KLING: Did your cousin live with you, is that it?
PATRICIA: Yes. She came to live with us when I was thirteen. Her parents got killed in an automobile accident on the turnpike.
CARELLA: Do you have any brothers or sisters, Patricia?
PATRICIA: Yes, I have an older brother.
CARELLA: What’s his name?
PATRICIA: Andrew Lowery.
CARELLA: How old is he?
PATRICIA: Nineteen.
CARELLA: Does he still live at home?
PATRICIA: Yes.
CARELLA: Was he at the party tonight?
PATRICIA: No, he was working.
KLING: What kind of work does he do?
PATRICIA: Well, it’s only part-time. There’s this steak joint on the Stem, they call him when they need help, usually on a Saturday night. I guess if he hadn’t been working, he’d have come to the party with us. And then what happened wouldn’t have happened.
KLING: Do you want to tell us what happened now?
PATRICIA: Yes. We were standing in the hallway there, looking out at the rain. I didn’t think it would ever let up. I kept telling Muriel we should just make a run for it, you know, but she didn’t want to ruin her dress. It was coming down in sheets by then, I guess she was right. Still—
KLING: What time was this?
PATRICIA: It must’ve been close to eleven.
CARELLA: Go on.
PATRICIA: There was nobody on the street, everything was deserted because it was raining so hard. We must’ve stood in the hallway there for at least five minutes without even seeing a car go by. Then — I still don’t know how he got there, he must’ve been in the building all along, maybe, sleeping in one of the empty apartments or something — this man was suddenly there. He just stepped out of the shadows behind us, and he grabbed Muriel by the wrist, and she screamed, or at least she started to scream. But then she saw he had a knife and she shut up even before he told her to shut up. I guess my first reaction was to run, to get away from there. But he was holding the knife on Muriel, and I figured if I did anything like that, he might hurt her just out of spite. So I stood there. I guess you just figure, in a situation like that, that it isn’t going to get worse, it’s just going to work out someway, somebody’ll come to save you.
CARELLA: Did you recognize this man? Was he anyone you knew, or anyone you’d seen before?
PATRICIA: No. He was a perfect stranger.
CARELLA: Can you describe him to us?
PATRICIA: Yes. He was a tall man. About as tall as you, I would say. Six-two, or six-three.
CARELLA: That would make him taller than I am.
PATRICIA: Well, no, he was about your height. A little huskier, though.
CARELLA: Was he white or black?
PATRICIA: White.
CARELLA: Did you notice what color his hair was?
PATRICIA: Dark. Either brown or black, but very dark.
KLING: And his eyes?
PATRICIA: He had blue eyes.
KLING: Was he clean-shaven, or did he have a mustache or beard?
PATRICIA: Clean-shaven.
CARELLA: What was he wearing?
PATRICIA: A suit, I think. Or else slacks and a sports jacket, I’m not sure. If it was a sports jacket, it was a solid color. And dark.
CARELLA: Shirt and tie?
PATRICIA: No tie.
CARELLA: Would you recognize him if you saw him again?
PATRICIA: Yes. There wasn’t any light in the hallway, but there was light from the streetlamp. I’d recognize him. And I’d also recognize his voice.
KLING: You said he told your cousin to shut up—
PATRICIA: Yes, that was after she’d stopped screaming already. She screamed when he first came out of the darkness, and then she saw the knife and stopped screaming, but he told her to shut up, anyway.
KLING: What else did he say?
PATRICIA: That he wouldn’t hurt us if we did what he told us to do. He was holding Muriel by the wrist, and I was sort of against the opposite wall. He had the knife pointed at Muriel.
CARELLA: What kind of knife was it?
PATRICIA: What do you mean?
CARELLA: A switchblade or—?
PATRICIA: No, no, it was a regular knife. Like the kind of knife you see in a kitchen.
CARELLA: A long knife, or a short one?
PATRICIA: I guess the blade was about four inches long.
CARELLA: And when he came out of the darkness, he had the knife in his hand already?
PATRICIA: Yes.
CARELLA: From which direction did he come? The right of the entrance hall, or the left?
PATRICIA: The right, I think. Yes. Muriel was standing on the right, so that’s where he must have come from. Because it was Muriel he grabbed, you see.
KLING: What happened after he told Muriel to shut up?
PATRICIA: He made her get down on her knees in front of him. And then he told her she was going to do what he wanted her to do. He said go on, take it, I know you want it. I was watching them. I was standing against the wall, watching them. I thought after she did it, I thought that would be the end of it. But he suddenly started stabbing her, he was... it was terrible to watch, he just stabbed her again and again and I stood there watching what he was doing to her and I couldn’t believe this was happening, I couldn’t believe he was doing this to her, I almost couldn’t believe my own eyes. And I knew what would happen next, I knew he would force me to do the same thing, first promising he wouldn’t hurt me, but hurting me afterward, anyway. I realized I had to run, but somehow I couldn’t move, I just watched while he kept doing it to her. And then he—
CARELLA: Patricia, you don’t need to—
PATRICIA: I want to tell you, I want to tell you everything. He turned to me, and he said, You’re next, and I thought he meant he was going to force me the way he’d forced Muriel, but then I realized he was going to kill me, he was coming at me with the knife, he was moving the knife toward my face. I put out my hand to protect myself, I threw back my arm, you know, like this, to try to protect my face, and he cut me across the palm of my hand, I guess it was, and I threw up my other hand, and he kept forcing me back against the wall and slashing at my hands. He ripped open the front of my dress with the tip of the knife, and I remembered what he had done to Muriel’s breasts, and I began screaming at the top of my lungs, but no one heard me, there was nobody in the neighborhood, it’s a construction site, you see. That was when he cut me on the cheek, when I was screaming, here under the eye. I don’t know how I got away from him, I think I must have kicked him. I remember he was groaning on the floor when I ran out of the building, so I guess I must have kicked him. Then I heard him yelling behind me, and I heard him coming down the steps after me, and I knew if he caught me he would kill me the way he’d killed Muriel. I was thinking ahead by then. I was thinking if I ran home, he could catch me going up the stairs, we live on the third floor, he could catch me in the hallway. But if I ran to the police station, if I could just get to the police station, then there’d be cops all around, and he wouldn’t be able to hurt me. So that’s where I ran, to the police station.
KLING: Was he following you?
PATRICIA: I don’t know. I think so. But I slipped and fell when I was about two blocks from the station house, and I didn’t hear anybody behind me, so maybe he’d given up by then. Will you catch him?
In the mortuary downstairs, the coroner gave Carella and Kling a verbal necropsy report on Muriel Stark. Though she had suffered many wounds during the brutal assault, the coroner told them that the fatal wound had most likely been a gaping incision of the left shoulder and neck, six and one-half inches long, and one and one-quarter inches deep, which had completely severed the left common carotid artery and internal jugular vein, and extended through the left lobe of the thyroid and anterior portion of the trachea. Death, in the coroner’s opinion, had probably resulted from external hemorrhage, attended by inhalation of infused blood, and supervening pulmonary air embolism.