One Cold Night

this situation, but these detectives worried her. She looked at Dave and squinted her eyes, trying to transmit her thoughts: They had to get some competent detectives down here. He had just stepped forward with the sober expression of someone about to climb out on a limb, when Officer Johnson began a summary of his initial investigation. Susan watched Dave as he kept still and waited, ever polite. She had always admired his diplomacy — he believed that most things eventually resolved themselves — but tonight she did not feel there was time for patience. If he didn’t speak up soon, then she would.
    Johnson finished his summary with, “Detective Strauss might have seen someone up there” — he pointed at the brightly lit window, three buildings down — “looking onto the street.”
    Bruno’s and Ramos’s attention veered simultaneously to the single glowing window. In that quiet moment, their faces shared a look of concentration and seriousness that surprised Susan, supplying the littlest morsel of hope.
    “Johnson,” Ramos said, “get the girl’s stats on theair. Tell ’em we gotta MOS family situation, could be one thing or another but we’re gonna run with it. And get Forensics down here; we want prints and we want ’em ASAP. Mrs. Strauss, you’re gonna show me around your house while we wait on the prints. And you, mi amor, take Detective Strauss over here and pay a visit to that freak in the window.”
    “Hell on heels,” Bruno muttered, as if to himself, though anyone could hear him. “Witch on a broomstick.”
    “Say it if you’re gonna say it.”
    “ That would be unprofessional, baby.”
    Lupe Ramos snickered a little as she consulted her watch, with its pink leather band and rhinestone-outlined face. “Yo, Johnson. When I get back here in twenty, I wanna see bodies. Got it?”
    Officer Johnson nodded. “You got it, Chief.”
    “Mrs. Strauss, you live around here, no?”
    “It’s Susan,” she said, feeling helpless and glancing at Dave for guidance.
    “You go with Detective Ramos.” Dave emphasized detective. “I’ll meet you back here in a little while.” When Ramos took a moment to huddle with Bruno and Johnson, Dave leaned in to Susan and whispered, “I’ll make a call and see what I can find out. Don’t worry yet; the detective squads are filled with characters.”
    Susan and Lupe Ramos walked together along Water Street, quickly, not speaking at first. Except for the scratchy radio sounds of Johnson calling in the broadcast behind them, they walked into a space that felt hushed, eerily silent. The quiet surprised Susan, because in her mind Ramos was wearing — had to be wearing — stiletto heels. Hell on heels. Pain of my existence. She didn’t feel comfortable with either ofthese detectives, but if she had to agree with one of them it would be Bruno, despite his malapropisms. Lupe Ramos was just the kind of person who was hell on wheels and had to be the bane of someone’s existence. Susan looked down at Ramos’s feet to confirm her assumption about the shoes and was surprised to see lace-up canvas sneakers, pink to match her shirt, watch, fingernails and lipstick.
    Ramos noticed her looking. “They my paws,” she said. “I can walk silent anywhere in thems.”
    “They are my paws,” Susan said. “I can walk anywhere in these. ” She hated herself as soon as she issued the corrections; she herself was a college dropout and had no right to correct anyone’s grammar.
    Ramos’s tweezed brows arched sharply up and she slid a dark-eyed look at Susan. “I graduated from Hunter,” she said in a new, sober tone. “Got my master’s in criminal justice from John Jay.”
    She was serious, Susan realized; all of that, before, had been an act.
    “Then why do you act so...?” Stupid was the word Susan couldn’t bring herself to say. She just couldn’t fathom why this woman would deliberately act ditzy when, in fact, she was not.
    “It’s easier playing it to the hilt this way,” Ramos said. “Alexei likes it; they all do. And I get results.”
    They walked into Susan’s lobby. Dex was still on shift at the front door.
    “Did you see Lisa come in?” Susan asked him.
    He shook his head and Susan’s heart dropped a little lower. Dex was the most alert doorman the building had, never ducking out for a cigarette or burying his face in a book; if he hadn’t seen Lisa, then she wasn’t there.
    The women waited in silence for the elevator. When it came