Page 115 of Long Way Down

~*~

“I found her,” Kat said without preamble when Pongo answered his call. And a beat later: “She’s dead.”

“Shit.”

He met Kat on the second-floor, front-facing fire escape of the apartment above a bodega. “This your place?” he asked when Kat let him into a living room sparser and shabbier than his own.

“No,” he said, and didn’t explain further, just led him out onto the fire escape and offered a cigarette that Pongo accepted.

Down on the street below, a little to their left, patrol cars pinned back traffic, and yellow crime scene tape fluttered from mailboxes and light poles. An ambulance had arrived since Pongo had; its doors stood open, and its crew unloaded the gurney, now. The body lay half on the sidewalk and half in the street, covered with a white cloth. It had started to mist. Pongo pulled up his hood; beside him, Kat wore his usual ballcap.

“How do you know it’s her?” Pongo asked.

“I saw her.” He exhaled, and the curls of smoke dissolved in the mist as it thickened to a sparse rain. Discreet drops that hit the iron railing with loud plops. “Fernando downstairs called me before he called 911. He’s not legal, and he was worried he’d get scooped up. We’ve helped him out before; he does us a solid now and then. I came, and when I saw the state she was in, I told him to call it in, and that I’d deal with the cops if I needed to.”

“Was she dead when you saw her?” Pongo asked, and felt like a heel for it.

“Almost.” Another exhale, this one quicker, hinting at agitation. “It was definitely April.”

“Damn it,” Pongo muttered. “I tried to get her to let Dixie help.”

Kat’s head turned a fraction, and a single brow lifted in question.

“My – a friend. A detective.”

Knowledge sparked, subtly, in Kat’s gaze. “Thought she was your girlfriend.”

“Well. She is. Mostly. Not sure she’d call it that.”

Kat snorted.

“Anyway, asshat. What the hell happened?”

Kat shook his head. “Don’t know for sure. Fernando said it was slow hours. He has a little TV back behind the counter and he was watchingFamily Feud. Said he heard tires squealing and looked up to see a car peeling away. He saw something lying in the gutter and went out to see what had happened. It was April, bleeding everywhere: gut wound. She was in and out of consciousness, he said, and he knelt down to put his hands on her, tried to stop the bleeding. She was trying to say something, but it was slurred and he couldn’t understand her. Said he looked up and saw taillights. Nice car, slick, dark gray, something foreign and expensive. He managed to memorize the plate number.”

“Shit, that’s helpful.” Pongo glanced down at the milling uniforms. An unmarked blue Crown Vic pulled up: that’d be the detectives. “Too bad we can’t look it up.”

“I can,” Kat said. “I texted it to one of our guys back at HQ. He can hack into the database, in and out before anyone notices.”

“Shit, that’sreallyhelpful.”

The Crown Vic’s doors opened and out heaved the dicks, one on either side. The passenger was lanky, and obviously young, even from a distance; held himself with a scarecrow’s awkward stoop. The driver, on the other hand, stood tall and forceful, with broad shoulders, and big arms, and a square jaw like…

“Aw fuck, it’s Blockhead,” Pongo muttered.

“Another friend of yours?”

“Nah. Dixie’s old partner in Vice. She had a crush on him and his big, giant fucking block head.” At least, he hoped it washad, past tense.

“Hm. He doesn’t look much like you.”

“And that’s a compliment to me, thanks.”

Another snort. “Whatever.” His phone pinged, and he pulled it out, leaning forward so the bill of his hat protected the screen from the ever-increasing rain.

On the street, Blockhead flashed his badge like he wanted to be on a cop show and ducked under the tape, his young partner hurrying to keep up. Blockhead reached the body and snapped on a glove; lifted the edge of the sheet and exchanged a few words with the uniform on duty.

He was a floor above and too far away to make out much, but Pongo saw the lights gleaming off a mass of dark hair, and noted that April had been turned over onto her stomach.