Dying in the Post-War World

4

I left Kruger at the counter where he was working on a big slice of apple pie, and used a pay phone to call home.

“Nate,” Peg said, before I’d had a chance to say anything, “don’t you know that fellow Keenan? Robert Keenan?”

“Yes,” I said.

“I just heard him on the radio,” she said. Her voice sounded both urgent and upset. “His daughter...”

“I know,” I said. “Bob Keenan is who called me this morning. He called me before he called the police.”

There was a pause. Then: “Are you working on the case?”

“Yes. Sort of. The cops and the FBI, it’s their baby.” Poor choice of words. I moved ahead quickly: “But Bob wants me around. In case an intermediary is needed or something.”

“Nate, you’ve got to help him. You’ve got to help him get his little girl back.”

This morning was forgotten. No talk of divorce now. Just a pregnant mother frightened by the radio, wanting some reassurance from her man. Wanting him to tell her that this glorious post-war world really was a wonderful, safe place to bring a child into.

“I’ll try, Peg. I’ll try. Don’t wait supper for me.”

That afternoon, a pair of plainclothes men gave Kruger a sobering report. They stayed out of Keenan’s earshot, but Kruger didn’t seem to mind my eavesdropping.

They — and several dozen more plainclothes dicks — had been combing the neighborhood, talking to neighbors and specifically to the janitors of the many apartment buildings in the area. One of these janitors had found something disturbing in his basement laundry room.

“Blood smears in a laundry tub,” a thin young detective told Kruger.

“And a storage locker that had been broken into,” his older, but just as skinny partner said. “Some shopping bags scattered around — and some rags that were stained, too. Reddish-brown stains.”

Kruger stared at the floor. “Let’s get a forensic team over there.”

The detectives nodded, and went off to do that.

Mrs. Keenan and ten-year-old Jane were upstairs, at the neighbors’, through all of this; but Bob stayed right there, at the phone, waiting for it to ring. It didn’t.

I stayed pretty close to him, though I circulated from time to time, picking up on what the detectives were saying. The mood was grim. I drank a lot of coffee, till I started feeling jumpy, then backed off.

Late afternoon, Kruger caught my eye and I went over to him.

“That basement with the laundry tubs,” he said quietly. “In one of the drains, there were traces of blood, chips of bone, fragments of flesh, little clumps of hair.”

“Oh God.”

“I’m advising Chief of Detectives Storms to send teams out looking.”

“Looking for what?”

“What do you think?”

“God.”

“Heller, I want to get started right now. I can use you. Give Keenan some excuse.”

I went over to Bob, who sat on the edge of a straight-backed chair by the phone stand. His glazed eyes were fixed on the phone.

“I’m going to run home for supper,” I told him. “Little woman’s in the family way, you know, and I got to check in with her or get in dutch. Can you hold down the fort?”

“Sure, Nate. Sure. You’ll come back, though?”

I patted his shoulder. “I’ll come right back.”

Kruger and I paired up; half a dozen other teams, made up of plainclothes and uniformed men already at the scene, went out into the field as well. More were on the way. We were to look under every porch, behind every bush, in every basement, in every coal bin, trash can, any possible hiding place where a little body — or what was left of one — might be stowed.

“We’ll check the sewers, too,” Kruger said, as we walked down the sidewalk. It was dusk now; the streetlamps had just come on. Coolness off the lake helped you forget it was July. The city seemed washed in gray-blue, but night hadn’t stolen away the clarity of day.

I kept lifting manhole covers and Kruger would cast the beam of his flashlight down inside, but we saw nothing but muck.

“Let’s not forget the catch basins,” I said.

“Good point.”

We began checking those as well, and in the passageway between two brick apartment buildings directly across from the similar building that housed those bloody laundry tubs, the circular iron catch-basin lid — like a manhole cover, but smaller — looked loose.

“Somebody opened that recently,” Kruger said. His voice was quiet but the words were ominous in the stillness of the darkening night.

“We need something to pry it up a little,” I said, kneeling. “Can’t get my fingers under it.”

“Here,” Kruger said. He plucked the badge off the breast pocket of his jacket and, bending down, used the point of the star to pry the lid up to where I could wedge my fingers under it.

I slid the heavy iron cover away, and Kruger tossed the beam of the flashlight into the hole.

A face looked up at us.

A child’s face, framed in blonde, muck-dampened, darkened hair.

“It looks like a doll,” Kruger said. He sounded out of breath.

“That’s no doll,” I said, and backed away, knowing I’d done as my wife had requested: I’d found Bob Keenan’s little girl.

Part of her, anyway.