Sara Paretsky - Burn Marks

Vinnie bunched up his lips, not wanting to back down but knowing he had to. “911,” he muttered, then said more defiantly, “And it’s about time someone took her in.”

Bobby looked toward the street and bellowed, “Furey!”

Michael climbed out of the car and trotted over. Just what I needed to complete the transformation of romance into farce-Michael must have seen me in a clinch with Robin at the door.

“This kid here called 911 when he heard me talking to Vicki-get on the radio and find out who’s coming and cancel them, okay? And turn off the light. Guy needs his beauty sleep.”

Michael, at his most wooden, ignored me completely and headed back to the car. Vinnie tried asking for Bobby’s badge number so he could lodge a complaint with the watch commander-“your boss” as he put it-but Bobby put a heavy hand on his shoulder and assured him that everyone had better things to do with their time, and if Vinnie had to be at the office in the morning, maybe it was time he turned back in.

“Well, at least get this woman to stop conducting her business in the front hall in the middle of the night,” Vinnie demanded petulantly as he opened the front door.

“Is that what you do, Vicki?” Bobby asked. “Lose your lease downtown?”

I gritted my teeth but didn’t try to fight it as he took my arm and ushered me down the walk-Mr. Contreras would doubtless be out next with the dog if we stayed any longer.

“Elena,” I said shortly. “She’s come around a few times in the last week. Always after midnight, of course.”

“I haven’t seen her since Tony’s funeral. Didn’t even know whether she was still in town.”

“I wish I hadn’t seen her since then, either. She got burned out of her place last Wednesday-you know that SRO fire near McCormick Place?”

Bobby grunted. “So she came to you. Underneath it all you’re not that different from your folks, I guess.”

That left me speechless for the remainder of the short walk. Bobby opened the back door for me. I waved at Robin and climbed inside.

Michael was sitting in the front seat, John McGonnigal- the sergeant Bobby most preferred to work with-in the back. I said hello to both of them. They kept up an animated conversation about police business all the way to the morgue. Even if I’d wanted to, I couldn’t have joined in.

At the Rue Morgue

Some practical bureaucrat put the county morgue on the Near West Side, the area with Chicago’s highest murder rate-it saves wear and tear on the meatwagons having to cart corpses only a few short blocks. Even during the day the concrete cube looks like a bunker in the middle of a war zone; at midnight it’s the most depressing place in town.

As we walked up to the sliding metal doors marked “Deliveries,” Furey began a series of morbid one-liners, a kind of defense against his own mortality I suppose, but still unpleasant. At least McGonnigal didn’t join in. I moved out of earshot, into the entryway-a small box of reinforced glass whose inner door was locked. A knot of clerks at the reception counter inside looked me over and went back to an animated conversation. When Bobby materialized behind my left shoulder, the party broke up and someone unlocked the door.

I pushed it open when the buzzer sounded and held it for Bobby and the boys. Furey still wouldn’t look at me, not even when I went out of my way to be superpolite. Last time I’d go to a political fund-raiser with him, that’s for sure.

For the public brought in to identify their nearest and dearest, the county provides a small furnished waiting room-you can even look at a video screen instead of directly at the body. Bobby didn’t think I needed such amenities. He pushed open the double doors to the autopsy room. I followed, trying to walk nonchalantly.

It was a utilitarian room, with sinks and equipment for four pathologists to work at once. In the middle of the night the only person present was an attendant, a middle-aged man in jeans with a green surgical gown thrown loosely around his shoulders. He was hunched over a car-and-track magazine. The Sox were on a seven-inch screen on the chair in front of him. He looked at us indifferently, taking his time to get up when Bobby identified himself and told him what he wanted. He sauntered to the thick double doors leading to the cooler.

Inside were hundreds of bodies arranged in rows. Their torsos were partially draped in black plastic, but the heads were exposed, arcing back, the mouths open in surprise at death. I could feel the blood drain from my brain, I hoped I wasn’t turning green-it would put the cap to my night if I got sick in front of Furey and McGonnigal. At least Furey had shut up, that was one good thing.

The attendant consulted a list in his pocket and went over to one of the bodies. He checked a tag on the foot against his list and prepared to wheel the gurney into the autopsy room.

“That’s okay,” Bobby said easily. “We’ll look at her in here.”

Bobby took me to the gurney and pulled the plastic wrapping away so that the whole body was exposed. Cerise stared up at me. Stripped of clothes, she looked pathetically thin. Her ribs jutted ominously below her breasts; her pregnancy hadn’t yet given any roundness to her sunken stomach. Her carefully beaded braids lay tousled on the table-I stuck a hand out involuntarily to smooth them for her.

Bobby was watching me closely. “You know who she is, don’t you?”

I shook my head. “She looks like a couple of different women I’ve met briefly. What did she have that made you think I knew her?”

He compressed his lips again-he wanted to yell at me but he belongs to a generation that doesn’t swear at women. “Don’t play games with me, Vicki. If you know who it is, tell us so we can get moving on tracking down her associates.”

“How did she die?” I asked.

“We don’t know yet; they won’t do a postmortem until Friday. Probably a heroin overdose. That help you distinguish her from the others?” Bobby’s sarcasm is always heavy.

“What do you care, anyway? Dead junkies must be a dime a dozen around here. And here are three crack guys from the Violent Crimes Unit only three hours after she was found.”

Bobby’s eyes glittered. “You ain’t running the department, Vicki. I don’t account to you how I decide to spend my time.”

The intensity of his anger surprised me; it also spelled in large block letters that he hadn’t chosen to be here. I stared at Cerise thoughtfully. What about her life or death could bring heat from the top down to the Central Division in such a short stretch?

“Where was she found?” I asked abruptly.

“On the big construction project going up near Navy Pier.” That was McGonnigal. “Watchman found her in the elevator shaft when he was making his rounds, called us. She hadn’t been dead too long when the squad car got there.”

“Rapelec Towers, right? What made him look down the shaft?”

McGonnigal shook his head. “One of those things. Why she was on the site we’ll probably never know, either. Nice secluded place at night if you want to shoot up in peace, but awfully far from where you’d expect to find her.”

“So what did she have that made you think of me?”

Bobby nodded at Furey, who produced a transparent evidence bag. Inside was a plastic square. My photograph was glued in the left corner, looking just as demented as the one I’d had taken this morning.

“Hmm,” I said after I’d looked at it. “Looks like my driver’s license.”

Bobby smiled savagely. “This isn’t Second City, Victoria, and nobody’s rolling in the aisles. You know this girl or not?”