Free The Shadow Man by John Katzenbach

what is obvious is also true. Now, let the patrolman take your statement. Tell him who she was scared of.’
    He didn’t finish his thought out loud, which was: Whoever it was, it was the wrong damn person.
    The two men paused in the center of the living room. Simon Winter wanted to get angry, but felt himself searching instead for a grip on the events. He cursed his age and indecision inwardly.
    ‘Now, where’s that address book?’
    ‘In the drawer.’
    Winter pointed, and Walter Robinson stepped across the small room and opened the drawer beneath the phone.
    ‘It’s not here.’
    ‘I saw it there earlier. That’s where she always kept it.’
    ‘Not here now. What did it look like?’
    ‘Red leather. Not expensive. About four by five. Gold-embossed “Addresses” in script on the front. The sort of thing you’d get in a drug store.’
    ‘We’ll look for it. Not the sort of thing a junkie looking for cash is likely to grab. It’ll show up.’
    Winter nodded. ‘She had it out, tonight, when I left her.’
    ‘Well, give your statement to the patrolman, Mr Winter. And don’t hesitate to call if you can think of anything else.’
    Robinson handed Simon Winter a business card. The old detective put it in his pocket. Then the younger man turned away, leaving Winter to be led outside by the patrolman. Winter started to say something, but stopped, and keeping the surge of thoughts to himself, reluctantly followed the patrolman, leaving Sophie Millstein behind. He glanced back over his shoulder once, back into the
    bedroom, and saw that her last moments were being documented by a police photographer’s camera. The photographer dipped and swayed, dancelike, around Sophie Millstein, his camera popping with each flash of light, taking another series of shots while the morgue team waited patiently in a corner, talking quietly amongst themselves. One man idly worked the large brass zipper on the shiny black rubberized body bag, making a small tearing sound.
    Walter Robinson looked on the floor in the bedroom for the address book, but could not find it. He made a note of this as well. Then he went back to the telephone in the living room and dialed directory assistance on Long Island. Sophie Millstein’s son’s number was listed in Great Neck. But before calling the victim’s son, he dialed the twenty-four-hour service for the Dade County State Attorney’s Office and received the number for the assistant with homicide duty that night.
    He dialed and waited through a half-dozen rings before a sleepy voice staggered across the line:
    ‘Yes?’
    ‘Is this Assistant State Attorney Esperanza Martinez?’ he asked.
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘This is Detective Robinson. Beach homicide. We haven’t met…’
    ‘But we’re going to meet now, right?’ the sleepy voice replied.
    ‘That’s right, Miss Martinez. I’ve got an elderly victim, killed by an unknown assailant inside her apartment, twelve hundred block of South Thirteenth Terrace. Crime could fit the profile of a series of breakins we’ve had out here, except this time the perp strangled the old woman.
    We have a witness who got a look at the suspect. Tentative description: black, late teenage to early twenties, slight stature, about five-ten, maybe 175 pounds, and moving fast.’
    ‘You think I need to be there?’ the prosecutor asked. ‘Is there some legal issue you need advice on?’
    The young woman’s voice had gathered an edge of irritation. Robinson ignored it.
    ‘Well, no. No legal issue that I can see. The crime itself is pretty cut and dried. But what we have is an elderly white, Jewish victim and a young black perpetrator, and it’s my guess this will be high-profile real quick, what with this being an election year for your boss and there being at least a half-dozen reporters and cameramen outside who are gonna be damned after waiting around all damn night if they don’t make this into something that lands ‘em on the
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