The Hollow-Eyed Angel (19 page)

Chapter 26

                                        The accident that killed Jo Termeer was reported by the crew of a patrol car called by the tram driver via her radio.

The policemen's report said that, according to the tram's passengers, the victim came running toward it well after the streetcar, of the Number Two line, had pulled away from the Queens Avenue tram stop.

A modern streetcar's safety features do not allow the vehicle to drive off when its sliding doors are still open. No system, however, is foolproof. This time the vehicle's safety feature didn't work. The streetcar's doors were still closing as the vehicle gathered speed.

The victim managed to jump through the closing doors but slipped on something inside the car—what that could have been hadn't been determined. It could have been anything—someone's spittle maybe, fruit juice, a crushed sweet. The passenger then fell over backward and, as the doors were still closing, his body was pinned between them. His head was still outside the tram and it hit the concrete base of a light post that marked the end of the tram stop.

The Number Two streetcar's driver,. tall blond twenty-nine-year-old Agatha Franken, an experienced operator with an unblemished record, had not been aware of anything being amiss as the tram gathered speed. She stopped as soon as passengers began calling out. Miss Franken had to be taken to the hospital in an ambulance, where she was successfully treated for shock.

That night the commissaris did not dream. As usual after a case he had managed to solve, thanks to having good assistants, not being presented with the impossible and to good luck, he rested well.

Monday morning, 8:30, found the commissaris waiting at the tram stop, feeling chipper, as he had told his wife, but when the streetcar came he turned and went back to his house.

He had forgotten that, since he had as of that date been retired from active duty, his presence at Moose Canal Headquarters was no longer required.