“You’re a good man, Charlie Brown,” she toldhim.
He got to his feet. “Nah. Mark Twain saidthe best way to cheer yourself is to cheer someone else, so I’m being selfish.”He cracked another smile, went to his own desk and sat facing her. Poked at hisfiles for a few seconds, then raised his eyes back to her. She looked reallytired. Still pretty, now pulling her hair back into its usual ponytail, butthere were dark circles under her dark blue eyes and her tall, slender framelooked suddenly thinner. The collar of her white blouse looked too big on her;ditto the pants of her black pants suit.
“Take a day, Kerri. Go home. What littlesleep you’ve gotten has been up in the crib. Don’t you have plants to water orsomething?”
As Sergeant he was also her boss, tellingher nicely before pressing harder as he sometimes had to do. Kerri knew the boundariesof their give and take; knew too when she could say no.
“Home is lonely. The plants are watered andthe cat has enough Meow Mix for a week.” She pulled some folders to her andopened the top two. “I’ll just do some of this cheery light reading todecompress,” she said, letting out a pent-up sigh. “That hedge funder who sayshe didn’t drown his wife in the bathtub. That mother of the year who says her kidfell accidentally off the fire escape.”
Abruptly, she got up. “But first I shower. Yech,that reeking, murdering POS touched me.”
He caught her arm as she started past. “We’llstill get him. They’re going to be sitting on him every move he makes. He’llmake another mistake and we’ll get him.”
“Will he have to murder someone elsefirst?” she grimaced. It obsessed her that women were so easy to harm.
Jo Babiak, another detective, came and puta new folder on Kerri’s desk. “Unpleasant update on that missing coed,” shesaid. “They’re about to close the case, declare her a runaway.”
Kerri frowned at the folder’s label: SashaPerry. “No way. That’s a homicide.”
Jo shrugged unhappily. “Agreed, but hard toprove with no body. She disappeared in June.”
Kerri flipped open the folder. A blonde lookedup at her from what would have been her graduation photo: pretty,delicate-looking with a crooked smile. Anger re-took the hurting detective’sheart, which was good, it was a fast cure for depression. “There is no way thisgirl wanted to die or disappear,” Kerri said bitterly. “She was thrilled about graduating.Wanted to become a vet - rescued animals, for God’s sake.”
“Yeah, this one hurts,” Jo said, catchingAlex’s grim head shake that said he felt the same. Over two months, Sasha Perryhad been missing. Everything pointed to foul play but there was no way to proveit; it was hard, even, to investigate. The P.D. had really worked this, triedto build a case, collected hundreds of witness statements but were left withbig holes.
Sasha had been a student at NYU. It wasAugust. Friends and friends of friends were scattered. Funds had run out for this.The door was about to close and every detective in the squad now worried aboutKerri, who’d become obsessed with the case. Was found, after double shifts,exhausted and still poring over evidence, rereading witness statements, gettingnowhere.
They had taken turns helping her when theycould, but they’d all started to shake their heads. Gotta give it up, Kerri…
Gently, she straightened Sasha Perry’sphoto in the folder, then closed it and placed it on her desk. “I’m going toshower and be back in five minutes,” she said. “Can we talk more about this?”
Alex was now on his phone, but Jo said yes.“In an hour if I don’t get called. That woman who says she didn’t kill herboyfriend-”
Her phone went off too. She answered,rolled her eyes at Kerri. She and her partner Buck Dillon had been called out.
Kerri rushed off, in a hurry to be back.
5
Beth Harms, surprisingly,tried to veto the Prince Street loft, on the grounds that it was “trouble.”
As undergraduates, Beth had served as thepragmatic brakes to Liddy’s too-easy leaps from practicality. They’d becomefriends in one of their art history classes; had bonded further in their studioart and over boyfriend and financial troubles and Beth’s divorce and years ofstruggling to get gallery representation. Beth was a born New Yorker, with herhealthy cynicism built in. Liddy came from a small town upstate, the youngestin a family often too busy or overwhelmed to pay much attention to her, soshe’d grown up lonely, in her own world, reading and sketching compulsively. Evennow, as they met first at a sidewalk cafe on Soho’s Spring Street, Liddy’s handzoomed her charcoal pencil around in one of the sketchbooks she carriedeverywhere.
Paul wanted to know why the loft would betrouble. “The price sounds right.”
“Well...” Beth put down her lemonade, stilladmiring Liddy’s sketch of a dark-haired woman who had passed them minutesbefore. “Amazing,” she said. “You only caught a glimpse of her.”
“But she was so striking.” Liddy smudgedcharcoal into the lines of the woman’s dark eyes. Her hand worked. Beth turnedback to Paul.
“For starters, the place is going to need work.The owner trashed it. Charlie Bass, ever hear of him?”
They hadn’t.
“He was a troubled actor who had a role inthat whatchamacallit vampire movie, and he…ah, hung himself. The joist is stillthere, bent where he did it.”
Liddy’s hand holding her pencil stoppedmotionless. “How awful.”
“But it’s near,” Paul said, finding a voicemailon his phone, cursing that it was Carl Finn his research partner probablywondering where he was. “If we don’t see the place we’ll be curious.”
He rose and paced near the shade of theirumbrella to argue into his phone about “different mechanisms” and “modify thecompound” and “Propofol analogue, it’s the analogue!”
Beth watched him for a moment. “Carl’sworking today?” she asked Liddy. “It’s Sunday.”
“He’s manic.”
“Back on uppers?”
“Up, down, up, down.”
“He’s an M.D. Nice when you can prescribe foryourself.”
“Definitely. So…the loft?”
Beth leaned closer. “It isn’t thatbad,” she said low. “Just depressing even for me, and I’m the listing brokerand – given those awful dreams you’ve been having…”
“They’re lessening.”
“Lessening but more intense when they happen.You told me.”
“Yes but…” Liddy inhaled, seeing her feardream of this morning flashing in her mind for just a
