“She was like a shadow.”
Peter shivered as if he could feel the damp, icy bite of the very shadow pass through him as he took in the story. The prisoner swept his hand in an arc, his eyes wide. He continued, “Yes, she was just like a shadow. She turned and disappeared right into the doorway. Left the poor guy just stone-cold dead in the alley.”
“What doorway?”
“I don’t know. I never noticed a door there before.”
“This was the alley with the laundry?”
“Yesssss.”
Peter was still writing when the prisoner leaned over and said, “You don’t really believe me, do you, Mr. Goodkind? You’re just doing this because my home-boy, Sydney, asked you. It can’t be the money because…” He chuckled until he lost his breath and then shook his head. “Mmm, mmm! You won’t be surprised to know I’m flat.”
“I did promise to help you but it was Monique Sackett who asked.”
“You mean Sydney didn’t set us up? After all the support I gave him? And who’s Monique? Is that some old girlfriend I don’t remember?”
“She works for the man who owns the laundry, Mr. Wycliff.”
“Wycliff? He thinks I’m innocent?”
“I gather he has no opinion one way or the other. It’s Mademoiselle Sackett who is concerned. She heard that you had been arrested and had no representation.”
“Imagine. There’s still some good people left in the world.”
“So, did you get a good look at her before she turned away, this woman?”
“Mercy, no. I was staring at the dead guy. Pinkham. It had to happen sometime ‘cause he was into some very twisted business. He had bagmen all over the place running nasty little errands. I don’t know if he crossed the lady or was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Maybe she was one that turned the tables on him. Heck, for all I know, she was a cop, just taking the law into her own hands to mop the garbage up off the street. They got cops like that, you know.”
“I know.” Peter heard the voice of the lady cop who arrested Lyndsey playing back in his head, insisting that there was a dark side to his brother-in-law and he deserved to pay for it. Lyn, with his predictable honesty and his colorless devotion to beating mathematical concepts into the dull heads of college nitwits? “So, again…can you describe her at all?”
“She was just like a shadow.”
“And…?”
Peter’s wandering pen stopped its looping tour of the page as the prisoner rolled his eyes up and spat out what few details he could remember. Another man might have described the lady cop, as she was apparently well known in the neighborhood, or maybe the laundry clerk, as she was associated with the victim. But the prisoner managed to describe a few telling aspects of someone else whom Peter recognized with ease.
