“You’ve talked to witnesses?”

“What do you think I’ve been doing? Hanging out at the mall?” She was getting pissed off, too.

“Like here in the building,” Marino said, and after a pause that he interpreted as her unwillingness to answer, he added, “I’m going to be passing all this to Berger the minute I get off the phone from talking to you. I suggest you give me the details so I don’t have to tell her I had a problem with cooperation.”

“She and I don’t have a problem with cooperation.”

“Good. Let’s keep it that way. I asked you a question. Who have you talked to?”

“A couple of witnesses,” Bonnell said. “A man who lives on her floor says he saw her come in late yesterday afternoon. Said he’d just gotten home from work and was on his way out to the gym and saw Toni come up the stairs. She unlocked her apartment door while he was walking in the hallway.”

“Walking in her direction?”

“There are stairs at either end of her hallway. He was taking the stairs near his apartment, not the stairs near hers.”

“So he didn’t get close, didn’t get a good look, is what you’re saying.”

“We should get into the details later. Maybe when you talk to Jaime again you can tell her all of us should sit down,” Bonnell answered.

“You need to be telling me the details now, and that’s indirectly a directive from her,” Marino said. “I’m trying to picture what you just described. The guy saw Toni from his end of the hallway, from about a hundred feet away. You talked to this witness yourself?”

“An indirect directive. That’s a new one. Yes, I talked to him myself.”

“His apartment number?”

“Two ten, three doors down from the victim’s, on the left. The other end of the hall.”

“So I’ll stop by on my way out,” Marino said, pulling out his folded report from RTCC, looking to see who lived in apartment 210.

“Don’t think he’s going to be there. Told me he was on his way out of town for a long weekend. He had a couple of overnight bags and a plane ticket. I’m a little concerned you’re off track.”

“What do you mean ‘off track’?” Goddamn it. What hadn’t he been told?

“I mean your info and mine might be different,” Bonnell replied. “I’m trying to tell you something, one of your indirect directives, and you’re not paying attention.”

“Let me share. I’ll tell you my info and maybe you’ll tell me yours. Graham Tourette,” Marino read from the RTCC data report. “Forty-one years old, an architect. My info is what I find out by taking the time to look. I got no idea where you’re getting your info, but it doesn’t appear to me you’re bothering to look.”

“Graham Tourette is who I talked to.” Bonnell wasn’t as prickly now. What she sounded was cautious.

“This Graham Tourette guy friendly with Toni?” Marino asked.

“Said he wasn’t. Said he didn’t even know her name, but he’s sure he saw her go into her apartment yesterday around six o’clock. He said she was carrying her mail. What looked like letters, magazines, and a flyer. I don’t like getting into all this over the phone, and my call waiting’s going crazy. I should go. When Jaime gets back, we’ll sit down.”

Marino hadn’t said anything about Berger being out of town. It was occurring to him that Bonnell had talked to her and wasn’t going to tell him what had been said. Berger and Bonnell knew something that Marino didn’t.

“What flyer?” he then asked.

“A flyer on bright pink paper. He said he recognized it from a distance because everyone got one that day-yesterday.”

“You check Toni’s mailbox when you were here?” Marino asked.

“The super opened it for me,” Bonnell said. “You’ve got to have a key. Her keys were in her pocket when she was found in the park. I’ll put it to you this way. We’ve got a sensitive situation on our hands.”

“Yeah, I know. Sexual homicides in Central Park tend to be sensitive situations. I saw the scene photographs, no thanks to you. Had to get them from the OCME, their death investigators. Three keys on a lucky-dice keychain that turned out not to be so lucky.”

“The mailbox was empty when I checked it this morning, when I was there with CSU,” Bonnell said.

“I got a home phone for this Tourette guy but no cell. Maybe e-mail me what you got on him in case I want to talk to him.” Marino gave her his e-mail address. “We need to take a look at what the security camera recorded. I’m assuming the building’s got one in front, or maybe there’s one nearby and we can take a look at who was coming and going. I think it would be a good idea for me to talk to some of my contacts at RTCC, ask them to link to that camera live.”

“What for?” Bonnell was sounding frustrated now. “We got a cop sitting in there twenty-four-seven. You think someone’s going to come back for more, saying where she lived is somehow connected to her murder?”

“Never know who decides to walk past,” Marino said. “Killers are curious, paranoid people. Sometimes they live across the friggin’ street or are the boy next door. Who the hell knows? Point being, if RTCC can link up live with whatever security camera network is involved, we can make sure we capture the video ourselves, make sure it doesn’t get accidentally recorded over. Berger will want the video, which is the bigger point. She’ll want the WAV file of the nine-one-one call made by whoever discovered the body this morning.”

“It wasn’t just one,” Bonnell replied. “Several people called as they drove past, thought they saw something. Since this has hit the news, the phones are ringing off the hook. We should talk. Let’s you and me talk. You’re not going to shut up, so we may as well have a face-to-face.”

“We’ll also be getting Toni’s phone records, getting into her e-mail,” Marino went on. “Hopefully there’ll be some logical explanation about the cell phone, the laptop, like maybe she left them at a friend’s house. Same thing with her pocketbook and billfold.”

“Like I said, let’s talk.”

“I thought that’s what we were doing.” Marino wasn’t going to let Bonnell call the shots. “Maybe someone will come forward, say Toni was visiting and went out for a run and never came back. We find her laptop and phone, we find her pocketbook and billfold, maybe I’ll feel a little better. Because I’m not feeling so good right this minute. You happen to notice the framed picture of her on the little table when you first come through her door?” Marino stepped into the entranceway, picked up the photograph again. “She’s running in a race, wearing bib number three forty-three. There are a couple others in the bathroom.”

“What about them?” Bonnell said.

“She’s not wearing headphones or an iPod in any of the pictures. And I’m not seeing anything like an iPod or Walkman in her apartment, either.”

“And?”

“And this is what I’m talking about. The danger of having your friggin’ mind made up,” Marino said. “Marathon runners, people into running races, aren’t allowed to listen to music. It’s prohibited. When I was living in Charleston, it was front-page news when they had the Marine Corps Marathon. They threatened to disqualify the runners if they showed up with headphones.”

“And this is leading to what point you’re trying to make?”

“If someone came up behind you and hit you in the back of the head, maybe you’d have a better chance of hearing it coming if you weren’t listening to music full blast. And it would appear that Toni Darien didn’t listen to music when she ran. Yet someone managed to come up behind her and whack her in the back of the head without her even turning around. That bother you at all?”

“You don’t know that the killer didn’t confront her and she turned away, ducked, or whatever to protect her face,” Bonnell said. “And she wasn’t hit exactly in the back of the head, sort of on the left side, behind her left ear. So maybe she’d started turning around, was reacting, but it was too late. Maybe you’re making some assumptions because you’re missing information.”