“I been West.”
“On your way to Mexico to pick up some junk?”
“What does it matter where I was on the way to? I been West, and in LA nobody reads newspapers. In LA what they do is complain about the smog and keep their eyes open in case Lana Turner should stop for a traffic light. That’s what they do out there.”
“You’re the first junkie we had in here who’s also a social commentator,” Willis said.
“Well, it takes all kinds,” Pine said philosophically.
“So La Scala was living alone, that it?”
“Yeah,” Pine said.
“No girl?”
“No.”
“Did he have relatives besides his parents?”
“A sister, yeah. But she lives on the coast, too. In Frisco.”
“You think they read the papers there, Pine?”
“Maybe. All I know for sure about Frisco is that all the ladies wear hats.”
“You think his sister knows he’s dead?”
“I don’t know. Give her a call and ask her. You got plenty of taxpayers’ money. Give her a call.”
“You seem to be perking up a little, Pine. You’re getting a real sharp edge of a sudden.”
“Yeah. Well, you can’t operate on one level all the time, you know.”
“I wouldn’t know. In other words, Pine, La Scala was alone in this city, huh? You know anybody who might have wanted him dead?”
“Nope. Why should they? He wasn’t bothering nobody.”
“And all his relatives are in California, is that right, too?”
“That’s right.”
“Then nobody here’ll miss him,” Willis said.
“I got news for you, cop,” Pine answered. “Even if they were here, they would not miss him.”
Paul Blaney was an assistant medical examiner, a short man with a scraggly black mustache and violet eyes. It was Blaney’s contention that he, as junior member on the medical examiner’s staff, was always given the most gruesome corpses for necropsy, and he was rather surprised and pleased to receive the body of Eileen Glennon. The girl seemed to be in one piece, and there were no signs of undue violence, no stab wounds, no gunshot wounds, no broken skull. Blaney was sure one of his colleagues had made a mistake in assigning this particular cadaver to him, but he was not a man to look a gift horse in the mouth. Instead, he fell to work with Dispatch, half afraid they would change their minds and give him another corpse before he was through.
He called the squadroom at 1:30 on Tuesday afternoon, ready to give a full necropsy report to whoever was handling the case. Steve Carella took the call. He had spoken to Blaney many times before, and Blaney was glad that Carella and not another of the 87th’s cops had answered the phone. Carella was a man who understood the problems of the medical examiner’s office. Carella was a man you could talk to.
The men exchanged the pleasantries and amenities and then Blaney said, “I’m calling about this little girl they sent over. From what I understand, the body was found in Majesta, but it seems to be connected with a case you’re working on, and I was asked to deliver my report to you. I’ll send this over typed later, Carella, but I thought you might want the findings right away.”
“I’m glad you called,” Carella said.
“Her name’s Eileen Glennon,” Blaney said, “That right?”
“That’s right.”
“I wanted to make sure we were talking about the same person before I went through the whole bit.”
“That’s okay,” Carella said.
“This was an interesting one,” Blaney said. “Not a mark on her. Plenty of bloodstains, but no visible wounds. I figure she’s been dead a few days, probably since Sunday night sometime. Where was she found, exactly?”
“In a little park.”
“Hidden?”
“No, not exactly. But the park doesn’t get much traffic.”
“Well, that might explain it. In any case, I estimate she was lying wherever they found her since Sunday night, if that’s any help to you.”
“It might be helpful,” Carella said. “How’d she die?”
“Well, now, that’s what was interesting about this. Does she live in Majesta?”
“No. She lives with her mother. In Isola.”
“Well, that makes sense, all right. Though I can’t understand why she didn’t at least try to get home. Of course, considering what I found, she probably had a range of symptoms, which could have confused her. Especially after what she’d been through.”
“What kind of symptoms, Blaney?”
“Chills, febrile temperature, vomiting maybe, syncope, weakness, and eventually stupor and delirium.”
“I see,” Carella said.
“The autopsy revealed a slightly distended cervix, tenderness of the lower abdomen, discharge from the external os, and tenacula marks.”
“I see,” Carella said, not seeing at all.
“A septic infection,” Blaney stated simply. “And, at first, I thought it might have been the cause of death. But it wasn’t. Although it certainly ties in with what did kill her.”
“And what was that?” Carella asked patiently.
“The bleeding.”
“But you said there were no wounds.”
“I said there were no visible wounds. Of course, the tenacula marks were a clue.”
“What are tenacula marks?” Carella asked.
“Tenacula is a plural for tenaculum — Latin,” Blaney said. “A tenaculum is a surgical tool, a small sharp-pointed hook set in a handle. We use it for seizing and picking up parts. Of the body, naturally. In operations or dissections.”
Carella suddenly remembered that he didn’t very often like talking to Blaney. He tried to speed the conversation along, wanting to get at the facts without all the details.
“Well, where were these tenacula marks?” he asked pointedly.
“On the cervical lip,” Blaney said. “The girl had bled profusely from the uterine canal. I also found pieces of pla—”
“What did she die from, Blaney?” Carella asked impatiently.
“I was getting to that. I was just telling you. I found pieces of pla—”
“How did she die?”
“She died of uterine hemorrhage. The septicemia was a complication.”
“I don’t understand. What caused the hemorrhage?”
“I was trying to tell you, Carella, that I also found pieces of placental tissue in the cervix of the uterus.”
“Placental...?”
“The way I figure it, the job was done either Saturday or Sunday sometime. The girl was probably wandering around when—”
“What job? What are you talking about, Blaney?”
“The abortion,” Blaney said flatly. “That little girl had an abortion sometime over the weekend. You want to know what killed her? That’s what killed her!”
Somebody had to tell Kling what everybody in the squadroom decided that Tuesday. Somebody had to tell him, but Kling was at a funeral. So, instead of speculating, instead of hurling theories at a man who was carrying grief inside him, instead of telling him that one of those closets they’d spoken about had finally been opened and, like all closets opened in the investigation of a homicide, it contained something that should have remained hidden — instead of confronting him with something they knew he would disbelieve anyway — they decided to find out a little more about it. Carella and Meyer went back to see the girl’s mother, Mrs. Glennon, leaving Bert Kling undisturbed at the funeral.
Indian summer was out of place at that cemetery.
Oh, she had charm, that guileful bitch. The trees lining the road to the burial plot were dressed in gaudy brilliance, reds and oranges and burnt yellows and browns and unimaginable hues mixed on a Renaissance palette. Hotly, they danced overhead, whispering secrets to the balmy October breeze, while the mourners marched beneath the branches of the trees, following the coffin in colorless black, their heads bent, their feet drifting through idle fallen leaves, whispering, whispering.