Ghosts

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They might have been ghosts themselves, the detectives who stood in the falling snow around the body of the woman on the sidewalk. Shrouded by the swirling flakes, standing in snow three inches deep underfoot, they huddled like uncertain specters against the gray facade of the apartment building behind the slain woman. The two Homicide men who stood on the pavement with Detective Cotton Hawes were wearing black overcoats and gray fedoras. Hawes was hatless. His red hair shrieked into the monochromatic hush, echoing the blood that stained the woman’s clothing. There was a streak of white just above Hawes’s left temple, the memento of a scuffle while investigating a burglary; it seemed almost a wider patch of the snow crystals that glistened in his hair.

The Homicide detectives stood with their hands in the pockets of their overcoats. This was four days before Christmas, and the time was 7:00 P.M. Monoghan had not yet bought a present for his wife; neither had Monroe. The stores would be open till 9:00 tonight, and they had planned to go shopping the moment they were relieved at a quarter to 8:00. Instead, they’d taken the call from the Eight-Seven, and Christ alone knew how long they’d be here on the sidewalk with Hawes and his partner Carella, who was standing at the curb talking to the patrolman who’d been first at the scene.

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