"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.
"See you later, officer," I said.
I popped the handle on the door and started to put the thermos down in the seat.
"Why don't you just take that with you for the ride back," she said. "It'll keep you company."
"I'm not sure when I'll get it back to you."
"I'm guessing soon enough," she said and I watched her eyes, trying to find the color.
"OK," I said, stepping back and closing the door.
12
I pulled into the ranger station parking lot at 4:00 A.M. There was a single light on over the wash house door. Another burned high on a pole over the dock. When I wheeled into my usual spot, my headlights hit a small reflective sign: PARKING BY PERMIT ONLY.
I sat staring at the words, looked around stupidly like I wasn't sure I was in the right place, and then felt the blood rising into my ears. I put the truck in reverse, punched it and sent a spray of shell and dirt clattering through the undercarriage. I backed into a spot on the other side of the lot, clearly in a public space. I pulled out my bags and locked up. As I approached the pool of light near the dock, I saw another sign that was staked next to my overturned canoe: ALL UNATTENDED WATERCRAFT ARE THE SOLE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE OWNER. THE PARK IS NOT LIABLE FOR ANY LOSS OR DAMAGE.
I flipped the canoe, checked for the paddle, still safe inside, and then dragged the boat to the ramp. I stored my bags and turned back to stare into the front of the ranger's office, hoping to catch the new man, maybe at the window, awakened by my rumblings. Nothing. All I could see was a single red dot glowing inside; a security alarm indicator that had never been there before.
I pushed the boat forward and floated the bow. With one foot in the stern and hands gripping either gunwale, I shoved off onto black water.
I took several strokes west and then sensed the incoming tide taking me. I could feel the water through the thin hull like a shiver under a horse's coat. A half moon was pinned high in the sky like a flat silver brooch and its light glittered on the calm water. I cleared my throat and spat once, then started paddling toward home. The moon followed.
It took me more than an hour to reach my shack, and the thin light of dawn was already seeping into the eastern sky. I checked the stairs and went up. I stripped off my clothes and stepped back out to stand under the rain-barrel shower and used a few gallons to hose the sheen of sweat off. I pulled on some shorts and poured the rest of the thermos of Richards's coffee into a mug, then sat in my straight-backed chair and put my heels up on the table. By the third sip I was asleep.