Streets of Fire

Patterson shrugged. ‘Suit yourself.’

By the time Patterson had finished, the body looked as if a hand grenade had exploded beneath it. The chest, stomach and abdomen were slit open and their cavities exposed. Large flaps of skin hung over her sides like pieces of torn cloth, and a continual stream of blood and other fluids trickled down the drainage spouts and into the buckets below.

Patterson peeled the rubber gloves from his hands and dropped them into the wastebasket beside the dissecting table. ‘Well, we learned two things, Ben, both of which I could have told you without all this.’ He looked at Ben haughtily. ‘She was shot in the head. And she was raped.’

Ben continued to stare at the ravaged body. The face remained intact, but the skin over the rest of the head had been peeled back, the skull sawed open, and the brain removed. She seemed even more exposed, her body open like a blasted fruit, her small naked buttocks now pressed flat against the cold blue of the tabletop.

‘What’d you do with her clothes?’ he asked as he glanced back up at Patterson.

‘They’re in a box in the other room,’ Patterson said. He stepped over to his desk and put on his jacket. ‘We’ll bury her in them.’

‘Did you vacuum them?’ Ben asked.

Patterson laughed. ‘You must be kidding, Ben. Till the front office got on it, we were treating her just like any other case.’ He straightened the knot of his tie. ‘You want to vacuum them? Go ahead. Just get them back to me by tomorrow morning.’ He moved to the door and opened it. ‘Unless you want her buried in a bag.’ He looked back toward the adjoining room. ‘I’m finished out here, Davey,’ he called. ‘Just put a sheet over it and put it back in the cooler.’

The old man appeared at the door, his milky brown eyes staring silently at Patterson.

‘I’m going to take a break,’ Patterson added, ‘then I’ll come back and sew up.’ He looked back at Ben and politely touched the brim of his hat. ‘And with that final word, Ben, I’ll say goodnight.’ He smiled thinly, then disappeared behind the door.

Ben continued to stand by the table, and after a moment the attendant walked out of the back room and over to the opposite side of the body.

‘You want me to take her now?’ he asked.

‘I guess,’ Ben said. He stepped back slightly and watched as the attendant draped a clean white sheet over the body.

‘We found her over on Twenty-third Street,’ Ben said.

The old man did not seem to hear him. He walked to the rear of the table, grasped the handle and began to tug it backward toward the adjoining room.

‘What part of town do you live in?’ Ben asked as he followed along.

‘Thirty-second Street,’ the attendant said dully.

‘That’s not too far from where we found her,’ Ben said. ‘You know that old ballfield around there?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘That’s where she was. Buried under a goalpost.’

The old man said nothing. He continued to tug the table slowly forward, maneuvering carefully toward the open door behind him.

‘What’s your name?’ Ben asked him.

‘They calls me Davey.’

Ben grasped the edge of the table, stopped its movement, then pulled the sheet back to reveal the girl’s face.

‘You ever seen this little girl, Davey?’

The old man gave the small face a quick glance. ‘Naw, sir.’

‘Maybe playing in the park, something like that? Maybe just walking along the sidewalk?’

‘I ain’t never seen her,’ the man said. He drew his eyes from the girl’s face and gave a tentative pull on the table.

Ben held it firmly in place. ‘Who runs things over in Bearmatch?’ he asked.

The attendant kept his eyes downcast. ‘The Black Cat boys,’ he said quietly.

‘I don’t mean them,’ Ben said. ‘I mean your own people.’

The old man said nothing.

‘Lots of things go on in Bearmatch,’ Ben said. ‘Somebody has control of it.’

The attendant shook his head. ‘It ain’t my business,’ he said softly. He waited a moment, then gave another tug on the table.

Ben released it, then followed it into the adjoining room. He leaned against the wall and watched as the old man opened the freezer door and pushed the table inside. When he turned back around, he seemed surprised to find Ben still lingering in the room.

‘You ask the Black Cat boys what you wants to know,’ he said. ‘You one of they own.’

Ben smiled quietly. ‘You trust them, Davey? You trust the Black Cat boys?’

The old man said nothing, but he looked at Ben knowingly.

‘I don’t either,’ Ben said. ‘That’s why I want to talk to somebody else about this girl.’ He paused, letting it sink in. ‘Give me a name, Davey. Just one name.’

The ancient brown eyes squeezed together slowly as he turned it over in his mind.

‘They’re going to bury that little girl tomorrow,’ Ben added. ‘I think her mama ought to be there.’

The old man’s face lifted slightly, as if with sudden pride. ‘Roy Jolly,’ he said.

FIVE