The McBain Brief (18 page)

H
er face was small and chubby, the eyes blue and innocently rounded, but seeing nothing. Her body rested on the seat of the wooden bench, one arm twisted awkwardly beneath her.

The candles near the altar flickered and cast their dancing shadows on her face. There was a faded, pink blanket wrapped around her, and against the whiteness of her throat were the purple bruises that told us she'd been strangled.

Her mouth was open, exposing two small teeth and the beginnings of a third.

She was no more than eight months old.

The church was quiet and immense, with early-morning sunlight lighting the stained-glass windows. Dust motes filtered down the long, slanting columns of sunlight, and Father Barron stood tall and darkly somber at the end of the pew, the sun touching his hair like an angel's kiss.

“This is the way you found her, Father?” I asked.

“Yes. Just that way.” The priest's eyes were a deep brown against the chalky whiteness of his face. “I didn't touch her.”

Pat Travers scratched his jaw and stood up, reaching for the pad in his back pocket. His mouth was set in a tight, angry line. Pat had three children of his own. “What time was this, Father?”

“At about five-thirty. We have a six o'clock mass, and I came out to see that the altar was prepared. Our altar boys go to school, you understand, and they usually arrive at the last moment. I generally attend to the altar myself.”

“No sexton?” Pat asked.

“Yes, we have a sexton, but he doesn't arrive until about eight every morning. He comes earlier on Sundays.”

I nodded while Pat jotted the information in his pad. “How did you happen to see her, Father?”

“I was walking to the back of the church to open the doors. I saw something in the pew, and I . . . well, at first I thought it was just a package someone had forgotten. When I came closer, I saw it was . . . was a baby.” He sighed deeply and shook his head.

“The doors were locked, Father?”

“No. No, they're never locked. This is God's house, you know. They were simply closed. I was walking back to open them. I usually open them before the first mass in the morning.”

“They were all unlocked all night?”

“Yes, of course.”

“I see.” I looked down at the baby again. “You . . . you wouldn't know who she is, would you, Father?”

Father Barron shook his head again. “I'm afraid not. She may have been baptized here, but infants all look alike, you know. It would be different if I saw her every Sunday. But . . .” He spread his hands wide in a helpless gesture.

Pat nodded, and kept looking at the dead child. “We'll have to send some of the boys to take pictures and prints, Father. I hope
you don't mind. And we'll have to chalk up the pew. It shouldn't take too long, and we'll have the body out as soon as possible.”

Father Barron looked down at the dead baby. He crossed himself then and said, “God have mercy on her soul.”

I was sipping
at my hot coffee when the buzzer on my desk sounded. I pushed down the toggle and said, “Levine here.”

“Dave, want to come into my office a minute? This is the lieutenant.”

“Sure thing,” I told him. I put down the cup and said, “Be right back,” to Pat, and headed for the Skipper's office.

He was sitting behind his desk with our report in his hands. He glanced up when I came in and said, “Sit down, Dave. Hell of a thing, isn't it?”

“Yes,” I said.

“I'm holding it back from the papers, Dave. If this breaks, we'll have every mother in the city telephoning us. You know what that means?”

“You want it fast.”

“I want it damned fast. I'm pulling six men from other jobs to help you and Pat. I don't want to go to another precinct for help because the bigger this gets, the better its chances of breaking print are. I want it quiet and small, and I want it fast.” He stopped and shook his head, and then muttered, “Goddamn thing.”

“We're waiting for the autopsy report now,” I said. “As soon as we get it, we may be able to—”

“What did it look like to you?”

“Strangulation. It's there in our report.”

The lieutenant glanced at the typewritten sheet in his hands,
mumbled, “Uhm,” and then said, “While you're waiting, you'd better start checking the Missing Persons calls.”

“Pat's doing that now, sir.”

“Good, good. You know what to do, Dave. Just get me an answer to it fast.”

“We'll do our best, sir.”

He leaned back in his leather chair, “A little girl, huh?” He shook his head. “Damn shame. Damn shame.” He kept shaking his head and looking at the report, and then he dropped the report on his desk and said, “Here're the boys you're got to work with.” He handed me a typewritten list of names. “All good, Dave. Get me results.”

“I'll try, sir.”

