“Still don’t want to tell me about that 64 in Farland?”
“No,” she asserted. But the words were still there, flotsam in a dark sea. A baby. Someone killed a baby… But people killed babies every day in this demented age. It’s my job to investigate murder, she scolded herself. She let go of the locket. So go do it and stop being such an insecure wuss.
“Go on, get out of here,” Tom said. “You can’t keep public service waiting. Do you have your gun?”
“Yes,” she groaned. Helen hated guns but she had little choice but to carry one. A tiny Beretta Jet-Fire, .25 ACP. She was so bad at the range she had to be waived every year to qualify.
“Good. And be careful, okay?”
“I will.” She could tell, as she always could, that here was a man who was genuinely concerned with her, and someone who genuinely loved her. Don’t screw it up again, Helen, she warned herself.
She kissed him again and left.
««—»»
Dane County didn’t have its own PD—they were uncharted, like a lot of Wisconsin’s counties. What they had instead was a small-time sheriff’s department. Helen’s response grid—Grid South Central—stretched from Beloit to the Petenwell Reservoir; this one, at least, wouldn’t be too bad of a drive in her unmarked. There’d been times when she’d had to take the pill-white Ford Taurus a hundred miles out of Madison merely to write up a prelim WSP Form 18-82—Initial Investigatory Report for Possible Critical Case Homicide—and then recommended as to whether or not the 64 warranted the intervention of the Wisconsin State Police Violent Crimes Unit. VCU was run by six regional field liaisons, all captains, one of whom was Helen Closs. Eighteen years with the state police, she’d started at Traffic and worked her way up. Three years ago, working with the Intelligence Unit, she’d orchestrated a state-wide sting operation that had brought the house down on a complex cocaine triad whose shooters had murdered half of their informant line as well as four state undercover cops. Result: promotion to captain, commendations from the governor and the director of the DEA, and a transfer to the coveted VCU. The unit let her work alone, make her own decisions, and left CES and Processing at her instant disposal. Thus far, of the seventeen critical homicides that had taken place in her grid, Helen had solved sixteen, the highest success percentile in the history of the department. In another year, she’d be up for deputy chief.
A grand career, in other words. Yet grand was the last thing she felt. Forty-two, she thought dryly, and premenopausal according to my blood tests. One bum marriage and half a dozen bum relationships. Was it age, or just the world? The world was a vampire whose lips and fangs sucked up a little bit more of her vitality as each year passed. A world of murderers and child molesters, of Fetal Cocaine Syndrome and gang rape and failure. She hadn’t truly seen the sun shine in twenty years.
Just darkness, and the ebon of the human mind.
A plethora of visibar lights erupted as Helen pulled up at her 20. State Technical Services looked like scarlet phantoms roving the darkness; Sirchie portable UV lamps glowed eerily purple. The techs wore red polyester utilities so that any accidental fiberfall wouldn’t be confused as crime-scene residue by the Hair & Fibers crew back at Evidence Section.
Cold air choked her when she got out of the Taurus’ capsule of heat. Her breath turned to dismal gaseous frost. A long county road—ravined and flawlessly straight—seemed to extend into infinity. A couple of Dane County Sheriff’s cars—old Ford Tempos—sat parked off the road in a vast cornfield that had been threshed to nubs a few months ago, their headlights aimed at the contact perimeter. Three state cars were here too; on any case that might qualify as a VCU candidate, Central Communications would dispatch the nearest state units, to help the local department secure the scene, and CES had been dispatched right after them, a powder-blue van which served as a mobile crime lab, and a couple of station wagons the same odd color. The uniforms, both county and state, seemed oblivious to the cold, unjacketed as they leaned against their cars.
“Captain Closs?” one voice rang out.
Helen showed her badge and ID to the corporal who approached her, a young guy from Highway Division.
“Is Beck here?” she asked, turning up her collar.
“Yes, ma’am.” He pointed to the lit ravine. “Down there. It’s…”
“What, Corporal?”
“It’s pretty bad, ma’am.”
Helen ignored the comment, glancing instead up toward the county cars. Several of the men were smoking. “Tell those idiots from Dane to put there cigarettes out and pocket the butts. Jesus Christ, this is a crime scene.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And if I see any state cops smoking here, I’ll write them up. I’ll make the Wicked Witch of the West look like Little Orphan Annie. Got it?”
The corporal nodded, his face whitened raw by the cold. Or perhaps it was really shock. After all, there was a dead infant somewhere on this perimeter.
Helen squinted again at the county responders: a mopey, ragtag bunch. “I mean, what is this? The Keystone Cops?”
“Those county SD guys? They don’t know what to do, that’s why they called in a VCU request when they found the body.”
The body, Helen finally remembered why she was here. The baby. “Who’s the trooper in charge? You?”
“No, ma’am.” The corporal stolidly pointed again toward the ravine. “Sergeant Farrell, right over there.”
Helen turned without further word. Farrell was down on one knee beside the CES van, his forehead in his hand.
She could see that he’d vomited. “Are you all right, Sergeant?”
Farrell looked up, blinked hard. “I—”
“Get up, straighten yourself out,” Helen ordered. There was no other demeanor she could maintain. If she didn’t keep up the bad-ass routine, these kids would never take her seriously.
“This is a real bad 64, Captain.”
“I know it’s a bad 64, Sergeant, I know it’s a baby, but we’re all out here to do a job. Were supposed to be in charge, and I can’t have my officers keeling over on the scene like a bunch of greenhorns straight out of cadet school. You’re a Wisconsin State Trooper, start acting like it. If you can’t do your job, say so, and I’ll have you relieved.”
Farrell, trim and large, rose to his feet. He gulped hard. His embarrassment was plain. “What should I do, ma’am?”
He probably has kids himself, she suspected. She knew the look. He’s probably got a little baby… “Just hold tight and keep the scene secure, that’s all I need you to do.”
The moon shone like a pallid face over the dead cornfield. Helen strode off the hardtop, then marched awkwardly into the ravine. She felt a bit silly; this was a rural murder site and here she was wearing Nine West pumps, a $400 Burberry topcoat, and a merle sheath dress from Carole Little. Don’t trip and fall in the ravine, she stupidly warned herself. Those county dopes would be laughing it up for a week.
Helen could never discern why, but she knew that Jan Beck, the TSD field chief, didn’t like her. She refused, for instance, to call Helen by her first name, which was perfectly appropriate for two female employees of the same pay grade. But then it occurred to her more clearly that nobody on the department liked her save for Olsher and the rest of the brass. Helen didn’t even care any more.
“Hi, Jan,” Helen said to the slim, crimson-garbed figure. Jan Beck’s silhouette seemed to disgorge itself from the lights. She had thick glasses and frizzy black hair like a witch’s.