Walk a Black Wind Read Free

their own minds, the children today. We teach them to think, and they think in ways we can’t even know, much less understand.”
    Gazzo said, “You can’t tell us anything?”
    â€œNothing we can think of,” Katje Crawford said. “Francesca was always our difficult child. I never seemed to reach her after she was ten.”
    â€œPigheaded!” Martin Crawford said, the anger as much for himself as for the dead girl. “Sometimes she just sat and stared at us. The best one, I suppose. The best child is often the worst for the parents. A child’s standards and her parent’s standards are often very different, and if the child is tough, they battle.”
    â€œYou battled a lot with her?” I asked.
    They both looked at me for the first time. Martin Crawford nodded.
    â€œAll the time. On everything. She even opposed me on public issues. Housing, conservation, crime fighting.”
    â€œWhen did you hear from her last?” Gazzo said.
    â€œAfter she left we didn’t hear at all.”
    I said, “Three months? Did you look for her?”
    â€œNo,” Crawford said. “She left a note saying she had gone on a trip. No reason, nothing about where or why.”
    â€œShe had a scar,” I said. “Like a bullet wound.”
    â€œA childhood accident,” Mrs. Crawford said.
    Gazzo said, “Mr. Fortune just wonders if it could have any bearing. So do we. Did someone shoot at her?”
    â€œMartin shot by accident. She was two-and-a-half,” Mrs. Crawford said, and she looked at me with a question in her blue eyes. “You called this man ‘Mister’ Fortune. Isn’t he one of your policemen, Captain?”
    â€œA private detective,” Gazzo said. “Working with us.”
    â€œPrivate?” she said. “I don’t understand. You mean someone hired him? Why? Who?”
    â€œI knew Francesca, Mrs. Crawford,” I said. “I met her here in New York. I want to help.”
    â€œHelp?” she said. “Yes, I see. Thank you.”
    Gazzo said, “Can either of you think of anything in your daughter’s life before she vanished that could help us?”
    â€œNo,” Martin Crawford said. “I mean, where do we start?”
    â€œIn twenty years,” Mrs. Crawford said, “how do we pick out what could help you? Francesca was unusual in many ways—busy, too silent, good in school, intense on her own projects. But she was normal, too, with a lot of friends. Some we knew, some we didn’t. Nothing stands out, Captain. Perhaps if you had specific questions, but until you do …”
    Both Gazzo and I knew they were right. If nothing stood out in their minds, until we had some ideas it would be like shooting fish in a very large barrel.
    Martin Crawford said, “She’s dead, and what can we do? What’s the use of power and money if we can’t stop chance, can’t control life? What do we do?”
    â€œWe go on trying to control life,” Gazzo said.
    Crawford nodded, and they stood up. The wife went out first—to claim her daughter. We hadn’t learned much. Maybe there wasn’t much to learn. Just another small-time murder?

3.
    Night was falling fast—the way it does in late autumn—over the East Eighty-fourth Street block where Francesca Crawford had lived briefly as Fran Martin. The wind seemed to have dropped, as if the tree-lined street was walled in from the turmoil of the rest of the city. The East Side can be like that, while the West Side throbs and boils.
    The dead girl’s building was a small brownstone, neater than West Side brownstones. There were flower boxes in the windows instead of milk cartons and shirtless men. I got no answer to my ring, and the vestibule door was locked. Sure that I was alone, I used my thin square of stiff plastic to open the spring lock. On the top floor I used my ring of keys to enter the silent