If a tree falls in the woods and there’s no one there to hear it, does it make a sound? Well, that’s the age-old philosopher’s question and I’ve never heard the definitive answer, but right now I was wondering if it applied to a young girl’s scream on a deserted city street late at night. It was now early morning, and cold, so cold. And I’m sure that with the wind whipping around the corners of downtown’s high rise buildings, as it had been several hours earlier, it had to have been even worse. Wind chills must have reached at least zero maybe even five below. And there had been snow. At least five or six inches had drifted up along the windward side of the young girl’s body. But this was Rochester in February, I thought with a shoulder shrug, standard stuff. If those two little kids hadn’t missed the school-closing announcement on the radio and after bundling up at home headed out the door for the bus stop, she might have lain there for another hour at least, before being found.

I had arrived at my desk early this morning hoping to catch up on some paper work from a case I’d cleared just the day before when the call came in from the desk downstairs. I was the only detective in the squad room at the time so by process of elimination; I caught the case. Rochester was becoming quite a shooting gallery these days, what with an the drugs coming through from downstate, and the whole squad was beginning to show the strain. I’d had my gold rt sshield for four years now and each year the caseload just kept climbing.                         .

I stopped back at my apartment quickly to dress a little warmer.With a thick wool topcoat over a bulky ski sweater and long underwear under a pair of Levi corduroys, a pair of Timberland fleece lined boots and gloves, which made it difficult but not impossible to scribble in my notebook, I was still freezing. Years before my brother had given me a satin lined, rabbit skin pillbox hat, which had to be the ugliest hat in creation. But it was warm and today I was willing to sacrifice vanity for any added warmth I could find.