Shadow Roll Read Free Page A

week, maybe even a week and a half ago.  A week or so was just about enough time.
    Sixty feet below, Lino, Mrs. Z, Mister, and entourage were heading back into the house, leaving the guys who cleaned up to clean up.  If I knew Lino, right about now he’d be thinking about having a look up on the roof, see if he could spot where the girl was pushed or got dropped or fell.  By now, he might know her name and he might not.  He might think of talking to the kids and he might not.  But he was sure to be headed my way.  I had maybe five minutes to myself.
    Nothing but pigeon toes going every which way and seagull shit up here.  No cigarette butts or spent matches.  No scraps of torn clothing.  Not even a bloody saw.  The sound of Lino and Co. was getting louder.  I needed to get farther out on the roof without messing with stuff already there.  A plank would be perfect.  There wasn’t any plank.  But there was an old window, left leaning against the bit of wall at the top of the ladder that ended at a door opening onto the roof.  I grabbed it fast, set it down on the tarry roof and crawled out as far as I could go.  No footprints.  No handprints—wait a minute.  There was the faintest pattern on the cool tar.  I practically shoved my nose into it to get the best look.  What was it?  A board might show the grain of its wood.  The window frame I was kneeling on might leave an imprint.  It was material of some sort.  What material would leave little crosshatched marks like these?  And with that I remembered the blankets the kids were still using, old things, cheap things.  I remembered the threadbare bedspreads.  Called something—chenille?  But oldest and cheapest of all were the sheets.  What I was looking at was the imprint of a sheet.  And here and there I was also looking at indentations made by knees or elbows or both.  But not Pamela’s knees or elbows.  Even pregnant, Pamela was still a lightweight kid.  These were made by someone heavier.  And perhaps made even heavier by carrying a couple of someones smaller—like Pamela and her unborn babe.  In the shallow indentations were little spots of dried blood.  No doubt seeped through the sheet.
    Later today some sort of cop would be up here scraping it off the tar paper and slipping flecks into an envelope.  But not me.  I needed a moment to think.  None of the poor kids trapped below me had the strength to carry one of their own up the ladder to this roof, much less to crawl with her to its edge.  And since it was impossible to spread out a sheet unless you could leave the body nearby while you did all this spreading, the sheet had to be here before any of that happened because there wasn’t any “nearby.”
    The sheet proved planning and planning proved premeditation.
    I had the old window propped up where I’d found it, and was back down the roof ladder and out of sight in a linen closet before Lino and his mob were climbing up it.
    OK.  There’d been a sheet spread out on a flat bit of roof, the bit that ended in the five-story drop into sumac.  There wasn’t a sheet there now.  To have one ready and then to remove it had to mean the killer lived here, or at least worked here.  Or—hell.  I suddenly remembered all those wounded GIs down on the lower floors.  Could it be some sick creep who’d knocked up a kid and then got rid of her?
    I was out of the closet and down the stairs in seconds flat.  In this game, I had to move fast.  Lino was not only dumb, he jumped to conclusions faster than an incoming blockbuster.
    It didn’t take long to discover what should of been obvious.  Any poor schlub bedded down in the Staten Island Home for Children was here for the long stay.  As the beat cop said: none of ‘em were going anywhere, least of all up a coupla flights of stairs to molest kids.
    Now what?  Scratch the burn victims in their jellied body bags.  Forget the guys with half their heads blown off or those with