Indigo by Charlaine Harris
1
Nora could have vanished into the shadows, but she didn’t need to. The people crowded around the sidewalk memorial for Maidali Ortiz were so lost in their grief she might as well have been invisible. Normally she had to work a little harder to hide in plain sight, but not today. It made her job much simpler.
The girl’s body had been dumped at the top of the steps that connected Heath and Bailey Avenues, a broad set of concrete stairs with black wrought-iron railings, shaded by lush oak trees. Fall had arrived at last, and a cool breeze rustled the leaves of those trees. During the day, the long descent from Heath to Bailey would be pleasant enough, but at night, with streetlamps that were constantly broken, the stairs would be dark and forbidding.
She wove through the crowd to get a better look at the steps. Stout, middle-aged Dominican women clustered together, keeping mostly to themselves, but the high school and middle school kids weren’t so discriminating. The Irish and Dominican and Cuban kids stood together, girls holding each other, while others added flowers and stuffed animals and framed photos to the memorial that had grown up around the graffiti-covered US mailbox to the left of the stairs.
Nora listened to the quiet weeping and the words of comfort and shock spoken by those around her. Inhaling the scent of the flowers, she glanced around at the homes on either side of the stairs. The small, three-story apartment house with a fa?ade of tan bricks and the squat little single-family row house had only two things in common: each had a small patio in front and bars on all the windows. This was Kingsbridge. While other Bronx neighborhoods were being gentrified, Kingsbridge had been sliding in the other direction for years.
“Did you know her?”
Nora blinked and frowned at the man who’d appeared beside her. Early thirties, sweater pushed up to his elbows, facial scruff, and two-tone brown wing tips. She marked him as a former hipster who missed his glory days, but he was handsome. Odds in Kingsbridge suggested Cuban or Dominican, but she wasn’t going to guess.
“Not at all,” Nora admitted quietly, turning aside to move the conversation away from the gathered mourners. “I’m new to the neighborhood. Just out for a run, to be honest, but it seemed disrespectful not to at least stop and offer up a prayer.”
The former hipster cocked his head, brown eyes warm. “That’s kind of you.”
“It’s a horrible thing.” Nora hugged herself with a shudder. “I know it’s not the safest neighborhood, but I never expected something like this. Three kids in a row.”
Though she had her magenta-streaked hair tied back and was dressed for it, the out-for-a-run story was only a cover. The shudder, however, was real.
“It’s awful, no argument,” he said. “But you just got here. Don’t give up on Kingsbridge yet. There are a lot of good people here, families that go back generations—”
“Yours?”
A news van pulled up at the curb and the crew began to climb out. The former hipster scowled at their presence and nodded to a spot farther up the sidewalk, away from the crowd and the cameraman. A police car rolled silently up the block, and Nora could see a competing news van approaching as well.
“Both sides of the family, yeah. Half–Puerto Rican, half-Albanian, but a hundred percent Kingsbridge.” He offered his hand. “I’m Rafe Bogdani.”
They shook, and she lied, “Shelby Coughlin.”
Rafe commented on her Irish name, how down on Bailey Avenue there were still clusters of Irish families that went way back, but she wasn’t paying much attention now. Church bells were ringing inside the Dominican church at the bottom of the steps, echoing out across the bright autumn morning, and the people at the top of the stairs moved to either side, waiting for the procession they knew was coming.
Nora saw pain in Rafe’s eyes. “You knew her?”
Rafe glanced at her, hesitant. But then he nodded. “I teach history at the high school. I had Maidali in class last year. She was a smart kid, thoughtful in a way so few of them are.”
Nora forced herself not to look too interested. She shifted to get a better view past the crowd and down the stairs, where a procession ascended from the church on Bailey Avenue. “What about the other two?”
“The boy was an eighth grader, I hear. Never met him. Supposedly the other girl, Corinna-something, was from Yonkers. Down staying with her cousins, was it?”
Nora nodded. “Sounds right.”
Corinna’s last name had been Dewar. A fifteen-year-old ginger with more freckles than there were stars in the sky. The eighth grader had been Tomas Soares, a future track star, tall for his age and unafraid of running at night.
Nora and Rafe stood in the midst of the crowd on the Heath Avenue sidewalk, watching as Maidali Ortiz’s parents and grandfather and little brother climbed the stairs. The fall breeze had stilled as if the morning held its breath, and the murmuring on the sidewalk also fell silent. The only sounds were the quiet sobs of the family members and their dearest friends, the people who had been in the church for this morning’s memorial. The police wouldn’t release Maidali’s body yet, but the family hadn’t wanted to wait any longer to offer up prayers, both in the girl’s memory and in search of some comfort. Some small bit of grace that might alleviate the screaming pain in their hearts.
Nora wondered if they had found even a sliver of that grace, of peace. She hoped so, but from the looks on their faces as they were confronted by the neighbors and spectators waiting, she doubted it.
“How could someone do that to a child?” Rafe whispered.
She didn’t have to ask what he meant. Nora had seen a couple of the crime-scene photos thanks to her police contacts. Maidali had been mutilated, her face and body marked with a knife, her eyes removed postmortem. The girl had been murdered elsewhere, her body dumped down the steps sometime between 2:00 and 3:00 a.m. on Wednesday morning. Whoever had killed Maidali had returned her to her neighborhood, dumped her seven blocks from her house, like some car thief who’d gone for a joyride and then left the car nearby in apology.
Not an apology, Nora thought. They were done with her. Tossed her back where she’d come from.
The idea made her clench her fists. Whoever had killed Maidali had to be stopped before doing it again. The police might find the killer, but if they didn’t …