The Shadow of Your Smile

48

On Saturday morning at ten o’clock Detective Carl Forrest was seated in his car, parked directly opposite Greenwich Village Hospital. He had worked with John Hartman before his retirement. It was Forrest who had checked for fingerprints on the picture that Hartman had brought in, the one that had been sent anonymously to Monica Farrell’s office.

After Monica’s narrow escape from death, it was Forrest, again at Hartman’s urging, who had studied the security tapes of Greenwich Village Hospital, the ones that covered the time that Monica left the hospital on Thursday evening, minutes before her encounter with the bus.

Accompanying him was his partner, Jim Whelan. They were studying the pictures they had just taken of a young policewoman standing on the steps of the hospital. They had asked her to stand in the same spot where Monica had been photographed so that they could analyze the location from which the shot had been taken.

Forrest had his computer on his lap and printed out the pictures, then with a grunt of satisfaction, he handed them to Whelan. “Compare them, Jim,” he said, as he held up the snapshot that had been mailed to Monica’s office. “Whoever took the picture of the doctor with the kid in her arms was probably sitting in a car parked right here. The angle is exactly right. I thought at first that John Hartman was wasting our time, but I don’t think that anymore. Let’s review it.”

“Thursday evening the hospital security cameras show the doctor coming down the steps. Next frame we see someone getting out of his car, parked in this spot, following her down the street. This guy is wearing a hooded sweatshirt, gloves, and dark glasses, the exact description the old lady gave us. The break of the century is that fifteen minutes later the security camera shows his car being towed because the meter ran out! Now we know it was reclaimed by Sammy Barber, a two-bit thug who was acquitted of being a hitman.”

“Acquitted because he or one of his slimy friends either threatened or paid off jurors,” Whelan remembered. “They don’t come any guiltier than he was. I did a lot of work on that case. I’d love to find a way to nail him now.”

The policewoman who had posed for the picture came over. A traffic officer, she had agreed to give up a few minutes of her break to help them out. “Did you get what you wanted?”

“You bet,” Forrest told her. “Thanks.”

“Anytime. I never thought of myself as being a model. Neither did anyone else.” With a brief wave, she was on her way.

After she left, Forrest turned on the ignition. “Even if we bring Sammy in for a lineup and the old lady identifies him, you know what will happen. If it got to trial, which is doubtful, a lawyer would shoot holes in her identification. It was dark. He was wearing sunglasses. His hood was pulled up. On top of that, there was a crowd on the corner. The bus was coming and people were lining up for it. She was the only one who thinks the doctor was shoved. The doctor herself claims it was an accident. Case dismissed.”

“But if Barber was stalking her, it was because someone is paying him to do it. Does she have any idea of who that could be?” Whelan asked.

John Hartman mentioned Scott Alterman. “I checked him out. He’s a successful lawyer. Just moved to New York, but apparently about five years ago he was stalking Dr. Farrell in Boston. He’s the only one John heard about as someone who might have a reason to take that picture of the doctor.”

“Or have someone like Sammy take the picture for him?” Whelan suggested.

“Possibly. But where are we going with that?” Forrest asked. “If it is Alterman, he won’t be the first rejected guy to order a hit on the woman who turned him down. We’ll keep an eye on him and see if there’s anything illegal Sammy has done at that bar where he’s a bouncer that we can make stick and get him off the street.”