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      “An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propaganda, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it.”

   – Mahatma Gandhi

      “In seeking truth, you have to get both sides of a story.”

   – Walter Cronkite

Chapter 1 — Friday in the Park

Friday

JAVIER HEARD A SCREAM.

       He was heading home after leaving the basketball court at Sixth Avenue and 3^rd Street. His pick-up team had won three straight games. He could have remained on the court for another, but he had promised his mom he would be home by nine o’clock. His boss at the supermarket wanted him stocking shelves by six a.m. and didn’t permit late arrivals. He took his usual route, cutting through Washington Square Park on his way to the NYCHA apartment building on 6^th Street, between Avenue C and the FDR Drive. The courts in the park along the East River were closer to home, but the college scouts only watched the Sixth Avenue games, where the best street players dazzled spectators.

       The scream stopped him as he trotted along a paved path curving between the trees, thick with fragrant spring blossoms. Looking left, he tried to convince himself that the sound might not have been a cry of distress—and that it might not have been from a woman. People yelled for all kinds of reasons. A dropped cell phone or a mean Tweet could prompt one. He resolved to ignore it and keep going. He needed to make sure his little brother got to bed before his mom got home from working the evening shift at the hospital. Spring pollen hung in the still air, leaving a pungent smell that mixed with the Italian sausages languishing on a rolling food cart’s grill a few hundred feet to the south.

       Two strides later, he heard it again—this time louder and more clearly a cry of pain and fear, almost certainly from a girl. His mother would be unhappy if he was late. She would also be unhappy if he ignored a cry for help. She had a mantra, repeated often enough to be part of Javier’s psyche:

       A person is defined by the actions they take and by the actions they choose not to take

       He made a sharp left down a dirt path. His shoulder bag containing his hoops gear swung in a wide arc around his body. He made his way through some thick bushes toward the sound.

* * *

JOE MALONE HEARD THE BANG from inside his guard house. It was barely a shed, plopped down at the southwest corner of Washington Square Park. Joe, working for New York University that Friday evening, was moonlighting from his regular gig as a security guard at the Citi Bank on Church Street. He had put in his twenty years at the NYPD and was supposed to be enjoying his retirement while working the cushy bank assignment he had lined up years earlier. Divorcing his wife had left him with an account balance requiring supplemental income. If he were still on the force, he would have had enough seniority to pick his shift and assignment. Retiring had been his worst decision. Well, maybe not as bad as leaving his wife for a woman who dumped him six months later. Now, he had to make another decision.

       He knew that sound. A gunshot has a specific aural texture and echoes off the surrounding buildings, even when it comes through the trees. Most New Yorkers would ignore it, even if they knew what it was. That’s the nature of city life. Don’t get involved. Cops think differently; and deep down, Joe was still a cop.

       The inside of the park, however, was not his jurisdiction. The university wanted him in his little shack on the sidewalk, to make the students feel safe as they strolled up and down the cobbled sidewalks between the bars and clubs and restaurants. If there was a fight or a purse-snatching on the street, he was expected to emerge from his shelter and take action. The wrought-iron barrier separating the park from the sidewalk was his boundary. Joe was supposed to leave the dark shadows under the city-owned trees to the NYPD. If something was happening inside the park, university security was supposed to call 9-1-1. Those were his orders.

       Joe was lousy at following orders. He slid off his chair and stretched his back as he wandered out of the shed and tipped his head up, listening in case there was another shot. He could hear a truck speeding up Sixth Avenue a block away, and the buzzing chatter of happy and drunk college students. The ambient noise drowned out any sounds coming from the park. The lights on the street gave way to shadows on the far side of the fence. Nothing. No second shot.

       He dialed the local police precinct and spoke to the desk sergeant. “This is Joe Malone, NYU Security at 4^th and MacDougal. I have a probable gunshot inside Washington Square Park, likely to my north. Please send a unit over to check it out . . . Yes, I know the difference between weapons fire and a car backfiring. I’m retired NYPD. Just send a car.”

       He punched END and again tilted his head, listening. Nothing. The precinct dispatcher would eventually put out a call for a squad car, but it would take a few minutes, at least.

       “Fuck it.” Joe walked through the gap in the fence, pulling out his two-foot-long tactical flashlight that also served as a Billy club. He walked along a smooth, paved path, still listening. The street sounds were muffled here, behind layers of shrubs and trees. The pool of brightness from his flashlight filled in the shadows. He left the pavement, following a dirt path toward what he knew was a clearing around the Hangman’s Elm. Joe had no clue how the tree got its name, but assumed criminals were actually hanged there in olden times. It was a spot where people gathered in the daylight for picnics and where New Yorkers who preferred not to be seen came to score some weed—or more—after dark.

       Joe wasn’t interested in busting a small-time drug dealer or their customers, but he figured the shot he heard had come from this direction. The clearing was as good a place to start as any. Another bang caught his attention. It was farther away, toward the east: different, but likely another gunshot. He swung his light around to confirm there was no potentially hostile person in the clearing. Emerging through a gap in a line of thick forsythia bushes where the path narrowed, Joe shone his light at the Hangman’s Elm.

       He saw a flash of purple and a dark shape on the ground. He walked toward it, shining the light all around the silent dirt, trampled by hundreds of New York feet. When he was close enough to be sure of what he was seeing, he rushed forward. It was a girl. On the ground. Not moving. He knelt in the dust, not worrying about what evidence he might be trampling. Sticking the flashlight under an arm, he reached out and nudged her, in case she was just sleeping. She wasn’t. He rolled her onto her back. His eyes jumped to the dark hole in her forehead. She wasn’t going to need an ambulance.

Chapter 2 — Dream Job

HANNAH’S PHONE BLASTED the opening bars of “Takin’ Care of Business” at nine-fifteen Friday night. She was on a date—a first date. Not wanting to appear too anxious, she wore a conservative green dress with a high neckline and half-sleeves. Hannah’s brown hair, which she usually kept in a ponytail, hung in loose curls around her shoulders.

       “I’m really sorry, but this is my boss. I need to answer.” She was already halfway out of her chair. Hannah had mostly talked about her job during cocktails and dinner, so her date, Erik, should not have been surprised. She had described the job as exciting and challenging, but also requiring long and unpredictable hours. She could be called to cover a breaking news story at any time. Her explanation was proving itself all too true.

       “We’re not sure who the victim is, but the report is a young female.” David Butler’s voice carried excitement and urgency. “Terry is down there with a van. He was shooting background video of a climate change roundtable with John Kerry, a Saudi prince and the Chinese vice president when he got a tip about this shooting. We’re a little light tonight, so let’s see if there’s any link between the climate conference and this dead girl.”

       It was the kind of breaking story Hannah lived for. Dave was her managing editor, so she had to take orders from him. But he knew how to push her buttons and make her want to drop everything and rush to the scene.

       “I’m sending William Wilson. Try not to piss him off too much. We want to do a live shot for eleven o’clock. First segment. Can you get there?”

       “Absolutely.” Hannah’s response carried more excitement and emotion than any of her conversation at the dinner table with Erik.

