Cohen didn’t see the woman until they reached the end of the alley. In the corner building’s recessed parking lot, she sat on the ground with her back against a garbage bin. With her skinny legs akimbo, her short black skirt had pulled up and displayed the edges of her frayed, lurid-pink panties. Her greasy black hair was slicked against her head. And her torn, once-white T-shirt exposed a right arm that was red and swollen from elbow to fingers. She looked familiar to Cohen, but then most of the users did; he spent a disproportionate amount of his investigative time in this neighborhood.

“We’ll take it from here. Thanks.” Leetch nodded to the uniformed cop who, looking miffed at the dismissal, sauntered off without a word.

The woman looked up at the detectives with pinpoint pupils and glazed eyes. Cohen recognized the signs of a heroin high. “Morning officers,” she mumbled and stared past them vacantly. “What’s up?”

Cohen knelt down beside her. This time, Leetch labored to lower himself into a partial squat. “I’m Detective Leetch,” he said. “This is Detective Cohen. What’s your name?”

“Carol.” Her eyelids drooped.

“You got a last name, Carol?”

“Wilson.”

Leetch circled a finger in the air. “You around here last night, Carol?”

She yawned, exposing a front tooth broken near the root. “Most nights. Most days.”

“Notice anything out of the ordinary?” Leetch asked.

“Nothing ordinary around here,” she said.

“Okay.” Leetch rolled his eyes. “How about Frigerator Baxter and Jimmy Mitchum, you know them?”

Carol didn’t answer, but recognition registered on her gaunt face.

“Someone killed them last night.”

She stared back at Leetch with utter apathy. “Occupational hazard,” she said.

“Did you see them last night?” Leetch asked.

“Don’t remember,” she said.

“We’re Homicide, honey.” He pointed at her ratty pink handbag beside her. “We don’t care what’s in your bag.” He heaved an exaggerated sigh. “But if you don’t cooperate a bit more, we’re going to have go through the hassle of busting you for whatever rig you got in there.”

The threat had its desired effect. Her eyes widened. She struggled to sit up straighter, and she moved her legs closer together. “Yeah. I saw those pricks last night.”

“What did they want?”

“What they always want,” she snorted. “Money.”

Cohen allowed Leetch to lead the interview while he absorbed the details. He couldn’t help inhaling Carol’s stale aroma, which brought back raw memories of his mother’s final days wasting away from breast cancer. Carol exuded that same death smell.

Cohen shook off the painful memory and focused his attention on Carol’s angry red arm, the skin stretched to the point of translucence and the fingers swollen into sausages. He noticed how she held it tightly against her body without moving it so much as a flicker.