Jonathon King - A Visible Darkness

And got shot by a kid, I silently finished the sentence for her.

She turned another corner.

We rolled through an intersection and Richards slowed again to a crawl. Every city has a dope hole and this was theirs. Nearly eleven o'clock and there was a busy nonchalance that showed in the slow spin each man did as the green-and-white slid by. Drag from a cigarette. "I ain't give a shit about no cop," but the cupped hand helps hide the face. The older ones sitting on empty milk crates, elbows on knees, something too interesting to stare at in the dirt but proud enough to raise their jaws in defiance as the back fender glides by. The young ones who don't hide. They goof and throw signs with twisted fingers and pull at the loose fabric in their crotch and their eyes say "Ain't no big thing" and their justification is "All I'm doin' is bidness."

We got some extra scrutiny; two new faces on the night shift. But I knew Richards wasn't showing me this for the dealers. Dope dealers don't kill old ladies for life insurance money. They also don't need to rape and murder. There are enough addicts who will give it up for whatever the dealer wants. Richards was looking past them, into the back corners and at the side of houses for the desperate ones.

"We tried to set up surveillance, watch the customers drive in and out, check the plates, run the names through NCIC looking for a hit with a sex crime conviction. Nothing.

"We've got some liaison with the community leaders who are trying to clean things up, appealed to their sense of safety, hoping to pick up at least some rumor. Nothing."

"Too scared?"

"And distrustful," she replied.

"And scared," I repeated.

"And probably tired as hell of nothing ever changing."

She tightened her jaw and we turned again. She seemed to have a destination in mind. A few more blocks and we pulled to a stop next to a dark, undeveloped field of overgrown grasses and brush. The orange glow of the street lamps had little effect on the interior of the empty land.

"Not exactly an urban park," I said.

"The land was originally bought by the city for some kind of trash transfer station," she said. "But the commissioner who represents this area fought it. So now they're waiting for someone to come up with the money to develop it."

"Been waiting long?"

"Years."

She flipped on the spotlight and swung it into the darkness. A few tree trunks took shape. A clump of saw palmetto. A squat bunker of gray concrete with a single black window.

"This is where we found the last body," she said, reaching down to grab a long-handled flashlight and her riot baton. "Take a look?" she said.

It wasn't really a question as she popped open the door. I got out and as I walked around she closed and locked the car, leaving the spotlight on. I followed her into the brush.

"The report came in on a pay phone back up near the dealer's corner. First time that line has been dialed to the police station. Patrol and a rescue responded. Girl had been dead eight, ten hours."

I was watching Richards's feet, following in her tracks, wishing for a flashlight of my own.

"She was ID'ed through fingerprints. We had her on file for some minor possession charges, loitering. She was basically a heroin addict. Her sister kept kicking her out and taking her back in."

Richards unsnapped the holster of her 9mm as we approached the bunker, stepped around the wall and found the doorway. Inside the squad car's spotlight painted a square on the wall opposite the window. I stepped in and the stench hit my nose and made my eyes water. It had been a while, but the reek of stale sweat, rotting food and wet mold was not unlike some corners I'd had to stick my head in down in the Philadelphia subway tunnels. Richards's flashlight beam sprayed across the walls and into all four corners and then settled on the mattress.

"They found her face up, skirt pulled up and top pulled down around her waist, just like the others. This one had fresh bruises on her ankle and one wrist."

"Toxicology?"

"She was high but the twist in her neck and the bruises around her throat were so obvious they knew before the M.E. got here she'd had her windpipe crushed."

Around our feet there were half a dozen empty plastic lighters strewn among the trash. Pipers, I thought. When I was a young cop my Philadelphia sergeant had been standing with me at a magistrate's walk-through at the roundhouse and he grabbed the shackled hand of a guy in line and twisted his thumb up for me to see.

"Bic thumb," he called the clubbed and thickly callused digit. "From spinning the lighter so many times trying to keep the crack lit."

I reached out and pushed Richards's light back to the mattress. Stains and burn marks and ripped fabric where the rats had gnawed holes.

"You guys ever consider taking this thing to the lab for a DNA sampling?"

"Jesus, Max. You want to type every scumball and user in a fifteen-block radius? They're all in there somewhere," she said. "A defense attorney would have a field day."

She had a point.

We got back to the car and she unlocked and switched off the spot, started the engine and kicked the A.C. up.

"That was the third of the most recent ones," she said, reaching into her back seat and bringing out a bottle of water. Then she reached back again to get a thermos.

"Coffee?"

"You're a mind reader."

"Doesn't take much," she said and I watched her take a drink and then continue.

"The victim before that was in a stand of bushes near the overpass. One before that was in an abandoned press box at the high school. All the crime scenes were places that the addicts know and use. But nobody's come forward with credible information, even the confidential informants looking for a few bucks."

"Maybe even they're afraid," I offered, pouring the coffee into the plastic top of the thermos.

She was staring out into the orange glow on the pavement ahead.

"They're never more afraid than they are hungry."

We cruised the area for another hour, down a handful of alleys, up behind an old style drive-in theater where movies were flashing away on three different giant screens and along a street that she called the border. Even in the dark you could see that on one side of the street were modest but well kept homes, trimmed grass, planted palms and nice sedans in the drives. It was, Richards said, a neighborhood where middle-class blacks had come together to make a stand and a community. On the other side of the street were the scrub-and-dirt yards, the lot with two broken cars alongside the drive, the open lot with a pile of discarded sofas and trash.

"Don't ask me how you get from one side to the other," Richards said. "Smarter people than me have been trying to figure it for a long, long time."

We drove back to the sheriff's building and pulled into a spot next to my truck. Light from the poles all around poured in through the windshield.

"So that's the nickel tour," she said, turning off the ignition and unsnapping her seatbelt.

"I appreciate the time," I said.

She leaned back into the corner of her seat and door. The light had an odd way of playing in her eyes. Sometimes they were a light gray, sometimes a deep green. The shadows in the car kept me from seeing them now.

"So."

"So?" I could feel her grinning at my awkwardness.

"You staying at Billy's tonight?"

"No. I need to get back out to the river."

"Ahh. Back to the frogs and gators."

"Yeah, well," I said, my time to smile. I let the moment sit for a while. "Billy says we're dancing, you and I."

"Billy's right," she said.

"So am I dancing too fast, or too slow?"

"You're being very careful, Max. I like that in a man."

She sat up straighter in her seat. The onboard computer was between us. She raised her eyebrows to the building facade, as if she needed to remind me where we were.