Dell Shannon - Streets of Death

At the office, Hackett was in talking to Mendoza, and as they came in Lake told Grace and Landers that there was a new body reported by the Fire Department. Glasser and Palliser had gone out on it.

"There’s nothing in it," said Hackett. "I gave it an hour or two-just to look-and it’s silly. This Yeager is letting his imagination run wild or something. Overheard a joke and built it up. These Lamperts are ordinary quiet people, the son’s on full disability from a service injury, and by what I heard from the people I talked to in the apartment, they get on just fine together."

"Yes," said Mendoza inattentively, and pulled the trigger on his flame-thrower.

"That damned thing," said Hackett. "Set the place afire if you’re not careful."

"Don’t be silly, Arturo." The phone buzzed on his desk and he picked it up. "Robbery-Homicide, Mendoza."

Without preamble, Dr. Bainbridge said crisply in his ear, "Traffic sent in a body on Monday night, said to be a hit-run victim. What it looked like. It isn’t. Man about thirty, a heavy drinker, and he was beaten to death with a club or something similar. I thought you’d like to know."

"Hell and damnation!" said Mendoza.

Palliser went our with Glasser on the new call, and condescended to fold his six feet into the little Gremlin Glasser had so luckily won in a drawing last year. As Glasser backed out of the slot Palliser massaged his handsome straight nose in a habitual gesture and said, "You know, I’ll have to do something about that dog, damn it."

"What dog? Oh, the pup that woman gave you?"

"That one," said Palliser. "She’s a very nice dog, Trina, but she’s big, and going to be bigger. A German shepherd after all. She ought to have obedience training, but damn it, how can I take her? Robin can’t, with the baby. I’ve been on the phone to this local club, and the nearest class to us is Saturday afternoons, and I’m only off on Monday. This fellow said I could get a book and try training her myself, just a few minutes a day, but I don’t know."

Glasser hadn’t any useful suggestions.

The new call turned out to be an old building out on San Pedro, plastered with CONDEMNED signs and looking ready to fall down, all four stories of it. The fire truck was still there, and the battalion chief waiting for them. "Not much of a fire," he told them, "but when we’d knocked it down we found the body. Somebody likely thought he’d get rid of it by lighting a match, but he bungled the job, this damp weather."

"Arson?" said Glasser. "Definitely?"

"You better believe. A trail of kerosene to the body, but it fizzled out-you notice it’s a derelict building, part of the roof’s gone and there was a mist this morning. It’s back here." Even on this gray morning threatening rain, a little crowd had gathered to watch the activity, and the uniformed men from the black and white were keeping them back. The chief led Glasser and Palliser into what might have started life as a small hotel fifty years ago, and ended up as an apartment house. The place had been a shambles even before the fire; there were clusters of broken bricks and heaps of plaster dust, gaping empty doorways, and most of it was open to the sky. "The quake in seventy-one finished it off, but they just haven’t got round to taking the rest of it down. There you are." The chief pointed unnecessarily.

Near what had been the rear door of the building, between the empty doorway and another pile of rubbled brick, the body sprawled almost casually. Palliser and Glasser didn’t need the chief’s interpretation to read what had likely happened here. It was a little, slender body, and somebody had tried to set fire to it, but the fire had gone out without doing much damage.

"A lot of smoke," said the chief. "Fellow at the tailor shop down the block called in the alarm." There was a cluster of miscellaneous little shops down the block, in other ramshackle buildings not yet condemned-the cluster of citizens outside had probably come from there.

Palliser squatted over the body. "Make any educated guesses, Henry?"

"One," said Glasser sadly. "She was raped-assaulted at least-and probably strangled."

Palliser grunted. "You’d better call up S.I.D. Go through the motions, photographs and so on." Glasser went out to use the radio in the black and white.

The body was that of a young girl: very young, Palliser thought. Dark blonde, thin, hard to say if she’d been pretty or not, the face discolored with death or the effects of strangulation, the body already stiff: dead awhile. She was naked from the waist down, and there was dark dried blood on the inside of her thin little-girl thighs. Still on the upper half of the body was a pale-green knit turtleneck sweater, pulled up to show part of a dirty white brassiere; by the slight small swell of one breast, she’d hardly needed that. On her feet were what looked like new sneakers, blue and white, fairly clean, and white ankle socks. One arm was flung out from the body, and Palliser had just made a couple of discoveries when Glasser came back.

"The mobile lab’s on the way."

"Good. Look at this," said Palliser. "Makes it not quite so anonymous, at least. We may get her identified right off."

"Oh, yes," said Glasser, squatting beside him. "Helpful."

The trail of kerosene had led from the front hallway, but the fire had first created a lot of smoke, and according to the engine boys had been already dying out when they got here; it hadn’t damaged the body at all. On the outflung bare arm on the inside of the elbow, clearly visible, was a long puckered scar; on the third finger of that hand was a ring. Palliser had delicately manipulated the nearly rigid wrist around to inspect the bezel. "We’ll want pictures, but it could make shortcuts all right." The ring was a school ring, the usual indecipherable crest, a little blue enamel, and in minute letters around that, FRESNO JR. HIGH. Palliser stood up.

"Fresno," said Glasser. "My God, these kids. She doesn’t look over thirteen or fourteen. And ending up down here-" But it wasn’t anything new, they’d seen much the same thing before, and there wasn’t much to say about it.

They waited for the mobile lab, told Duke to get shots of the ring and send it up to the office. It was getting on for noon then. In the Missing Persons office back at headquarters they found Lieutenant Carey hunched over a report, and he just groaned at mention of a possibly-reported-missing juvenile.

"We’ve got a million of ’em, from all over the country. Take your pick."

"Maybe we can narrow it down," said Palliser. "I don’t think this one was very far into the teens. An older one, she could have been out roaming on her own a couple of years, but one this young-she might not have been away from home and mother very long. And we’ve got two good leads-she had on a ring from Fresno Junior High, and there’s a distinctive scar on the left arm."

"We can have a look at the recent files," said Carey.

They did. Just in the last month, enough juveniles had been reported missing to this office to build up those files into a thick stack, and they had to be glanced at one by one, the description scanned briefly to weed it out. Palliser and Glasser took a lunch break, ran into Galeano and Conway at Federico’s on North Broadway, and heard about the off-beat case Carey had just handed them. Glasser went down to S.I.D. when they got back to base, to see if they’d come up with anything, and Palliser went back to the files. It was after two-thirty when he came up with a recently filed report that rang bells.

Reported missing to the Fresno police, Sandra Moseley, aged fifteen, five-two, a hundred and five, blonde and blue: scar inside left arm, appendectomy scar; reported by mother, Mrs. Anita Moseley. She was thought to have been with another girl, Stephanie Peacock, also fifteen, also missing.