I glanced at my watch. It was nine-thirty. “That would put it around one-thirty this morning, give or take an hour.”
He nodded. “Better call it between midnight and three, and be on the safe side. I’ll phone you later, if I can give you a closer estimate.”
The roof door opened and the lab crew and photographer came through it and walked toward us. They needed no instructions. They said hello to the rest of us, and went straight to work with their chalk and tape measures and powders and cameras. They worked as a team, silently, with no lost motion and no lost words. Their appearance on the scene had brought a round of cheers from the rooftoppers and window-watchers.
“You’d think it was a floor show, and a new act had just come on,” Rosie said. “Well, Steve, do you want me for anything else?”
“Guess not, Rosie. Thanks a lot.”
“The only time I get any results is when they bring the girls in on a raid. Then there’s some action. They soak their hair in a solution of dope and water, so they can rinse it out again once they’re in the tank. And razor blades in their hair — my God, I must have found a thousand of them. And girls with big bills rolled into their garters. You men think you’ve got something when you get a prisoner with an ice pick tine hidden in his tie, don’t you? Well, you should see some of the things the girls come up with. You’d never believe it.” She waved to the group of men around the body and walked toward the entrance to the stairway.
A moment later, the assistant D.A. and two of the detectives attached to the D.A.’s office arrived. Walt and I briefed them, told them what we’d done so far, received the usual pep talk from the assistant D.A., assured him we’d wrap up a good case for him, and then the assistant D.A. and the detectives left. Their work — most of it — would come after Walt and I had got together enough of a case to take before the grand jury. It was Walt’s and my job to conduct the investigation and find the killer. It was the job of the D.A.’s office and staff to make sure the killer was indicted, tried, and convicted.
The chief of the tech crew called to me. “She’s all yours, Steve.”
I got a receipt for the body from one of the ambulance attendants. Then he and his partner set up their collapsible stretcher, eased the girl onto it, and took her away.
“I’ll go along now, too,” the doc said. “Maybe I’ll be able to schedule a fast autopsy for you, Steve.”
“I’d appreciate it.”
“I’ll let you know.” He followed the ambulance attendants toward the stairs.
Walt had been giving one of the tech crew a hand with a tape measure, and now he came back to where I stood.
“You make another look around up here?” I asked.
“Uh huh. No go. Not even any fresh cigarette butts. The super back yet?”
“No. And neither is the switchboard operator. I talked to the guy who phoned in the squeal, though.”
“Henderson?”
“Yeah.”
“You get a make on the girl?”
“That’s just about all I did get. Her name’s Barbara Lawson. Henderson says she was a model.”
“It figures. She was sure as hell pretty enough.”
“She lived here in the building. I think we’d better go down and hit her flat, Walt.”
“Fine. I’ve had enough of this roof. There’s nothing more we can do here, anyway.”
I told the tech chief Barbara Lawson’s apartment number, in the event he should want us for anything, and Walt and I went down the fire stairs to the sixth floor. We got the complimentary treatment from the open doors along the corridor again, and stopped in front of 601.
“Spring locks on these doors?” Walt asked.
“Yeah. At least the one on Henderson’s was.” I took a strip of celluloid from my billfold, inserted it in the crack between the door and the jamb, and pushed the edge of the strip against the bevel of the bolt.
We stepped inside and closed the door behind us.
“Some layout,” Walt said. “Maybe you and I should have gone in for modeling, Steve.”
I figured that it would take roughly a year of my salary to furnish my apartment the way Barbara Lawson had furnished hers. It had the look that comes only when a top interior decorator is given a free hand and money is no object.
“I keep-thinking about what the doc said about there not being enough blood,” Walt said. “Maybe she lost some of it down here.”
“I don’t think so, Walt.”
“Why not?”
“She was wearing that same dress when she was stabbed, of course. The position of the wounds and the slashes in the cloth showed that. If there’d been a heck of a lot of bleeding, her dress would have been soaked, no matter where she was killed.”
“Yeah, I guess that’s right. Let’s give the place a look.”
“Just a minute, Walt.” I lifted the phone from the top of a gossip-seat, and when the patrolman I’d posted on the switchboard answered, I asked him if either the regular switchboard operator or the super had shown up yet. He said they had not. I told him Walt and I would be in 601 for a while and to let us know as soon as the switchboard operator or the super came in.
“I remember when I was a patrolman,” Walt said as I hung up. “Running switchboards was the thing I hated most. I never did really catch on to it.”
“Patrolmen are smarter these days,” I said. “They learn faster and remember longer.”
Walt nodded soberly. “You’re so right,” he said. “Now, so far as you’re concerned—” He broke off as the phone rang. The officer on the switchboard was routing all incoming calls exactly as the regular operator would have done — except that he was monitoring every one of them. The same was true, of course, of outgoing calls.
I picked up the phone again. “Hello?”
There was a short pause on the other end of the line. Then a girl’s voice said, “Is Barbara there?”
“Not right now. May I—”
“Who’s speaking, please?”
“A friend of hers. Where can she call you back?”
Another pause. “Just tell her Ann Tyner called, please. Do you expect her back soon?”
“It’s a little hard to say.”
“Well, tell her it’s important. I’ll be home all day.”
“You want to give me your number?”
“She knows it.”
“All right.”
“Thank you.”
I dropped the phone back in its cradle and reached for the directory. There was no Ann Tyner listed, but there was an entry for a Wilma A. Tyner. I dialed the number. When the same girl answered, I hung up without saying anything. I looked at the address and entered it in my notebook. She lived at 917 West Seventy-second Street.
“Well, we’ve found a friend of hers,” I said. “Or at least an acquaintance.”
“We’d better get to talking to the tenants,” Walt said. “There’s going to be some terrific yelling done if we don’t spring them pretty soon.”
“I was just going to call the lieutenant and ask him for some more men,” I said. “But I don’t think I’ll wait for that. We can send the patrolmen through the building, and if they come up with anything interesting, we can take over.”
“That’s not strictly according to the book,” Walt said, grinning.
“Maybe not. But the precinct’s already got two other murder investigations on its hands. If we drag in any more men on this one, it’ll mean canceling a lot of the guys’ leaves and days off. I’d like to avoid that, if we can.”
“I’ll get the boys off the roof,” Walt said. “The techs can get along without them.”