He watched me in silence as I collected evidence and tubes of blood and began to initial them.
“Find anything I need to know?”
“Her cause of death is asphyxiation due to strangulation due to the ligature around her neck,” I said mechanically.
“What about trace?”
He tapped an ash on the floor.
“A few fibers-”
“Well,” he interrupted, “I gotta couple of things.”
“Well,” I said in the same tone, “I want to get the hell out of here.”
“Yo, Doc. Exactly what I had in mind. Me, I’m thinking of taking a ride.”
I stopped what I was doing and stared at him. His hair was clinging damply to his pate, his tie was loose, his short-sleeved white shirt was badly wrinkled in back as if he’d been sitting for a long time in his car. Strapped under his left arm was his tan shoulder holster with its long-barreled revolver. In the harsh glare of the overhead light he looked almost menacing, his eyes deeply set in shadows, his jaw muscles flexing.
“Think you need to come along,” he added unemphatically. “So, I’ll just wait while you get out of your scrubs there and call home.”
Call home? How did he know there was anyone at home I needed to call? I’d never mentioned my niece to him. I’d never mentioned Bertha. As far as I was concerned, it was none of Marino’s goddam business I even had a home.
I was about to tell him I had no intention of riding anywhere with him when the hard look in his eyes stopped me cold.
“All right,” I muttered. “All right.”
He was still leaning against the desk smoking as I walked across the suite and went into the locker room. Washing my face in the sink, I got out of my gown and back into skirt and blouse. I was so distracted, I opened my locker and reached for my lab coat before I realized what I was doing. I didn’t need my lab coat. My pocketbook, briefcase and suit jacket were upstairs in my office.
Somehow I collected all of these things and followed Marino to his car. I opened the passenger door and the interior light didn’t go on. Slipping inside, I groped for the shoulder harness and brushed crumbs and a wadded paper napkin off the seat.
He backed out of the lot without saying a word to me. The scanner light blinked from channel to channel as dispatchers transmitted calls Marino didn’t seem interested in and which often I didn’t understand. Cops mumbled into the microphone. Some of them seemed to eat it.
“Three-forty-five, ten-five, one-sixty-nine on chan’1 three.”
“One-sixty-nine, switchin’ ov’.”
“You free?”
“Ten-ten. Ten-seventeen the breath room. With subj’t.”
“Raise me whenyurten-twen-fo’.”
“Ten-fo’.”
“Four-fifty-one.”
“Four-fifty-one X.”
“Ten-twenty-eight on Adam Ida Lincoln one-seven-zero . . .”
Calls went out and alert tones blared like a bass key on an electric organ. Marino drove in silence, passing through downtown where storefronts were barred with the iron curtains drawn at the end of the day. Red and green neon signs in windows garishly advertised pawnshops and shoe repairs and greasy-spoon specials. The Sheraton and Marriott were lit up like ships, but there were very few cars or pedestrians out, just shadowy clusters of peripatetics from the projects lingering on corners. The whites of their eyes, followed us as we passed.
It wasn’t until several minutes later that I realized where we were going. On Winchester Place we slowed to a crawl in front of 498, Abby Turnbull’s address. The brownstone was a black hulk, the flag a shadow limply stirring over the entrance. There were no cars in front. Abby wasn’t home. I wondered where she was staying now.
Marino slowly pulled off the street and turned into the narrow alleyway between the brownstone and the house next door. The car rocked over ruts, the headlights jumping and illuminating the dark brick sides of the buildings, sweeping over garbage cans chained to posts and broken bottles and other debris. About twenty feet inside this claustrophobic passageway he stopped and cut the engine and the lights. Directly left of us was the backyard of Abby’s house, a narrow shelf of grass girdled by a chain-link fence with a sign warning the world to “Beware” of a “Dog” I knew didn’t exist.