looking ready to fall down, all four stories of it. The fire truck was still there, and the battalion chief waiting for them. 'Not much of a fire,' he told them, 'but when we’d knocked it down we found the body. Somebody likely thought he’d get rid of it by lighting a match, but he bungled the job, this damp weather.'
'Arson?' said Glasser. 'Definitely?'
'You better believe. A trail of kerosene to the body, but it fizzled out-you notice it’s a derelict building, part of the roof’s gone and there was a mist this morning. It’s back here.' Even on this gray morning threatening rain, a little crowd had gathered to watch the activity, and the uniformed men from the black and white were keeping them back. The chief led Glasser and Palliser into what might have started life as a small hotel fifty years ago, and ended up as an apartment house. The place had been a shambles even before the fire; there were clusters of broken bricks and heaps of plaster dust, gaping empty doorways, and most of it was open to the sky. 'The quake in seventy-one finished it off, but they just haven’t got round to taking the rest of it down. There you are.' The chief pointed unnecessarily.
Near what had been the rear door of the building, between the empty doorway and another pile of rubbled brick, the body sprawled almost casually. Palliser and Glasser didn’t need the chief’s interpretation to read what had likely happened here. It was a little, slender body, and somebody had tried to set fire to it, but the fire had gone out without doing much damage.
'A lot of smoke,' said the chief. 'Fellow at the tailor shop down the block called in the alarm.' There was a cluster of miscellaneous little shops down the block, in other ramshackle buildings not yet condemned-the cluster of citizens outside had probably come from there.
Palliser squatted over the body. 'Make any educated guesses, Henry?'
'One,' said Glasser sadly. 'She was raped-assaulted at least-and probably strangled.'
Palliser grunted. 'You’d better call up S.I.D. Go through the motions, photographs and so on.' Glasser went out to use the radio in the black and white.
The body was that of a young girl: very young, Palliser thought. Dark blonde, thin, hard to say if she’d been pretty or not, the face discolored with death or the effects of strangulation, the body already stiff: dead awhile. She was naked from the waist down, and there was dark dried blood on the inside of her thin little-girl thighs. Still on the upper half of the body was a pale-green knit turtleneck sweater, pulled up to show part of a dirty white brassiere; by the slight small swell of one breast, she’d hardly needed that. On her feet were what looked like new sneakers, blue and white, fairly clean, and white ankle socks. One arm was flung out from the body, and Palliser had just made a couple of discoveries when Glasser came back.
'The mobile lab’s on the way.'
'Good. Look at this,' said Palliser. 'Makes it not quite so anonymous, at least. We may get her identified right off.'
'Oh, yes,' said Glasser, squatting beside him. 'Helpful.'
The trail of kerosene had led from the front hallway, but the fire had first created a lot of smoke, and according to the engine boys had been already dying out when they got here; it hadn’t damaged the body at all. On the outflung bare arm on the inside of the elbow, clearly visible, was a long puckered scar; on the third finger of that hand was a ring. Palliser had delicately manipulated the nearly rigid wrist around to inspect the bezel. 'We’ll want pictures, but it could make shortcuts all right.' The ring was a school ring, the usual indecipherable crest, a little blue enamel, and in minute letters around that, FRESNO JR. HIGH. Palliser stood up.
'Fresno,' said Glasser. 'My God, these kids. She doesn’t look over thirteen or fourteen. And ending up down here-' But it wasn’t anything new, they’d seen much the same thing before, and there wasn’t much to say about it.
They waited for the mobile lab, told Duke to get shots of the ring and send it up to the office. It was getting on for noon then. In the Missing Persons office back at headquarters they found Lieutenant Carey hunched over a report, and he just groaned at mention of a possibly-reported-missing juvenile.
'We’ve got a million of ’em, from all over the country. Take your pick.'
'Maybe we can narrow it down,' said Palliser. 'I don’t think this one was very far into the teens. An older one, she could have been out roaming on her own a couple of years, but one this young-she might not have been away from home and mother very long. And we’ve got two good leads-she had on a ring from Fresno Junior High, and there’s a distinctive scar on the left arm.'
'We can have a look at the recent files,' said Carey.
They did. Just in the last month, enough juveniles had been reported missing to this office to build up those files into a thick stack, and they had to be glanced at one by one, the description scanned briefly to weed it out. Palliser and Glasser took a lunch break, ran into Galeano and Conway at Federico’s on North Broadway, and heard about the off-beat case Carey had just handed them. Glasser went down to S.I.D. when they got back to base, to see if they’d come up with anything, and Palliser went back to the files. It was after two-thirty when he came up with a recently filed report that rang bells.
Reported missing to the Fresno police, Sandra Moseley, aged fifteen, five-two, a hundred and five, blonde and blue: scar inside left arm, appendectomy scar; reported by mother, Mrs. Anita Moseley. She was thought to have been with another girl, Stephanie Peacock, also fifteen, also missing.
'Kids,' thought Palliser. He went back up to Robbery-Homicide and got on the phone to the Fresno department. A Captain Almont said he’d get in touch with Mrs. Moseley. 'It looks pretty definite, it’s this Moseley girl dead down there?'
'Well, we’d like a positive identification, but there’s the ring and the scar. No autopsy yet, but it looks pretty certain for Murder One.'
'Hell of a thing,' said Almont. 'We’ll get in touch with the mother and get back to you.'
'Thanks very much,' said Palliser. He wondered momentarily what had happened to the other girl-if they had been together. He wondered what he was going to do about Trina. The obedience club secretary had given him the name of a book to get.
Glasser came back and said S.I.D. hadn’t picked up any latents or any other physical evidence at the scene. She’d probably been killed elsewhere and brought there just before the fire was set. 'Well, we’ve probably got her identified, at least,' said Palliser absently.
Galeano and Conway had been deflected onto the supposed hit-run, which everybody had comfortably supposed would get buried in Pending. Landers had gone to cover the inquest.
At least they had no sooner been informed that it wasn’t a hit-run than they got an I.D. for him. Traffic had come across the body about midnight on Monday, in the middle of Valencia Avenue up from Venice Boulevard; there hadn’t been any I.D. on it, so the lab had collected his prints next morning to run through. Ten minutes after Bainbridge had called Mendoza, the routine report came in. His prints were in their records; he had a small pedigree from a while back. He was Robert Chard, now thirty-nine. He’d been picked up for auto theft as a juvenile, for attempted assault just after he’d turned legally adult, and had one count of B. and E. after that. He’d never served any time at all, and apparently had never been in trouble since.
The latest address was sixteen years out of date, but it was a place to start. Longwood Avenue. You had to go by routine even when it looked unproductive. Not feeling very hopeful, Galeano tried that address, which was an old frame house in need of paint, and turned up a Mrs. Holly, a thirtyish slattern who said she was Robert Chard’s sister.
'Why you looking for Bob? He hasn’t been in any trouble for a long time, nor he won’t be either, under the thumb of that bitch he married. You cops tryin’ to make out he done something?'
'No, ma’am,' said Galeano politely. 'We’d like to get his body identified. He’s dead.'
'Well, for God’s sake,' she said mildly. 'Bob? Is that so? Was it an accident?'
'We’re not sure,' said Galeano. 'When did you see him last?'
'Gee, I’d hafta think. The last years, since he got married, rest of the family hardly ever saw him at all. That bitch, she used to be scared he’d spend money on presents for Ma, and he kinda got out of the habit of coming-of course Ma died last year- Well, I could tell you where they were living, last I knew, but I don’t know if they still lived there. It was Constance Street. My God, think of Bob dead-damn, I s’pose I got to get in touch with her, I oughta go to the funeral.'