       “You’re not my first choice, Hawthorne, but nobody else is available. Don’t give me another Lower East Side Baby. Got it?”

       Hannah cringed and bit her tongue. It was useless arguing with Dave that the Lower East Side Baby debacle wasn’t her fault. The witness she put on camera two months earlier claimed he saw the baby’s mother in the window before the child fell. Hannah had no way of verifying it. After Hannah put him on camera, a reporter from The New York Post discovered the witness on a security camera at the critical time, outside a strip club ten blocks away. The network was embarrassed. The witness turned out to be the woman’s ex-husband and had a grudge. The injured child was not his. It was a mess.

       “I won’t let you down, Sir.” She ended the call and hurried back to the table, making her excuses and giving Erik a peck on the cheek. “This is my life. Like I told you, it’s exciting, but sometimes inconvenient. Can we try again?” She grabbed her sweater, blew him an air kiss, and hustled away. Erik sat in disbelief for a moment before reaching across the tiny table to stab a bit of Hannah’s abandoned crème brulé.

       Hannah waited on the Sixth Avenue curb outside Possa Notte and lit a cigarette. She hadn’t wanted to endanger a first date by smoking in front of Erik, but now she was working. As soon as an empty yellow cab pulled over, she tossed the butt and climbed in.

* * *

ONE HOUR AND FORTY MINUTES LATER, Hannah walked down the cobbled sidewalk along the north side of Washington Square Park, holding the elbow of a young woman in a pink sweatsuit and matching flip-flops. The girl, Petra Burroughs, was the former roommate of the shooting victim, Angelica Monroe. Petra’s brown hair was pinned up with a plastic claw clip. She had no makeup and looked like she was ready for bed.

       Hannah guided Petra through the growing obstacle course of broadcast media equipment. Since the initial police calls about a shooting in Washington Square Park, a swarm of media had descended on the area. Black power cables snaked across the sidewalk every ten feet, connecting portable generators to aluminum spiders with flood-light eyes that illuminated the eerie scene. Hannah and Petra passed several broadcast vans before arriving where her cameraman and driver, Terry, had staked out a position.

       Unlike most of the other media vehicles, the white American Cable News van was emblazoned with the corporate name and logo. The company’s executives had decided that, even after the near-riots targeting journalists after the George Floyd murder, the young network’s branding was more important than the risks to its reporters. Terry, the first media member on the scene, had grabbed a location on the curb next to an access path into the park under a streetlight. Any extra light for a camera shot was gold for a nighttime live report.

       Hannah had wheedled the victim’s identity out of a university security guard named Joe Malone, who found the body. Hannah implied that she could get Joe an on-camera interview. A shy smile and a hundred-dollar cash payment, for a copy of Joe’s cell phone picture of the crime scene, convinced Joe to give up Angelica Monroe’s name. Hannah then worked Instagram and Twitter to find photos of Angelica. There were plenty, one of which included Petra, whose name was tagged. Paydirt. It would have been a better story if Angelica was somehow linked to the climate conference. Still, the brutal murder of an attractive young woman in the middle of Manhattan was juicy—as long as she could come up with a witness to put in front of the ACN camera.

       Petra was, naturally, skeptical when Hannah contacted her via social media. However, Hannah’s youth and her own online photos and portfolio broke down Petra’s resistance after the seventh message. When Hannah arrived at Petra’s dorm room, the girl was reluctant to talk about Angelica. “I was, like, only her roommate. And that was last year. It’s not like I knew her that well. I’m . . . really not the best person.”

       Hannah was not going to lose this witness. “Don’t be modest. You lived with her for a year. You can certainly tell our viewers how crushed you are about losing her at nineteen. I’m sure she was a good friend and a kind person, right?”

       Petra fidgeted, clasping her hands behind her back. She avoided making eye contact. Hannah couldn’t be sure if her reluctance was trepidation about being on camera or something else.

       She didn’t have time to psychoanalyze the girl. “Look, right now everybody is speculating about Angelica and what happened. You will be the first person who knew her to go on camera. You don’t get many chances to be the star witness. Can I count on you?”

       “Can I change into something nicer, and put on some make-up?”

       “You look great just as you are,” Hannah lied. She wanted the girl to look natural, even disheveled. Speed was the name of the game. The first interview was, by definition, the best one. “We need to hurry if we’re going to make it in time for the eleven o’clock top story. Just grab a sweatshirt, in case you get chilly.”

       As they walked past a barrier of yellow crime scene tape, Hannah prepped Petra for her on-camera appearance. “Our reporter, William Wilson, is a wonderful guy. You’ll like him. He’ll lead you through the interview, so don’t worry. We want you to talk about Angelica. It’s a tragedy. We want our viewers to know her through you. You’ll explain what a wonderful person she is—was—and about your feelings now that you know she is so suddenly gone. It must be awful, knowing a classmate could be murdered only steps away from your dorm.”

       Hannah stopped talking long enough to gauge Petra’s demeanor and mood. The girl’s eyes looked like golf balls, with dime-sized black pupils. Panic. Hannah wanted sadness. She changed her approach and asked Petra whether Angelica had a boyfriend.

       “Um, I haven’t really hung out much with Angie this school year. She lives in a dorm up by Union Square and we don’t have any classes together. She had a guy last spring named Tony, but I haven’t seen him on Angie’s Instagram lately, so he’s probably not around anymore.”

       Hannah escorted Petra around two black-and-white police cruisers, both with their blue and red lights twirling. They stopped at the ACN interview location, where Terry had marked a huge X on the sidewalk stones with red duct tape. Behind the mark, a four-foot-high iron fence made a perfect background for the live shot, the trees beyond draped with crime scene tape.

       Hannah stood on the red mark with Petra, consoling her and building up her confidence about being on camera. When Terry gave the signal, William Wilson emerged from the ACN van and walked to the mark, while Terry focused the HD camera, mounted on a tripod. The flood lights brightened as Wilson stepped into the illumination, smiling and holding a wireless microphone.

       Hannah stepped aside, giving Petra a raised thumb of support. Her phone vibrated. “Hey,” she answered, knowing from the caller ID that David Butler was on the other end.

       “Are you ready? We want a buck-thirty at two past eleven.”

       “All set, Boss. Did you get my notes?”

       “Yeah. Nice work. How the hell did you get the dead girl’s roommate?”

       “I’m just that good. And she’s last year’s roommate. Let’s get the lead-in right.”

       “Fine. Fine. We have it. You’re sure she’s legit?”

       Hannah bit her lip. “Yes. It’s based on photos on Angelica Monroe’s Instagram.”

       “Who?”

       Hannah sighed. “The dead girl. Don’t worry, the witness is solid.”

       “Tell William to tape a second segment after you’re done live. We want two minutes for the overnight. You got any other witnesses?”

       Hannah held the phone away from her ear, slowly counting to five. It was a technique one of her journalism school professors taught her to avoid blurting out something she would regret later. “No, Boss, I’ve been fully occupied securing you the scoop of the night. It may take me another half hour to get an interview with the killer.” The silence on the other side of the call, rather than a burst of laughter, signaled that her sarcasm was not properly appreciated. “But I’ll keep digging, as soon as we finish the live segment.”

