Читать книгу The Last Government Girl - Ellen Herbert - Страница 12

6

Arlington Cemetery’s narrow road wound uphill. Oaks lined the way, throwing nets of shadow over them. As they passed rows of white tombstones like troops on parade, Jess felt a familiar burning in his chest. He would never become immune to murder, the ultimate violation.

Lowering his head, he prayed, yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil… Alonso’s hands tightened on the wheel, knuckles rising beneath the skin. Jess sensed him sharing the dark sensation that gripped them whenever they met the murder victim.

Alonso parked behind the DC police car. “Of course, Ray K. got here first.”

“It’s not a race,” Jess said, “but I bet he had his siren on through the city.”

Their nemesis, Detective Kaminski, Ray K. as he liked to be called, of the Metropolitan Police of the District of Columbia or MPD, unintentionally brought humor to places where there was none.

Short and wide as a garden shed, Ray K. strutted toward them in a double-breasted jacket, its buttons straining to contain him. His driver, a young beat cop, leaned against the black-and-white. Chin in the air, the driver blew smoke into the starless sky.

“Need help getting out, Jess?” Ray K. straightened and looked over the hood at Alonso. “Get lost driving here, Al? Finding your way in the big city can be confusing for ‘Bama boys.”

This was Ray’s favorite theme: that Jess and Alonso were ignoramuses, hopelessly out of their depths in DC. Jess had begun to fear Ray was right.

Pulling his kit from under the seat, Jess slung its strap over his shoulder and pushed open the car door forcing Ray to step back onto the grass.

Jess rushed at him, grabbed his tie, and yanked him forward. “Your siren brought the press to the gates.”

Immediately Jess was ashamed of himself. He was six inches taller and at least ten years younger than the DC detective.

His aggression got the attention of the beat cop, who started around the black-and-white as if to protect his boss. Alonso blocked his way.

Ray K. motioned for the uniform to back off. The man had his pride. He was a rescuer not one in need of rescue.

“Careful with my favorite tie, ‘Bama.” He shoved Jess back. “For your information, our siren was not on. Sometimes reporters wait outside the station and tail us.” He smoothed his tie back into his jacket. “In this town, we call it a free press. Maybe they don’t have such a thing in Alabama.”

Because the first two government girls’ bodies had been found in Washington City, Ray K. and his partner had been assigned the cases. After the third murder, the Bureau was called in. Of course, they were all supposed to be working this together, but police detectives were like dogs. They marked their territory and didn’t welcome encroachers. Ray K. resented Jess on sight, although he pretended to be cooperative.

What Ray didn’t know was that on almost all their previous cases, there had been at least one local dick like him to deal with.

“I need to be sure Thad Graham found out about the murdered young woman by following you here,” Jess said. “Also it looked like his photographer came in another vehicle. Why did they drive here separately?”

“You talk to the press and J. Edgar’s going to hit you with his hammer,” Ray K. said. “I know Thad. I’ll talk to him for you.” Ray’s wandering left eye truly wandered tonight, leaving most of his eyeball white. “This way, boys,” he said as if they were scouts in his troop.

The three walked toward the police lamps, bright in the cemetery’s vast darkness. Alonso carried his camera snug under his arm.

“This is the oldest part of the cemetery, where the Union’s Civil War dead are buried.” Ray K. brought both eyes into alignment to direct his gaze. “But I doubt they let Johnny Rebs like you in here, Jess.”

“Lucky I’m not looking for a burial place right now.” Part of his outburst with Ray stemmed from his frustration with the investigation.

Jess introduced himself and Alonso to the two Park Policemen standing uphill from the girl’s body, their cigarettes glowing in the dark. Men smoked in the presence of death. It was the one thing they could do when they were afraid that didn’t make them look afraid.

A young Park Policeman in dusty riding boots stood back from the group, holding the reins of his horse, a quiet neighing presence.

