‘Well, I didn’t see anything happen, actually,’ Josie said.
‘As I understand it, you saw a man carrying a dead body.’
‘Well, I guess she was dead,’ Josie said. She was biting the cuticles on her right hand. Carella squelched a fatherly urge to tell her to quit doing that.
‘Can you tell me what you did see?’ he asked gently.
‘This man parked his car on the service road...’
‘You saw him parking his car?’
‘No, but I heard the car come in, and then the engine went off.’
‘Go ahead.’
‘And then he walked past us on the...’
She stopped suddenly.
‘Yes?’
‘We were on this sort of rock. Above the path,’ Josie said.
‘Who?’ Carella said. ‘You and who?’
‘Me and this boy.’
‘I see. What time was this, Josie?’
‘Around one o’clock.’
‘One o’clock in the morning?’
‘Well, yeah.’
‘Go on.’
‘And this man came by,’ Josie said, and shrugged.
‘What did he look like, this man?’
‘He was tall and blond.’
‘Was he wearing a hearing aid?’
‘I don’t know. I didn’t see any hearing aid.’
Of all the detectives on the squad Carella and Willis were the only ones who’d ever seen the Deaf Man face to face. Willis had glimpsed him only fleetingly, in the midst of a shoot-out in the back of a tailor shop. But Carella had remembered him from their first meeting...
The Deaf Man turning from the hi-fi unit against the living room wall, Carella seeing the hearing aid in the right ear and then the shotgun in his hands. And suddenly it was too late, suddenly the shotgun exploded into sound. Carella whirled away from the blast. He could hear the whistling pellets as they screamed across the confined space of the apartment, and then he felt them lash into his shoulder like a hundred angry wasp, as he fired a shot at the tall blond man who was already sprinting across the apartment toward him. His shoulder felt suddenly numb. He tried to lift the hand the gun and quickly found he couldn‘t and just as he shifted the gun to his left hand and triggered off another shot, high and wide as the Deaf Man raised the shotgun and swung the stock at Carella’s head. A single barrel, Carella thought in the instant before the stock collided with the side of his head, a single barrel, no time to reload, and a sudden flashing explosion of rocketing yellow pain, slam the stock again, suns revolving, a universe slam the stock. . .
‘Sorry I’m late,’ Brown said, coming into the office and closing the door behind him.
‘This is my partner, Detective Brown,’ Carella said. ‘Artie, this is Josie Sears. She was just telling me what she saw in the park last month.’ He turned to Josie. ‘That was on October twenty-fourth, is that right?’
‘Well, the twenty-fifth, actually,’ she said. ‘It was one o’clock in the morning, you know.’
‘Right,’ Carella said. ‘And this tall blond man you just described...’
‘Was he wearing a hearing aid?’ Brown asked at once.
‘I didn’t see any,’ Josie said. She was looking at Brown, remembering all the things her father had said about niggers and wondering if he was a genuine detective. She didn’t want to be telling any nigger about what she and Eddie had been doing when she saw the man carrying the body. She hoped they wouldn’t ask her what she and Eddie had been doing.
‘What was he doing?’ Carella asked.
For a panicky moment she thought he was referring to Eddie. Then she realized he meant the man she’d seen.
‘He was carrying a girl over his shoulder,’ Josie said.
‘What color was she?’ Brown asked.
‘White,’ Josie said, and wondered if that was a trick question.
‘What color hair did she have?’ Brown asked.
‘Blond.’
‘How old would you say she was?’ Carella asked.
‘I don’t know.’
‘But you called her a girl.’
‘Well, yeah. I mean, she didn’t look like a lady, if that’s what you mean. Not like my mother or anything.’
‘How old is your mother?’ Carella asked.
‘Thirty-eight,’ Josie said.
He almost sighed. ‘And this woman was younger than that?’ he asked.
‘Yeah.’
‘Can you estimate how old she was?’
‘Well, in her twenties, I guess. I only had that glimpse of her when they passed the light.’
‘How far away from you were they? This man and woman.’
‘Five feet, something like that.’
‘You were where?’ Brown asked.
‘On this rock. Above the path.’
‘Doing what?’ Brown asked.
Here we go, Josie thought.
‘Sitting with this boy,’ she said.
‘What boy?’
‘A boy I know.’
‘What’s his name?’
‘Eddie.’
‘Eddie what?’
‘Hogan.’
‘Did he see this man, too? This man carrying a woman over his shoulder?’
‘No, he ... he didn’t see her.’
‘He was sitting with you, wasn’t he?’ Brown asked.
‘Yes, but...’
‘Both of you five feet from where the man...’
‘His eyes were closed,’ Josie said.
‘Eddie’s eyes?’
‘Yes.’
‘Was he sleeping?’
‘No, but his eyes were closed.’
Josie looked away. Brown looked at Carella. Carella nodded almost imperceptibly.
‘So you’re the only one who saw this man carrying the woman,’ he said.
‘Yes.’
‘And you say you guess she was dead. What made you think that?’
‘There was blood at the back of her head.’
‘Where?’
‘Right here,’ Josie said, and lifted her hair and touched the nape of her neck.
‘You saw blood?’
‘Yes.’
‘At the back of her head?’
‘Yes. Her head was hanging down, you know? He was carrying her over his shoulder with her head hanging down. And her hair was hanging, too, and I could see blood at the back of her head.’
‘Then what?’
‘Well, he just kept walking. I mean, I didn’t see him after that.’