Mr. Nicholas shook his head. “With a daughter it’s different.”

For the first night in a week, it wasn’t raining. The detective looked at the map he’d made, showing the streets from 32nd to 45th on the West Side. The locations where the bodies had been found were marked with red circles. They were spread around-enough so that it didn’t look like there was a pattern. But five homeless people dead in the course of seven weeks? All poisoned? It wasn’t obvious that this was the work of just one person, but that the deaths were connected the detective had no doubt.

He started at the uptown end, the theater district. As you left the streets dominated by Disney marquees, you found the remnants of the old Times Square: novelty shops, import/export storefronts, peep shows, For Rent signs. Plenty of homeless people to talk to.

The detective took his time, walking slowly, keeping his eyes open-for what, he wasn’t sure. He stopped whenever he saw someone sitting on the sidewalk, leaning against a street lamp, lying under a filthy quilt in a cardboard box. He introduced himself, asked whether the person had seen anything unusual lately.

Mostly they said no.

One man said, “You not going to get anyone to tell you anything. They too scared.”

“You scared?” the detective asked.

“Bet your ass I’m scared.”

“Why’s that?”

“I don’t want to end up dead.”

“We all end up dead,” the detective said.

“Not me, man. I’m not ready yet.”

“So why don’t you tell me, who is it that people are scared of?”

The man just shook his head emphatically.

“Why? Why won’t you tell me?”

“Maybe it’s you.”

“For god’s sake, I’m a cop. I’m not going to hurt you.”

“You’re a cop don’t mean nothing. You know that, I know that, everybody know that.”

The detective moved on. Could it be a cop? He thought about it. A frustrated beat cop, maybe, out to clean up the neighborhood in his off time? An old PD hack, about to hit retirement, sick of seeing bums lining the sidewalk? It was possible. He didn’t want to think about it.