The fragment of glass had broken into three pieces. Three separate mirror reflections of Jack Koldstad's grim face stared back at him.
Koldstad scooped up the largest piece. It was a mirror. But when he turned it around, he could see his fingers through transparent glass.
"Damn!"
He went to the fractured window. The hole was large enough for his head but the edges were too sharp to risk it, so he stuck his hand out, holding the piece of glass mirror-side in.
The mirror's own reflection showed up in the glass. Koldstad should have seen himself reflected. The other side of the window was obviously a mirror, too.
"A damn one-way window," Koldstad growled. "Folcroft isn't so innocent after all."
He dropped the shard into a wastepaper basket as he strode out of the office, his squeezed-in temples making him look like a man with the most excruciating headache in the universe.
Chapter 7
Desk Sergeant Troy Tremaine had seen it all.
During his thirty years on the Port Chester, New York, police force, he had seen every human aberration, every nut case, nut job, dimwit, chuckle head and dip-shit loser come through the frosted-glass front doors and step up to his old-fashioned high precinct desk.
The skinny guy with the thick wrists didn't look like one of those. In fact, he looked very sincere. There was great sincerity in his deep-set brown eyes. They were veritable wells of sincerity. Sergeant Tremaine would have staked his pension on the skinny guy's high sincerity quotient.
He walked up, squeezed the front edge of the desk with his fingers and said in a very sincere voice, "My wife is missing."
Tremaine, who had a wife himself, immediately felt for the poor guy. But business was business.
"How long?"
"Two days."
"We need three days before we can file a missing-person report."
"Did I say days? I meant weeks."
Tremaine's hot button should have gone off right then. But the guy was so sincere. He looked exactly as though he was heartsick over the loss of his wife.
So Troy said, "You said two days."
"I'm upset. I meant weeks."
"Her name?"
"Esmerelda."
Troy looked up. "Esmerelda?"
"It was her mother's name, too. Esmerelda Lolobrigida."
"That would make you..."
"Remo Lolobrigida." And the skinny guy produced an ID card that said he was Remo Lolobrigida, private investigator.
"You try looking for her yourself?"
Remo Lolobrigida nodded soberly. "Yeah. For the past week." His voice dripped sincerity.
"But you said she was missing two."
"I was out of town one week. Look, this is serious. I gotta find her."
"Okay, let me hand you off to a detective." He craned his bull neck and lifted his voice to a passing uniform. "Hey, who's catching today?"
The answer came back. "Boyle. But he's out to lunch."
"Damn. Okay, I'll take it. Give me the particulars, friend."
"She's about, I'd say twenty-eight."
"Say?"
"I think she lied about her age before we married. You know how women are."
"Right. Right."
"She's brown on brown, slim, wears her hair long."
"Recent photo available?"
"No. She was camera shy."
Oh, great, Tremaine thought. He kept it to himself. "How do you expect us to find your wife, buddy, without a recent snapshot?"
"Is there a police artist around? I know I can describe her pretty well"
Tremaine chewed on that as he erased something he had written.
"Guess we can try that." He picked up a phone and said, "DeVito. Got a guy out here who's missing his wife. Yeah. No recent photo. In fact, no photo at all. Want to take a crack at it? Sure."
Tremaine pointed to a door. "Go through there. DeVito will help you. Good luck, pal."
"Thanks," said the skinny guy, walking away. Only then did Troy Tremaine think that it was damn cool out there to be walking around in a T-shirt. By then it was too late.
POLICE SKETCH ARTIST Tony DeVito thought nothing of the skinny guy's light attire, either. He waved him into his office and said, "First I want you to look at some head shapes. Just to get us started."
The skinny guy went through the book and picked out a nice oval. Tony transferred the oval to his sketch pad and said, "Let's start with the eyes. What kind of eyes did-I mean does-your wife have?"
"Nice."