“I don’t know; it was just something she said. We never had time to go into it. You know how it is, Dino; a lot of idealistic people don’t like an up-close view of how the justice system works. It takes a pretty thick skin to live with it every day.”
“Yeah; I had a hard time with it at first, too.”
“You? I’m surprised.”
“What? You think I’ve always been the tough-but-honest, cynical cop you see before you? I had to grow a thick hide, just like you had to.”
“If you say so.”
Across the garden a light came on in a house directly opposite Stone’s, and a woman in a business suit walked into a room framed by a large picture window.
“Watch this, Dino,” Stone said.
“Watch what?”
“The woman across the way.”
“What about her?”
“Just watch. I think you’ll find this interesting.”
The woman, who was tall with long red hair, began to undress.
“You’re right,” Dino said, “this is interesting.”
“Just keep watching,” Stone said.
The woman carefully hung up her suit, then stepped out of her half-slip, unhooked her bra, and slid out of her panty hose and panties. She dropped the underwear into a hamper. Now she was completely naked, exposing a slender but shapely body with high, firm breasts.
“Wow,” Dino said softly.
“She’s something, isn’t she?”
Now the woman went to a closet, took out a vacuum cleaner, plugged it in, and began to vacuum the room.
“What the fuck is she doing?” Dino asked.
“She’s vacuuming. She does this two or three times a week; she comes home from work, takes off her clothes, and vacuums her bedroom. Then she disappears for a while. I guess she’s vacuuming her whole apartment. The she comes back into the bedroom, puts away the vacuum, and disappears again. Sometimes she gives a little wave.”
“You mean she knows you’re watching her?”
“I expect half the neighborhood is watching her,” Stone said.
Dino abruptly sat up straight in his chair. “Look at that,” he said.
“I am looking at it,” Stone replied.
“No; there’s a guy.”
“Where?”
“Standing in the bedroom door.”
Stone looked. Dino was right; a shadowy figure stood in the half darkness of the doorway. “Her boyfriend, maybe?”
“No; not the way he’s standing. She doesn’t know he’s there.”
“She hasn’t seen him, and she can’t hear anything over the vacuum noise.”
The woman continued to vacuum, turning toward the window. The man began to move toward her. He was short and slender, with bushy, dark hair – almost an Afro, though he was white.
“Oh, shit,” Dino said. “He’s got a knife.”
Stone saw that Dino was right. The man walked up behind the woman, snaked an arm around her neck, and yanked her backward, pulling her chin up.
Dino was on his feet, unlocking the window, shoving it open, grabbing the pistol at his belt. “Don’t you do it, you son of a bitch!” he screamed.
Stone sat, riveted to his chair. The man was looking directly at them.
Dino raised his pistol and fired twice. Two holes appeared in the upper left-hand corner of the window.
“You’ve got his attention,” Stone said.
It didn’t seem to matter that he knew he was being watched. The man drew the knife’s blade across the struggling woman’s neck, and blood began to spill down her naked body. She collapsed, but he held her up with the hand under her chin, widening the wound in her neck.
“Let her go, and I’ll shoot you where you stand, you bastard!” Dino screamed.
Instead, the man began to walk backward toward the door, dragging the dying woman, holding her up as a shield. Then he dropped her and left the room.
“Call nine-one-one!” Dino said, grabbing his coat. “I’m going over there; do you know the address?”
“I don’t know the number; you’ll have to guess,” Stone replied, picking up the phone.
“Wait here and make sure he doesn’t leave the house through the garden,” Dino said, running for the door.
“Dino!” Stone shouted, stopping him in his tracks.
“What?”
“I know the guy,” Stone said. “I know the killer.”
“Later,” Dino said, running down the stairs.
Stone reported the homicide, then unlocked a cabinet, took out a pistol, and stood, watching the back of the house. Maybe he could get a shot at the guy. Two minutes passed, then Dino appeared in the woman’s bedroom, followed by a uniformed officer. He gave the uniform some instructions, and the officer left the room. Dino picked up the phone and dialed a number.
Stone saw the light on his phone flash. He picked it up. “Dino?”
“Get over here,” Dino said, then hung up.
Stone stuck the pistol in his belt, grabbed a coat, and ran out of the house.
6
STONE JOGGED QUICKLY AROUND THE BLOCK, looking at every person he passed, hoping to see the frizzy-haired perpetrator. Finding the house was easy; two black and whites were double-parked outside, their flashers working. A uniformed cop stood guard at the top of the house’s steps. Stone flashed his retired officer’s ID and was admitted to the house.
He could see by the mailboxes that the original town house had been divided into apartments; the door to the ground-floor unit stood open, and he walked in, breathing hard. Two uniformed patrolmen stood in the entrance hall. “Is Lieutenant Bacchetti upstairs?” Stone asked, flashing his ID.
“Yeah,” one of the men said.
Stone ran up the stairs. He was met by another uniform and by the two detectives he had met at Susan Bean’s, Andy Anderson and Michael Kelly.
“What are you doing here?” Kelly demanded.
Stone ignored him and walked toward the rear of the house. He was on the upper floor of a ground-floor duplex, handsomely decorated. He emerged from a hallway toward the woman’s bedroom. Her body lay on the floor in the doorway, uncovered, her skin dead white, her throat gaping.
Dino looked up. “It’s a lot like the way Susan Bean was done,” he said to Stone. “Right-handed perp, knife drawn from left to right, very deep.”
“Any luck on finding him?” Stone asked. “He didn’t come out the back, and I didn’t see him on the street on the way over here.”
“No,” Dino said, picking up the dead woman’s handbag from a chair and stepping over the body into the hallway, taking care not to step on the blood-soaked part of the pale carpet. “Come in here for a minute,” he said, leading the way down the hall and into a study. The room had bookcases on one side and was hung with good pictures on two other walls. An antique desk faced the second-story windows, looking out onto the street. “Sit down,” Dino said, opening the handbag.
Stone took a seat. “What’s her name?” he asked.
Dino was looking in her wallet. “Miranda Hirsch,” he said, handing Stone her business card. “Executive VP in charge of loan operations at the Manhattan Bank.”
“Big job,” Stone said, looking at the card.
“Did you know her at all?”
“Only what I’ve seen of her through the window,” Stone said.
“While you were playing Peeping Tom, did you ever see a man in the place?”
Stone shook his head. “Not until tonight. After the performance with the vacuum cleaner, she always closed the curtains.”
“Downstairs, too?”
“Yes.”
“How many times did you watch her undress?”
“A dozen, fifteen, I guess.”
“You’re lucky I was with you tonight,” Dino said, “or Kelly and Anderson would be pulling you in, making a case for how you were overcome with passion by her performance.”
“That’s not a bad line to pursue,” Stone said. “They should be canvassing my side of the block; the perp could be living over there, and I’ll bet there were other witnesses.”
“Could be, but nobody called it in. You said something before I left your house; you said you knew the perp?”