Читать книгу The Last Government Girl - Ellen Herbert - Страница 10

4

Washington, D.C.

Special Agent Jessup Lindsay weeded the squash vines. He was too anxious to do anything else. On the last Sunday of every month since January, a government girl’s body had been found. And today was the last Sunday in May.

Let it not happen again, let it not happen, he repeated to himself.

Around him in the victory garden, dusk folded into night. The light was fading. If he wasn’t careful, he would pull out a vine instead of a weed.

No lights burned from the back of the three-story house on Georgia Avenue, where their landlady, Mrs. Trundle, lived. Behind her house was the bungalow, little bigger than a henhouse, but he and Alonso called it home and paid Mrs. Trundle, a war profiteer if ever there was one, a whopping thirty-five dollars a month for it and for the garage. At first, their bungalow hadn’t even been livable. Alonso, who Mrs. Trundle referred to as “your nigra manservant,” had screened its windows and run a wire from the house for electricity.

Mrs. Trundle’s back porch light came on. Jess straightened, dread coursing through him. This could be it.

Footsteps pounded down the porch steps. “Jess, Jess,” Bert, Mrs. Trundle’s adult son, called. Tall and stocky, Bert stood on the path in khaki trousers with Civil Defense pins attached to his shirt like military insignia.

Jess wiped his hand on his dark trousers and walked down the garden row. Bert’s eyes searched Jess’s for what…disapproval, scorn about his rigged uniform. Jess understood. Men not in uniform felt they owed folks an explanation.

Bert said, “Agent Friedlander’s on the phone for you.”

Jess’s heart tightened like a fist. Their boss calling on Sunday night meant only one thing. He looked up at the window above the garage, where Alonso stood, his palm lifted to Jess. Alonso knew, too.

Jess pivoted and ran to the house.

“Wait up, Jess,” Bert called. At the back porch, Bert reached around Jess to open the screen door as if Jess, who had only one arm, was helpless.

Jess, accustomed to people overdoing assistance, refused to take offense.

On a cabinet door in the kitchen, a calendar listed Bert’s Civil Defense meetings as well as the dinners of fried spam and canned peaches Mrs. Trundle had planned for them.

Bert stopped at the sink to wash his hands. He was a clean man, who appropriately enough worked for a laundry.

Jess strode into the hall, floorboards creaking under him, the smell of mothballs and furniture polish strong in the humid air. At the telephone table tucked beneath the staircase, he lifted the receiver. “Jessup Lindsay,” he said. Wedging the receiver between his shoulder and cheek, he motioned for Bert to give him privacy.

His hands red from washing, Bert pushed open the parlor door. Swing music spilled from the radio, the happy round notes of Benny Goodman’s clarinet.

Jess took the pad from his pocket and wrote. “Okay Fred,” he told Agent Friedlander. “We’re on our way.”

As soon as he hung up, squat Mrs. Trundle appeared in the parlor door, her face lifted to him, her white hair pulled into a bun so tight it made her eyes slant. She’d been eavesdropping. Again.

Mrs. Trundle considered this narrow strip of land on Georgia Avenue, the house, their bungalow behind it, and the garage fronting the alley, her kingdom, where she ruled like a tyrant. She believed everything that happened here was her business. He would never have rented from the busybody if they hadn’t been desperate for a place to live in crowded DC.

“Mr. Lindsay, I’m worried about my niece and her friend taking the streetcar late with their luggage.” She smoothed her dress over her big pillow of a bosom. “After you finish your business for the Bureau, would you kindly fetch them from Union Station?”

“No, Mrs. Trundle, I won’t. My car is strictly for government use. Sorry.” More polite than he felt. “The young ladies ought to take a taxi.”

A red dot bloomed in each pale cheek. “Well, I never…”

He rushed back, feeling a twinge of guilt for refusing to pick up her government girls, not that they were in danger, not together.

Inside the bungalow, he grabbed his badge, hat, and jacket.

From the garage, their Packard’s engine pierced the neighborhood’s quiet.

He sprinted down the path to the alley, the air sugared with honeysuckle. Thick vines climbed the garage’s brick wall and the wooden archway over the path, forming a leafy tunnel. Something shone among the vines: an electric wire.

Alonso backed the Packard out. Jess slid in beside him. On the seat between them was Alonso’s beloved camera, big as a toddler in its case.