With all of them walking around in the dark, no telling what evidence had been trampled. “Pick up your cigarette butts, fellas,” Jess called and stepped into the brightness the circle of lamps made.

The girl lay on her side, one arm stretched over the grassy grave as if to caress it. Her body appeared posed. Jess studied her from various angles. Like the others, she was dark-haired pretty, a little plump, further proof these weren’t random murders. The killer selected his victims, all of whom looked so much alike they could have been related.

Jess crouched beside her. She wore a knee-length skirt and a jacket too warm for the weather. The edge of her right sleeve was stained purple probably from a typewriter ribbon. And this time there were no lines drawn up the backs of her legs.

“Another government girl out for a good time.” Ray K. stood uphill from Jess. “You think she’d have better sense than go off with a fella she didn’t know from Adam’s house- cat.”

“Too late for a lecture, Ray K.” Jess’s gaze stayed with the girl.

Not that Jess didn’t see Ray’s point. The war encouraged folks to act as if each day was their last. The nearness of death breathed on all of them, making life brighter, more vivid. This girl had taken a risk in moving to Washington and an even greater risk when she went away with a man she didn’t know, but her killer must have been in uniform, so she trusted him.

From his kit, Jess took out a stiff rubber glove. Without a word between them, Alonso set his camera down and tugged the glove up Jess’s arm.

Jess crouched beside the girl her pupils large with surprise, red spots caused by broken capillaries dotted her face, her mouth open as if to scream. Three things struck him, the first that her lipstick wasn’t smeared. Thelma Sykes, the government girl murdered in April, also had perfectly applied lipstick.

He put his hand on her forehead, closed his eyes, and imagined the terror she felt in those moments before she died, when she realized what was happening, but couldn’t stop it.

How he wished the dead could speak. In some ways they did. Instead of words they left signs. He studied her fingernails, unbroken without skin or dirt beneath them. Why hadn’t she struggled?

Alonso screwed a flashbulb in his camera and sent Jess a glance he read like a telegram.

“You best blinker your horse,” Jess called. The policeman led his horse away.

Because they had come out of the Deep South, where Jim Crow ruled, they had developed a system. Alonso never told a white person what to do. Conversely, when they dealt with coloreds, Alonso took the lead, and Jess kept quiet. That way they avoided the unnecessary complications brought on by race relations, as bad in Washington as anywhere else they’d been.

Jess dreamed of a place in America without the color bar, where he and his brother didn’t have to hide their bond of blood.

The camera flashed from the foot of the grave, turning night to day. Alonso made his way around the dead girl, hat tilted back on his head to make room for the big camera covering his face. A flashbulb exploded with each snap.

The Park Policemen and the groundskeeper, Mr. Novak, an elderly man with a great shock of white hair, averted their eyes, but stood in place, as if stunned by what had happened on their watch.

The medical examiner, Dr. Lee, a slender Chinaman, joined the group with a nod to Jess. He stayed in the shadows, clutching his bag, until Alonso finished.

Jess led Mr. Novak away from the rest and asked, “What time did you find her?”

“It was almost dark when I look for clippers.” Mr. Novak pointed to shrubs on a nearby ridge. “I trim there yesterday and leave clippers, if not maybe she not found for long long time.” He rubbed his eyes, some of his white eyebrows as long as cat’s whiskers.

Dressed in a stained shirt and ragged trousers, the man smelled of physical labor under a hot sun. Jess knew that sour odor. He and Alonso had picked cotton in Alabama heat from dawn to dusk on their father’s land.

Jess squatted beneath a linden tree, using the flat of his thigh to write in his notebook. “Does the cemetery keep a record of the cars and trucks that come through its gates?”

“No record.” The old man sat cross-legged before him. His hands reached around, tugging at the grass. “Only me and Marek here, six days a week. We trade off Sundays.”

“Did you see any cars or trucks parked along here today?”

“No. Today I work in Spanish American War, far from roads. I see no cars, no trucks, no one.”