       “OK. You did good tonight, Kid. Keep it up.” The line went dead. Hannah smiled, despite being pissed off. She hated that it made her so happy to get a small nugget of recognition from Butler.

       When Hannah looked up, the red light atop the huge black camera in front of Terry flashed. William Wilson thanked the studio anchor and launched into Petra’s interview. As Hannah had hoped, Petra looked like she had been ready for bed, but agreed to be interviewed in her night clothes because she was so mortified by her friend’s tragic death. She told the camera how Angie loved animals and wanted to be a veterinarian. When asked to recall her favorite memory of Angelica, Petra’s tears flowed like a spring rain. Through her obvious grief, Petra said Angie was popular and a friend to everyone. She could not understand how anyone would want to hurt her. It was gold.

       After the live interview ended, Terry and William held Petra in place, then launched into a series of questions that could be edited together later into the longer piece. When the questions ended, Terry hustled Petra inside the van on the pretext of giving her a downloaded copy of her interview. The goal was to keep her under wraps so the other reporters and producers couldn’t grab her for a copy-cat spot. Hannah remained outside with William, who unbuttoned his dress shirt and pulled his necktie down three inches.

       “That was fantastic! You got us the absolute best interview. I’m sure there wasn’t a dry eye in the studio. This Angelica girl is as tragic as it gets.” He stepped toward Hannah with his hands spread wide, angling for a hug.

       Hannah extended a hand, holding him at bay. “Don’t seem too happy that she’s dead, William. The people want to see you cry, not pop the champagne.”

       Wilson pushed through her outstretched arm and grabbed her shoulders with his manicured hands. He leaned in to kiss her as her elbow bent. She turned her head and winced as he planted his lips on her cheek, then released his grip and turned away with a smile. Hannah thought about tripping him as punishment for the unwanted kiss, but recalled Dave’s admonition that she should not piss off the network’s most popular field reporter. Wilson walked around the front of the van and disappeared beyond.

       After escorting Petra back to her dorm, Hannah waved at several colleagues from the local network affiliates. They flashed expressions conveying congratulations, admiration, jealousy, and contempt all at once.

       Back at the van, Terry sat in a folding camp chair, smoking a cigarette. “Can I bum one?” Hannah held out her left hand without waiting for a response. It was a familiar dance.

       Terry bumped his pack and offered the extended butt, saying, “You should quit.”

       “I know. Thanks.” She used her own lighter. She had half a pack in her bag inside the van, but smoking Terry’s didn’t count against her self-imposed limit of five per day.

       “You going home?” Terry asked between drags.

       “Not sure. You?”

       Terry blew out a perfect foot-wide smoke ring that drifted toward the crime scene tape attached to the iron fence. “I’m gonna stay. This location is too good to give up. Butler gave me permission for the overtime. He said the morning show will want a shot, even if there’s no update.”

       Hannah nodded. Terry was dedicated, and he was right about the prime location. If they moved the van, three others would battle for the turf. It was best to dig in. Parking regulations would not be enforced as long as the media was there.

       Hannah surveyed the scene. Two reporters from other networks stood in pools of bright light doing live reports. They were so close to each other they had to angle their cameras in order to avoid having their neighbors in the shot. She counted six news vans parked along the street, five with their satellite dish antennae extended skyward.

       A middle-aged man wearing a faded blue sports jacket and a dark-haired woman in a jacket and slacks combo ducked under the yellow tape, accompanied by two uniformed officers. They moved along the iron fence, then turned right, into the park. “Those are the detectives,” she said in Terry’s direction. She stepped toward the park entrance, but was stopped by two officers who held out their palms without speaking. The press was not allowed behind the tape while the investigation was ongoing.

       Hannah returned to the van. It was nearing midnight, but the scene was still buzzing with activity. There were more reporters than cops. “I think I’ll stick around a while and see if the detectives come back.”

       “Suit yourself.” Terry tossed his spent cigarette on the pavement and crushed it out with a clunky black shoe. “I’m going to try to get some sleep while I can.”

       “Great.” Hannah gave him a pat on the shoulder. “Fantastic work today.”

       Terry grunted as he disappeared inside the van, which was equipped with a hammock and a mini-fridge. She shook her head slowly, marveling at the feeding frenzy all around her. She needed a big story to make her boss forget about the Lower East Side Baby. She snuffed out her butt and sat down in Terry’s abandoned canvas chair, then mumbled to herself, “This is going to be great.”

Chapter 3 — Step Right Up

DETECTIVE ANDREW “DRU” COOK ducked under the streamer of yellow crime-scene ribbon. He glanced back to make sure his partner, Mariana Vega, made it through behind him. Dru had been a homicide detective for seven years and was increasingly annoyed when calls came in on a Friday night. It was certain to ruin his weekend.

       Dru liked to think he didn’t look like a cop. His athletic six-foot frame attracted admiring glances. He still had a full head of wavy hair, although he had to admit that what was once Norse-god-blond had darkened through his twenties. Now, at age thirty-six, it was at best sandy-brown. Still, he had the blue eyes and light skin of his Scandinavian ancestors.

       The area around Washington Square Park was buzzing with an intensity unusual for a Friday at nearly midnight—and that was saying something. The New York University area, like much of Manhattan, normally got busier as the hour got later. Mariana had parked two blocks away because of the news vans blocking all the normal no-parking spots cops usually occupied. With several dozen reporters and at least eight camera crews encircling their crime scene, this figured to be a long night.

       The two detectives each pulled out blue latex gloves and prepared for the initial look at their stiff. Dru wore a faded blue sport jacket. Mariana’s tailored blazer was a dark maroon above her black slacks. Her long, dark hair was tied back in a neat ponytail, leaving her face unobstructed.

       Two uniformed officers stood guard at the entrance into the park. One had a cigarette dangling from his mouth.

       “Put that shit out!” Dru snapped. “You’re on duty.”

       The officer dropped the butt and crushed it into the ground with a black boot.

       Mariana turned her head slightly and mumbled, “Geez, Dru, give a cop a break. Just because you’re trying to quit doesn’t mean everyone else has to.”

       “Smoking on duty is against regulations.”

       “When did that ever stop you?” Mariana raised one manicured eyebrow.

       Dru and Mariana walked slowly down the paved path, curving through the landscaping toward the big tree known as the Hangman’s Elm. When the pavement curved left, they ducked under more yellow tape onto the grass. They knew to take their time when traversing a fresh crime scene.

       They emerged past a line of azalea bushes into the clearing around the huge elm. Mariana turned to her right, surveying more crime-scene ribbon wrapped around protruding branches and bushes in the absence of anything else to which it could be affixed. She couldn’t help but think of the song her mother loved about yellow ribbons and old oak trees.

       Mariana stood six inches shorter than her slightly more senior partner. A light-skinned Dominican with slender legs and mysterious dark eyes, she looked like anything but a cop. After nine years on the force and four working homicide, the veteran beat cops had learned not to underestimate her small package.

       A uniformed officer stood between them and the big Elm tree, waiting. Four portable light stands, each with three large aluminum pans reflecting the light from halogen bulbs, made the clearing as bright as a movie set.

