Seven Minutes to Noon

was crazy to doubt her, Alice decided; the girl was pure charm.
    Alice reached down for Ethan’s dinosaur pajamas and put them on the counter.
    “Need a bag for these?”
    “I’ll just put them here.” Sylvie folded the pajamas neatly into her canvas purse with its long shoulder strap and large blocks of color. She had been in Brooklyn four years and had mastered the look of the New Local woman — understated clothes, easy hair, a casual bag slung across her middle.
    “Are you going over to Garden Hill today?” Alice asked. “I’ve been playing phone tag with that broker you recommended. I can’t remember who owes who a call, I’ve been so distracted. But she must know what’s going on.”
    “Oh yes, if it’s happening, Pam will surely know about it. But no, today I’m not working there. I’m taking a walk and running some errands. It’s such a lovely morning.”
    Alice glanced at the window. The sun was out in full force. “Enjoy it,” she said, just as Maggie appeared on the sidewalk out front and charged through the door. She was breathless, her forehead speckled with drops of sweat.
    “Did you hear?” Maggie asked.
    “Hear what?” Alice leaned over the cool stone of the counter.
    “Over at the canal,” Maggie said. “They found a body.”

Chapter 8
    “Come on,” Maggie said. “We’ll call Martin later and explain.” She set the brown paper bag on the counter. “Sylvie, can you watch the shop?”
    “Yes, of course.”
    Alice and Maggie left the store. Maggie started to run, then slowed down so Alice could keep up.
    “It could be nothing.” Alice’s head had begun to throb.
    “It can’t be nothing,” Maggie said, “but it may not be her.”
    By Degraw Street Alice’s lungs were burning. They turned the corner and from two blocks away could see the chaos. There were four blue-and-white police cars, two dark sedans, a dented white van with its side door gaping and an ambulance, lights revolving in eerie silence.
    Alice and Maggie had both slowed to a trot by the time they crossed Bond Street, where the blunt end of Degraw quickly turned derelict. Bands of hastily strung yellow police tape separated a cluster of onlookers from the area surrounding the bank of the canal. People were gathered on the sidewalk by a strip of dried earth that strangely boasted a plaque announcing a Parks Department urban renewal project; another good intention unfulfilled. Police and plainclothes detectives swarmed the garbage-strewn landing overlooking the end of the canal. Men and women wearing tight plastic gloves were collecting things into paper bags. Evidence. Alice rememberedreading once in the newspaper that evidence was collected in paper bags, not plastic, to avoid the damaging effects of moisture.
    Alice and Maggie stood with the onlookers, attention fixed on the low metal fence at the crest of the canal’s muddy bank. The fence was covered in graffiti and malformed as if someone had rammed a truck into it.
    Frannie stood in a deep bend in the fence. Hands jammed into her pockets, she seemed to be watching something below. Her face, tilted toward the canal, showed a case-hardened weariness that jolted Alice. Frannie’s forehead was clenched tight, eyes skewered on some new, ugly truth.
    Maggie squeezed next to Alice in the crowd. Together they struggled to look where Frannie was looking. In the distance, Alice saw nothing but a blur of refuse: a shopping cart tipped out of the muddy water, a kid’s bike wheel covered in algae, a deflated pink condom hanging off a craggy branch jutting from the bank. Staked into the ground just next to Frannie was a yellow traffic sign in the shape of a diamond. END, it said, with awful simplicity. Someone had felt the twisted need to add to that sentiment in black marker: boned a bitch here. Alice wanted to cry.
    “What’s happening?” Alice asked a police officer who was just then coming toward them.
    “Crime scene,” was all he said before turning his back on the gaggle of curious citizens.
    “Wait! Officer!” Maggie shouted.
    Frannie turned around and saw them, then twisted back to face the canal. Alice now noticed Detective Giometti down on the muddy bank with his brown work boots toed into the water. His hands were planted on his hips and he too was staring at something.
    “What’s happening down there?” Maggie called to the officer, who glanced back to answer.
    “Divers.”
    There was no shade and the sun grew hotter over them, as