"Cray, David - Little Girl Blue" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cray David)

their lives in those stairways. It is to these men and women, and to
their wives and their daughters and their husbands and their sons, and
to all the grieving families whose tears now flood our hearts, that I
respectfully and humbly dedicate this book.

One final note. In the year 1835, a great fire swept through lower
Manhattan. Driven by high winds, the fire raged for two full days.
More than six hundred buildings were utterly destroyed, including the
Merchant's Exchange. A year later, five hundred new buildings had
risen from the ashes and the city was again marching north.

Keep the faith.

David Cray, September 20, 2001, New York City

ONE

WHEN LIEUTENANT JULIA BREN NAN pushed through a semicircle of uniformed
cops to view the body for the first time, the words Little Girl Blue
jumped into her mind as if they'd been crouching in her unconscious,
patiently awaiting an opportunity to catch her unawares. She brought
her gloved right hand to her mouth, though she hadn't spoken aloud, but
was unable to withdraw the words, or even to stop thinking them,
because the body was, indeed, the milky blue of the winter sky above
Central Park. It was the body of a little girl as well, curled into a
fetal position beneath the folded leaves of a wintering rhododendron.

"Ain't this a shame, loo? Ain't this a shame?"

Julia turned from the body to find Detective Albert Griffith standing
alongside. He was shifting his weight from one foot to another, biting
at the edge of his lower lip. Griffith was a deeply religious black
man, had been, as he put it "... church-raised by my Auntie Bernice."

Julia looked back at the girl. Maybe eight or nine years old, she wore
no clothes, not even shoes or socks, and her hair was matted with dried
leaves and clods of dirt. The soles of her feet were also dirty. They
appeared to be abraded, as if she'd walked or run some distance.

"You look around?" Julia asked.

"The ground's froze up. There's no trail. Nothin' obvious, anyway."

Julia sighed. "I was hoping for a dropped wallet," she admitted. When
Griffith didn't respond, she quickly added, "They're gonna be screaming
for blood. The brass, the mayor, the press, the public." A frigid
gust of wind rattled the dry leaves of the rhododendrons and Julia
instinctively hunched her shoulders. "Us, too," she added. "We're
gonna need this one, too."