The Paw of the Cat

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Stenn came down the subterranean corridor of the emergency ward, his big hands swinging at his sides, an inch of damp cigarette pasted to his lower lip at the left corner of his wide mouth.

The prowl-car cop was young, with nervousness hiding behind his blunt Slavic features. He pushed himself away from the wall at Stenn strode toward him.

“Are you—”

“I’m Detective-Sergeant Stenn.”

“Patrolman Matchic. They’re working on her in there.”

“How did it happen?” Stenn said.

“Didn’t Kevan report it all in?”

Stenn pinched the cigarette out of the comer of his mouth, dropped it and scuffed it with his foot. He shoved the grey hat with the stained sweatband back off his broad forehead and looked at Matchic with distant annoyance.

“I’d like for you to tell me.”

“Sure. We were over by the station, cruising slow. A guy comes running out into the street yelling about an accident. I pulled over and Kevan and I ran in. It was on Track 7. A big mob was waiting to grab the 5:28, a commuter train. What always happens, they back it down beside the platform. Anyway this girl had gone over the edge, nobody knew how. It was up near the front end of the platform so that the engineer didn’t know it and they backed seven coaches over her before the train stopped in the usual place. It was a mess, with women down on the platform and guys fanning them and everybody running back and forth. As we were running we found a doc in the crowd. You couldn’t get at her from the side she fell off of on account of the platform is high. We went around the end of the last coach. It’s a double track there and we could get to her.

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