Free Shadow Dancers by Herbert Lieberman

stared upward into the shadowy well soaring thirty more flights above them. “Nobody heard anything?”
    “Only after. When he’d left. Then we heard her screaming and pounding on the door to get back into the hall.”
    “Probably kept her quiet with that knife.”
    “It was a big knife, she said.”
    Mooney nodded. “We have a description of it.”
    “It was awful,” Crane said, and for the first time that morning, he appeared shaken. “Clothes torn. Pretty well banged up. Hysterical.”
    “Anyone else get a look at him besides her?” Mooney asked. “What about the elevator man?”
    “We haven’t had an elevator operator here for twenty years. These things are all automatic now.”
    “But you’ve got a dispatcher downstairs,” Pickering said.
    “We always have one or two on duty. But they don’t notice who comes or goes.”
    “No strange, odd-looking characters?”
    Crane’s features formed a funny, pained expression. “Ever get a load of some of these messengers that promenade around the city nowadays?”
    “I get your point,” Mooney snapped, dismissing the line of questioning.
    “She gave a fairly good description to the police, though,” Crane added.
    Mooney sighed and flicked several pages back in his pad. He started to read aloud. “Blond hair. Caucasian. Average height — five eight, five nine — weight approximately a hundred fifty pounds. Wore a full-length, dark-brown leather coat over jeans. A Basque shirt. Was extremely polite. Apologetic was Miss Bailey’s word.” Mooney snapped the pad shut. “I guess that’s about it.” They started back slowly up the steps through the airless, dimly lit stairwell.
    “She never did make an identification, did she?”
    Crane took out a key and proceeded to unlock the hall door.
    “The chief at Midtown South said she came down to a couple of lineups with guys pretty much fitting that general description and with known records for sex offenses. She couldn’t recognize anyone. Just too jumpy by then, I guess.”
    They stepped back out onto the floor and strolled toward a door with Crane, Poole, Inc., and Member SAR, ILAA stenciled in black letters on a frosted glass window.
    “Christ, wouldn’t you be?” Crane fretted. “Young kid like that. Right out of school. Twenty-two years old. First job in New York. Assaulted in a goddamned stairwell at knife point. Then suddenly she starts seeing this guy in all kinds of places. Outside on the street when she goes out to lunch. Lurking in doorways near her apartment. Clearly following her around. Just waiting for a chance to grab her again. And each time she calls the police they don’t do a damned thing.”
    Mooney sighed. He could see where this was leading. “It’s a big city, Mr. Crane. Lot of funny people walking around off the leash, as you say. The police answered her calls three times. Never found anything.”
    “Well, if it takes them twenty minutes to get over here, of course —”
    “They were there inside of five to six minutes each time.”
    “That isn’t what she said.”
    “I’ve got the operations reports right here.” Mooney spoke with gruff persistence. “The girl herself claimed she’d only get quick glimpses of the guy, then he’d be gone.”
    “All right,” Crane conceded. “All right.” His head drooped and he appeared momentarily contrite. “It’s just a damned shame when people get into trouble in this city, real trouble, and go to the police. The police don’t exactly break their necks to help.”
    “She could’ve just been imagining things,” Pickering said reasonably. “She was in a pretty bad state of mind by then.”
    By that time Mr. Crane was grinding his teeth. “I hope you didn’t say that to her parents when they came down to identify the body.” He yanked open the door to his office. “Has anyone spoken to her family?”
    “I did.” Mooney’s voice was barely a whisper. “Thanks very much for your help.” Mooney thrust a hand toward