Pat had a list of calls on his desk when I went outside again. I picked it up and glanced through it rapidly. A few older kids were lost, and there had been the usual frantic pleas from frantic mothers who should have watched their kids more carefully in the first place.

“What's this?” I asked. I put my forefinger alongside a call clocked in at eight-fifteen. A Mrs. Wilkes had phoned to say she'd left her baby outside in the carriage, and the carriage was gone.

“They found the kid,” Pat said. “Her older daughter had simply taken the kid for a walk. There's nothing there, Dave.”

“The Skipper wants action, Pat. The photos come in yet?”

“Over there.” He indicated a pile of glossy photographs on his desk. I picked up the stack and thumbed through it. They'd shot the baby from every conceivable angle, and there were two good close-ups of her face. I fanned the pictures out on my desk top and phoned the lab. I recognized Caputo's voice at once.

“Any luck, Cappy?”

“That you, Dave?”

“Yep.”

“You mean on the baby?”

“Yeah.”

“The boys brought in a whole slew of stuff. A pew collects a lot of prints, Dave.”

“Anything we can use?”

“I'm running them through now. If we get anything, I'll let you know.”

“Fine. I want the baby's footprints taken and a stat sent to every hospital in the state.”

“Okay. It's going to be tough if the baby was born outside, though.”

“Maybe we'll be lucky. Put the stat on the machine, will you? And tell them we want immediate replies.”

“I'll have it taken care of, Dave.”

“Good. Cappy, we're going to need all the help we can get on this one. So . . .”

“I'll do all I can.”

“Thanks. Let me know if you get anything.”

“I will. So long, Dave. I've got work.”

He clicked off, and I leaned back and lighted a cigarette. Pat picked up one of the baby's photos and glumly studied it.

“When they get him, they should cut off his . . .”

“He'll get the chair,” I said. “That's for sure.”

“I'll pull the switch. Personally. Just ask me. Just ask me and I'll do it.”

The baby was
stretched out on the long white table when I went down to see Doc Edwards. A sheet covered the corpse, and Doc was busy typing up a report. I looked over his shoulder:

Doc Edwards looked up from the typewriter.

“Not nice, Dave.”

“No, not nice at all.” I saw that he was ready to type in the
Result of chemical analysis
space. “Anything else on her?”

“Not much. Dried tears on her face. Urine on her abdomen, buttocks, and genitals. Traces of Desitin and petroleum jelly there, too. That's about it.”

“Time of death?”

“I'd put it at about three a.m. last night.”

“Uh-huh.”

“You want a guess?”

“Sure.”

“Somebody doesn't like his sleep to be disturbed by a crying kid. That's my guess.”

“Nobody likes his sleep disturbed,” I said. “What's the Desitin and petroleum jelly for? That normal?”

“Yeah, sure. Lots of mothers use it. Mostly for minor irritations. Urine burn, diaper rash, that sort of thing.”

“I see.”

“This shouldn't be too tough, Dave. You know who the kid is yet?”

“We're working on that now.”

“Well, good luck.”

“Thanks.”

I turned to go, and Doc Edwards began pecking at the typewriter again, completing the autopsy report on a dead girl.

There was good
news waiting for me back at the office. Pat rushed over with a smile on his face and a thick sheet of paper in his hands.

“Here's the ticket,” he said.

I took the paper and looked at it. It was the photostat of a birth certificate.

“Here's how they got it,” Pat said, handing me another stat. I looked at it quickly. It was obviously the reverse side of the birth certificate.

There were several more good reasons why a birth certificate should be kept in the sugar bowl, and then below that:

“Alice Dreiser,” I said.

“That's the mother. Prints and all. I've already sent a copy down to Cappy to check against the ones they lifted from the pew.”

“Fine. Pick one of the boys from the list the Skipper gave us, Pat. Tell him to get whatever he can on Alice Drieser and her husband. They have to be sailors or relations to get admitted to a naval hospital, don't they?”

“Yeah. You've got to prove dependency.”

“Fine. Get the guy's last address, and we'll try to run down the woman, or him, or both. Get whoever you pick to call right away, will you?”

“Right. Why pick anyone? I'll make the call myself.”

“No, I want you to check the phone book for any Alice Dreisers. In the meantime, I'll be looking over the baby's garments.”

“You'll be down at the lab?”

“Yeah. Phone me, Pat.”

“Right.”