Two barefoot colored boys came running, closed the garage doors, and locked them with the padlock. Alonso paid the boys to watch the garage and alert him if anyone tried to break in. Gas was so precious thieves siphoned it from vehicles all over the city.

The boys stood at attention and saluted. “At ease, men,” Alonso called with a salute of his own.

They rolled down the narrow alley between grim two-story tenements. This was the other Washington, Negro Washington. Alleyways like this lay tucked away all over the city. Behind a white neighborhood was a Negro one. The newspapers called the alleyways the secret city.

Jess noticed cardboard stars taped in some tenement windows, signifying these families had a member fighting in the war. Patriotism existed here, where running water, indoor plumbing, and electricity didn’t.

From several windows, oil lamps gave off soft glows, but from the window closest to the garage, an electric bulb came on, lighting the alley like a beacon.

Jess stared at that bright window. “Ruth’s waving at you, Al.”

Without turning his head, Alonso touched his fedora’s brim to her.

“What happens when Mrs. Trundle discovers you’re sending electricity from her house to Ruth’s?” Jess asked.

“Let there be light,” Alonso said, a smile in his voice. “Don’t worry, Jess. Mrs. Trundle never comes out here.”

Women with babies in their laps and elderly men sat on stoops, fanning themselves. Someone played a spiritual on a harmonica. Voices sang along softly. Men rolling dice moved out of the way to let their sedan pass. Standing with hands on hips, the dice players glared at Alonso, a mulatto.

Jess rubbed the notch in his chin. “No wonder Ruth brings you collards and cornbread all the time.”

“Ruth needed better light to study. She wants to become a government girl, but I doubt that’s going to happen.”

“Why not? This war’s opening up opportunities for everyone. Only in wartime would the FBI hire a one-armed man.”

“They hired the famous Alabama detective, Jessup Lindsay. And you forced them to take me.”

Jess took in Alonso’s profile, so like his own. “Brother, I let Fred know I never solved anything without you, that you and me are two crackers from the same cracker barrel.”

The corners of Alonso’s mouth lifted at the word brother for they were half-brothers, not that anything between them felt divided. On his own, Jess couldn’t cuff a suspect, but Alonso could. They worked like a pair of hands and traveled from job-to-job. This one with the FBI was temporary. Once they solved this case, they’d be on their way. Unless they didn’t solve it quickly enough for Director Hoover and were fired.

Alonso braked at the street. “Where was her body found, Jess?”

“Arlington National Cemetery.” Jess took the map from the glove compartment. “Know where that is?” They had been on the job a month now and were still learning Washington.

“Sure. Put the map away.” Alonso stuck his arm out the window, signaling a left turn.

They took Georgia Avenue, which became 7th Street, through the city. Whenever their motor car crossed streetcar tracks, Alonso reached over to steady his camera.

“He’s right on schedule,” Alonso said, a catch in his voice.

Jess understood how his brother felt. They hadn’t found the killer yet. A young woman died tonight because they had failed to find this killer, and for that they grieved.

“Oh, yes,” said Jess. “He’s punctual and ritualistic.”

Everywhere, streets were brightly lit, and sidewalks filled with uniforms, Navy whites and jaunty sailor hats, marines and army in summertime khaki. A long line waited to get into the Apex Movie Theater on 14th Street to see Double Indemnity.

“It’s after 10:00 on a Sunday night, but this city’s still having a Saturday night party.” Jess scanned the faces in the crowd. Was the killer among them? “Only the party guests keep changing.”

This was the strangest case they had ever worked. They hadn’t found a single witness who remembered the victim when she disappeared, much less the man at her side.

Alonso stopped at a light. “According to that Bureau report, 15,000 servicemen from military bases a bus or train ride away pour into Washington every weekend.”

“That’s like having 15,000 suspects.”

MPs, their whistles shrill, ran toward a crowd of sailors fighting with some soldiers.

Alonso pulled out from the light and steered around a telegram boy pedaling fast on his bicycle. The government sent telegrams to the families of servicemen wounded, missing in action, or killed. This boy would deliver bad news to some family tonight.

“You suppose if we questioned all 15,000 every weekend, we’d find him?” Jess sighed. “Which reminds me. We’ve got a few cells of servicemen to question after this is done tonight. The officer on duty blamed the heat for the rise in assaults on women.” He heard his own discouragement.

