Little Girls Lost (2 page)

After more than ten years in homicide he couldn't stop his mind from clinically ticking off the presumptive facts of the case. Sam didn't like that part of himself. He had seen too many investigations screwed up because the detective on the case jumped to a conclusion and was too sure that he was right. Sam made a point of cultivating uncertainty, a fact that drove his partner crazy but also made him one of the best cops in the city.

Turning, he located Bud in the crowd and motioned with his head. It was time to examine the body.

The remains of what had once been a young woman with a bright future had presumably been drifting slowly along in the sluggish river on its way into town when it snagged on some branches and debris that had collected at the base of one of the pilings on which the suspension bridge was constructed. There it had rested, partly in the water and partly out of it, until time, heat from the sun, and the tireless work of countless microorganisms had rendered its flesh so rancid and noxious as to draw the attention of a jogger who was nearly a full city block away.
 

Sam could never quite get used to the stench of a body that had been dead and neglected for far too long. He knew that it was wrong, both cruel and illogical, to be angry at a corpse for stinking, but knowing it didn’t stop him from feeling that way. Over time he arrived at a compromise, hating the rotting flesh but focusing his sympathy and his concern on the human soul that had once occupied it. "Hate the stink but love the stinker," Patty had joked once, when he had shared the thought with her. She giggled at the idea for days afterwards, but Sam could never bring himself to laugh at it. There wasn't anything funny about being dead. He knew that better than most.
 

The body had been photographed from every angle, detangled from the river debris, and moved to the river bank by the time they arrived. The medical examiner was wearing his trademark powder blue gloves as he went over the body with a fine-toothed comb. Sam got his first look at the victim over the ME’s shoulder. The river hadn't been kind to her, but even so he could tell that she had been young and pretty, with long brown hair and a face that in better times might have been called sweet. She deserved better than this, but that wasn't saying much. Most everyone deserved better than what she'd received.

Bud held his nose and carefully maneuvered to a standing position where he wouldn't get mud on his freshly-polished shoes. "Christ, I hate river rot," he muttered loud enough for Sam to hear. "It sticks in your nose for days." To the examiner, he added in a voice pitched to carry: "What've we got, Bobby?"

Robert Wilson looked over his shoulder with a look of irritation. He hated the nickname "Bobby," which was precisely why Bud insisted on calling him that. "We have a dead Caucasian female, looks to be mid to late teens. I count seven stab wounds. May be post-mortem. I'll know more when I get her back to my lab."

"Time of death?" Sam asked.

Robert shrugged. “Judging by the extent of decomposition I'm going to say 48 hours. Give or take."

Sam ran his eyes over the surroundings, taking in the river, the bank along which it ran, and the hulking metal bridge that stretched overhead. "I'm thinking this wasn't where he did it."

"Nah," Bud agreed. "Maybe he dumped her from the bridge?"

Sam looked up, considering, recreating the scene in his mind. "Could be. But a car stopped in the middle of a bridge is conspicuous, and the body would make a hell of a splash after that drop. That would make him nervous."

Bud ran his fingers through his short beard, considering. "You're giving him too much credit. A guy stupid enough to kill a girl and drop the body where we're sure to find it is stupid enough to be noisy.”

"Yeah," Sam agreed. He knew that Bud had a point, but there was something about it that didn't feel right. Still, they had to check every angle. He made a mental note to tell one of the uniforms to ask around, see if someone who lived or work in the area saw something suspicious on the bridge a couple nights back.

With Bud, climbed back up the steeply-sloping bank to the road. In his mind, he saw the investigation stretch out in a series of steps before him. He hated every one of them.

Late that night a cab let Sam out in front of his house, and after the car pulled away he stood still breathing the night air and taking the measure of his house. He watched the windows, looking for movement. There was nothing.

The lights were out on the second floor, which meant Patty had gone to bed, but she had left the light in the kitchen on for him, which was a good sign. A light on in the kitchen meant that she was thinking of him, and wanted him to have some small greeting when he came home from work. No lights on would have meant that she was mad at him, and that he’d catch hell in the morning. All the lights on would mean that she had brought a friend home. Those were the worst nights of them all.

