The Littlest Witness. Amanda Stevens
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Trembling, she watched as Gallagher knelt and examined the body. He didn’t touch the victim, didn’t disturb the crime scene with so much as a stray glance, but for a long moment, he remained there, studying her face as if her last thoughts might be lingering somewhere on her frozen expression.
After several minutes he stood. “Who was the first officer?” His tone was deep, authoritative. Not cold exactly, but a voice belonging to a man Thea had no wish to confront.
“McGowan,” someone told him.
“Over here,” the man beside her called out.
Gallagher turned and started toward them. His features stood out starkly in the streetlight. Even the rain didn’t diminish the angles of his face, the broad nose, the full sensuous lips. His eyes were blue, which surprised Thea. She’d thought they would be dark, like his hair. The light color was particularly striking against his grave features.
He wore a suit beneath the overcoat, as if he’d taken the time to dress properly before coming out. But his cheeks were roughened with stubble, giving him a sinister appearance that made Thea’s stomach quiver in fear.
His gaze barely grazed her before he said to McGowan, “What happened?”
“Wait here,” McGowan told Thea. He and Gallagher took a few steps away from her, but the wind caught their voices and tossed them back at her. “Looks like a dry dive,” McGowan told him. “DCDS. Detective Cox found a suicide note in her coat pocket.”
“Any idea who she is?”
“Not yet. There’s no ID on her, but Cox has gone up to canvass the roof for a purse or wallet, anything she might have dropped before jumping.”
Almost inadvertently Thea’s gaze followed Gallagher’s to the roof of the building. She thought she could see someone up there now, and she shuddered as the shadow moved away from the edge.
“Who found the body?” Gallagher asked.
“The building manager. Claims he came outside just before midnight to walk his dog, and that’s when he saw the victim lying on the street. He checked for a pulse, didn’t find one and then went back inside to call 911.”
“Great,” Gallagher muttered. “Probably trampled all over anything resembling evidence.” He paused. “Just before midnight you say. How accurate do you figure he is on the time?”
“Fairly accurate,” McGowan told him. “He says he’d just finished watching an old episode of ‘Hill Street Blues,’ which comes on at eleven, but the closing credits hadn’t yet run. He lives with his elderly mother. He says she can corroborate his story.”
“How soon did you respond?”
“Torecelli and I were on the scene within ten minutes after we got the call from dispatch. We secured the area and radioed for backup.”
“The manager couldn’t identify her?”
McGowan shook his head. “Claims he never saw her before tonight. She’s not a tenant, and he doesn’t know how she got into the building, unless someone buzzed her in. The outside doors are always kept locked.”
That was true, Thea thought. But a policeman worth his salt knew how easy it was to obtain entrance to almost any unmonitored building. If someone wanted in badly enough, all he or she had to do was wait around until someone was either coming or going and slip through the unlocked door, usually unnoticed. Crooks did it all the time.
And so did murderers.
Thea shivered as she studied Detective Gallagher’s grim countenance. His gaze traced the angle of the building, studying the windows that faced the street. “What about eyewitnesses?”
“None so far. No defense wounds, either, that we could see. We bagged her hands in plastic because of the rain.” Thea knew that normally the police liked to use paper bags, because the lack of air with plastic could alter the evidence. But that was something she didn’t want them knowing she knew.
In fact, the less any of them knew about her the better, especially Gallagher. Thea had a bad feeling about him. A very bad feeling.
He turned and observed the street again, watching for a few minutes as the crime-scene unit finished taking pictures and then began scouring the ground around the body for trace evidence.
He glanced at Thea, then at McGowan. “Who’s she?”
“She lives in the building. Says she was just getting home from work.”
Gallagher nodded vaguely. “Might as well chalk the site when CSU finishes, although it won’t do much good if the rain doesn’t let up. I’m going up to the roof. Let me know when the coroner gets here. Establishing time of death is going to be a bitch in this weather.”
McGowan nodded and took off, leaving Thea standing alone to face Gallagher. She hoped he’d just go up to the roof and forget all about her, but when he turned and started toward her, she saw in his eyes that he had no intention of letting her get away so easily.
“I’m Detective Gallagher.” His gaze was direct, penetrating. If he noticed her trembling, Thea hoped he’d blame the cold. “And you are?”
“Thea Lockhart.”
“Officer McGowan said you live in the building, is that right?”
She nodded. “I was just coming home from work when he stopped me.”
“You work around here, Miss Lockhart?”
“It’s…Mrs. I’m a waitress at a diner near the university. I already gave this information to Officer McGowan.”
The detective’s piercing gaze met hers. “You weren’t home tonight?”
Thea shook her head, shoving her hands even deeper into her pockets. “I’ve been away since before seven o’clock this morning. I didn’t see anything.”
“No strangers lurking around the building lately? No loud arguments, anything like that?”
“No, nothing unusual.”
Gallagher nodded almost absently. “I wonder if you’d mind taking a look at the body. See if you can identify the victim.”
The request was courteous enough, allowing her to decline if she wanted to, but Thea knew she had no real choice. No matter how much she didn’t want to look at that poor dead woman, she mustn’t do or say anything that might make Detective Gallagher suspicious.
She nodded and followed him over to the victim. The woman was lying on her back, her face surprisingly unscathed from what must have been a horrendous fall. But as Thea looked more closely, she saw the cuts and the terrible bruising that gave the body an almost ghoulish appearance. Her arms and legs were at strange angles, too, the bones undoubtedly shattered.
“I’ve never seen her before.” But Thea had second thoughts almost at once. There was something vaguely familiar about the woman, but she couldn’t place her. Which was good. At least she didn’t have to tell an outright lie.
As if sensing her hesitation, Gallagher pressed, “You’re sure?”
She could feel his gaze on her and she tried to suppress a shudder. “I don’t remember seeing her around here before.” Thea paused, then couldn’t resist asking, “Do you really think she committed suicide?” Jumping from a building seemed like such a ghastly way to die, but then, so was a bullet to the heart. A sick feeling rose in Thea’s throat, but she swallowed it away as she glanced up at Detective Gallagher.
His gaze narrowed on her, and she thought for one heart-stopping moment he might have recognized her. Then he said, “Suicide’s a possibility. We’ll know more when we’ve done a thorough search of the area. Right now you’d better get in out of this rain. We’ll be in touch if we need you.”
Alarmed, Thea started to ask why he would need to contact