He kept the flashlight beam centered on the corpse. The rain fell in straight lines, striking the dead man’s face. To Sam, the dead man looked like a wax dummy. There was a sudden slash of light, and Sam flinched as Ralph took the first photo. As Ralph replaced the bulb, he groused, “Plenty of time for me to make tomorrow’s edition.”
“No,” Sam said. “You know the arrangement, Ralph. We get twenty-four hours, first dibs, before you use any crime scene photos in the paper.”
Another flash, and Sam blinked at the dots of light floating before his eyes. “Come on, Inspector, give me a break,” Ralph muttered. “Twelve hours, twenty-four hours. What difference does it make?”
“If it’s twenty-four hours, it makes no difference at all. If it’s twelve hours, the department makes arrangements with another photographer. You’re an educated man, Ralph, you know what the jobless numbers are like. You really want to dick around with this sweet deal?”
A third flare of light. “Some goddamn sweet deal, getting rained on in the cold, taking photos of a dead bum.”
Sam gave him a gentle slap on his back. “Just the glamour of being a newsman, right?”
“Some fucking glamour. My boss got a visit last week from some jerk in the Department of the Interior. Wanted to know how we’d survive if our newsprint ration got cut again next month. So my boss got the message—tone down the editorials, or the paper gets shut down. Yeah, that’s glamour.”
Sam said, “Spare us the whining. Just get the photos.”
“Coming right up, Inspector. I know how to keep my job, just you see.”
This was Sam’s first untimely death as an inspector. As a patrolman and, later, sergeant, he had seen a number of bodies, from drowned hoboes pulled from Portsmouth Harbor to sailors knifed outside one of the scores of bars near Ceres Street. But as a patrolman or a sergeant, you secured the scene and waited for the inspector to arrive. That had been old Hugh Johnson, until he died of bone cancer last year.
Now it was Sam’s job, and what he did tonight could decide whether he got to keep it. He was on probation, a month left before he turned in the silver shield of an inspector on tryout, before getting the gold shield and a promised pay raise that would give his family some breathing room, a bit socked away in savings, something that would put them at the top of the heap in this lousy economy. So far, all of his cases had been minor crap, like burglaries, bunco cases, or chasing down leads for the Department of the Interior on labor camp escapees who had ties to the area. But if this turned out to be a homicide, it could help him with the Police Commission and their decision on his ultimate status.
As Ralph made his way back to the restaurant’s parking lot, Frank spoke up. “Sam, looks like this is a lucky night for all of us.”
“Not sure what you mean.”
Frank played the light over the corpse. “Doesn’t look like a political hit, which means it won’t be taken away from us. This’ll be a good first case for you, Sam.”
“Sorry, what in hell’s a political hit?” Leo asked.
Frank answered, “What I mean, kid, is that sometimes bodies pop up here and there, mostly in the big cities, where the guy has his hands tied behind him and he’s got two taps to the back of the head. None of those cases ever get solved. So it’s lucky for us that this guy’s arms are nice and spread out. Means nothing political is involved. We can just do our jobs, and nobody from Concord is going to bother us.”
Sam squatted, winced as a cold dribble of rainwater went down the back of his neck. He looked about him: a dead body, possible homicide, his first major case. Even in the rain and darkness, everything seemed in sharp focus: the two cops and their wet slickers, the mud, and the sour tang of salt water. The scent of piss from the dead man before him, the one who’d brought him here.
The man was thin, maybe fifties, early sixties. The skin was pale and the hair was a whitish blond. No cuts or bruises on the face. Sam touched the skin. Clammy. He went through the pockets of the suit coat, taking his time. No money, no paper, no wallet, no coins, no fountain pen, no cigarettes, no lighter. He sensed the other cops watching him, evaluating him, a feeling he hated.
Sam raised each shirtsleeve, looking for a watch or jewelry. “Frank,” he said. “Bring the light closer, down to his wrist.”
Frank lowered the light, illuminating the skinny white wrist. There. A row of faint squiggles on the skin. Numerals. Sam rubbed at the numerals. They didn’t smudge or come off.
A row of numbers, tattooed along the wrist. Portsmouth was a navy town, and Sam had seen every kind of tattoo, from Neptune to mermaids to naked hula girls, but never anything like this.
The numerals were blue-gray, jagged, as if they had been quickly etched in:
9 1 1 2 8 3
“Frank? You see those numbers? You ever see anything like that before?”
Frank leaned forward, and rainwater poured off his hat brim. “Nope, never have. Maybe the coroner, maybe he’s seen something like that. But not me.”
Though it didn’t make any difference to the dead man, Sam lowered the shirtsleeve. “Leo. Give me a hand here. We need to roll him over.”
“Cripes,” Leo said, but he was a good cop and did as he was told. They rolled the corpse on its side, and Sam checked the front and rear pockets of the trousers. The fabric was sopping wet, but the pockets were empty. The stench from the body grew stronger. Frank was right. No bullet wounds to the base of the skull. Sam and Leo rolled the body back.
“No money, no wallet,” Sam told them, standing up.
Leo said, “Maybe he was stripped, robbed, by one of the bums from the camp.”
Frank laughed. “Shit, kid, don’t be dumb. There’d be footprints. Nope, the way he got here is the way he arrived: no cash and no belongings. Still, Sam…”
“Go on, Frank.”
“Those clothes. They look pretty good. You know? Not from somebody riding boxcars or hitchhiking, looking for work. No patches, no rips. Not brand-new but not… well, not beat up.”
There was noise again from the Fish Shanty parking lot, and Sam looked up to see the hearse from the Woods funeral home roll in. Saunders from the county medical examiner’s office shouldn’t be too far behind, so the body could be moved and they could all get out of this damn rain. Sam was hungry, and it was getting late, and Sarah and Toby were waiting for him at home.
Two attendants carried a canvas stretcher from the hearse, the men holding the stretcher by its side so water didn’t pool in the canvas. Sam didn’t envy them having to haul this corpse back to the hearse, over the gravel and railroad ties, but it was their job. As everyone said nowadays, it was good just to have a job.
Frank stared at the approaching attendants, stumbling a little in the mud, and said, “Hey, Sam. All right if me and the kid take off after the body’s removed?”
“Yeah, but first I want the two of you to do a check of the buildings on this side of the tracks. See if anybody saw anything.”
“They’re mostly stores. They’re all closed by now.”
“Then it won’t take long, will it?” Sam told Frank. “If anything of interest surfaces, call me at home. If not, write up a report. Leave it on my desk when your shift’s over.”
Frank said, “All right. But hey, remember, there’s a Party meeting tomorrow night. You’ve missed the last two. You don’t want me to make a report to the county director, now, do you? Or have one of Long’s boys start asking you questions?”
“Just do the search,” Sam said. “Write something up and put it on my desk. Don’t worry about me and the Party.”