Burn (Michael Bennett 7)

“The fact that this Roger guy seems to have some psychiatric issues, that he’s a physically abusive substance abuser, and that Holly had been intimate with him are some very serious red flags when it comes to the potential for violence.”

I suddenly stopped the car as we were sweeping around Holly’s block for the second time. I took a pair of binoculars that I keep in the glove compartment and pointed them into Morningside Park.

“What’s up?”

I handed Arturo the glasses.

“Female on the bench off to the right by the playground,” I said.

“The white girl with the glasses?” Arturo said, focusing in.

“She’s directly opposite Holly’s building, and she’s got a camera with a telephoto lens.”

“Birdwatcher?” Arturo said.

“She’s watching something,” I said, pulling over. “This Roger guy is quite the ladies’ man, right? Well, maybe he got himself a new friend to keep an eye on Holly. Let’s go see what she has to say.”

Only having been in it a few times, I had almost forgotten how nice a park Morningside is. Built by Frederick Law Olmsted, the famous nineteenth-century landscape architect who designed Central Park and Prospect Park, it had meandering walkways and grand stone staircases and even an elaborate waterfall beside one of its pathside ponds.

Too bad I wasn’t there to sightsee.

“Hey there,” I said, showing the woman on the bench my shield as I approached. The pale woman stood up, quickly stuffing the camera into a bag and gathering her things. But before she could take off, Arturo was already coming up the opposite side, blocking her way along the curving tree-lined path.

“What do you want?” the woman said. “I’m not doing anything.”

It was hard to tell how old she was. Besides the granny glasses, she had studs in her pierced cheeks, a men’s vintage-shop gray raincoat and badly dyed black hair peeking out from under a ragged tweed cap. She’d been pretty once, probably not too long ago. Now she looked as hard as the old concrete she probably slept on every night.

“Sit back down,” I told her.

“What is this about?” she said as I sat down next to her and took out my binoculars and pointed them at Holly’s building. I knew it. She had a straight shot to the front door.

“This is about him,” I said, showing her Roger’s picture on my phone. I stared at her face as I showed it and caught a brief flicker of recognition.

“Hey, Mike, watch her,” Arturo called out as the young woman thrust her hands into her bag.

I waved him off. She wasn’t going for a weapon, I knew. She was just busy thumbing the Delete button on her camera. It was a Sony, a three-or-four-hundred-dollar digital SLR. Which made little sense, considering she was homeless. Probably stolen by Roger, I thought. I let her thumb away at it.

“What’s your name?” I said.

“Piss off,” she said.

I looked at her glassy eyes. It looked like she was on something.

She didn’t say anything as I went into her tattered backpack and took out a wallet. She had a Connecticut driver’s license. Rachel Wecht. I couldn’t believe she was only twenty-one. Thanks, drugs. Thanks, broken families. I was also right. She had been pretty once.

“Listen, Rachel,” Arturo said. “This guy Roger, or whatever his name is, who’s got you doing this, he’s really not as exciting as you think he is. In fact, he’s trouble. Like you’ll-end-up-dead kind of trouble. We have a warrant out for his arrest.”

“We could lock you up right now for aiding and abetting a known criminal,” I said. “But I’m going to go on the assumption that he lied to you, OK? I’m going to cut you some slack. If you tell me where he is.”

She sneered at me as she took off her tattered cap and spun it on her finger.

“As if I knew what the hell you’re even talking about,” she said.

“This lady you’re watching. She was Roger’s old girlfriend,” Arturo said. “What do you think happens to you when he gets sick of you?”

She rolled her eyes and shrugged before she stood up and shouldered her pack.

“I’m leaving,” she said with a dreamy smile.