drug overdoses.

Tonight he was overseeing an operation in Queens, which meant, even if he had picked up, he would still be an hour’s drive away.

I wasn’t the one who’d been shot in this alley; I was perfectly okay, and the police were on their way. A hysterical message from me wouldn’t do either of us any good. So I ended the call, closed my eyes to gain some objectivity, and shifted the beam to illuminate Alf’s wound.

Judging from the scorch marks on the breast of the velvet Santa suit, Alf had been shot at point-blank range. The lapel pocket was turned inside out—no doubt when the mugger rifled Alf’s pockets. The killer had ripped open Alf’s costume, too, using so much force that one of the big white Traveling Santa suit’s signature buttons was ripped off.

I passed my flashlight over the nearby snow, but I didn’t see the button. I did, however, see Alf’s blood. There was so much of it pooled around him, it was impossible to miss. Its warmth had even melted the snow around it, forming a gory pile of pinkish slush.

I stilled, realizing something for the first time: Alf’s blood hasn’t frozen solid yet. In weather like this, that could only mean one thing: He was shot very recently.

About then I noticed my hands were shaking. I was upset about Alf, of course, and beginning to feel very cold, but I knew something else was making me shiver.

I reminded myself that the perpetrator of this horrible crime was gone. I’d called out to Alf enough times that anyone lurking in the shadows would have been scared away. And that single trail of footprints I’d noticed coming out of the alley was heading away from the scene and toward the river. That had to be a trail of the killer’s prints, I thought.

But what if they aren’t?

There was a slim possibility that Alf’s murderer was demented enough to hang around the crime scene. The shooter could be lurking in the shadows, watching me right now. I swallowed hard and hit another button on my speed dial.

Matt answered on the first ring. “Clare! Where are you? You left without me—”

“It’s Alf. I found him lying in the snow. Someone shot him. He’s dead.”

Matt’s breath caught.

“I’m not hurt,” I quickly added. “I’m just waiting for the police.”