Joy had grown fond of that funny little Santa, too. She loved the red glow of his nose, strong enough to cast a bit of festive color through her bedroom window during the dark December nights.
Unfortunately, on one of those nights—the longest of the year—a foursome of local punks got drunk enough and mean enough to want to kill Christmas. They set about smashing holiday decorations all over town. One of their victims was our much-beloved Santa. I can still recall the morning I had to comfort my tearful daughter, while trying to explain the unexplainable to a little girl.
A decade later, kneeling in the snow, I was the one who felt like a little girl, needing the unexplainable explained to me. I said a prayer for Alf, but it answered nothing. In fact, talking to God only turned my feelings of grief and shock into an onslaught of other emotions.
How could this happen to a good man like Alf?! Do you hear me, God?! What are you going to do about it?!
Tears welled and spilled. I swiped them away; when my vision cleared, I saw something I hadn’t noticed before. Right in front of me were more footprints in the snow.
I noted the size and shape of the prints and played my flashlight on the sole of Alf’s slightly pointy boots. The prints in the snow were identical. Standing up, I used my little flashlight to illuminate this new trail of Alf’s pointy boot prints. Oddly, they were coming out of the courtyard.
What in the world?
The killer’s rounder-toed prints stopped in the snow next to Alf’s body, then backtracked out to the street again. That meant Alf was coming out of this building’s courtyard and through its side alley when the killer mugged and shot him.
But that made no sense for a street robbery. A mugger would have confronted Alf on the sidewalk, taken his donation box, and (God help me) forced Santa into the alley at gunpoint to prevent him from identifying the criminal in a lineup. But the marks left behind in the snow didn’t tell a story like that. According to the boot prints, Alf came into this alley alone, went back into the courtyard for some reason, and met his killer on his way out again.
Why would Alf go into this dark courtyard alone? Why was Alf even on this desolate street during a snowstorm?
I knew at once that the detectives assigned to this case needed to see these prints. But where were they?!
I glanced skyward. The fat white flakes were falling even harder now. If the police didn’t arrive soon, this evidence would be completely covered. I listened for the sound of a siren but heard nothing. Worried the prints would be obliterated by the weather, I moved farther into the alley to track them myself.
Inside a minute, I’d followed Alf’s footprints through the alley’s shadows and all the way into the snow-covered courtyard. The prints appeared to pause in the middle of the small yard, and I got the impression Alf had stood here for a moment, shifting from left to right, as if studying something.
But what were you studying, Alf?
His prints moved from this spot to the back wall of the building, where another gray metal Dumpster stood with three blue plastic recycling bins lined up beside it. I noticed a steel door to the building near these bins, but Alf clearly wasn’t interested in going through this service entrance because his prints deliberately bypassed the door, heading instead for the far end of the blue bins.
I moved my flashlight beam around the snow-covered ground and saw his prints ending near an empty wooden crate. The snow was pretty scraped up in the area, but it was clear to me, following the scrape marks, that the crate had been dragged from a pile a few yards away and placed next to these blue bins.
Why would Alf do that?
I stepped back a moment to consider the question and realized that the building’s fire escape stairs—high off the ground—would be reachable if someone were able to boost himself up using these recycling bins.
Alf must have paused in the middle of this courtyard to consider how to get up on the fire escape. He pulled that crate over to use it as a step. Then he climbed onto the recycling bins and most likely onto the fire escape.
I stared up at the tangle of iron grilles looming over me and wondered why Alf Glockner would climb an icy set of outdoor stairs in the middle of a winter snowstorm. If you asked me, Alf was too chubby to be a part-time cat burglar, and far from the sort of person I’d peg for a peeping Tom.
Just then, I became aware of a high-pitched wail in the distance. An emergency siren! Finally! A police car was approaching from the street I’d left. I checked my watch and realized with a start that less than six minutes had passed since my 911 call. Given the state I was in, it only seemed like hours. Still, I was glad I’d had the time to investigate. Now I was more than ready to give my statement to the detectives, show them what I’d found.
That’s when I heard the voices.
“Police!”
“Freeze!”
Men were shouting between buildings from the other side of the courtyard.
“NYPD!”
“Stop, police!”
Frost-crusted snow crunched behind me. As I turned to see who was coming, a hooded figure rocketed across the small, dark yard. I tried to make out the person’s face, but I didn’t have more than a nanosecond before the figure slammed into me.
The impact tore me off my feet. I flew through the air, and two seconds later I knew what a blitzed quarterback felt like when he hit Astroturf.
Five
“Ms. Cosi? You okay? Ms. Cosi?”
The voice sounded earnest, youthful, and familiar. I blinked against the flashlight’s glare. A silhouette formed in my blurred vision. Narrow shoulders blocked the falling snow. The young man bent down to the icy ground beside me, and that’s when I noticed the nickel-plated badge pinned to the dark blue uniform.
“Officer Langley?” I whispered. He and his partner, Demetrios, were regular customers at the Blend. (Langley was a latte man; Demetrios, double espressos.)
“You really took a tumble,” Langley said.
Still flat on my back in the snow, I felt an icy clammi ness creeping over me. Slush was trickling down the back of my parka, and I tried to sit up. Officer Langley gently restrained me.
“Don’t move, Ms. Cosi. An ambulance is on the way.”
“You’re kidding, right? ’Cause I’m freezing down here!” I sat up—then clutched my ribs. “Ouch.” I moaned.
“You shouldn’t move until the paramedics check you out,” Langley said. But I refused to remain on the frigid ground any longer, and the young cop gave up trying to fight me.
With a sigh of defeat, Langley helped me up. Loose strands of my shoulder-length hair were hanging in my face. As I brushed them away, a wind blast knifed through the courtyard. I groaned from the cold and noticed Langley shiver as he spoke into his police radio. Under his uniform’s hat, the man’s fair complexion blanched pastier than an albino thrown into a meat locker. After this long in the cold, I figured my own olive skin tone had gone nearly as pale.