“That’ll work,” Mimi said. She looked Sedrick up and down. “You with the Six-Oh?”
“Nope. Night watch.”
“Did you get here first?”
“We got here around the same time,” he said, nodding to Zochi. “Guys from PSA—one heard a woman screaming and came over. It wasn’t the vic screaming, though; it was another homeless woman who found her. Cart-pushing lady named Wilomena. She’s back there with PSA still, but she’s not talkin’。”
“Is someone else coming out?” Mimi asked Zochi.
“Yeah, Len Dougherty from the Six-Oh. I texted him. He’ll be here in a few.”
“The wheel,” Mimi said. “You’re on that too?” The “wheel” meant the notification process that the responding detectives went through to get the police chain of command involved with a homicide.
“Oh yeah, they’re chattering already. We’ll see brass in a few minutes.”
Mimi nodded and glanced over Zochi’s shoulder. “Okay then. Back to Wilomena?”
CHAPTER 5
1:12 a.m.
Wilomena had little to say after an hour in police custody, although “custody” in this case meant she was seated on the curb with a couple of patrol officers who had asked her not to leave. They were from Police Support Area—or PSA—1. PSAs were commands that patrolled public housing units. There were a few such units, including some historically dangerous ones, in Coney Island. To Zochi, it seemed like a pretty cool gig for a younger cop, at least in the summertime. Rather than a typical squad car, PSA 1 responders tooled around in a marked NYPD pickup truck. For the moment, it was parked where Twenty-Seventh Street met the boardwalk.
Wilomena wore a dirty yellow housedress over a pair of long underwear. Her dark, fleshy arms were wrapped around her knees. She was staring out at the ocean, the south shore of Staten Island, and the distant lights of New Jersey beyond it. From time to time she would snap her eyes over to her shopping cart, as if someone might try to sneak off with it. To Zochi she looked forty or fifty and clearly homeless, or mostly so. In Zochi’s experience, people like Wilomena could be much younger than they appeared.
“Wilomena, my name is Detective Hernandez,” she said, sitting down. Mimicking how Wilomena was sitting, she put her arms around her knees.
“Yeah, I’m Donna Summer.” Wilomena stared at the water.
“We know your name; it’s okay.”
“Not my last name. You ain’t gettin’ that neither.”
“I’m not asking for it. Look, Wilomena—”
“It’s Donna. Wake up!”
“Wilomena, come on, this is serious. As far as anyone knows, you were the first person to find her over there.”
Wilomena frowned, jutting her lower lip forward, and shifted her eyes to Zochi.
“So what?”
“So did you know her?”
“Seen her ’round.”
“What was her name?”
“Names, names, we all need names,” Wilomena said, as if reciting verse.
Zochi cataloged this in her mind—the possibility that Wilomena was mentally ill, maybe delusional. That was far from uncommon in the city’s homeless population.
“You know what I mean,” she said quietly. “What did people call her out here?” Zochi’s “call” came out cawl.
“Damn, you the smart ones! You got DNA, right? One hundred thirty pounds of it in that body bag just went by. You tell me who she was.”
“It doesn’t work that way. You know that.”
“What do I know? DNA. Y’all know everything now.”
“Nah, we don’t. Listen, no one’s gonna keep you here, Wilomena. It’s a nice night; we’re gonna let you get back to it. But I think you can help us. What was her name?”
Wilomena’s eyes seemed to cloud over. She went back to gazing over the water, gleaming in the moonlight. The moon was taking on a yellow tinge as it descended in the west.
“Lois,” she said finally. “Her name was Lois.”
“Any last name?”
“She was trying to get over there,” Wilomena said, as if she hadn’t heard the question. She nodded toward Staten Island, and Zochi’s eyes followed.
“Staten Island?”
“Yeah, over the bridge. She was trying to get bus fare. But it’s a few buses you gotta take. The B64 to the B1. Then one or two more. It’s like twice the normal fare, and she couldn’t keep all the details straight anyway.”