paper cups, snapped on flat lids, and pointed to the door. “Anyone who comes in here from the police or fire departments gets free drinks tonight. And start brewing up a thermal urn of the Breakfast Blend. When I come down, I’ll bring the coffee out to them.”
“Okay, Clare.”
“Sure, boss.”
“Thanks, guys.” I left the espresso bar and began to cut a serpentine path through the crowded café tables. I’d been in a pretty big hurry to get to Matt—until I realized the conversations taking place around me were about tonight’s shooting. My pace instantly slowed.
At a table to my right, a group of NYU guys in ripped jeans, T-shirts, and day-old chin scruff were all agreeing that they hadn’t seen or heard a thing and they didn’t know the woman.
Right. I moved on.
At the next table, a twenty-something girl in vintage seventies fringe leather was speaking excitedly about seeing the New York 1 news van. Her redheaded girlfriend in a neon pink cashmere sweater confessed to a crush on Pat Kiernan, the station’s morning anchor.
O-kay. I kept walking.
Three more tables turned out to be a bust: conversations about rent hikes, a lousy love life, and an HBO miniseries. But at the very next table, a couple of guys were talking about the shooting. It sounded to me like they were comparing notes on their separate questioning by canvassing cops.
I slowed to a complete stop.
“Did you hear anything? ’Cause I sure didn’t,” the first man said. He appeared to be in his early thirties, had a fresh-faced, midwestern look about him with thick blond hair and a J. Crew outfit of pressed khakis, a pale-yellow button-down, and a matching sweater draped over his shoulders.
“You didn’t hear anything because your apartment window doesn’t face Hudson,” the second man replied. “Mine does.”
I recognized the second man as a regular Blend customer named Barry. He was a very nice, soft-spoken but brilliant Web designer in his early forties. His brown hair was thinning, and his once-trim figure was spreading a bit, but he had a warm, genuine smile and always took the trouble to compliment our coffee. Like many of my regular Village customers, Barry also happened to be gay, and the man he was sitting with looked about ten years younger and a whole lot cuter than Barry’s current boyfriend.
“I actually heard the shot,” Barry announced.
“Really?” the other man replied. “You heard it? What about Martin?”
Barry frowned and shook his head. “Martin left.”
“Oh, really?”
The cute guy leaned forward slightly. I smiled, seeing the obvious. Barry, however, remained glum.
“He packed up three days ago,” Barry said with a sigh. “So I was alone tonight. This is actually the first time I’ve come out since he dumped me. Anyway, I didn’t know what I heard was a gunshot. Not at the time. I thought it was something harmless, you know? Then I hear sirens and forty minutes later, the cops are pounding on my door—”
“Excuse me,” I said.
Both men looked up. Barry smiled. “Oh, hi, Clare. What do you need?”
“Did you just say that you heard the gunshot in the street?”
Barry nodded. “Sure did. It was right under my window, too.”
“And where do you live exactly?”
“Two and a half blocks away, on the same side of the street as the Blend.” Barry gestured in that direction. “I’m in a second-floor apartment.”
“You heard the shot right below you?”
“I’m sure of it.”
“And what did you see?”
“Not a thing. That’s what I told the police. I went to my window and looked down—I thought it might have been a kid with fireworks or a car tire popping, something like that—but there was nothing. Not a soul.”
Barry’s story fit with what I’d experienced, too. By the time I’d turned around to look for the shooter, the person was out of view.
“Did you tell the police anything else?” I asked.
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know, I mean . . . You didn’t see anything, but did you hear anything after the shot? Say, like, footsteps running, something like that?”
“Well, actually, now that you mention it . . .” Barry scratched his chin. “I did hear some footsteps really close, but they weren’t running. They were walking.”
“What?” I’m pretty sure my bloodshot eyes bugged at that.
“I heard some footsteps, like you said. But I didn’t see anyone there, so I didn’t mention it to the cops, you know? I mean, why would that matter?”
“Well, if you heard footsteps walking, yet you couldn’t see who was walking, don’t you think this person