Victims Read Free Page B

row of parked cars. They nodded and noted and questioned and listened as witnesses to the event pointed and explained.
    One man pointed out what might be the victim’s car. He had been looking out the window to wave goodbye to a friend, had stayed there for a moment, had seen the yellow Toyota pull into the space his friend had just vacated. Pretty sure, yeah. Anyway, a girl, a woman, got out and locked the car and started across the street and no, he didn’t watch anymore, he went to take a shower so he hadn’t seen or heard anything more until there was all this noise and police sirens and he got dressed and came down and then he realized that the woman who parked the car might—maybe, must be—the woman who got killed. Think so, maybe?
    Maybe. The detective went to check on the ownership after advising a uniformed man to stand guard on the Toyota.
    A small, graying man in a dark suit, carrying a doctor’s black bag, approached the dead woman. They all knew who he was—they’d seen it all before in the movies, on TV. He had to be the medical examiner, and sure enough he was. He greeted a few of the homicide cops before he even looked at the victim, then finally he turned and stared.
    “You got all you need, Ed?” he asked the crime scene photographer.
    “Gimme two more minutes.”
    The photographer circled, aimed, flashed, photographed from every angle possible. It seemed a waste of time; from any angle, the girl was dead.
    Finally it was the medical examiner’s turn, and the neighbors could not see what his work entailed because the detectives were all standing around blocking their view.
    Stein moved back and mingled again with the older people. They were not so anxious to catch every word or to identify every new arrival. Death was there under the streetlamp and it had visited a very young woman. They stayed somewhat apart from their neighbors.
    “Do you think it is the Spanish girl?” a woman asked her neighbor, who merely shrugged: I don’t know. Who knows?
    “Where does the Spanish girl live?” Mike asked quietly, turning, searching the apartment building.
    “No, no,” a woman told him. “Over there, in the first building.”
    “Not just one girl, two sisters I think live there.”
    “Stewardesses, that’s what they are.”
    “The third girl, the youngest sister, she goes to school. She’s the troublemaker, she has boys over and plays that music so loud. Her sister, the stewardess, she comes and goes, very quiet.”
    There was a sound, a communal moan of surprise, of shock. Stein turned and watched the medical examiner slide the body from its sitting position. Under the glare of the lights that had been set up, the reality of bloody, violent death was revealed to people who had not seen it before. It was not exactly like a movie or a TV event, after all.
    There were great wide slashes on both sides of the woman’s face. Her chest and arms were covered with blood to such an extent that it was impossible to immediately verify other wounds. It didn’t take the M.E. very long before he finished his job and packed up.
    Stein wandered among neighbors; stopped; listened. They had finished, for the time being, comparing what they had seen and heard. He moved closer now to the body, as close as the police lines permitted and then a little closer. He listened to one detective ticking off to his partner information to be included in their initial report: no apparent rape or sexual mutilation; no apparent robbery—wallet and credit cards intact; victim holding house key in right hand.
    Other detectives were moving through the street, now turning their attention to the crowd of people who were watching and waiting for something more to happen. The police were very good at what they did, and careful not to turn people away or frighten them off. They moved and spoke and questioned with great tact and consideration and awareness of who these people were: middle-class Barclay Street, Forest Hill, neighbors