Devil's Bridge by Linda Fairstein

and whether she’d taken any pills or had anything to drink. Neither, she told me.
    Her eyes were red and the skin beneath them was puffy and tear streaked. I riffed for a while about how difficult her work must be, the fact that the sergeant had told me she was an only child, and my big lie to her that someday the image that had been created tonight—the sight of her father’s head blown to bits in his own bed, the crimson fluid spattered around him—would fade to a distant memory. That would stay with her as long as she lived.
    “May I ask you some questions, Angela?”
    “Certainly, Detective. I’ll do my best to answer.” She was wringing a handkerchief with both hands.
    “Mike. Please call me Mike,” I said, with a glance at my watch. It was after midnight. “Did you work yesterday?”
    “I did. Yes, I did.”
    Her shift was twelve hours, from eight A.M. to eight P.M. , caring for a woman in her late nineties—who was in good health, she said, though too frail to manage at home by herself.
    “Had you planned to visit your father after work?”
    “No. I hadn’t expected to do it. I was going to meet a friend of mine for a late supper, around ten o’clock, at a restaurant just two blocks from here.”
    “The friend, may I ask his name?”
    “A woman. We went to high school together. We have dinner once a month. She’s a nurse at Columbia Presbyterian.”
    “Sorry to interrupt you,” I said, after she spelled the friend’s name for me.
    “It’s okay,” Angela said, sniffling into her handkerchief. “I called my father, probably around four o’clock in the afternoon.”
    “On his landline, or does he have a cell?”
    “No landline anymore. He’s got a cell phone.”
    “What’s the number?” I hadn’t seen one anywhere in the apartment. I texted Lee to look for it immediately and when Angela gave me the number I texted the lieutenant to have TARU—the Technical Assistance Response Unit—start tracking it.
    “Anyway, I hadn’t seen him in almost a week. I called to ask if he needed anything, but he didn’t answer.”
    “What about Keesh? Wouldn’t she get what he needed?”
    “Keesh doesn’t live here. Least not most of the time. And the reason it was so good for me to come by is that my father said that she was out of town for the week.”
    “Out of town?” Not the three words I wanted to hear about my suspect.
    “Don’t get that worried look on your face, Mike,” Angela said. She was focused again on the top of my head. I must have had my hand in my hair. “She never goes far.”
    “Where to?”
    “I didn’t want to burst my father’s bubble. Keesh would just move in with somebody else who fancied her, brief as that might be. Somebody with a fatter wallet than my daddy.”
    “Didn’t he know that?” I asked. “Wasn’t there a chance that he’d run into her on the street?”
    “Daddy? I’ve got to back you up so you understand him. He only went two places when he left home—the community center and the liquor store. If Keesh stayed clear of both of those, she might as well be on Bourbon Street in New Orleans, ’cause Daddy wouldn’t see her.”
    “But—?”
    “I know. You’re going to ask me about food. Doesn’t he—didn’t he—have to eat?” Angela said without my prompting. “Yeah. Cans of soup, and mac and cheese for the microwave. Wash it all down with Rémy and my father had everything he needed. With Keesh? That’s all he got. Which is why I liked to check up on him. I’d go home when I got off work and pick up some homemade food to bring him.”
    “And you did?” I asked.
    “Yeah. I made meat loaf the night before—two of them—and some black-eyed peas. Called Daddy again around nine o’clock to say I was on my way. I was gonna heat it up for him, sit and talk for a while—” Angela said, choking up and covering her mouth with the handkerchief.
    I waited while she composed herself.
    “I called mostly to make sure that Keesh hadn’t