One Cold Night

cigarette.
    “It’s pretty up here.”
    Dave nodded, staring out the window.
    “The Gardiner cops are probably there by now,” Bruno said. “This house, they knew it. But did anyone know this renter, this David Strauss?”
    It was a strange, rhetorical question, and Dave didn’t try to answer it. He glanced at Bruno’s grinningface, cheeks fat like a chipmunk having a bad-facialhair day, then set his eyes back on the cloud-wisped baby-blue sky.
    “Who are you, my friend?” Bruno asked.
    “You just answered yourself.”
    “What does he have against you?”
    Dave allowed a small smile. “I got the girl.”
    “You mean the girls,” Bruno corrected him.
    Of course, Dave thought. Susan and Lisa.
    So that was it: He got the girls.

Chapter 19
    Wednesday, 3:11 p.m.
    Lupe Ramos’s cell phone erupted with its disco serenade moments after Strauss took off for Floyd Bennett Field and his fancy copter ride. It was the kind of call she liked, showing her that her colleagues were doing their jobs, tracking down hard evidence: They had found the telephone handset missing from the Café Luxembourg.
    She took two steps for every one of Zeb Johnson’s long strides, her pink sneakers pawing soundlessly to the squish, squish, squish of his big rubber soles. She was getting used to navigating the uneven cobblestones and could swear she moved quicker now than this morning. They hiked a left onto Main Street, where they were met with a rush of wind and so much sunlight it was like a door had opened. Bridge ramps to the left and right bookended the open space: pale blue sky, green lawn and a steely river calm from no boats frothing the water at the moment. Lunchtime was well over, and fewer people than before lolled in the park. Kids were getting home from school,making her keenly aware that just about now Orlando was realizing she wasn’t home to help him with his social studies project; she’d already left him two voice mails promising to make it up to him with pizza and a movie Saturday night.
    Cops were clustered at the Washington Street entrance to the Brooklyn Bridge Park. The silver CIS van was already there. A rubber-gloved tech was kneeling over the rowboat-shaped sandbox, where the phone handset had been found by a two-year-old digging for treasure. The playground fence was traced with yellow police tape.
    Brooklyn Bridge Park, a sweet little playground between Main and Washington Streets. The jungle gym built like a ship in homage to the river. A stone’s throw from the Bailey-Strauss loft.
    Lupe’s mind couldn’t stop ticking. She knew there was more to this than Peter Adkins, knew it in her bones. A couple of short blond hairs had been collected from the street in front of the chocolate shop and from the Water Street apartment, but it told them little; they’d need DNA to prove they were Adkins’s hair, and that took weeks. What they could do today was identify fingerprints found in the apartment — and on the handset.
    The black handset was crusted with sand. The tech shook it gently over the sandbox, then carefully placed it in a brown paper bag, which he creased shut at the top like it was lunch. It was a different tech from the one she chewed out this morning, but she recognized this guy, and apparently he recognized her too.
    “Got it, boss,” he said. “I’ll tell them to process it stat. Get back to you in about three hours.”
    “Wrong!” Her voice rang out over the playground, the park, the river. “One hour, tops! You got that?”
    She felt how everyone around her froze for a split second. Felt it, and didn’t care. When you were five feet tall and weighed a hundred pounds, your voice was one way you made an impression.
    Fifteen minutes later they were back at the precinct. For hours now the task force detectives had been questioning witnesses, asking questions, having them stew alone in their respective interview rooms, then returning to ask the same questions and see if the answers stayed the same. Now Lupe was ready for her crack at them.
    She sprinted between room A, where she’d stashed Evelyn Sanchez, self-appointed proprietress of Seventy-seven Water Street; room B, where she had Donna Klein, high-falutin wife of the man they were mostly after — apparently her conscience had activated and she’d shown up with an armload of Adkins’s old papers; room C, where she had the dog-walking couple who had seen Lisa last night; and room D, where the five women who had also seen Lisa