Free Murder in Hell's Kitchen by Lee Harris Page A

I should be able to find her here?”
    â€œI should think so. But I have to tell you, we’re no longer on the best of terms. After she moved back, we just lost touch. I didn’t expect regular letters or phone calls, but I certainly thought she’d send Christmas cards. When she didn’t, I crossed her off my list.”
    â€œWell, I thank you for your help.”
    â€œAnytime. Always happy to do my part.”
    Jane took her coat and went down the hall to the elevator.
    Downstairs she made a brief detour and went to the post office to change her address. Then she called in and said she’d be late. It was after nine when she got to the Centre Street office. Defino was just as she had left him yesterday, sitting at the typewriter as though he had been there all night.
    â€œGot something?” he said, turning around to say hello.
    â€œGot an address and phone number for Margaret Rawls, and I’m starting to get a lot of bad feelings.” She told them about her call to find Jerry Hutchins and the conversation with Hollis Worthman’s mother.
    â€œSo of the three you’ve got one a homicide and two left the city,” Defino said.
    â€œThat’s the way it looks. What’s the time difference between here and Oklahoma?”
    MacHovec checked a card. “One hour and thirteen hundred seventy road miles.”
    â€œBetter wait an hour then for Miss Rawls. Nebraska’s at least an hour, too, but you can call Information and see if Hutchins is listed. If he’s not, we’d better see if we can find out anything from the place where he was working. It should be in the file or on that list Bracken gave us.”
    MacHovec was already on the phone asking for Hutchins, J., Jerry, Jerome, or Jerold. There was a lot of silence, and his pen didn’t move. He got off the phone and said, “
Nada.
I guess maybe he could live in a suburb. Why don’t I call the Omaha police first and see if they have anything on him?”
    â€œAnd maybe they’ll look in some suburban phone books.”
    â€œOmaha’s across the river from Iowa,” Defino said. “He might commute from out of state.”
    MacHovec wrote it all down and got on the phone. Jane walked over to where Defino was sitting at the typewriter. “This case is giving me the chills,” she said.
    â€œToo many deaths?”
    â€œAnd too many disappearances.”
    â€œYou think Bracken should’ve been onto it?”
    â€œThat’s not it. He had no reason to go back and reinterview the tenants. He talked to them early on. There’re plenty of DD Fives on them. He knew Mrs. Best had died. She was the first. So he was still back at the building six months after the Quill homicide. But I’m starting to feel . . .” She didn’t like what she was feeling.
    â€œI’m listening.”
    â€œI’m not sure what homicide we should be investigating.”
    â€œSoderberg was a possible; Worthman sounds like a homicide.”
    â€œSean can dig up the Sixty-ones and Fives on Worthman.” Sixty-ones were original complaint reports, formally called Uniformed Force or UF61s. That would be the first report on the homicide.
    In twenty-four hours they had fallen into roles as surely as if they had been assigned. MacHovec would handle the phone and do the research. Jane and Defino would do the legwork.
    â€œMaybe you should call the woman in Tulsa. She might respond better to you.”
    â€œSure.” She got her notebook and opened it. “I’ll call Quill’s wife too. Maybe I can set up an interview for today. And then there’s Bracken’s partner, Otis Wright. Sean can get that started.”
    â€œI’ll tag along if you set something up with the wife,” Defino said before turning back to his typewriter.
    Before calling the wife, Jane took a sheet of unlined paper and sketched the house on Fifty-sixth Street, putting in the names of