“Perkins?” said Rook.
“Think so.” Heat parked to protect the scene from oncoming traffic and left her gumball flashing. When she got out, a blue-and-white was right behind her and she directed the officers to split up. One to direct traffic, the other to hold the witnesses on scene. The detective hurried over to the victim, who was facedown on the car park driveway in front of the TT that had struck him. It was indeed Mitchell Perkins.
She did a check for vitals. He had a pulse and was breathing; both weak, though. “Mr. Perkins, can you hear me?” Nikki leaned an ear down near his face, which was sideways on the concrete, but got nothing back. Not even a moan. As the ambulance siren approached behind her, she said, “It’s Detective Heat. The ambulance is here. We’re going to take good care of you.” And she added, just in case he was semiconscious, “And police are with your wife, so don’t worry.”
While the EMTs went to work, Heat pieced together what had happened from the trio of citizens on the scene. One of them was a housekeeper who happened by after the incident and wasn’t of much use for information. However, the driver of the Audi said he was pulling out of the garage for a trip to Boston when he struck Perkins. Nikki figured the editor was in such a rush from the subway, freaked about his wife, that he wasn’t paying attention. But she adhered to her training not to box the story until all the details were in, and never to lead the eyewitnesses with her own guesses. Let them talk.
That’s what she did, and the story she got was big. The parking attendant said Perkins wasn’t running up the sidewalk when he first saw him. He was in a struggle with somebody, a mugger, trying to get his briefcase. The attendant had gone into his kiosk to call 911, which was right when the TT came up from the underground ramp. The driver said he pulled out just as the mugger ripped away the briefcase. Perkins had been pulling so hard that when he lost his grip he flew back into the front of the car. The driver said he hit his brakes, but there was no way to stop the collision.
Roach rolled up to the scene, and Heat assigned them to separate the witnesses and get more detailed statements and better descriptions of the mugger from them. As often happened in sudden violent crimes, the eyewitnesses had gotten distracted or shocked by the blur of action and missed basic descriptions of the perpetrators. “I already had one of the uniforms put out the APB for a Caucasian, medium build, in sunglasses and dark navy or black hoodie and jeans, but that’s pretty vanilla. See what else you can get, and try to get them down to the precinct for a look at photo arrays. I want to make sure we include the Texan and some of our other players in the deck. And while we’re at it, line up the sketch artist, too.” She looked around for Rook and saw him squatting in the gutter over the spilled contents of the editor’s briefcase.
“No, I didn’t touch anything,” he said as she approached, snapping on gloves. “I’m incorrigible, but trainable. How’s he going to be?”
Nikki turned to watch them load Perkins into the back of the ambulance. “Still unconscious, which is not optimal. But he’s breathing and they did get a better pulse, so we’ll see.” She crouched down beside him. “Anything useful here?”