“If you see a vehicle, do you check whether it has a right to be here?” As soon as Jess asked, he knew the answer.

“No.” Mr. Novak shook his head. “Is only me and Marek.”

Jess leaned against the linden’s trunk, feeling as if he’d absorbed some of the man’s exhaustion. “Okay, Mr. Novak.” They stood. Jess gave him his card. “If you think of anything that might help us find the person who did this, call me, please. And would you ask Marek to do the same?”

“Ya, I tell Marek.” He pocketed the card. “Terrible sad this young lady…”

“Yes.” Jess meandered through nearby tombstones, where he made a discovery. “Any of ya’ll put a lady’s pocketbook back here?” he called to the men.

“No, sir,” the Park Policeman in charge called back. “We didn’t touch anything.”

Jess picked up the pocketbook by its handle so as not to disturb any fingerprints. He took it into the light, squatted, opened it, and went through the wallet. It contained a government ID from the Pentagon with the dead girl’s photograph and name, Kaye Krieger, as well as her address in Alexandria, Virginia. The address appeared to be a house. Was it possible she was a native?

The other murdered government girls came from all over the country, so it fell to local police departments to inform their next-of-kin. A dreadful, but necessary duty he’d done before. But with the government girls’ murders, they got no closer to the victim than the friend she had traveled here with. They talked to the girl’s roommates, co-workers, boss, but government girls were strangers to the city, often strangers to each other, strangers surrounded by strangers.

Inside her purse was a half-smoked pack of Kools and a new matchbook from the Palace Royale Ballroom, a dance place on H Street. Jess opened it. Not one match had been struck. Had she been at the Palace Royale tonight? Is that where she met her killer?

“Pretty gals give them matchbooks out downtown,” Ray K. said, looking over Jess’s shoulder. “Got one myself even though I never went inside the place.”

Jess didn’t care how many matchbooks were given out. The Palace Royale would be their next stop. He put her ID in his pocket. They’d show it to the manager, employees, and patrons. If she was there earlier, maybe someone remembered her and possibly could identify the man at her side.

He searched the purse’s lining, but could find no lipstick. Where was it?

While lipstick was precious to women, metal was critical to the war effort. Women saved the metal tube their lipstick came in and bought colored refills at stores like Woolworth’s or G.C. Murphy’s.

Dr. Lee cleared his throat.

“Ready?” Jess looked up at the doctor’s serious unblinking eyes magnified by thick glasses. Dr. Lee dropped his chin in a polite nod.

Jess put the contents of Karen Krieger’s pocketbook back, placed the pocketbook in a paper evidence bag to be turned over to the Bureau’s Identification Department, and stepped from light into darkness.

“Mind if I’m in on this?” Ray K. asked Jess.

Jess said, “Come along.” Ray K. could make things difficult if he felt left out. And they needed good relations with the MPD.

“This time is different,” Dr. Lee said to them.

The three walked up a graveled path to a copse of maples at the cemetery’s edge. The slice of moon slipped from the clouds. Wind rustled the leaves, the smell of rain in the air.

“Manual strangulation, no belt,” Dr. Lee said. “There is a thumb-size bruise right here.” He brought his thumb to the notch at the base of his throat.

Ray K. said, “Maybe she wasn’t killed by the same guy.”

Jess hated the idea there were two killers. Still he wondered why no belt. Did a branch of the service have a beltless uniform? He and Alonso had studied uniforms since they got here, yet he couldn’t recall one like that. But it was important the killer’s pattern had changed. They needed to stop focusing on how the murders were similar and study their differences.

Away from the lights and group around the girl’s body, moonlight shone on the backs of the tombstones, sending blanket-sized shadows over the dead. Why did he bring her here? Was it significant that this was the oldest part of the cemetery, or that it was near the memorial to the Confederate dead? Maybe he thought her body wouldn’t be found for days.

“Did he do her like he did the others…you know?” Ray tugged on his cigarette, its red glow pulsing.

