“No, she’s not,” Virgil said. “Not at all. We’re running down a list of people who knew a man who died, trying to find some relatives.”
The manager might have been skeptical but shrugged, and said, “Up the stairs and to the left. Or up the elevator and to the right,” and walked away.
—
At Cohen’s apartment, Capslock said, “Watch the master and learn.” He knocked rapidly, but not loudly, on the door, and said, in an anxious whisper, “Abby! Abby! Are you in there? Abby!”
A moment later, a woman’s hushed voice: “Who is it?”
“Abby! It’s me. Jesus Christ, Abby, we got to get out of here...”
The door opened a crack—a chain showed across the gap—and a woman peered out, and Capslock showed his ID, and said, “Police. Open the door, Miz Cohen.”
“Fuck that,” she said, and tried to slam the door, but Capslock had his steel-toed boot in the crack.
Capslock said, “If you don’t open it, we kick it in. If you break one of my toes, I’ll charge you with aggravated assault on a police officer.”
“I’m calling my lawyer,” Cohen said.
“We’ll let you do that,” Virgil said.
“What do you want?” she asked.
“We need to know what you saw in the library the night Barth Quill got killed.”
“I didn’t see anything,” she squealed. “I got scared and ran away.”
Virgil tipped his head back, and said, aloud, ‘Thank you, God.”
Capslock pushed on the door. “Open the door. You can call your attorney, but we want to make sure you don’t run away again.”
Silence. Then: “You promise?”
“I swear,” Capslock said. “We’ll sit on your couch, and you can call.”
More silence, then she popped the chain, backed past a short hallway, which led to a compact kitchen, and into the living room. She was wearing a mid-thigh green satin dressing gown that showed off her slender legs, her best feature.
Otherwise, Cohen, like Paisley, was an average-looking woman, long-faced, thin-lipped, a chiseled nose, with auburn hair tied back in a ponytail. Harder-edged than Paisley, as though she might work out on a daily basis. She did smell good, like vanilla.
She backed up until she got to a couch, sat down, and attempted to tug down the hem of her gown. Virgil and Capslock took two easy chairs that faced the couch over a glass table. A second hallway led out of the living room deeper into the apartment but only showed three closed doors.
“Call your attorney,” Virgil said. He got on his own phone and called Trane.
—
Virgil: “Where are you?”
“At home,” Trane said. “About to eat another pie.”
“We found the woman who was in the library with Quill when he was killed.”
“Holy cow! Uh, who’s ‘we’?”
“Do you know Del Capslock?” Virgil asked.
“Del? He’s there with you?”
“Yeah.”
