There was something about pounding the streets that appealed to me that night. We talked to everyone in the building that we could find at home, about half the apartments. Nobody had seen a purple and blue cab on the street; nobody had seen Tori or Marion, either. Or so they said.

“You see any connections anywhere?” I asked as we came down the steep stairs of a fourth-floor walk-up. “What do you see? What the hell am I missing?”

“Not a thing, Alex. Nothing to miss. Weasel didn’t leave a clue. Never does.”

We got back down to the entrance and met up with an elderly man carrying three clear-plastic bags of groceries from the Stop & Shop.

“We’re homicide detectives,” I said to him. “Two young girls were murdered across the street.”

The man nodded. “Tori and Marion. I know ’em. You want to know ’bout that fella watchin’ the buildin’? He was sittin’ there most the night. Inside a slick, fancy black car,” he said. “Mercedes, I think. You think maybe he’s the killer?”

Chapter 55

“I BEEN AWAY AWHILE, y’see. Visitin’ wit’ my two old-bat sisters in North Carolina for a week of good memories, home-cooked food,” the elderly man said as we went up to the fourth floor. “That was why I was missed during the earlier time through here by your detectives.”

This was old-school police work, I was thinking as I climbed stairs — the kind of work too many detectives try to avoid. The man’s name was DeWitt Luke, and he was retired from Bell Atlantic, the huge phone company that services most of the Northeast. He was the fifty-third interview I’d had so far in Shaw.

“Saw him sittin’ there around one in the mornin’. Didn’t think much of it at first. Probably waitin’ for somebody. Seemed to be mindin’ his own business. He was still there at two, though. Sittin’ in his car. Seemed kinda strange to me.” He paused for a long moment as if trying to remember.

“Then what happened?” I prompted the man.

“Fell asleep. But I got up to pee around three-thirty. He was still in that shiny black car. So I watched him closer this time. He was watchin’ the other side of the street. Like some kind of damn spy or somethin’. Couldn’t tell what he was lookin’ at, but he was studyin’ somethin’ real hard over there. I thought he might be the police. ’Cept his car was too nice.”

“You got that right,” Sampson said, and barked out a laugh. “No Mercedes in my garage.”