He let himself in the front door, stepping carefully in case there was a cat underfoot, and passed through the dark living room into the kitchen. He hadn't eaten much, but it was too late for a meal and nothing in the refrigerator caught his eye. Finally he grabbed an apple out of a bowl on the counter. It would be enough to get him to sleep.

The house was silent when he headed upstairs to the bedroom. Sam listened for the sound of Patty's breathing, and felt reassured when he heard it. He needn't have bothered, though—he could have smelled the stale liquor on her breath from the hallway. He tucked her in and gave her a quick kiss on the cheek. Even on the bad days it was good to have her home.

The next morning Sam parked his car in front of a gray suburban house with a sick feeling in his stomach that had nothing to do with the three cups of coffee he'd already drunk in the station.

Dental records on the body they found in the river had turned up a match: one Jasmine Martin, sixteen years old and a high school junior. Inside that gray house sat Jasmine's mother, who was no doubt struggling to come to terms with the fact that her daughter, once so full of life, was now dead. Sam knew that feeling all too well, and he hated that he was about to inflict an extra bit of pain on her.
 

He got out of the car with a sigh, blinking against the bright morning sunshine. If nothing else, he could take consolation in the fact that sometimes the pain is so deep that it can't get any worse.
 

There were already two cops in the living room when Sam arrived, and Sam caught sight of Bud in the kitchen. Joining him there, he gave his partner a quizzical look. "Looking for something to eat?" he asked.
 

Bud smirked. "Nah. Waiting for you. You're a lot better at this than I am."

Sam shook his head. "There is no such thing as being good at this." He looked back over his shoulder in the direction of the living room, where he could hear women's hushed voices and scattered sounds of grief. "Let's get it over with."

The living room of the Martin home was comfortable, a little too much so, with overstuffed easy chairs circling the television set. On the couch in the center of the room sat Jasmine's mother, looking very tired with her dirty blonde hair pulled back into a sloppy ponytail. She was clutching a framed photo against her chest. With a practiced eye Sam sized her up and, despite himself, made a few educated guesses: she was a recovering alcoholic, most likely, and probably a smoker, too, though if so she was a careful one because he couldn't smell nicotine in the room. This thing with her daughter would be hard on her, Sam thought. Losing a child is impossibly hard for everyone, but if you have something to fall back on—your faith, your family, or a sense of purpose—you have a chance to make it through. This woman looked like she didn't have much in her corner on a good day.

Sam kneeled in front of her. Two other women, about the same age, hovered on either side and eyed him warily. Sam knew they were protecting their friend, but he had some questions that needed asking.

"Mrs. Martin, I can only guess at the pain you're going through right now, but I need to ask you a few questions." He waited for her eyes to focus on him and for her to nod. "Was your daughter seeing anyone? Was there anyone in her life who made her feel uncomfortable or afraid?"

Jasmine's mother stared at him silently for a time. Sam knew her mind was returning from the realm of memory to the present day. "I ... no. I don't think so."

Sam persisted. "Anyone at all. If you can give us anything, any place to start, it would be a huge help in catching the person who's responsible."

Her eyes filled with tears. Sam knew she was thinking about what had happened to Jasmine, and how her daughter must have felt, how she must have screamed and begged in the last few moments of her life. She took a look at the photo in her hands, then handed it to Sam. It was a photograph of a pretty young girl with brown hair and a confident smile, barely recognizable as the corpse they had pulled from the river the day before.
 

One of the women bustling about, who had a tired face and greasy hair, took up a position nearby. "Joanne, don't you think you should tell them about Jimmy?"

Jasmine's mother shot her an acid look, but then she nodded reluctantly. "I suppose I should tell you," she said, giving Sam an unhappy look. "Jasmine's father ... he left me. We didn't see or hear from him for years, but a few weeks ago he called. Out of the blue. He said he wanted to be part of Jasmine's life again."

