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tone.
    â€œWe’ll call for you. Give the phone number to Detective O’Toole. And wait here—I’ll want to talk to you.”
    The right bluesuit was guarding the bus passengers: a barrel-chested black man with shoulders wide enough to block the exit. “Officer Jackson?” Marian identified herself and told him to start letting the agitated passengers off two at a time. “You’re the first officer?”
    â€œYes’m. Most of the passengers had scrammed before I got here. This bunch here musta been daydreaming—they didn’t think nothing of it when the driver stopped the bus to make a phone call.”
    â€œI was afraid of that.” She waited while Jackson ordered the first two passengers to step off; O’Toole and Torelli were waiting for them. “How long between the dispatcher’s call and your arrival?”
    â€œCouldna been more’n two or three minutes. But that’s long enough for most of ’em to get off. There’s only ten, twelve people here—but the driver said the bus was packed.”
    So most of their potential witnesses had disappeared into the streets. Marian nodded her thanks to Jackson and went back to the bus driver, who was watching the cops directing traffic around his bus amid a lot of horn-honking and shouting.
    The driver was an angry man in his late thirties who took it as a personal affront that someone would go and get himself killed on his bus. “Like I don’t have enough to worry about,” he complained. “Busful of tired and short-tempered people on their way home from work. And me already behind schedule.”
    â€œHow did you find out you had a dead man on board?” Marian asked. She had to shout to make herself heard.
    â€œPassenger told me,” the driver shouted back. “And she told me loud enough that everybody in the front part of the bus heard her. They couldn’t wait to get out of there! I couldn’t even go back and check the guy right away because of that mob pushin’ to get off.”
    â€œDid you touch the body?”
    â€œHell, no. With all that blood everywhere? He was dead, all right.”
    â€œThe woman who told you—was she one of those who left?”
    The driver looked at her scornfully. “You expect her to hang around?”
    No, Marian didn’t. “I don’t suppose you remember where the dead man got on?”
    The driver looked smug. “Matter of fact, I do. Second Avenue.”
    â€œHow can you be sure?”
    â€œHe was an old guy, slow … ya know. While he was climbin’ on, I was lookin’ at what the Thirty-Fourth East was showin’.”
    A movie theater. “So he was killed somewhere between Second and Ninth Avenues. Let’s see, counting in Lexington and—”
    â€œNine blocks,” he interrupted. “Exactly.”
    â€œAnd nobody heard the shot? Or saw anything?”
    â€œMusta used a silencer,” the driver said, nodding sagely.
    While they’d been talking, both the Crime Scene Unit van and the car from the Medical Examiner’s office had arrived. Marian could hear the CSU men griping about having to deal with a movable crime scene that was blocking traffic. They waited until the last passenger was off and then boarded the bus.
    The traffic noise had died down to its usual level—which was to say, merely deafening. O’Toole and Torelli had let everyone go except three people, one of whom was a girl of thirteen or fourteen who looked scared to death. Marian shot a look at O’Toole.
    â€œYou said keep everybody who didn’t have ID,” he said defensively.
    Marian drew the girl aside. “What’s your name, kiddo?”
    The girl whispered something.
    â€œWhat’s that? I can’t hear you.”
    â€œSharon Brandt.” A louder whisper.
    â€œSharon, don’t you know you should never leave home without carrying some kind of