“Sometime soon we’re going to catch a break.”

A police siren wailed in the distance.

“Hope you’re right, Al. Most of these servicemen aren’t stateside long enough to kill anyone. And we both know these kinds of killings are the hardest to solve because the victim doesn’t know her killer.”

Jess went over his notes in his head. They were overlooking something. “If government girls are so khaki wacky, how come they can’t distinguish one uniform from another?”

The first victim told her roommates she’d met a Naval officer in Lafayette Park, but the second government girl, whose body was found in Rock Creek Park, wrote in her diary she met a handsome Marine at the USO. Were any of these the man the girls went off with? The man who wrapped his belt around their necks and squeezed the life out of them?

“I tested Ruth and Miss Minnie with those photographs.” Alonso nodded at the windshield. “They got all the branches of the service right as well as each man’s rank. What do you make of that?”

Jess considered. “Well, Ruth and her mother have lived in Washington a long time, so they’ve been around the military, and Miss Minnie works in a laundry, cleaning and mending uniforms. Whereas most government girls are new to the city, like these two coming to live at Mrs. Trundle’s tonight. Maybe they’ll allow us to test them.”

They passed the Lincoln Memorial covered in darkness. Couples walked up its marble steps hand-in-hand. The memorial, kept dark at night as a conservation measure, had become a lovers’ lane. Couples went there to kiss and pet.

But the killer found even more remote places to leave his victim’s body.

They drove between the twin statues of muscular men on horseback flanking the Memorial Bridge and crossed the Potomac. Reflected light from the bridge’s equidistant lamps flickered in the dark water.

“This river is a common thread in all the murders,” Jess said. “Every place a woman’s body has been found is near the Potomac, including the Rock Creek that flows from the Potomac.”

“So you reckon the killer lives near the river?”

“It’s a possibility. Maybe he brings the woman to his house, where he kills her then puts her in his car and leaves her close to the Potomac.”

“That’s a lot of traveling about, “Alonso said. “He’s taking the chance of being seen.”

Jess agreed. “But he hasn’t been seen yet. We need to find a native Washingtonian, if there is such a person, to ask about the area. Where would the killer live to be able to do all that in secret? Where is the murder scene?” When they found that, they would find the killer.

The dark hills of Arlington National Cemetery rose in front of them. Lightning splintered the night sky. Once over the bridge, they entered the state of Virginia.

“This is Park Police territory, right?” Alonso asked.

“Yep.” Jurisdiction was confusing here. The first two murders took place in Washington City, the third on the C&O Canal, and the fourth at Theodore Roosevelt Island, both under the Park Police.

They traveled partway around a circle until they turned right, crossed a cobblestone forecourt, and stopped outside large, wrought iron gates. A maroon Oldsmobile and a battered truck were parked to their right.

Emerging from the motor car, a curly-haired young man in Clark Kent glasses rushed Jess’s side of the Packard. “You’re the Bureau’s man,” he said and held out an identification card. “I’m Thad Graham, Washington Herald. What’s going on up there? Somebody murdered in the cemetery?”

Jess heard Mississippi in his accent and smiled in spite of himself. Thad was like them, a Southerner a long way from home.

“Get back, you,” a Park Policeman yelled and chased the reporter away, then came to Jess’s window.

Jess showed him his Bureau ID. The policeman opened the gates and leaned in. “They’re way up near the Confederate Memorial. Follow the signs. Sorry ‘bout them newsies. They showed up right behind the DC police.”

Once Alonso put the car in first, another man leaped in front of them and took a photograph through the windshield, his flashbulb blinding them.

Alonso braked hard, rocking them forward and back. The car stalled. “That’s one photographer who near about got himself run over.”

Jess blinked, adjusting his eyes. “Hope Thad Graham figures out what’s going on here.” The Bureau insisted on keeping a lid on the murders, so as not to discourage young women from coming to Washington to work. “Whatever you do, don’t talk to the press,” Fred had told them. “That comes from the highest level. Keep these murders quiet.”

But in other cases, Jess and Alonso had gotten help from the public. Witnesses came forward. Someone might have seen something here in DC—the city was too crowded not to—but nothing had been reported.

With these murders, they were on their own and worse, government girls like the ones coming to live with Mrs. Trundle were unaware of the danger. These young women believed Washington was safe and that men in uniform were heroes, never suspecting one of their heroes was a killer.