“The Park is like my backyard. I been going in it to play since I was a kid.”
“I grew up in Queens, right near a big park. Not as nice as this one, though nothing is. I spent half my life in that park.”
Flo picked her head up again and looked at Mercer. She was trying to use her street sense to see whether he was someone she could trust or not. I needed him to get her to lose her attitude so I could jump in and retrieve some more facts.
When the cops had asked her what she was doing in the Park at 9:30 at night, Flo’s answer to them had been “Nothing.”
“Most of the time, when I went to the park to do sports,” Mercer said, “it was daytime. When I went there at night, it was usually to meet up with friends. How about you?”
“Sometimes I go there to get away from people. Just like to be by myself.”
“Was tonight one of those nights? You wanted to be alone?”
Flo nodded her head up and down.
“I have plenty of times like that. Who were you getting away from?”
“A guy.”
“Your boyfriend?”
Flo sneered and suppressed a laugh. “Sometimes.”
“You want to tell me his name?”
“No chance. He have nothing to do with this.”
“Fair enough.”
She checked Mercer’s face again to see if he was sincere about that.
“Were you with him before you went into the Park, or were you coming from home?”
“With him. Hanging out on 110th.”
“Till he said something stupid to you, and you got mad and crossed the street.”
Flo tilted her head. “Now, how you know that?”
Mercer smiled at her. “’Cause he’s a guy. That’s what guys do half the time. Hanging out on a beautiful night with a nice girl, and we blow it. Say something, do something stupid. Am I right? Then you headed off to-I don’t know-someplace that’s special to you two. Someplace you go to be together ’cause you knew he’d follow you eventually. Try to make it right.”
Flo stopped bouncing her legs. She was completely fixed on Mercer.
“I don’t know about making it right,” she said, leaning forward to play with Mercer a bit, “but I know he’d want to get him some before he went home for the night.”
“His loss,” Mercer said. “Totally his loss. So where were you headed?”
“You know the waterfall?”
“All three of them.”
“The big one. The one closest to where I came in.”
Among the most beautiful creations in the Park were the three waterfalls in the Ravine, north of 102nd Street. They looked as natural as any country scene or wilderness preserve but were completely man-made. They were so carefully engineered more than 150 years ago that each was designed to be entirely different from the others. The rocks were set at different distances so the sound of the water cascading was unique to each site, depending on the height of the drop and the size of the boulders below.
“I know it. Is that your spot?”
“Yes,” Flo said. “Leastways it was until tonight.”
“You were just going to hang out by the waterfall?”
“There’s actually a little ledge inside it. You know, behind the fall?”
“I didn’t know that. Did you, Alex?”
Mercer would draw me in now, getting ready to turn his witness over to me.
“I had no idea.”
Flo was happy to show off her knowledge. “You just get like a little wet passing in, but then you can sit and look out. Kind of a cool thing. It’s like a little cave, almost.”
“A cave?” My interest was as piqued as Mercer’s. “You can go inside it?”
“Not really. It’s sort of a dug-out space behind the waterfall. I used to hide out there with my friends when we were kids. Me and my boyfriend-like two of us could just fit there for a while. You know, like sitting and talking is all.”
I wondered how many cave-like places there could be in this massive Park, with all the rock outcroppings and formations that had been styled to build up the ground surface.
“Did you tell the cops that you were on your way to the waterfall?”
Flo frowned at me. “They was so not interested in me once I told them I went in there alone. They didn’t need to know nothing else.”
“We want it all,” Mercer said.
There was a knock on the door, and one of the young advocates introduced herself and handed me a clean T-shirt and a pair of hospital pajama bottoms for Flo.
“Why don’t Mercer and I step out so you can get dressed? I’m sure you’ll be more comfortable out of that gown.”
“I want my own shirt. I wanna go home in my own clothes.”
“We need your clothes,” Mercer said, trying to calm the reagitated young woman. “They’re evidence.”
Mercer had showed me the three items he had collected from the RN who’d done the forensic exam. The yellow cotton halter top had been ripped off Flo by its thin strap. Her shorts were torn as well and covered in dirt, just like her underpants.
“It’s after eleven o’clock, Flo. Will your mother be waiting up for you?” Mercer asked.
“No. She don’t wait up.”
“I’ll drive you home. She won’t see you this way.”
“What do my clothes prove?”
“For one thing, the tears in the fabric show the force this man used. And the fact that you were on your back, rolling in the dirt-”
“But you ain’t never gonna find this guy, so what’s the difference what I say?” Flo stood up and started to take off the gown. The cuts and scratches on her back, from where she had rolled on the ground on stones and twigs, were deepening in color. They were more intense than the digital shots that had been taken in the ER, so we would need to get another set, showing the progression of the bruising, within the next twenty-four hours.
I followed Mercer out of the room. Within seconds Flo called out to us that it was okay to come in.
Mercer held the chair out so she would sit down again. “Alex and I have worked these cases together for a very long time. The men who do this? For the most part, Flo, they’re pretty damn stupid. They get away with it once or twice, but not for long.”
“And what really makes them extra stupid,” I said, “is that once they attack one or two women, they get really comfortable doing it the same way. They think that if it worked for them once, it will work that way every time. I know you didn’t tell those two cops much-”
“Why should I? They acted like I was some kind of whore.”
“This will be the last time they do anything like that,” I said. “I promise you.”
“So it’s the detail we want to get from you, Flo,” Mercer said. “Sometimes, just the way a guy does things, the words he uses-we can maybe tie him to another case like yours, one where a girl wasn’t as smart as you were or as brave.”
“Talked crazy is what he did. Grabbed me and threw me down. Total crazy badass guy.”
“Start from where you walked into the Park on the corner of 110 and Fifth,” Mercer said. “Were you alone?”
“I was by myself, if that’s what you mean. But there were lots of people around at nine o’clock, inside the Park and out.”
Flo walked us from the entrance to her route on the pathway that took her halfway around the Harlem Meer, the latter word being Dutch for “lake.” She told us that she hadn’t encountered anyone she knew, and that she wasn’t alone until she turned off the wide walk to head for the Ravine.
“Do you know where Huddlestone Arch is?” Mercer asked.
“Yeah. That’s where this guy was waiting for me, when I came out of Huddlestone.”
“Did you see him up ahead?”
“Nah. It’s like a little tunnel, you know. All dark inside till you come out the other end. I was looking back over my shoulder half the time.”