14th Deadly Sin

CHAPTER 7

BALMY ALLEY AND Twenty-Fourth looked like a freeway pileup.

I counted three hastily parked cruisers, and another one was coming in behind me. Both streets were cordoned off, causing traffic to back up in the one open lane on Twenty-Fourth. Pedestrians had gathered three deep at the barrier tape with cell phones in hand, evidently having nothing better to do than gawp at a bleeding corpse in the crosswalk.

I parked on the sidewalk, got my point-and-shoot Nikon out of the console, and found Conklin, who was talking to a young cop. He introduced me to Officer Martin Einhorn, a rookie who’d been writing up a parking ticket when the incident occurred.

Einhorn’s black eyes flashed back and forth between Conklin and me as he walked us through the scene. He was sweating through his uniform and his speech was high-pitched and staccato. Very likely he’d never seen a body before, and now he’d been this close to an actual murder as it happened.

He said, “I was putting a ticket on that red Mazda over there. The victim was crossing the street. There were a lot of people crossing at the same time, both ways. Tourists mostly,” he said, pointing his chin in the general direction of the sightseer magnet: vividly colored murals protesting human rights abuses over the last fifty years.

“I didn’t see the attack,” said the rookie. “I heard the screaming, and when everyone scattered, I saw … her.” He took a moment to get himself together before continuing.

“I called it in and the EMTs got here like a minute later. They said the victim was dead and I told them to leave her body in place. That this is a crime scene.”

“Exactly right,” I said.

Einhorn nodded, then said a squad car had arrived after a few minutes and the officers had strung tape. “We got as many names as we could, but people were trying to get out of here and we didn’t have enough manpower to detain them. Those two witnesses hung in. Mr. and Mrs. Nathan Gosselin, right over there. Mrs. Gosselin saw the attack.”

While Conklin approached the couple standing outside a smoke shop, I took a wide-angle view of the crime scene and got a fix on where the victim lay in relation to cars, buildings, and people. Then I ducked under the tape and identified myself to the officers who were protecting the body and the scene.

One of the cops said, “Right this way, Sergeant. Mind the blood.”

“Got it,” I said.

I gloved up, then moved closer so that I could get a good look at the victim.