The other girls had been sodomized after death.

Dr. Lee looked from Ray K. to Jess. “I will know for certain after the post mortem.”

“Any idea when she died?” Jess asked.

Dr. Lee pushed his glasses up on the bridge of his nose and left his finger there, holding the glasses in place. “With asphyxiation victims, it is difficult to pinpoint, but because of today’s heat, rigor is already present. I would guess maybe three, four hours ago.”

Jess slapped his thigh. “Daylight? He left her body here in daylight?”

Ray said. “Cemetery’s locked at sunset. He drove up here and dropped her off.”

Drivers had to have special permits to buy gasoline. The Office of Price Administration had instituted a tiered system of rationing depending on the driver’s occupation. In Washington, getting a permit wasn’t difficult. Most of the men, who worked in the offices with the murdered girls, had both a permit to buy gasoline and a vehicle. Yet they also had alibis, which Jess and Alonso had verified.

“He must be subduing the woman some way… Could he have given her a barbiturate, maybe in her drink?” Jess asked Dr. Lee. “Her tongue was stained purple as if she’d drunk grape soda or wine.”

“Yes. I also see purple tongue.” Dr. Lee was nodding. “These days, barbiturates are almost as common as aspirin. Doctors prescribe them for anyone having trouble sleeping. And because of the war, that is many people. I will test the contents of her stomach for a barbiturate.”

Jess felt a tingling in his chest, a sensation he got when he was onto something. A barbiturate might lead to a prescription with a name on it.

As they walked back to the girl’s body, one of the Park Police watching them nudged the policeman beside him. With the moonlight behind Jess, they could see he was missing an arm. Jess imagined one saying to the other, “The Bureau must be hard up these days.”

Yet his stump had become a badge of honor, albeit an unmerited one. No one asked how he’d lost it. Folks assumed it had happened in the war, which made him feel guilty. More than anything, he wanted to fight for his country as the men whose graves surrounded him had done.

“Wait a minute, fellas,” Jess called to the ambulance crew taking her body away.

He lifted the blanket and studied Kaye’s face, wishing he had a woman with him to tell him what she thought. The lipstick though freshly applied went above her lip line. With the tracing paper from his kit, he blotted her lips.

“More photographs?” Alonso asked him.

“Please, and get her blouse or whatever it’s called.” Jess stepped away.

Beneath her jacket, she wore a low-necked top made of thin cotton that showed off her ample breasts. Thelma Sykes had worn a similar one.

Alonso snapped some photographs.

“It’s called a peasant blouse,” Ray K. said behind Jess, “like Jane Russell wears in them movie posters. Some call it cheap, others think it’s sexy. You must not have a woman in your life, or you’d know about such things.”

Nothing like getting women’s fashion tips from Ray K. Still Jess took out his notebook, crouched, and wrote peasant blouse and the actress’s name.

The men on the hillside watched the ambulance bear Kaye Krieger’s body away, its red taillights disappearing down the hill, united in a moment none would forget.

After the ambulance went through the gates at the bottom of the hill, Thad Graham’s car pulled out behind it and followed across the Memorial Bridge.

Ambulance chasers: Jess had thought the term referred to lawyers. He didn’t know a newspaper would pay a reporter to sit outside police headquarters, hoping for something to happen. Ray K. was right about him. He had a lot to learn about Washington.

After everyone left, Jess asked Alonso. “See any footprints?”

“Not in this thick grass. Wish I had.”

They had been given a photograph of a shoe print found near the woman’s body on the C&O Canal. The shoe had tiny holes in the soles like hobnail boots, except the pattern of holes was irregular. They were making the rounds of construction crews talking to roofers, who sometimes put tacks through their soles to keep secure as they climbed.

Rain began to fall in drops large as coins.

They ran to the car. Once inside, Alonso turned to Jess and said. “Again, she was missing her right shoe.”

“His souvenir.”