       “Hey, Hernandez,” Dru called out. “You in charge here?” Officer Emmanuel Hernandez nodded. He had a boyish brown face below short-cropped black hair, buzzed above both ears. Dru had worked with him before and was glad he had a competent officer in charge of the scene. “Good. What’ve we got?”

       Hernandez gave a quick rundown to the newly arrived detectives. “The victim is identified as Angelica Monroe, sophomore, nineteen. Looks like a gunshot.” A lumpy white sheet lay under the Hangman’s Elm on the packed dirt. One large light, resembling a grotesquely oversized desk lamp on a bent goose-neck arm, illuminated the corpse.

       The assistant medical examiner was packing up her gear in a green duffle bag, looking like a dental hygienist who had completed a tooth cleaning. An EMT crew stood idly by beyond the big tree, ready to remove the body as soon as the detectives finished their inspection. Hernandez explained that the university security guard who found Angelica searched her purse and found an NYU identification card. The responding officers had already contacted campus security and were securing her dorm room, several blocks to the north.

       “Good,” Dru interrupted the narrative. “We’ll check there when we’re done here.” Dru then took a few paces toward the covered body and called to the Assistant ME. “Natalie! We have a cause of death?”

       “Detective,” she sighed, “you know I can’t give you that at the scene.” Natalie Or, a slender Asian woman in her early thirties with long black hair tied in a bun, put a bony hand on her hip and glared at Dru. They had worked on the same crime scenes many times. Without an autopsy, she could not give any definitive answers and they didn’t want to be quoted to the press prematurely. Despite the caution tape and a phalanx of officers surrounding the scene, an intrepid reporter could be lurking in the shadows, waiting for such juicy information.

       “I know. The university security guard and Officer Hernandez here both say gunshot. Can you at least confirm the likelihood for me?”

       Natalie pressed her lips together until they formed a pink line and rolled her eyes. “Fine, I’ll say there appears to be a gunshot to the head. Large caliber. I see no obvious alternative causes of death. Yet.” She turned away and grabbed her bag. “Now, if you will excuse me, it’s a busy night and I have another corpse to inspect.” She walked toward the park exit.

       Dru nodded in sympathy. He knew there was another body waiting for her on the other side of the park. Two for the price of one. She didn’t even need to move her wagon from its parking space. He wondered whether she had secured a closer spot than Mariana.

       Then he turned back to Hernandez. “Sorry, Hernandez. I cut you off before you were finished.”

       “Understandable, Sir.” He continued the rundown in an efficient monotone. “The victim had a large purse containing a plastic baggie with what I estimate to be one ounce of weed and $500 in cash. Also an iPhone, which is locked.”

       “So, not a robbery,” Dru observed.

       “A drug buy gone bad?” Mariana suggested.

       “Why would a dealer shoot his customer and not take the cash?”

       Mariana shrugged. “Somebody trying to steal the weed after the buy?”

       “Why not take the weed and the money? And why would she fight back enough to get shot?”

       Hernandez, who had been listening intently, asked, “Should we let the press know about these details?”

       Dru put a hand on the officer’s shoulder. “Hernandez, you know better than that. The press is never our friend. They want any details they can get out of us, but anything we say will only hurt the investigation. Say nothing. No cop has ever cracked a case by sharing information with the press at a crime scene.”

       “OK,” Hernandez replied, properly schooled. Hernandez then finished his recitation of the important information. The responding officers had bagged blood found near the body and a small amount from the ground about twenty feet away. They also recovered a silver-grey shoulder bag with the logo of Emirates Airlines, which had been on the ground near some bushes on the perimeter of the clearing around the tree. After following standard safety protocol, they had opened it and found a pair of Air Jordan basketball shoes and a basketball jersey. The jersey was damp and sweaty, as if recently worn. There was no identification in the bag, but the sneakers had the initials “JE” written in black ink under the Nike logo.

       “Good work, Hernandez. We’ll get you promoted to detective yet,” Dru smiled. Hernandez bowed his head in acknowledgement, but didn’t comment.

       Dru and Mariana slowly walked the scene. When they reached the body, Dru motioned for Mariana to remove the sheet. The body’s most significant attribute was a dark hole above the left eye. It was easily identifiable as the likely cause of death, even without confirmation from Natalie. Angelica’s purple top, which looked like silk, was torn off one shoulder. The corpse showed scratches and bruises, consistent with an assault. Two fingernails on her right hand were jaggedly broken.

       Mariana extracted a tongue depressor from a pocket and lifted the dead girl’s skirt. “Natalie will do a rape review when they get the body back to the morgue, but her underwear looks to be intact. If it was a sexual assault, it doesn’t look like it got far.” Nothing else around the body caught their attention.

       They next inspected the athletic bag, which was waiting a few feet from the body. Inside, the basketball jersey was less sweaty than Hernandez described, but the passage of time explained the change. The bag could be significant, but Dru had no idea how.

       Dru and Mariana both pulled out flashlights and slowly patrolled the area. Despite the artificial lights, the detectives liked to provide their own illumination, since there were always shadows and hidden places at a nighttime murder scene. They were already assuming a murder. College students didn’t shoot themselves in the foreheads with nonexistent guns.

       Five minutes later, Mariana called out, “Hey, Dru. Take a look at this.” She was standing near the edge of the clearing, next to some thick bushes. On the ground to her left, two yellow flags marked the place where the responding officers had found the Emirates Airlines bag. When Dru joined his partner, Mariana directed her flashlight beam to the ground next to a forsythia bush, thick with new spring leaves and the last remnants of yellow blossoms. In the pool of light, Dru saw the object of Mariana’s attention, a small detached branch sporting four shoots of green leaves. “Had to come from that bush, pushed forward by somebody coming through from the back side.”

       Dru nodded his agreement. “You think the bag?”

       “Probably. Somebody came through here, then dropped the bag.”

       “The girl?” Dru asked.

       “Not likely. Sweaty basketball gear? We can check the sneaker size against her foot, but I doubt it.”

       “The killer?”

       Mariana looked around, as if the bushes would speak to her. “Maybe. Could have seen her, or followed her, then dropped his bag to attack her. Then ran off afterward, leaving the bag behind.”

       “Maybe,” Dru said slowly, not convinced. “It would explain the bag. But why not take it with you after you kill her?”

       “The bag could belong to a bystander.”

       Dru cocked his head to the side. “If so, where is he?”

       Mariana shrugged. “Ran away?”

       “And left his bag? Those are Jordans. He must have been in a big hurry.”

       “It’s just a possibility,” Mariana said. “Could be another buyer, waiting their turn?”

       After another ten minutes of meticulous searching, Dru and Mariana rejoined Hernandez next to the elm tree. The EMT crew had removed the body, leaving only small yellow markers behind.

       Dru asked, “Any luck finding a witness?”

       “None so far.”

       “What about the guy who found the body?”

       “The security guard? Name’s Joe Malone. Says he’s former NYPD. We sent him back to his guardhouse at the corner of 4^th & MacDougal. He was being a pest. He’ll be there until two o’clock. We told him not to leave until he talked to you.”

