Westermann walked from headquarters through a night unsettled by a hot wind careening through the streets, carrying debris on crazed, rudderless journeys. Men on the sidewalks seemed cowed by its force, staring bleakly at the ground or taking deep pulls from bottles held in paper sacks. Women and children stayed off the streets, and the night pulsed with violent possibility. Westermann took the journey at an easy stroll, enjoying the effect that his size and physical confidence had on other men. He neither sought nor avoided eye contact, but never conceded once engaged. His pulse pounded; his body coiled like a spring; desperate energy.
He thought about the girl lying in the morgue. He thought about Grip watching flotsam riding eddies in the river. He thought about a note left on his desk by one of the duty officers, asking him to return the call of an Art Deyna from the Gazette. He didn’t know that name. What the hell did he want?
Westermann walked without conscious direction, but there was, on some level, no doubt as to his ultimate destination. He wandered through neighborhoods that he’d never before visited, signs in unfamiliar languages, stocky men smelling of garlic and liquor. He passed through an abbreviated neighborhood, maybe two blocks square, where women clad head to foot in dark robes—only their brown eyes visible beneath their chadors—were accompanied by men with long beards wearing flowing white robes and sandals. The neighborhood smelled of tea, and two sets of street signs hung on the poles, one in English and the other in Arabic script.
He left this behind, feeling the sweat soak the back of his shirt, and entered the blue-collar environs of Praeger’s Hill. Here they dispensed with paper bags to cover the bottles they drank from. Here packs of boys roamed the streets, jacked on adolescent adrenaline, looking for action. As the streets became more alive with possibility, Westermann moved with more swagger, almost a dare; no badge to hide behind.
A thought forced its way into his mind. Pushing the girl’s body into the river, her skin stiff. He shook his head to rid himself of the memory.
He came to a block of row houses and walked about halfway down, checking to see if the curtains were still open in a particular one. They were; the signal that he had been hoping for. He climbed the steps and, despite himself, looked up and down the block before knocking. He heard the pad of footsteps inside, and the door opened as far as the security chain would allow, then closed again, before opening wide.
“Hello, Lieutenant.” The woman across the threshold was wearing a silk nightgown that seemed a size or two too small and over it a sheer robe of some sort. Her red hair was pulled into a pile on top of her head, and the streetlight picked up the sheen of perspiration on her pale skin. The word that Westermann associated with her was ravishing, and it was as apt tonight as it had ever been.
He stepped across the threshold, sliding his hands onto her hips. “Hello, Mrs. Morphy.”