Silent Victim - C. E. Lawrence [68]
Tanika looked down at her sociology textbook, trying to concentrate, but her mind kept wandering to those sandals. It had been a slow night for a weekend. No stabbings or shootings or anything like that, which is how she liked it. Unlike some of the other 911 operators, who worked the lines because they enjoyed the drama and excitement, Tanika was only here for the money. She just wanted an uneventful shift so she could study for her classes at Mercy College, where she only had six months before getting her degree as a social worker. She didn’t like to think of people hurting one another. She had lost a cousin to a gang shooting, and she knew firsthand the toll violence takes on people.
She looked down at her textbook, rubbed her eyes, and yawned. Damn, she was tired. Her line rang. She picked up, and, trying not to let her voice betray her fatigue, she said the words she had said a thousand times:
“911—what’s your emergency?”
The voice was soft, almost breathy. “I’d like to report a drunk driver.”
Tanika thought it was a man’s voice, but she wasn’t entirely sure. She could hear music playing in the background. She adjusted her earphones and moved the microphone closer to her mouth. “What is the location?”
“Christopher and Greenwich.”
“Has anyone been injured?”
“Not yet, but the driver was very drunk.”
“Do you have a description of the car?”
“I have better than that—I can give you the license plate.”
“Go ahead.”
He described the car and gave a New Jersey tag. She asked him to repeat it, writing it down both times just to be sure.
“I’ll alert officers in the area. Do you wish to give your name?”
“No, thank you.”
“Thank you for your call.”
“Thank you,” he said politely, and hung up.
Tanika immediately dispatched a call to the Eleventh
Precinct, in the West Village, alerting them of the complaint. She didn’t know what they would do from there, but she hoped they nailed the bastard—she hated drunk drivers. In her neighborhood a sweet little girl had been killed a few months ago by a hit-and-run they never caught. She walked past the girl’s shrine every day. Sometimes Tanika bought flowers and laid them next to the yellowing photographs and stuffed animals and packages of Gummi bears. She had a little sister, and she didn’t know what she’d do if anything ever happened to her.
She looked back down at her textbook, Sociology for the 21st Century, and stifled another yawn. She looked back up at the wall clock: it was 11:37 P.M.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
The night was so dark that Lee could barely see where he was going. He stumbled through a thicket of vines and branches tripping and clutching at him like skeletal hands, digging their cold, dead fingers into his flesh until it shivered with the dread and disgust of their touch.
And then he saw it in front of him—the Ansonia Hotel, with its ornate balustrades and rococo masonry. It beckoned to him, rising out of the mist like a stone leviathan, lights blazing in all the windows—and brightest of all in the penthouse apartment.
He struggled on through the forest, keeping his eyes on the grand old building, perched atop a stony hill, like a fortress. He sensed that this was not the usual look of Broadway and Seventy-third Street, but couldn’t quite remember what it was supposed to look like. So he dragged himself on through the thick, clinging vines and underbrush, vaguely aware that it was odd to see such forestation on the Upper West Side. It occurred to him that maybe he was lost, but there was the Ansonia, so how could he be lost?
He wasn’t sure why he was there, though—did he know someone who lived there? He didn’t think so, but then suddenly he was out of the forest and riding up in the elevator,