       Dru and Mariana exchanged a glance, then Mariana shrugged. “Might as well get it over with. What else do we have?”

       Hernandez pointed to the east. “There was another murder on the far side of the park, a Hispanic male. Shot once in the chest. A bloody knife was recovered at the scene. At least, that’s what I heard. We have two teams of officers over there handling the scene. One’s a buddy of mine and gave me the details.”

       “Any time of death on that one?” Dru asked.

       “Not sure.”

       Dru looked at Mariana. “Could be a connection?”

       “Maybe. We should check to see if the dead guy fits the shoes from our bag.”

       “You have a Cinderella complex, Mariana. Anybody ever tell you that?”

       “Fuck you.”

       Dru chuckled as he turned away toward the path back to the exterior perimeter of the park. “Let’s go. Nothing else for us here. Let’s take a stroll over to see who’s working the other stiff. Then we’ll talk to the security guard and then check the girl’s dorm room.”

       “Oh, boy,” Mariana replied sarcastically as they walked briskly away from the Hangman’s Elm, toward the street and the bright lights of the television camera crews. They ducked under the yellow tape and walked east. After several hundred yards, they reentered the park and walked along an internal path to the far northeastern corner.

       They reached a wide swath of grass crisscrossed by dirt paths. Even after midnight, the unusually warm April air was comfortable. An ambulance, lights on but without a siren, pulled up on the narrow, paved path.

       Dru spotted detective George Mason, standing alongside two uniformed officers. He called out, “They’re still sending your ass to the dog cases, eh?”

       “I’ll take ’em,” George replied with a chuckle. “You can have the spotlights.”

       Mariana playfully punched George on the right shoulder. “We got a circus over on the other side of the park. Where are your film crews?”

       “Nowhere,” George said. “We got a Latino teen here, dead with a gunshot in the chest. Nothing those vultures care about.”

       Dru asked, “You get a bullet?”

       “Nah. Embedded in the body. Looks like small caliber.”

       “Hmm,” Dru grunted an acknowledgement. “We’ll see if there’s any connection to our NYU undergrad. If it’s the same gun, we may have something to investigate.”

       “Yours also small caliber?”

       “No, actually. Ours looks like a howitzer. But you never know. Any ID on the kid?”

       “None.” George moved toward the body, holding out an arm to welcome Dru and Mariana to his crime scene. “We’ve got nothing else here besides the knife.” Dru pointed to the evidence bag on the grass next to the covered corpse’s head. George nodded. The bag held a long knife, its blade extended and bearing dark stains.

       “Prints?”

       “The forensics team collected some, then bagged the knife. The body has no obvious cuts, so it looks like the kid made the mistake of bringing a knife to a gunfight.”

       “Anything else of note over here?” Dru asked while walking around the body, examining the trampled grass with his flashlight. The floodlights here were half as bright as those illuminating the Hangman’s Elm. “Any witnesses?”

       “No. The after-dark regulars aren’t in a hurry to talk to us. Until we have an ID on the kid, there’s not much else to do.”

       “Yeah,” Dru mumbled, “we’re lucky. We have an ID, and now we have a dorm room to search. We should go.”

       “Sure. You go stand in front of the cameras,” George said with a chuckle, “I’ll close my case before you.”

       “Yeah, you’re probably right.” Dru turned and tapped Mariana on the arm. “Let’s go talk to Joe Malone.”

* * *

THE LITTLE GUARD SHACK wasn’t large enough to contain three people, so Dru and Mariana asked Joe Malone to step outside for their interview. Joe was happy to oblige.

       “I knew I heard a gunshot,” he volunteered. “It definitely came from the north, so I made the call to check it out.”

       “Slow down, Joe.” Dru held up an open palm. “Let’s do this one step at a time. First, do you remember seeing the girl earlier in the evening?”

       Joe, who was bouncing on the balls of his feet, became still as he contemplated the question. “I don’t think so. I certainly don’t specifically recall.”

       “OK,” Dru continued, “So, you heard a shot. How long between hearing the shot and finding the body?”

       “Lemme see,” Joe looked at the sky. “I waited a minute to see if there was another shot, then I called the precinct and asked them to send a squad car. The dispatcher didn’t seem to take me very seriously, which is why I decided to go in myself. I went in cautiously, so, maybe six or seven minutes.”

       “When you got to the clearing, did you see anyone there, besides the girl?”

       “No,” Joe immediately replied. “I swept my light all around the area. There was nobody.”

       Mariana then cut in. “Did you hear anything, like somebody running away, or shouting?”

       “I heard another shot,” Joe offered. “It was farther away, off to the east.”

       “The other murder,” Mariana made eye contact with Dru.

       “That’s good information,” Dru took back the lead. “So, you found the girl. Did you move her?”

       “Sure. I had to check if she was alive, so I rolled her over. She was face-down when I got there. As soon as I got a look at her head, I saw the shot, so it was pretty obvious she was gone.”

       “And you checked her wallet?”

       “Yeah,” Joe dropped his head, suddenly not as enthusiastic. “I know I should have left it for the responding officers. But I was a cop for twenty years, so I know how to manage a crime scene. I worked the Righteous Assassin murders, you know.”

       “Really?” Mariana responded without considering how she was interrupting Dru’s questioning.

       “Sure.” Joe snapped back to his animated self. “I was at the scene when Slick Mick Gallata got snuffed.”

       Dru looked at Mariana while replying to Joe. “That must have been exciting, but let’s stick to the present. Did you remove anything from her purse?”

       “No. No way. I saw her NYU ID, so I pulled it out to see who she was. I figured it would aid any investigation to have an ID on her.”

       “Did you identify anything else of significance at the crime scene?”

       “No. I told everything to the responding officers.”

       “OK, Joe. Thank you.” Dru turned away.

       “Wait,” Joe raised his voice. “Don’t you want to hear my theory about what happened?”

       Dru turned his head. “If we have any additional questions, we’ll let you know. Detective Vega will give you a card. Please send her a text so we know how to get you if we need you.”

       Mariana extended a business card, which Joe took, looking annoyed. Without any additional conversation, the two detectives walked toward their parked sedan. Angelica’s dorm room was far enough away that they should take the car. “Looks like we’re going to run up some overtime this weekend,” Dru mumbled.

* * *

A HALF-HOUR LATER, Dru and Mariana left Angelica’s dorm building, leaving two uniforms behind to finish taking an inventory. A clumsily hidden space in a bin under her bed contained two smaller plastic bins with remnants of marijuana and three pre-rolled joints. The hangers in her small closet contained some fashionable dresses and tops, with similarly high-end shoes on the floor. They had her phone, but could not access it without an unlock code. They found nothing else of significance in the room.

       On the walk back to the car, Mariana said, “You figure the weed is our connection?”

       “Maybe. She could have been meeting her supplier. She either had a heavy habit or was buying for more than one person. Hard to figure why the guy would shoot his customer.”

       “You assume a guy?” Mariana opened the car door and slid into the driver’s seat.

       When Dru had buckled up, he replied. “Women don’t generally carry cannons. You saw the hole in the girl’s head.”

       “True enough. But you know what the old man taught us. Never assume anything. Keep all possibilities in play until the evidence rules them out.”

