“I don’t know,” he replied. “It looked really real.”
She nodded and put down a couple simple notes. “Any idea how tall he was? How big he was? Did he hold anything in his hand? Did you see him bring in the woman?”
“Nope,” he answered. “I was just sitting there, snoozing, then I heard a weirdthunk, thunk, thunksound and heard him saying something. When I looked around the corner—from where I was hiding farther down the alleyway—he stood in front of the dumpster, his hands on his hips like this.” Her interviewee hopped up, put his hands on his hips, and glared, as if the table were the dumpster.
“So he was pissed?”
He nodded. “He looked like it. But he had on this weird mask, like I said. And the way he was standing there, I didn’t really see his face. So I don’t know if it was anger for sure, but that’s what it seemed like,” he explained apologetically.
“And, if you did see his face, what would you have seen?”
He shrugged. “Well, it would have been just the mask.”
“Height?”
“I’m thinking around six foot,” he guessed.
“And you figured that out how?”
“Well, he could rest his arms easily on the top of the dumpster.”
That she wrote down. “Did he have anything in his hands or anything with him?”
He shook his head. “Not that I saw.”
“Did he come past you?”
He shook his head. “Nope, nope, no way. I wasn’t gonna let that happen. I would have been out of there beforehand, but, when I saw him heading down to the other end, I let him go, and then I called the police.”
“But you didn’t call the police right away, did you?”
He looked around nervously.
“Because first you wanted to see what he put in the dumpster, didn’t you?”
The guy lifted his gaze, and she saw the haunted look in his eyes.
“Well, he cured me of that.” His voice was harsh, almost guttural in tone. “Because what I saw is something I won’t ever unsee.”
As she remembered the poor woman with the visible torture evident on her body, she could only agree with him. “What else can you tell me?”
“Nothing.” He laughed. “That was all.”
“Did he stop on the way as he left? Did he throw anything on the way out of the alley? Did he turn and look back?”
“No, he just walked away.”
She looked at him for a long moment and then nodded. “And there’s nothing else you can tell me?”
He shook his head. “No, he wore this long thing that looked like a cloak and the mask, but that was it.”
“Did he have the mask on when you first saw him?”
He frowned. “I don’t know.” He paused. “He also had this, you know, like a big hood on the long coat.”
“So, was it a cape or a coat?”
He shrugged.