I decide to walk up to 72nd Street because I’m starting to get my bearings, at least in this small area of Manhattan, and because walking helps me think. My favourite place in London is Hampstead Heath in September. Hyde Park is nice, but it’s still in the centre of the city and the ground’s too compacted. At least on Hampstead Heath the ground’s soft in places. It’s big enough and wild enough to almost feel like my childhood village, the one my parents will surely have to leave next year after the bank forecloses on their home. Our home. I thought I’d be more unsettled by the thought of it but it’s nothing compared to what we’ve all been living through the past few days.
The area around Columbus Circle is pretty overwhelming: too much traffic and too many people. I cross and skirt the southwest corner of the park.
Mum and Dad seemed more settled this morning. I think it’s because they finally know how KT died. We have the how but we do not have the who or the why. Meaning I have about thirty-six hours to come up with something I can give to Martinez and DeLuca.
I pass the YMCA where I met Violet that time, and head up towards Broadway.
The evidence suggests that the perpetrator knew KT. That she trusted him. It suggests the perpetrator is strong, enough brute force to pin her to her bed. KT was a swimmer. She had real upper body strength.
I think about Scott Sbarra and how he has the potential. Strong enough to push a pillow into his girlfriend’s face and then just up and leave and act like nothing happened. Free to live his own privileged life, rowing competitively and winning trophies; ending up in some downtown city law firm, becoming an equity partner in his fifties married to some media executive, both of them clearing a million a year with stock options. I then consider Violet, although I don’t think she’s a likely suspect. She doesn’t seem the type. KT trusted her, and why on earth would you smother your own best friend? I walk past the New York City Ballet. Might Groot have hurt KT? Might he have killed a young woman to save his own marriage? To silence her?
All I know is that I’d make a useless detective. Pathetic. I try to imagine the risks just here, in the core of the Upper West Side. I pass by an Apple store and a deli. This wouldn’t be a key terrorist target because they’d hit high publicity areas like Wall Street or the Rockefeller Center. But I am aware of men with their hands in their pockets, and of overhead scaffolding that could theoretically buckle and crash on top of me at any second. Before I received that phone call from Mum and Dad in London I read about a man in Berlin who walked down the street minding his own business and stepped on a closed cellar door, the metal doors flush with the pavement. It fell in. He broke his neck. Paralysed.
69th Street. I keep on walking.
I make a pact with myself to work all night tonight. Rereading the emails and reanalysing KT’s social media accounts. I will stay in the diner or in some 24/7 café and I will drink strong coffee and I will make much-needed progress.
Broadway and 72nd Street.
‘Molly!’ yells a voice from across the street. ‘Molly, over here.’
I cross over to them. Violet Roseberry and Scott Sbarra. KT’s best friend and her boyfriend. Violet’s lipstick is smudged, and Scott’s hair is a mess. He nods his greeting and Violet hugs me.
The suspicion that they’ve spent the night together crosses my mind, but I dismiss it. Not these two, surely. Not so soon after.
‘Dogs,’ she says.
I frown.
She points to the shop. ‘Gray’s Papaya. Best hot dogs in the whole of Manhattan.’
‘I dunno,’ says Scott.
‘Cannot resist a dirty water hot dog,’ she says. ‘No one can.’
We walk inside and there’s already a queue at eleven-fifteen. We order three hot dogs with sauerkraut, and three papaya drinks, and we get them to go.
‘We eat them out on the street?’ I say.
‘Few blocks, come on.’
Violet leads us to a playground with trees and a basketball court. A group of young teenagers are skateboarding and flirting and smoking cigarettes. We sit on a low wall and my hot dog is probably the best I have ever eaten. It hasn’t been boiled in filthy water; it’s been cooked properly. Thoroughly.
‘It’s delicious,’ I say.
‘Told you,’ she says.
Scott’s thrown away his bun because he says he wants to stay in ketosis, whatever that is. A scrawny bird pecks at it and we sit three in a line watching the skateboarders and taking whatever sunbeams manage to slice between the buildings.
‘I’m leaving tomorrow,’ I say.