       “Who are you now, Mike Stoneman?” The two detectives had both spent time under the wing of the department’s most senior homicide detective. Dru wished Stoneman, or any other detective, had drawn this case.

       “I wish.” Mariana rolled down her window, enjoying the warm air of spring in New York. It had been a cold winter and she wanted to enjoy the fresh breeze. She pulled into traffic without another word. Neither asked what the other had planned for the weekend. It didn’t matter.

Chapter 4 — Distant Lights

PAULO RICHARDSON SAT on a threadbare sofa in front of a huge silver box. It perched on an aluminum and glass table in his studio apartment on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. The hulking unit was a Mitsubishi 42-inch CRT High-Definition television, and had been state of the art in 1986. Paulo had recognized it as likely still functional and enlisted three buddies to help him drag it up to his apartment after somebody left it out with the trash.

       Paulo, knobby knees tucked under his wiry frame, nibbled at a plate of rice and beans with sausage while he watched the ten o’clock news. His impassive brown face, accented by a wispy goatee, split its attention between the food and the anchor, in her green dress with a cut-out slashing from her shoulder to mid-breast like a wound from a broadsword. He could not understand why the wardrobe people at the station picked such inappropriate attire for their news anchor. She looked like a nightclub date awaited her immediately after the broadcast and she didn’t want to change.

       Paulo wore boxer shorts, an aging NYU t-shirt, and white athletic socks with blue and red stripes at the ankles. Clear, brown eyes hovered under a mop of disheveled black hair he tried unsuccessfully to tame each morning with a comb.

       At thirty, he still felt like a journalism school student, even though he had been writing for the Lower East Side Tribune for six years. None of his colleagues had been at the tiny neighborhood paper as long, and many who started after him had long since moved up to more established publishers. “Paper” was a colloquialism, since it published only online. The LES Trib, as the staff called it, was near the bottom of the ladder for a Columbia Journalism School graduate. He knew that, but couldn’t bring himself to leave. It was his neighborhood. There were important stories to write, stories that mattered to the local residents and merchants. He had convinced himself he could make a difference. That was why he took the job in the first place, despite credentials that would have landed him a much more prestigious gig.

       Next to him on the sofa, a battered laptop computer sat with its lid open. Two paragraphs of text waited patiently for Paulo to return to his typing. He was in no hurry. The story was routine and, like so many, depressing. Another local business had announced a bankruptcy filing. The owner hoped to keep his combination dry cleaner and laundromat open while he negotiated with creditors, but the prospects weren’t good. If Mr. Liu had a better credit score, he might have found a bank willing to extend him a loan. The immigrant from Malaysia had no connections through a golf club to help him. He would likely have to liquidate to satisfy his debts. That was how Paulo saw it, another minority entrepreneur struggling to stay afloat after the Covid-19 pandemic and trying to contribute to the local economy, succumbing to unavoidable circumstances. No government bail-out would save him. He was small and could easily be allowed to fail. Paulo was not in a hurry to finish the story.

       The television news was mostly drivel, until the anchor teased her audience with a promise of “breaking news” concerning a shooting in Washington Square Park. As the station went to commercial, Paulo put down his fork, unfolded his awkwardly long legs, and padded to his west-facing window. He used a napkin to clean his wire-framed glasses. He could see the reflection of flashing blue and red lights beyond the end of 6^th Street. Another bit of senseless violence, probably another illegal gun. It was a familiar tale.

       He turned away from the window when the news anchor came back on, still wearing her green party dress. He knew the network had to save enough time for weather and sports, so there would not be much to say. They went live to a reporter standing on the sidewalk outside the park. She exhibited a full mouth of brilliantly white teeth when the anchor threw it to her with the banal lead of, “What’s happening out there?”

       The field reporter, wearing a tight black dress with a low neckline, started talking—another woman whose wardrobe was appropriate for the red carpet at the Oscars, but not for an urban crime scene. She had nothing to report. The police would only confirm one victim, a young woman whose identity had not been released. Maybe the police didn’t know. Reports from unnamed sources called it a shooting. That was all she could say.

       Only one thing was absolutely certain, Paulo thought. The dead woman in the park was White. The TV reporter hadn’t said so, but the attention level for this story was way too high for the victim to be a person of color.

       “Back to you, Candice,” she chirped, flashing another smile as if a casting agent were watching.

       Paulo snapped off the television. His gaze fell briefly on his laptop and the unfinished story waiting for his attention. For a moment, he considered putting on shoes and hustling over to the park. He dismissed the thought. There were probably a dozen reporters and several camera crews digging out anything meaningful. But tomorrow there might be something for him.

       He went back to his laptop and banged out the rest of the depressing bankruptcy story. He tried to humanize Mr. Liu and make his readers understand that the system was stacked against him. Paulo stopped short of advocating for the city government to make low-interest loans available to failing small businesses on the same terms that the feds provided liquidity to large banks and manufacturers. But the message was carefully woven between the lines. He was pleased with the final draft and sent it to his editor a few minutes before midnight.

       Outside the window, the distant red and blue lights still flashed. He flipped on the television and navigated to New York One. The 24-hour news channel ran on a loop after midnight. It was rough and superficial, but tended to be reasonably accurate. The shooting in Washington Square Park was the lead story. The victim now had an identity: Angelica Monroe, a White girl from Westchester County and a sophomore at NYU.

       “Knew it,” he mumbled to nobody.

       After a minute of talking that shed no new light on the facts, the anchor introduced a replay of an interview credited to American Cable News, with a young woman named Petra. She said she was the victim’s freshman roommate. Petra had no insight into the murder, but extoled the virtues of the dead girl and cried when asked how she felt about a brutal murder so close to her university sanctuary.

       Paulo turned off the set when the broadcast switched to a secondary story. He had no doubt that Angelica Monroe was a tragic casualty of the city’s violent personality. Nobody deserved to be shot to death at nineteen. It was a big story. Guns, murder, a young, White victim: all the attributes of a media feeding frenzy. He should probably stay out of it.

       As he brushed his teeth, Paulo mentally reviewed the stories on his work-in-progress report. Clarence, his boss and the only editor at the LES Trib, insisted on a report every Friday. Today’s sheet included the bankruptcy story he had just filed and three story ideas on which he had not done any significant reporting. There was always breaking news to cover, but his readers mostly wanted in-depth pieces. That was what got Paulo excited about being a journalist. At the moment, he didn’t have any stories in his head that would keep him up late. Maybe after the police made an arrest in the park shooting, there would be something to dig into. Maybe.

       As he meandered toward sleep, his mind kept returning to the female news anchor’s silly party dress. That was mainstream journalism. His stories were marginal news from a low-rent online paper.

       Tell that to Mr. Liu, he thought.

Chapter 5 — The Circus Is in Town

Saturday

SATURDAY MORNING, Mariana walked into the bullpen at the precinct house on 94^th Street and saw Dru emerging from their captain’s office. Edward “Sully” Sullivan was seldom in the office on a Saturday, and never at eight o’clock. Clearly, the Angelica Monroe case had caught the attention of the NYPD’s top leadership.

       “Couldn’t wait for me?”

