Thomas Cook - Streets of Fire

‘What are you doing?’ Patterson asked as he stepped up beside him.

Ben did not answer. He took the ring out of the bag, lifted one of the girl’s hands from the carriage and inserted the ring onto her little finger. It was too large to hold it. He tried the index finger, the middle finger and finally the thumb. The ring was far too large to fit any of them.

‘She wasn’t wearing it because it wasn’t hers,’ he said as he dropped the ring back into the bag.

Patterson nodded. ‘Boyfriend’s, maybe?’ he asked hesitantly.

Ben looked at him. ‘I don’t know. She could have worn it on a chain around her neck. She could have picked it up on the street.’ He walked over to the small metal desk at the rear of the room and looked at the ring under the desk lamp, turning it slowly in his fingertips. ‘No name,’ he said, almost to himself. ‘No initials.’ He dropped it back into the plastic bag and handed it to Patterson. ‘Send it over to be dusted,’ he told him, ‘and tell them to let me know what they find.’

‘Okay,’ Patterson said with a slight edge of sarcasm. Whatever they want in the front office, that’s what we do.’

Ben did not seem to hear him. ‘Where’s her dress?’

Patterson pointed toward a plain cardboard box which rested beneath a long wooden table. ‘Over there.’

Ben walked over to the box, took out the dress and spread it across the table. ‘Which pocket did you find it in?’

Patterson pointed to a single shallow breast pocket. ‘Right there.’

Ben gazed steadily at the dress. In addition to the one on the right front of the dress, it had two side pockets, and he inserted his hands into each of them. ‘They’re a lot deeper,’ he said.

Patterson looked at him oddly. ‘So what?’

‘Well, I was just thinking,’ Ben said. ‘If I were a little girl who wanted to keep from losing my ring, I’d put it in one of my side pockets.’ He looked at Patterson pointedly. ‘Wouldn’t you, Leon?’

Patterson glanced down at the dress, then back up to Ben. ‘Yeah, I would,’ he said. He shrugged. ‘Unless I was careless.’

Ben picked up the dress by the shoulders and turned it slowly in the light. It was badly soiled from the burial, and there were bloodstains on the skirt.

‘Those bloodstains,’ Ben said. ‘Where’d they come from?’

‘The rape,’ Patterson replied authoritatively. ‘Where else would they come from?’

Ben twisted the dress around so that Patterson could see the back of it. ‘How come there’s no blood on her collar?’ he asked. ‘She was shot in the back of the head. I lead wounds are usually pretty bloody.’

Patterson stared silently at the white, ruffled collar for a moment, then looked at Ben. ‘I can’t answer that, Ben,’ he said at last, ‘I really don’t know.’

‘I do,’ Ben said. He glanced back over toward the body. The small dark hand dangled from the metal carriage, casting a tiny shadow across the polished tile floor. She was naked when somebody shot her,’ he said. He lifted his right hand, fingers spread, and held it suspended in the air at about four feet from the floor. ‘She was naked, and she was standing about this high, Leon,’ he continued softly. ‘And somebody a whole lot bigger came up behind her and put a gun a few inches from the back of her head and pulled the trigger.’

Something very dark silently passed over Patterson’s face. ‘Let me know if I can help you any more on this one, Ben,’ he said finally. Then he turned very quickly and walked away.

SEVEN

During the night, police barricades had been set up at the entrance of the underground garage at headquarters, and several uniformed patrolmen now stood determinedly behind them, nightsticks already drawn, and with their eves squinting menacingly as Ben pulled to a halt.

‘Looks like you boys are getting ready for a rough day,’ Ben said as one of the patrolmen approached his car.

‘We’ve been told to expect anything,’ the patrolman replied. ‘Do you have business here?’

Ben took out his identification.

‘Fine, Sergeant,’ the patrolman said instantly. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t recognize you.’ He looked over at the line of patrolmen who stood silently behind the barricade. ‘Open up,’ he called loudly. ‘Sergeant Wellman passing through.’

The other patrolmen pulled back one of the long saw-horse barricades and Ben drove past them, nosing his car downward into the garage. On either side, men were lined up in marching formation, their commanders taking them through the paces of a military drill. At the southern corner of the garage, metal tables had been set up like a subterranean field headquarters, complete with telephones, typewriters, and, at the far end of the table, a cardboard box filled with an assortment of what looked like civilian handguns: thirty-eights, forty-fives, a few puny twenty-twos, and snuggled among them like a nest of sleeping vipers, a .357 Magnum, a P.38, and a few other high-powered pistols.

Sammy McCorkindale sat behind the box, routinely cataloging the serial numbers of one pistol at a time.

Ben picked up an old German Luger, shifted it slowly from one hand to the other, then threw open the cartridge clip. It was fully loaded. He shoved the clip back into position, then laid it down on the table in front of McCorkindale.

‘What the hell is this all about?’ he asked.

McCorkindale looked up slowly. ‘What does it look like?’

‘It looks like a lot a firepower,’ Ben said. ‘But what are you doing with it?’

McCorkindale returned to his ledger. ‘Chief wants all confiscated weapons to be put in working order,’ he said casually.

‘Why?’

‘Case we need them, I guess,’ McCorkindale said.

‘Need them for what?’

‘To arm the deputies.’

‘What deputies?’

‘The ones the Chief’s going to swear in if we need them.’

‘You mean civilian deputies?’

‘That’s right,’ McCorkindale said idly. He pulled a forty-five automatic from the box and began to write down its serial number.

Ben glanced to the left. A group of civilian office workers was busily unloading wooden crates filled with tear-gas canisters from a police van with Mississippi license plates and a large Confederate flag festooned across its rear double doors.

‘Looks to me like they’re expecting the shit to hit the fan,’ McCorkindale said. He looked up from the ledger and grinned. ‘They’re even going to put my fat ass on the line.’

Ben drew his eyes back over to McCorkindale. ‘How long’s it been since you fired a gun, Sammy?’

‘You mean my service revolver? You mean in the line of duty? I ain’t never fired it, Ben.’

Ben shook his head irritably, then picked up the Magnum. ‘You think these so-called deputies will know how to use a thing like this?’

McCorkindale smiled cagily. ‘Well, I figure if things really get out of hand, they’ll learn pretty quick,’ he said. ‘And I figure that’s what the boys in the front office are thinking, too.’

Ben placed the Magnum back down on the table. ‘They’ll shoot their own toes off, or they’ll shoot each other, or they’ll shoot one of us, Sammy, and that’s what’s going to happen.’ He looked down at the Magnum, then back up at McCorkindale. ‘You just don’t hand somebody a gun like that and then tell them to go on out and make up the rest.’

‘I’m not saying I agree with it,’ McCorkindale said, almost in a whine, ‘but we can’t just let the whole town go up in smoke.’

Ben’s eyes drifted over to the right, past a line of cement columns to where the Chief’s white tank rested near the garage entrance. Black Cat 13 was parked only a few feet away, and next to it, one of the bright red station wagons the Fire Department used to whisk the Chief from one blaze to another across the city.