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In short, it’s people like Walter Jackson who make homicide detectives look efficient.
Chapter4
I’D BEEN INthe office less than an hour, searching the ranks of missing persons, hoping to find a match for the girl we had pulled out of the Hudson, when a shadow fell across my desk like an eclipse. I turned to see the towering figure of Walter Jackson.
He eased down onto the hard, wooden chair across from my desk. Walter never sat down with force. He’d learned better, after a similar city-purchased chair had once crumpled under his weight. Now he instinctively tested each chair.
He gently placed a photo on my desk. It was clearly a recent picture of the beautiful victim from this morning. It hurt my heart a little to see her smiling in the photo. I said, “That was fast.”
“Me and Fotomat promise to develop photos in less than an hour.”
“Jesus, Walter, Fotomat? You’re not that old. How do you even remember them?”
“You’re not much older than me and you remember them.” He looked at the photo. “I got lucky. The ME’s office picked up immediately. They have a fingerprint scanner connected directly to the FBI. Turns out the girl had once applied to work at a preschool in SoHo. We were able to match her fingerprints to that application.
“Her name is Estella Abreu. Nursing student at Pace. Lived in East Harlem with her family on 116th Street.” He bent his head for a silent prayer. Walter did that any time he talked about a recent homicide victim. A common practice around people who deal with tragedy every day.
“Good work, Walter.”
“Autopsy is scheduled for tonight. Aurora Jones is the assistant medical examiner on duty.”
I was glad to hear it. Aurora was a hell of a coroner. I nodded and looked at Walter. “That’s outstanding. Can you see if there’re any connections between this victim and the one from the Bronx? When you have more information, we’ll compare them.”
Walter didn’t waste a second. “The girl in the Bronx, Emma Schrade, was a student at Juilliard. There is one connection right there. Both were students. Emma was a soprano.” He tossed an envelope onto my desk.
I opened it to see a bright-eyed blonde with a spectacular smile. “Where did these come from?”
“I just pulled them off the internet. I printed them so you could take them on interviews. I saved the original photo in ECMS.”
“Walter, just when I think you’re out of surprises, you pull one more out of the hat. This is impressive for just a few minutes.”
“I’ve got two daughters. You think I’m not motivated when I see a photo of a girl who’s been murdered? I don’t understand how you guys ever sleep at night. I’d be consumed with all the leads that come into a case like this. How do you handle it with your ten kids?”
“It’s definitely a balancing act. Between sports, homework, and just trying to spend some time with them, this is a tough job.”
Walter shook his head. “I don’t know how you do it, Mike. With your crazy-ass cases and all those kids, how do you find time in the day?”
“It’s all about being efficient and keeping moving like a shark. I’m afraid if I ever stand still, it’ll kill me. Believe it or not, I also start coaching my daughter Fiona’s basketball team this week.”
“All school officials see when they look at me is a potential football coach,” Walter said. “No one can believe it when I tell them I’ve never even seen a football game all the way from beginning to end.” He sighed. “I don’t know that I’d give up my steady daytime hours and comfortable desk for your job. I’d already be burned out and barely able to talk to my family.”
“Walter, I know your family. It doesn’t matter if you talk to them or not, they’d be talking to you.” We both laughed because we both understood what it meant to be true family men.
“I know what you mean. Questions at work, questions at home. Sometimes you want someone to answeryourdamn questions.”
I nodded. “Elementary school math and science can baffle me.”
Walter paused. “You mean like what weighs more, a gallon of water or a gallon of liquefied butane?”
“They weigh the same, right?”
Walter grinned. “No, butane is lighter fluid.”
I groaned and said, “You owe your daughter another dollar.”
“Totally worth it.”
Chapter5