       “Sorry.” Dru motioned for Mariana to follow him toward the stairs. “Sully surprised me and pulled me in as soon as I got here. He apparently got an earful from the commissioner at seven this morning. We’re all hands on deck on the Monroe murder. We’re also now assigned to the other murder from last night.”

       “The Latino kid?”

       “Yeah. We still don’t have an ID on him. We may not get it before Monday unless we think it’s connected to the girl.”

       Mariana stopped halfway down the first flight. “Spare no resources for the White girl, huh?”

       “Don’t,” Dru paused, but kept walking. Over his shoulder, he said, “Sully’s doing what he’s told. Take it up with the commissioner.”

       They took an unmarked sedan from the motor pool on the theory that they might need to drive to Westchester to talk with the dead girl’s parents.

       “Where’s that on our priority list?” Mariana asked.

       “Pretty low. The media has already done the research for us.”

       After the American Cable News broadcast had divulged Angelica Monroe’s name, the media swarm scrambled to find background on the dead girl. During the drive downtown, Dru summarized a folder of notes cobbled together from online news sites.

       “Angelica Monroe was the oldest of three children. The family lives in West Harrison, Westchester County. Her high school yearbook is available online, so we have photos of Angelica and basic information. She was on the volleyball team, in the a cappella choir, the National Honor Society, and wrote for the school newspaper. She wasn’t the homecoming queen or the class president, but from all appearances was smart, pretty, and athletic. Her father is an accountant for a big pharmaceutical company with headquarters in White Plains. Nothing on the mom. Not much detail yet on the father, but seems like a pretty typical upper-middle-class family. No wonder NYU wanted her.”

       “Anything on her college classes or activities?” Mariana honked as a biker swished past her while they were stopped at a red light.

       “Not yet. There’s a bunch of images from her Instagram and Twitter accounts.” Dru held up several print-outs so Mariana could sneak glances as they crawled through rush-hour traffic. The photos showed a pristine smiling face, with an aquiline nose, high cheekbones, and bright eyes decorated with makeup and long, thick lashes. She was not quite a model, but attractive and always wearing flattering clothes.

       “Did you see the morning news?”

       Dru grunted. “Yeah. Quite a circus. I’ll give them credit for getting their information quickly. I’m sure the mayor and the commissioner were watching, too. It was the top story on Good Morning America. Angelica Monroe is America’s tragic sweetheart.”

       As they neared Washington Square Park, Mariana once again parked two blocks away from where the police command post had been set up the night before. The news vans were locked in the same places along the north side of the park. Walking from their sedan, Mariana counted eight satellite dish towers, swaying in the breeze above the tree line like oversized sunflowers seeking the day’s first rays. At the base of the telescoping spires, the vehicles sat nose-to-nose as their crews jockeyed for the best angle to light the morning remote broadcasts. The twenty-four-hour news dragon needed continuous feeding, Mariana thought.

       Video crews had descended on the Hangman’s Elm, which had been deemed fully inspected and was no longer cordoned off. One pair of uniformed officers stood watch over the clearing around the tree, keeping order as the journalists maneuvered to be the next in line to tape a segment on the exact spot where Angelica Monroe was murdered. A makeshift memorial had sprung up at the base of the majestic tree. The small pile of bouquets and stuffed animals provided an emotional background for the cameras and talking heads.

       Dru and Mariana approached the corner of Washington Square North and MacDougal Streets at nine o’clock. Three black-and-white squad cars crowded around the corner, double-parked with their lights flashing. Eight uniformed officers stood around the lead car, talking and sipping coffees. One of the officers waved a hand holding a cigarette toward Dru as they approached.

       Mariana grabbed Dru’s elbow to stop him before they got within speaking distance. “I’m not complaining about the weekend overtime, but how are we going to find productive assignments for so many officers? You have some master plan you haven’t shared with me?”

       “Yes. It’s called looking busy.” Dru stopped on the sidewalk, still twenty feet from their posse of uniforms. “The captain is going to get a call today from the commissioner’s communications director, after she gets a call from the deputy mayor. They’re going to want to know what’s happening in the investigation, and they will each be able to tell their people that we have a squad of eight officers and two detectives combing the park and interviewing witnesses in a Herculean effort to solve this awful crime as quickly as possible. It doesn’t matter if we find any useful information, as long as we look incredibly busy.”

       Mariana tilted her head toward the blue sky, dotted with satellite dishes. “We had two officers working a double-murder when we found Floyd Merriman.”

       “Yeah, but there weren’t any camera crews on that one.” Dru took a step forward, but stopped when he felt Mariana grab his jacket sleeve.

       “Since when does the press decide what resources are assigned to an investigation?”

       Dru turned and held up an index finger, as if ready to emphasize a point, but lowered it as he took a long breath. “I’m not making the decisions, OK? And neither is Sully. Don’t be mad at me. We’ve got a job to do. You can file another complaint when we’re done.”

       She said nothing while Dru pulled away and approached the waiting officers.

       “All right, folks. Put out the cigarettes and put down the coffee and listen up.” Dru separated the eight officers into two groups. Pointing at the cluster closest to the street, he leaned in, keeping his voice down since there were reporters ten yards away. “You two teams are going to interview students, starting with the girl’s dorm building. The goal is to trace her movements in the hours leading up to nine o’clock last night. If we’re lucky, someone will be able to shed some light on why she was in the park after dark, and whether she was alone.”

       Turning to the two officer pairs closer to the park, Dru pointed east. “The other two teams will canvas the park. Talk to the vendors and the regulars who hang around during the day. Somebody might have seen the girl.” He pulled an envelope out of his jacket pocket and handed out photocopied pictures of Angelica Monroe to all eight officers; a pretty, smiling one from Instagram. “Her face is all over the news and the internet already, but use these to make sure you get a real ID. See if you can find somebody who saw her last night.”

       He then pulled out another envelope and handed out another set of images to the two park teams. This one showed the lifeless face of a teenage boy. It was washed out by the camera’s flash. A red splotch marred his left cheek around the eye socket. “While you’re talking to people, show ’em this one, too. The kid was shot and killed over on the east side, beyond the fountain. We’re not sure if it was before or after the Monroe girl. If anybody recognizes him, let us know. We don’t have an ID yet. We’re working both cases and he might be connected, somehow. Any questions?”

       Nobody spoke.

       “Fine. Meet back here at four o’clock. If you find anything significant, radio it in to us. Let’s get moving.”

       Dru and Mariana were officially assigned both cases, since they were going to be working the same vicinity anyway. “It’d be nice to have a better picture of the dead boy,” Mariana said with a tinge of sadness. “It’s like the brown boy is just a stiff and the White girl is a movie star.”

       “Yeah. It would be nice, but until we have an ID and can get a family photo of him, we go with what we’ve got.

       He and Mariana walked six blocks east to a stocky three-story building on Washington Place that housed the offices of NYU security. The lobby guard, in a uniform intended to evoke the look of an NYPD officer, was expecting them. The guard passed them quickly to a harried-looking middle-aged woman, who introduced herself as the weekend manager, Joline Maxwell. She escorted them down one floor to a windowless basement where two younger officers in much less impressive uniforms sat behind work stations in front of a massive wall of flat-screen video monitors.

