One Cold Night

She breathed in heavy beats as she spoke, as if she were running. “Johnson’s already inside. I just got a call the warrant’s in. I want you to get it from the precinct and meet me on Water Street, like, yesterday. Tell Bruno to stay at the precinct and get updated on the witness interviews, and tell him to bug Forensics about the letter — anything they find on that piece of paper, we want to know. You hear me?”
    Dave translated Ramos’s orders into simpler, calmer language, but Bruno’s seasoned ears interpreted the rant right back into it, and he snickered. “Oh, yeah, baby, whatever you say.”
    They pulled up in front of the Eight-four, where Tyrelle LaPierre was already waiting outside with the warrant. Bruno barely stopped before they were off again. The warrant snug in his pocket, Dave watched through the passenger window as the urban scenery morphed and morphed again. From the projects that housed the precinct like a bunion, their short journey flowered past the slick growth of Metrotech Plaza and its midday corporate hubbub, devolved into the tricky vein of Flatbush Avenue, sliced the unspoiled tip of the Heights and then tumbled into the burgeoning Dumbo waterfront.
    They sped down Front Street toward the turn onto Water.
    “Pull over here,” Dave told Bruno. He didn’t want to draw reporters’ attention; even in the city of cities, child abductions were rare, and when they did happen the press ate it up — and they ate you up along with the story. Cops learned to keep a distance from the press until they had something worthwhile to say, a lesson Dave had learned the hard way.
    Bruno stopped and Dave got out, slamming the door. He turned to see Bruno nod heavily, the leather cap dipping over his eyes, and the sense of fondness overcame Dave again.
    “Good luck,” Bruno said, then pulled into a wide U-turn and was gone.
    Dave ducked under a barricade and walked quickly, but not too quickly, along the broken asphalt and cobblestone patchwork of Water Street. He could see that a cadre of reporters had gathered in front of Seventy-seven. It probably meant that Ramos was already inside, that they had seen her go in and swarmed up from Susan’s shop. As he approached the building, hewas surrounded by cameras and microphones. Dave arrowed through the half-tired, half-hungry reporters, issued a tight smile and the requisite, “No comment,” and pressed the intercom button for apartment number three.
    “Dave,” he announced himself.
    After he was buzzed in, he made sure the door clicked shut behind him to stop the reporters getting through. He walked evenly up the hall until he reached the foot of the staircase and, once out of sight, bounded up two steps at a time.
    He was met by an elderly Hispanic woman who guarded the third-floor apartment door with a packed key ring jangling in her arthritis-bent hand. Assumedly she was how Johnson had gotten inside, and hanging around now was her big payoff. Her eyes were black seeds tucked into the leathery folds of her skin, but when she smiled warily at Dave as he entered the apartment, he saw the ghost of a lost, supple beauty.
    Zeb Johnson was standing in the living room, if you could call it that. The only furniture was a single wooden folding chair and a telescope whose lens speared through a tangle of greenery hiding the window on the right.
    Dave nodded at Johnson and, passing him, put the folded warrant into his hand. Keeping his back turned to the woman, Johnson slipped the warrant into his inside breast pocket and withdrew a piece of chewing gum. Now he turned to her and offered her half. It was a slick move, offering to share the gum. With the warrant snug in Johnson’s pocket now, the woman would never know he hadn’t had it before.
    “Thanks, Officer,” the woman said — was she blushing? — “but I can’t with these dentures.”
    Johnson smiled and nodded. He unwrapped the gum and put the entire piece into his mouth.
    From another room, Dave heard Ramos’s high-pitched voice. “Friggin’ true believer’s no different than any other friggin’ man I ever known in my friggin’ life!” Then she kicked something, hard.
    But before Dave could follow his ears, his eyes caught on a mosaic of papers covering every inch of wall space. Pages ripped from books and magazines. Newspaper clippings. An old dimestore photo strip showing Susan’s teenage face check-to-cheek with Peter Adkins — a younger, brighter version of the man in