"Was that a problem?"

She shifted uncomfortably. "He ... he used to get pretty rough, when we fought. And he hit Jasmine too, sometimes. Jasmine didn't want to have anything to do with him." She paused. "Do you think he might have something to do with this?"

Sam shrugged. "I can't say for sure, but we'll look into it. Thank you. Is there anything else?"

"She did ... there was a boyfriend. I didn't like him much, I thought Jasmine could have done better. She was so beautiful, she could have had any boy she wanted. But she saw something in him. He's a musician, or at least he claims to be."

Sam nodded. They had a place to start. He felt intuitively that the deadbeat dad was probably a dead end, but musicians who are just starting out play wherever they can get a gig, in some of the cheapest and roughest parts of town. If Jasmine was following her boyfriend to these places, it could have brought her into contact with the sort of person who would hurt a girl to get what he wanted. "Do you know his name, ma'am?"

"Billy Monroe," a woman's voice pronounced to Sam's right. He turned to look up into the scowling face of one of the women who had come to help Jasmine's mother during her time of grief. "He used to be friends with my son, until I told my boy he wasn't welcome around our home anymore. If he's still the same little punk I knew, you'll find him causing trouble down by the Lucky Strike on 5th."

The Lucky Strike by day was a depressing little box of a building surrounded by concrete, out in the part of town where downtown began to give way to the dirty factories that dotted the industrial district.

When the sun went down, though, the nightclub came into its own, illuminated on nearly every surface with a garish display of neon tubing that made shadow puppets of pale punk rockers and cast their monstrous shadows across every surface.

Sam walked with Bud across the parking lot and toward the front entrance. He knew his partner was taking a measure of the place, trying to decide whether these kids were as tough as they were acting or whether the whole thing was a game of make-believe. As a cop you learn that, in some ways, it really doesn't matter; even if a kid is nothing but a gangster wanna-be he may choose this night to impress his friends by trying to take out a cop. Sam didn't feel the familiar tingle along the back of his neck that signaled danger, though. It was a Thursday night, and the crowd wasn't in full rebel form yet.
 

The front door was flanked by five kids in black leather. Sam tried to hide his smirk. They all wanted to be non-conformists, and yet they were dressed so much alike it may as well have been a uniform. Like most would-be rebels he'd met, they were just members of a club.

He nodded at one of them, a kid with a dramatic mohawk with red and blue stripes. "You know a Billy Monroe?" he asked.

The kid looked back at him defiantly. "Who's asking?"

"I am," Sam replied evenly. "Don't worry, he's not in trouble, we just have a few questions for him."

The kid looked back and forth at his friends, trying to decide what to do. Bud cleared his throat. "There's no trouble here unless you make some. You're obviously a shitty liar, so just tell us where he is and get on with it."

The kid stared defiantly at Bud for a moment, but then something inside him gave way. "Billy!" he called over his shoulder. "Some people here to see you."

Sam looked past him at a shadowed area beside a dumpster. Three teenagers in black were huddled there, but when they felt a police detective's eyes on them, two of them beat a hasty retreat. Sam knew that he had probably interrupted a low-level drug sale, but it wasn't worth his time. He had bigger fish to fry. He walked over to the remaining figure.

Billy Monroe was the very image of the punk rebel, with tattoos covering both arms and a black hat pulled down over a head that rested on a the sort of neck you usually only see on a bulldog. To Sam's eyes, he looked like perfect boyfriend material for the sort of teenager who wanted to piss off her mother.

"You're Billy Monroe?" he asked the kid.

"Yeah," Billy replied, looking unhappy to find himself in this conversation. Over Sam's shoulders his eyes cast daggers at the friend who had ratted him out.
 

"You dated a girl named Jasmine?" Bud asked. He had taken up a position slightly behind Sam and angled so that he could keep an eye out for anyone who might be sneaking up behind them. Sam thought the measure was probably unnecessary, but he still felt glad that his partner quite literally had his back.