       Maxwell explained that the university security system included 264 cameras located around the sprawling downtown area that NYU liked to call its “campus,” but which everyone else called the NYU “area”. All the university buildings were on city streets, without any enclosed space dedicated only to the school. The campus stretched ten blocks to the north of Washington Square Park and five to the south. Sometimes two or three university buildings were adjacent to each other, but most were surrounded by privately owned offices, businesses, and apartment buildings.

       In such a spread-out environment, the security force relied on video surveillance and quick-response teams rather than having live guards in every location. Students on work-study jobs, she explained, supplemented the uniformed officers by serving as front door security at dorms, libraries, and classroom buildings. They had call buttons that would summon an officer within two minutes. That was the claim. Dru and Mariana both doubted the practical reality. Most of the officers were part-time, including some moonlighting active police, some retired cops, and some professional security guards engaged through third-party providers.

       At Maxwell’s direction, a desk jockey named Carlos began rolling video they had already culled from the night before. The two detectives watched on the largest wall monitor, giving instructions to stop or rewind the action. The system was not sophisticated enough to zoom in on sections of the picture, or to provide computer enhancements of blurry images. Such were the creations of the FBI, imaginative television writers, and maybe Disneyland. In the real world, even a relatively well-endowed school like NYU had low-end security cameras that could be cheaply replaced when broken or vandalized.

       “There she is.” Carlos used a red laser pointer to identify an image from the lobby of Angelica’s dorm at 5:23 p.m. Friday. The girl walked inside, flashed her ID card to the student “guard” at the door, then disappeared toward what Carlos said was the bank of elevators for the building. He cut to a clip from 6:33, when a woman wearing a dark, long-sleeved top left the building. The overhead camera, focused on the door, caught only her back. She was alone, clutching a large purse under her left arm. They saw the figure turn left, south, outside the door.

       Carlos efficiently queued up the next clip, eleven minutes later. The woman rounded a corner and walked down a sidewalk, toward the next camera, then vanished as she walked underneath the elevated sentry.

       “Where is that?” Dru asked.

       “Corner of 8^th and MacDougal,” Carlos replied quickly while navigating his mouse around two monitors.

       “Do we know where she’s going?” Mariana pointed toward the screen, as if she could swipe her finger and make the next image appear.

       “Yeah, I think so,” Carlos mumbled as he punched some keys on his console. The next image was a more distant view of a street after dark, with numerous pedestrians traversing the sidewalk on both sides. Lights from storefronts and streetlights cast pools of light on the concrete pathways. The neon marquee of a jazz club beckoned to passersby to stop and look.

       “That’s 3^rd Street,” Mariana called out. “I recognize the Blue Note.”

       “Right,” Carlos confirmed. The digital time stamp on the image read 7:43:23 and counted up the seconds in the screen’s lower-left corner. “There! See her walking west on the north side of the street?” Carlos again flashed his red dot on the image to direct the detectives’ eyes.

       Dru and Mariana squinted and both confirmed they saw the figure, in the same outfit with the same purse. She turned and entered a doorway halfway between MacDougal and the far end of the block, which they knew was Sixth Avenue.

       Dru asked, “Do you know what that door is, where she went in?”

       “I’m pretty sure it’s a bar called The Scampering Squirrel. It’s a popular hang-out for students.”

       “She’s underage to be in a bar,” Mariana pointed out, knowing the reality of university-area bars, which rarely asked for ID lest their business tumble.

       “Well, she was in there for about an hour,” Carlos responded. “The last clip I have is at eight thirty-five.” He called up an image from the same camera. They watched as the woman approached, now facing the camera. She was accompanied by a male, dressed in blue jeans and a New York Mets t-shirt, moving east. Angelica’s companion had light-colored hair and was several inches taller than her. He looked to be White, although the image was not clear. His face, while visible to the camera, was too far away to make out. As they watched the couple come closer to the camera, their faces came more into focus, although neither face was fully recognizable.

       “Can you get us a still shot of him, as good an image of his face as we can get?” Dru directed, without saying please.

       “Yeah, sure. Gimme a second.” Carlos paused the video and clicked his mouse a few times, causing a large square to appear on the monitor around the two faces. “Should come out in a minute,” he said. “The printer will need to warm up first.”

       “Is that the last shot you have of her?” Dru squinted at the blurry image still on the screen.

       “It’s the last good one. They turn north at the corner and walk north, but we only have their backs in that shot.”

       “North on McDougal—toward the park, right?” Mariana again pointed at the wall monitor.

       “That’s right. The camera at 4^th Street isn’t working. We have a repair order in for it, but we’ve got the street covered from 3^rd and 6^th, so it’s not a priority. I checked the 6^th Street camera looking south, but she’s not there.”

       “Must have gone into the park, which we already knew,” Dru said into Mariana’s ear.

       “Yeah,” their tech responded, as if Dru were talking to him. “Unfortunately, we don’t have any cameras inside the park. It’s not our property.”

       “Any ID on Angelica’s boyfriend?” Mariana asked.

       “No. We don’t have facial recognition software or anything like that.”

       Mariana turned to Dru. “Maybe one of her friends will recognize the guy, especially if they know he left that bar with her last night.”

       Dru agreed and turned to Maxwell. “So, the video puts her time of death sometime between eight-forty and nine-oh-two, when your guard found her under the big tree.”

       “The Hangman’s Elm,” Maxwell confirmed. “That’s right.”

       “OK, that’s a pretty narrow window. Mare, as soon as we have a digital image, send a text to all the officers out working the park and the dorms and let them know the window and that they are now also looking for anyone who might be able to ID the guy.”

* * *

WHEN THE BRIGHT SUNSHINE hit Mariana’s eyes after being underground for over an hour, she pulled dark glasses from her inside jacket pocket. Dru squinted at his phone. They were both copied on an email from the medical examiner’s office. “We have at least a preliminary autopsy,” Dru reported. They sat on a low concrete wall separating the security building from the sidewalk. Nearby, a blue pole labeled “EMERGENCY” with a call button and a blue light at the top stood ready to flash its beacon to summon help for a distressed NYU student.

       “Fastest autopsy on a Saturday ever,” Mariana muttered.

       “It’s good for us. Don’t bitch. It’s not the first time a high-profile case got special attention.”

       Mariana read aloud from her phone’s screen. “‘Cause of death:  gunshot to the head.’ Tell us something we couldn’t figure out ourselves,” Mariana turned her head to see Dru concentrating on his own screen.

       “There were defensive wounds, which suggests a struggle.”

       “Yeah, for sure. I remember those fingernails. But no tissue under her nails, so no DNA to sample.”

       “Seems odd, though.” Dru looked up to make eye contact with his partner. “The shot in the head seems like an execution. How was there a struggle and then that kind of kill shot?”

       “Maybe she lost the struggle?”

       “Clearly.” Dru slipped the phone back into his hip pocket.

       “At least she put up a fight,” Mariana mused.

       Dru stretched his arms toward the sky and stood up. “C’mon. Let’s go question some scared-shitless college students.”

* * *

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