The Other Murder
Kevin G. Chapman
“An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propaganda, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it.”
– Mahatma Gandhi
“In seeking truth, you have to get both sides of a story.”
– Walter Cronkite
Chapter 1 — Friday in the Park
Friday
JAVIER HEARD A SCREAM.
He was heading home after leaving the basketball court at Sixth Avenue and 3rd Street. His pick-up team had won three straight games. He could have remained on the court for another, but he had promised his mom he would be home by nine o’clock. His boss at the supermarket wanted him stocking shelves by six a.m. and didn’t permit late arrivals. He took his usual route, cutting through Washington Square Park on his way to the NYCHA apartment building on 6th Street, between Avenue C and the FDR Drive. The courts in the park along the East River were closer to home, but the college scouts only watched the Sixth Avenue games, where the best street players dazzled spectators.
The scream stopped him as he trotted along a paved path curving between the trees, thick with fragrant spring blossoms. Looking left, he tried to convince himself that the sound might not have been a cry of distress—and that it might not have been from a woman. People yelled for all kinds of reasons. A dropped cell phone or a mean Tweet could prompt one. He resolved to ignore it and keep going. He needed to make sure his little brother got to bed before his mom got home from working the evening shift at the hospital. Spring pollen hung in the still air, leaving a pungent smell that mixed with the Italian sausages languishing on a rolling food cart’s grill a few hundred feet to the south.
Two strides later, he heard it again—this time louder and more clearly a cry of pain and fear, almost certainly from a girl. His mother would be unhappy if he was late. She would also be unhappy if he ignored a cry for help. She had a mantra, repeated often enough to be part of Javier’s psyche:
A person is defined by the actions they take and by the actions they choose not to take
He made a sharp left down a dirt path. His shoulder bag containing his hoops gear swung in a wide arc around his body. He made his way through some thick bushes toward the sound.
* * *
JOE MALONE HEARD THE BANG from inside his guard house. It was barely a shed, plopped down at the southwest corner of Washington Square Park. Joe, working for New York University that Friday evening, was moonlighting from his regular gig as a security guard at the Citi Bank on Church Street. He had put in his twenty years at the NYPD and was supposed to be enjoying his retirement while working the cushy bank assignment he had lined up years earlier. Divorcing his wife had left him with an account balance requiring supplemental income. If he were still on the force, he would have had enough seniority to pick his shift and assignment. Retiring had been his worst decision. Well, maybe not as bad as leaving his wife for a woman who dumped him six months later. Now, he had to make another decision.
He knew that sound. A gunshot has a specific aural texture and echoes off the surrounding buildings, even when it comes through the trees. Most New Yorkers would ignore it, even if they knew what it was. That’s the nature of city life. Don’t get involved. Cops think differently; and deep down, Joe was still a cop.
The inside of the park, however, was not his jurisdiction. The university wanted him in his little shack on the sidewalk, to make the students feel safe as they strolled up and down the cobbled sidewalks between the bars and clubs and restaurants. If there was a fight or a purse-snatching on the street, he was expected to emerge from his shelter and take action. The wrought-iron barrier separating the park from the sidewalk was his boundary. Joe was supposed to leave the dark shadows under the city-owned trees to the NYPD. If something was happening inside the park, university security was supposed to call 9-1-1. Those were his orders.
Joe was lousy at following orders. He slid off his chair and stretched his back as he wandered out of the shed and tipped his head up, listening in case there was another shot. He could hear a truck speeding up Sixth Avenue a block away, and the buzzing chatter of happy and drunk college students. The ambient noise drowned out any sounds coming from the park. The lights on the street gave way to shadows on the far side of the fence. Nothing. No second shot.
He dialed the local police precinct and spoke to the desk sergeant. “This is Joe Malone, NYU Security at 4th and MacDougal. I have a probable gunshot inside Washington Square Park, likely to my north. Please send a unit over to check it out . . . Yes, I know the difference between weapons fire and a car backfiring. I’m retired NYPD. Just send a car.”
He punched END and again tilted his head, listening. Nothing. The precinct dispatcher would eventually put out a call for a squad car, but it would take a few minutes, at least.
“Fuck it.” Joe walked through the gap in the fence, pulling out his two-foot-long tactical flashlight that also served as a Billy club. He walked along a smooth, paved path, still listening. The street sounds were muffled here, behind layers of shrubs and trees. The pool of brightness from his flashlight filled in the shadows. He left the pavement, following a dirt path toward what he knew was a clearing around the Hangman’s Elm. Joe had no clue how the tree got its name, but assumed criminals were actually hanged there in olden times. It was a spot where people gathered in the daylight for picnics and where New Yorkers who preferred not to be seen came to score some weed—or more—after dark.
Joe wasn’t interested in busting a small-time drug dealer or their customers, but he figured the shot he heard had come from this direction. The clearing was as good a place to start as any. Another bang caught his attention. It was farther away, toward the east: different, but likely another gunshot. He swung his light around to confirm there was no potentially hostile person in the clearing. Emerging through a gap in a line of thick forsythia bushes where the path narrowed, Joe shone his light at the Hangman’s Elm.
He saw a flash of purple and a dark shape on the ground. He walked toward it, shining the light all around the silent dirt, trampled by hundreds of New York feet. When he was close enough to be sure of what he was seeing, he rushed forward. It was a girl. On the ground. Not moving. He knelt in the dust, not worrying about what evidence he might be trampling. Sticking the flashlight under an arm, he reached out and nudged her, in case she was just sleeping. She wasn’t. He rolled her onto her back. His eyes jumped to the dark hole in her forehead. She wasn’t going to need an ambulance.
* * *
Want to read the rest of The Other Murder? Look for the hardcover, available from Bookshop.org and from select independent bookstores starting January 8, 2024. Get the audiobook from your favorite audiobook retailer also January 8th. You can support your local bookstores by ordering from Libro.FM.
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