“I can’t. I just can’t. It’s so shameful.” She looked longingly again at the photograph. “She’ll have to tell you herself. I can’t talk about it.”
Gently, “Who is the woman, Mrs. Murray?”
“Her name is Joanne Everett. She works downtown in some welfare agency. I don’t know which one.”
“Do you have her telephone number?”
“Beth put it here somewhere.” Mrs. Murray crossed the room to an old black-and-white television set and rummaged through a clutter of papers on top of it. “Do you have to talk to her?”
“We really should.”
“Here it is.” She handed him a slip of paper. “Lieutenant, these... investigations are confidential, aren’t they?”
“We do the best we can to keep them so.”
“Good! I wouldn’t want it in the paper.”
The tennis ball traveled in a high arc through the cold air. Joanne Everett moved back easily and slapped the ball into the far corner. Her opponent lunged at it, but came up a foot short. Joanne laughed and called, “That’s game, set and match.”
Macauley shivered inside his coat and wondered how the two women could play tennis in weather like this. He watched through the high fence around the court as Joanne Everett came toward him, swinging her racquet.
He looked at her more closely now than he had earlier. He put her age at about thirty-five, but the long legs revealed by the short tennis skirt were slim and nimble, resembling those of a teenager. He could tell by the play of the muscles under the skin that she was in superb condition.
Sleek dark hair fell nearly to her shoulders, and her face was open and nicely-formed. Her mouth was a little too large for classic beauty. Macauley thought she was very attractive.
When she reached the fence and stooped to pick up her jacket and the can of tennis balls, something possessed Macauley to say, “He who lives by the lob dies by the lob.”
She looked up at him through the chain link and said, “What?”
Embarrassed, he pulled his ID folder out. “Lieutenant Macauley. Are you Joanne Everett?”
“Yes, I am.”
“Could we talk for a few minutes? It’s about Elizabeth Murray.”
Her forehead creased as she frowned. “Elizabeth’s death was a needless tragedy, Lieutenant. What more is there that I can tell you?”
A gust of wind cut through him. “Why don’t we go inside somewhere? That wind’s awfully cold.” He paused, then asked in spite of himself, “How do you stand it in no more clothes than that?”
She slung the light jacket around her shoulders. “I like to stay in shape. You get used to the cold.” She waved at the redheaded woman who had been her opponent and who was now leaving the court at the opposite end.
Joanne turned back to Macauley and said, “There’s a little cafe down the street. We could talk there.”
“Okay. I could use some hot coffee.”
She unlatched a gate in the fence and joined Macauley. He hunched down deeper in his coat as they walked, but she strode along easily.
The small coffee shop was nearly full with a good lunchtime crowd, but Macauley grabbed a booth and ushered Joanne into it. When they were both seated, he asked, “Coffee?”
“Please.”
He gave the order to a harried waitress. She came back in a moment with two cups of steaming black liquid. After one sip, Macauley decided it would be an injustice to call it coffee.
Joanne Everett looked down into her cup and said, “What exactly did you want to talk about, Lieutenant?”
“First of all, what was your connection with Elizabeth Murray?”
“She was a client.”
“You’re not a lawyer — you’re a social worker.”
“She’s a friend, then — was a friend.”
“I talked to that welfare agency of yours. They told me you were playing tennis, and where. I didn’t believe them at first.”
“You should be more trusting.”
“That can get you in trouble. Your agency specializes in unwed mothers, narcotics addicts and prostitutes. Elizabeth Murray wasn’t pregnant, and there were no needlemarks on her. Was she hustling?”
Joanne Everett sipped her coffee. Macauley saw her hand shake slightly as she set the cup down carefully. “Not that I know of.”
“But she had been.” Macauley didn’t even bother to make it a question.
“She was on the streets last summer. She couldn’t find a job. Luckily, she never got busted. But she quit, Lieutenant, voluntarily. We helped her to quit, showed her that she had other paths she could follow.”
“Other avenues of escape, you mean.”
“Everyone needs to escape sometimes.”
“I guess so. Anyway, Elizabeth Murray used to be a hustler, and it’s possible she may have started up again. That gives us something, anyway.”
“What does it give you?”
“A reason for her to be on the streets at that time of night.”
Macauley drank a little more of the bitter coffee. “I guess you were out at the Murrays offering your condolences.”
“That’s right, I was.”
“They know their daughter used to be a prostitute?”
“They knew.”
“How did they react when they found out?”
Joanne Everett’s voice got harder. “Her mother wrung her hands and her father hit the roof.”
“Not very sympathetic, huh?”
“Not very. And I don’t think you are, either, Lieutenant.”
“I’m sorry the kid got killed. It’s such a waste when they’re so young.”
“Lieutenant, being a hooker is a waste no matter how old you are.”
He started to answer, but she overrode him in forceful tones. “It’s a waste of your body, a waste of your emotions, a waste of your soul. You lose all sense of dignity and pride. You become a thing instead of a human being. There’s nothing worse.”
“Not even death?”
“Not even death.”
He sat quietly for the space of several heartbeats, musing over what she had said. Then he commented, “I suppose you get to know a lot about hookers, working with them all the time.”
The smile that pulled at her mouth was mocking and sad at the same time. “I know so much about hookers, Lieutenant, because I used to be one.”
Joanne Everett produced no more information. Macauley thanked her for her cooperation, then went back to his office.
He had sandwiches sent in for lunch, spent the rest of the afternoon going over the files on the murdered girls and completing the paperwork on several other cases he was handling. The faces of Elizabeth Murray, her mother and Joanne Everett kept slipping out from the back of his mind.
Late in the afternoon, he spread out on his desk the photos that had been taken at the scene. They told him nothing more than he had seen before, and all he saw was a pretty young girl who had run out of luck.
The apartment building rose like a glass monolith across the street from the park. It was brightly lit, but the glow from it was swallowed up quickly by the darkness. It was nine o’clock, and Macauley would have bet there would be snow by morning.
Double glass doors led into the foyer of the building. Macauley put a big hand on one of them and pushed, but it didn’t give any. Neither did the other one. He rapped on them, ignoring the buzzer next to the door.
A big man hustled out of a glass-walled cubicle just to the left of the doors. Macauley saw that he wore a military-style cap and a long greatcoat with braid on the shoulders. Macauley recognized him as an old-fashioned doorman.
He pressed a button and said, “Yes?” His voice was slightly distorted by the speaker built into the wall.