diary is probably bullshit too. In fact, Doyle thinks he can probably disregard everything that was said by that
cuckoo and get back to worrying about poor old Mrs Sachs.
There is, of course, one other possibility . . .
The call comes through at ten-forty.
‘Detective Doyle. Eighth Precinct.’
‘Hey, Doyle. This is Lopez up at the Two-Seven. Sorry to bother you, but we caught a weird one here, and your name came up.’
Doyle feels his insides drop into his shoes. Even without the details, he knows this is his worst fears coming true.
‘My name? Why? What’s the case?’
‘Homicide. A woman crushed between two cars on West 107th Street.’
‘You sure? That it’s a homicide, I mean? Not some kind of freaky accident?’
‘Nah, it was deliberate all right. According to the ME, she was rammed twice.’
‘Jesus, what a way to go. You got any wits?’
He’s thinking there has to be a witness. Surely you can’t make a vehicle sandwich on the streets of New York like that without somebody seeing something?
‘Nope. Nobody that’s come forward so far, anyhow. There are no occupied buildings near where it happened, and it was four o’clock in the morning.’
‘Four a.m.? There was nothing on the news about it.’
‘Body wasn’t discovered until seven-thirty. A woman jogging back from Central Park stopped for a rest and saw a foot underneath one of the vehicles. Then she took a closer look and
found the foot-bone was connected to the leg-bone, and she heard the word of the Lord. Thing is, she’d already passed it on her way to the park and thought nothing of it. Just two mashed-up
cars, looked like. My guess is other people walked past it too and thought the same thing. Who’s gonna call the cops for something like that, right?’
Doyle finds himself nodding in agreement. He knows that many people wouldn’t have called the cops even
after
they’d discovered the body.
‘I still don’t get how it went down. What was this woman doing out on the street at four in the morning?’
‘Yeah, that got us too. Especially when we find the woman’s wallet and learn she lives over in Brooklyn and works on the East Side. We contact the husband, deliver the bad news, wait
for the crying to stop, then ask him the same question. Only he has absolutely no idea what she was doing there either. So we start knocking on doors, and eventually we find a guy in one of the
apartment buildings farther along the street. Turns out she’s having an affair with him. A regular thing, apparently. She tells her husband she’s pulling a double shift, then goes and
pulls something else over at this younger dude’s place.’
‘Still doesn’t explain how she ended up getting squashed.’
‘No. That’s where you come in.’
‘Me? How?’
‘Reason we know she was killed at four was that she got a call on her cellphone when she was in the apartment. She told the boyfriend about it. He says it was a cop, or someone pretending
to be a cop, telling her that her husband had been locked up for drunkenness, and could she come take him home. The boyfriend thinks the cop called himself Boyle, or maybe Doyle, at the Eighth
Precinct.’
Doyle finds himself shaking his head. The sheer deviousness of that bastard.
‘Shit, Lopez. I don’t know what I can tell you.’
‘That’s okay. I didn’t expect nothing. Whoever did this probably just picked your name at random off a list. I just needed to check it out, okay? You know, tick the
boxes.’
‘Sure, no problem. You look at the husband for this?’
He asks because it’s an obvious question. Cuckolded husband doing away with his cheating bitch of a wife – it’s one of the oldest reasons under the sun. But deep in his gut,
Doyle knows it’s not the story here.
‘Natch. The boyfriend too. Both of them look safe right now, but we’re digging. CSU are checking out the SUV used in the hit. It’s stolen, but maybe we’ll get some useful
forensics. Anyways, Doyle,
cuckoo and get back to worrying about poor old Mrs Sachs.
There is, of course, one other possibility . . .
The call comes through at ten-forty.
‘Detective Doyle. Eighth Precinct.’
‘Hey, Doyle. This is Lopez up at the Two-Seven. Sorry to bother you, but we caught a weird one here, and your name came up.’
Doyle feels his insides drop into his shoes. Even without the details, he knows this is his worst fears coming true.
‘My name? Why? What’s the case?’
‘Homicide. A woman crushed between two cars on West 107th Street.’
‘You sure? That it’s a homicide, I mean? Not some kind of freaky accident?’
‘Nah, it was deliberate all right. According to the ME, she was rammed twice.’
‘Jesus, what a way to go. You got any wits?’
He’s thinking there has to be a witness. Surely you can’t make a vehicle sandwich on the streets of New York like that without somebody seeing something?
‘Nope. Nobody that’s come forward so far, anyhow. There are no occupied buildings near where it happened, and it was four o’clock in the morning.’
‘Four a.m.? There was nothing on the news about it.’
‘Body wasn’t discovered until seven-thirty. A woman jogging back from Central Park stopped for a rest and saw a foot underneath one of the vehicles. Then she took a closer look and
found the foot-bone was connected to the leg-bone, and she heard the word of the Lord. Thing is, she’d already passed it on her way to the park and thought nothing of it. Just two mashed-up
cars, looked like. My guess is other people walked past it too and thought the same thing. Who’s gonna call the cops for something like that, right?’
Doyle finds himself nodding in agreement. He knows that many people wouldn’t have called the cops even
after
they’d discovered the body.
‘I still don’t get how it went down. What was this woman doing out on the street at four in the morning?’
‘Yeah, that got us too. Especially when we find the woman’s wallet and learn she lives over in Brooklyn and works on the East Side. We contact the husband, deliver the bad news, wait
for the crying to stop, then ask him the same question. Only he has absolutely no idea what she was doing there either. So we start knocking on doors, and eventually we find a guy in one of the
apartment buildings farther along the street. Turns out she’s having an affair with him. A regular thing, apparently. She tells her husband she’s pulling a double shift, then goes and
pulls something else over at this younger dude’s place.’
‘Still doesn’t explain how she ended up getting squashed.’
‘No. That’s where you come in.’
‘Me? How?’
‘Reason we know she was killed at four was that she got a call on her cellphone when she was in the apartment. She told the boyfriend about it. He says it was a cop, or someone pretending
to be a cop, telling her that her husband had been locked up for drunkenness, and could she come take him home. The boyfriend thinks the cop called himself Boyle, or maybe Doyle, at the Eighth
Precinct.’
Doyle finds himself shaking his head. The sheer deviousness of that bastard.
‘Shit, Lopez. I don’t know what I can tell you.’
‘That’s okay. I didn’t expect nothing. Whoever did this probably just picked your name at random off a list. I just needed to check it out, okay? You know, tick the
boxes.’
‘Sure, no problem. You look at the husband for this?’
He asks because it’s an obvious question. Cuckolded husband doing away with his cheating bitch of a wife – it’s one of the oldest reasons under the sun. But deep in his gut,
Doyle knows it’s not the story here.
‘Natch. The boyfriend too. Both of them look safe right now, but we’re digging. CSU are checking out the SUV used in the hit. It’s stolen, but maybe we’ll get some useful
forensics. Anyways, Doyle,
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