another. The delirious, unexpected intensity of the night before was written in Dick’s face. She saw clearly: he was grateful. It touched her, made her think that maybe there was still something left after all.
“I—” The words seemed to die in her throat. They were so unfamiliar, so long unsaid.
Dick had come to her wordlessly, in the dark, just as she was falling asleep. He had embraced her, his body hot and trembling, and had awakened in her a painful rush of feeling. Maybe she
“What, Becky?”
“I don’t know. Just wanted to say good-bye.” But not I love you, not that again, not yet. And she felt like a heel for holding back, a selfish heel.
“Don’t make it sound so final.” He chuckled. “The worst I’ll get is early retirement. If the shooflies are real good they might give you a five-day. Don’t let it bug you, darling. And by the way, there’s something else I want to say to you before you go.” He rolled over on his back, throwing off the covers, exposing his naked body and erect penis with delightful lack of modesty. “You still remain one of the great American lays, darling.”
And she was beside him, bending over him, kissing his smiling face. “Dick, you silly fool, look at you. You never get enough.”
“I’m a morning man.”
“And a night man and an afternoon man. I wish I didn’t have to go! I’ll call you when I get the chance.” She drew herself away from him, full of a confusion of emotions. Why couldn’t she make up her mind about this: did she still love Dick Neff or didn’t she? And what about Wilson, what did her feelings for him mean?
She rode the elevator down to the garage level and got in her car. As soon as she started driving her mind closed around the case. The night with Dick receded, as did the welter of emotions she had been feeling. Like a murky, ugly fog the case rose and recaptured her. Wilson hadn’t said much over the phone, not much. But he had sounded uncharacteristically upset. Evans had been with him at Police Headquarters. She glanced at her watch: seven A.M. An early hour for Doctor Evans. She stepped on the accelerator, racing across Seventy-ninth Street in the snow, heading for the point of rendezvous, Central Park West and Seventy-second.
The streets were empty as she maneuvered the car around the corner at Seventy-ninth and CPW. She was now in the 20th Precinct. Ahead she could see the flashing lights, the dismal little crowd of emergency vehicles that always marked a crime scene. She pulled up behind a parked radio car. “I’m Neff,” she said to the lieutenant on the scene.
“We got a funny one,” he intoned. “Anticrime boys found this bench covered with frozen blood about an hour ago. We took it to pathology and sure enough it’s human. O-negative, to be exact. But we got no corpse, nothin’.”
“How do you know it was a murder?”
“There’s evidence enough. First off, too much blood, whoever lost it had to die. Second, we can see where the body was pulled across the wall.” Her eyes went to the indentations in the snow that lay along the wall. More snow had fallen since the murder, but not enough to completely obliterate the signs. “By the way, Detective Neff, if I may be so blunt, why are you here?”
“Well, I’m on special assignment with my partner, Detective Wilson. We’re investigating a certain M.O. When the M. E. finds a case that seems to fit he gives us a call.”
“You take your orders from the M. E.?”
“We were instructed by the Commissioner.” She hadn’t wanted to pull rank, but she sensed that he was needling her. He smiled a little sheepishly and strolled away. “Lieutenant,” Neff called, “is this blood all you have? No body, no clothing, nothing?”
“Hold on, Becky,” a voice said behind her. It was Evans, followed closely by Wilson. The two men came up and the three of them huddled together under the curious eyes of the men of the 20th and Central Park precincts. “There’s more,” Evans said, “there’s some hair.”
“He’s examined some hairs that were stuck in the blood.”
“Right. This is my interpreter, Detective Wilson. I found hairs—”
“That match the hairs found at the DiFalco scene.”
Evans frowned. “Come on, Wilson, lay off. The hairs match the ones we’ve found at every scene.”
“They’re pretty voracious if they only left blood,” Becky said.
“They didn’t. Don’t you see what happened? They hid the remains. They’ve learned that we’re on their tail and they’re trying to slow us down. They’re very bright.”
“That’s for certain,” Wilson said. Becky noticed how haggard he looked, his face waxen, his jaw unshaven. Had he slept at all? It didn’t look like it. He cleared his throat. “Are they searching for the corpse?” he asked the Lieutenant, who was standing nearby.
“Yeah. There’s some sign of something being dragged, but the snow covered most of the evidence up. We’re just not sure what happened.”
Becky motioned to Wilson and Evans. They followed her into her car. “It’s warmer here,” she said, “and the Loo won’t overhear us.”
Evans was the first to speak. “Obviously they were hiding behind the wall when somebody sat on the bench. Judging from the blood it happened five or six hours ago. They must have jumped over the wall, killed fast and dragged the corpse away.”
“Not in one piece,” Wilson said. “There’d be more marks. I think they tore it up and carried it.”
“Jesus. But what about the clothes?”
“That’s what we ought to be able to find. The bones, too, for that matter, there aren’t too many places they could have hidden them.”
