Free NYPD Puzzle by Parnell Hall Page B

Assuming it will take your boy a little while to browbeat the medical examiner.”
    “That’s not the way it works.”
    “How does it work?”
    Crowley looked at her sharply. “What do you care?”
    “I’m just a country girl from the sticks, trying to make my way in the big city.”
    “Didn’t you used to be from New York?”
    “Where’d you hear that?”
    “I don’t know. Just seemed like you were.”
    “Really? I’ve been in the country so long, I barely remember the city.”
    “And yet you own an apartment.”
    “Which is rented. The rental covers the maintenance, brings in pocket change. Win—win. Of course, once a New Yorker, always a New Yorker. Seems like only yesterday, and it’s been fifteen years.” Cora realized that made her seem old. “I recall I’d just turned twenty,” she hastened to add.
    Crowley laughed.
    “You find that funny?” Cora said.
    Crowley shook his head. “Lotta women been married several times before they were twenty. We just booked one. On prostitution. I don’t think all her marriages were legal, though.”
    Cora nodded. “Some of mine weren’t either. Since you ducked the question, I assume you’re married.”
    The phone rang. Crowley scooped it up, not, Cora noted, without some relief. “Yeah?… Really?… Well, I’m sure he was. Could you ask him to fax it over? Without handling it any more than he already has. If he’s really sorry, tell him I need it now. ”
    Crowley hung up the phone. “It’ll be right here.”
    “If the doctor cooperates.”
    “Perkins has him by the short hairs. He’ll cooperate.”
    He did. Perkins knocked on the door less than five minutes later, handed Crowley the fax.
    Crowley held it up for Cora.

    “I assume this is what you mean?”
    “You’ve never seen a sudoku before?”
    “I’m sure I have. I’m sorry it didn’t make a big impression. Can you solve it?”
    “Just watch me.”
    Cora whizzed through the sudoku in less time than it took the doctor to send the fax.
    She looked at the solution, whistled.
    “What is it?”
    Cora handed Crowley the sudoku. “Look at the middle row across.”
    Crowley looked at the sudoku.

    “What about it?”
    “What are the five numbers in the middle of the row?”
    Crowley read them off. “Two, seven, nine, three, eight.”
    Cora cocked her head at him, smiled. “Ring a bell?”
    “No,” Crowley said irritably. “What are you getting at?”
    “It’s the license plate number Perkins couldn’t trace.”

 
    Chapter
    16
     
    Becky Baldwin pushed the long blond hair out of her eyes, tapped the pencil against the yellow legal pad on her desk. “What the hell is going on?”
    “I have no idea,” Cora said.
    “But it’s all about you. Which makes no sense. But it has to.”
    “We’ve been over this before.”
    “It just happened. You just told me about it.”
    “Yeah, but it’s the same concept.”
    “Right. The killing had to do with you. Because of the crossword puzzle. Which makes no sense, because the killer must have known I was bringing you, but he couldn’t. Because I didn’t know I was bringing you. I just decided it that day.”
    “Well, that’s not quite true, is it?” Cora said.
    “What do you mean?”
    “You asked me the day before. And then that night I asked Aaron about theater tickets. And he asked around to see if he could get some. Which is how we wound up at the play. So Aaron knew I was going, and presumably the people he asked knew I was going.”
    Becky shook her head. “I would hate to have to sell that to a jury.”
    “Why?”
    “The killer invites me to a meeting in New York. Even that’s an assumption, but say he does. The killer invites me to a meeting in New York. I decide I’m going to bring you. He finds out I’m bringing you and says, ‘Oh, great, the Puzzle Lady, I’ll give her a puzzle.’ So he devises a crossword puzzle and a sudoku that, taken together, yield the license plate number of the car he’s going to use to