Night Passage

Chapter 42

Anthony DeAngelo had never seen a murdered person before. He’d seen a couple of people killed in car accidents, and he’d even done mouth-to-mouth on a guy who was having a heart attack and died while DeAngelo was working on him. But the naked woman in the junior high school parking lot was his first murder victim. There were bruises on her face, and her head was turned at an awkward angle.

Someone had written SLUT in what looked like lipstick across her stomach. DeAngelo tried to look at her calmly as he called in on his radio. He didn’t want the kids being herded past the scene by teachers to think he was frightened by it. But he was. This wasn’t accidental death. This stiffening corpse lying naked in the dull mist, on the damp asphalt in the early morning, had died violently during the night at the hands of a terrible person. He didn’t know exactly what he should do, standing there talking into his radio. He wanted to cover the poor woman, but he didn’t think he ought to disturb the crime scene. Rain wasn’t heavy. Probably didn’t bother her anyway. He wished Jesse would hurry up and get there.

In the school the kids were crowded at the windows despite the best efforts of the teachers. The school bus driver who had spotted the body first was standing beside DeAngelo’s cruiser. She looked for people to talk to, to tell about what she had seen and how she was the first to see it, and oh God, the poor woman! But DeAngelo was still on the radio and the junior high school staff was fruitlessly busy trying to protect the kids from seeing the corpse. He felt better when Jesse pulled up in the unmarked black Ford with the buggy whip antenna on the back bumper swaying in decreasing arcs as the car stopped and Jesse got out.

“Anthony,” Jesse said.

He walked over and looked down at the body.

“ ‘Slut,’ ” he said.

“Yeah. Like the car. Like the cat,” DeAngelo said.

Jesse nodded, still looking at her.

“Clothes?” he said.

DeAngelo shook his head. “I haven’t seen any.”

The town ambulance pulled into the parking lot and behind it Peter Perkins in his own car, a Mazda pickup. Two young Paradise firemen who doubled as EMTs got out and walked almost gingerly toward the crime scene. Peter Perkins got out of his truck. He was in jeans and a tee shirt with his gun strapped on and his badge on his belt. A thirty-five-millimeter camera hung around his neck. He went to the bed of his pickup and got his evidence kit. One of the EMTs knelt beside the body and felt for a pulse.

After a moment he said, “She’s dead, Jesse.”

“Un huh.”

“What do you want us to do, Jesse?”

The EMT was not quite twenty-five. His name was Duke Vincent. Jesse played softball with him in the Paradise town league. Like DeAngelo, Vincent had seen death. But never murder. Vincent’s voice was calm but soft, and Jesse knew he was feeling shaky. Jesse remembered the first time he’d seen it. It was a lot worse than this, a shotgun, close up, he remembered.

“You think her neck’s broken, Dukie?” Jesse said.

Vincent looked at the corpse again. Jesse knew he didn’t like it.

“I guess so,” Vincent said.

“Yeah, me too,” Jesse said. “Probably what killed her. You and Steve stand by with the ambulance for a while. We’ll have the county M.E. look at her, and there’ll be some state investigators along.”

“Why did he write ‘slut’ on her, Jesse?” DeAngelo said.

“Maybe the word means something special to him.” Jesse said.

“So is it the same guy that did the car and Captain Cat?”

“Might be,” Jesse said.

“But wouldn’t he know that it would connect him to the other crimes?”

Jesse smiled to himself at the TV locution his own officer was speaking in the presence of a murdered person. There were so many cop shows. It was hard for real cops not to start talking like them.

“Might want us to see the connection,” Jesse said. “Or it might be someone else who wants us to think there’s a connection.”

Most of the rest of the force had showed up, some in uniform, some dressed for off duty. For all of them it was their first murder and they stood by a little uneasily watching Jesse, except for Peter Perkins, who had stretched his crime-scene tape around the murder scene, and was now taking pictures. The other cops looked as if they envied him having something to do.

“John,” Jesse said. “You and Arthur put up some horses and keep people behind them.”

“There’s nobody around, Jesse.”

“There will be,” Jesse said. “Suitcase, you talk to the bus driver. Get everything she saw, thinks, hopes, dreams, whatever. Let her talk, pay attention. Ed, go in, talk to the principal. We’re going to have to talk with the kids, maybe we can do it class by class, find out if they saw anything. We also may have to search the school.”

“For what?” Burke said.

“Her clothes,” Jesse said. “I’d like to find her clothes.”

“Maybe he killed her someplace else and brought her body here nude,” Burke said.

“We find the clothes, it’ll help us decide that,” Jesse said. “The rest of you spread around and look for her clothes or anything else. Tire tracks, bloodstains. He whacked her around pretty good. But there’s no blood on the pavement.”

“Rain might have washed it,” DeAngelo said.

“Watch where you walk, go in wider and wider circles around the body. Maybe he hit her with something. See if you see anything. Anthony, start knocking on doors, see if anybody lives around here heard anything, or saw a car come into the school parking lot during the night.”

The cops did as they were told. They were happy to be given direction, happy to do something but stand and look at the battered body.

“Dukie,” Jesse said. “You can cover her. And pull the ambulance up so it screens her from the school. Doesn’t do the kids much good to look out at her all morning.”

Behind him in the parking lot, parents had begun to arrive. Already they had heard of a murder at the junior high school. Already they were there to see about their children. Jesse knew he’d have to talk with them. He knew a number of them would want to take their children home. He would like to have kept all the kids here until they had been questioned, but he knew he couldn’t and knew that trying to would accomplish nothing beyond his own aggravation.

Other people were gathering too. Not parents. Just people from the town, who, as the word spread, began to gather silently as close to the scene as they could. He saw Hasty Hathaway moving importantly through the gathering crowd with a plastic rain guard over his snap-brimmed hat. Probably wearing rubbers too, Jesse thought. Jo Jo Genest was there, hatless, in a crinkle finish trench coat. Jesse’s glance paused on Jo Jo. Jo Jo returned it and smiled. Jesse’s glance lingered a thoughtful moment and then moved on. He looked for Abby, but didn’t see her. Past the silent crowd Jesse saw the medical examiner’s car arriving, and behind it an unmarked state car. That would be the homicide guy.

Hathaway cleared the crowd and spoke to John DeLong guarding the barriers, and came on past him toward Jesse. I was right, Jesse thought. He’s wearing rubbers.