“No, Larry, you’re trying to be a jerk.”
Out on the street, it seemed as if Larry yelled something out after him. Sam kept on walking.
In the daylight, the crime scene looked smaller and less sinister. He kicked a stone onto the railroad tracks, frustrated after his drive here. His meeting with his father-in-law had made him late to see the county medical examiner, who was now down the coast in Hampton, looking at a body that had washed up from the Atlantic. So the autopsy report would have to wait until tomorrow. He stood on the tracks, saw the gouges in the mud where the funeral home boys had retrieved the body. How in hell did his guy end up here, dead and alone?
Funny, he thought, how John Doe was now his guy. Well, it was true. Somehow he had turned up dead in Sam’s city, and Sam was expected to do something about it. He was going to find out who this guy was, and his name, occupation, and what had killed him. That was his job.
9 1 1 2 8 3.
The newly disturbed mud yielded no clues. He started walking in a slow circle, staring down at the dirt and the grass. An hour later, all he’d come up with was an empty RC Cola bottle, four soggy cigarette butts, and a 1940 penny. He kept the penny.
Now what?
Two men emerged from behind one of the small warehouses, moving deliberately up the railroad track. Both wore tattered long cloth coats and patched trousers. They stayed to the side of the tracks as they came closer.
Sam looked around. He was alone.
“Got any spare change, pal?” the man on the left called out.
“No, I don’t.”
“Here’s the deal, pal. You turn out your pockets, give us your wallet, your shoes and coat, and we’ll let you be.”
The first man moved his hand from behind his coat, showing a length of pipe. “Or we don’t let you be. Whaddya think?” The second man grinned, showing gaps in his teeth, and also the length of the pipe he was carrying.
Sam pulled his coat aside, reached up to his shoulder holster, pulled out his .38-caliber revolver. Then, with his other hand, he took out his badge. “I think we’ve got another deal going on here.” The men froze, and Sam said, “Am I right, guys?”
The one on the left gave a quick lick to his lips. His companion said, “Yes, sir, I guess we do.”
“Then drop the pipes, why don’t you. How does that sound?”
“Hey, bud,” the one on the left whined as his pipe length dropped to the ground. “We was jus’ foolin’, that’s all.”
“We’re jus’ hungry, that’s all,” the second man said. “That a crime now? Bein’ hungry?”
Sam kept his revolver leveled on them. “Here’s our new arrangement. Lucky for you clowns, I got a busy day ahead of me. So I’m not going to haul you in. But you two are going to turn around and start walking. You ever show up here again in Portsmouth, I’ll shoot you both and dump you in that pond over there. You got it?”
He could see them looking at him, evaluating him. Then they turned away. He kept his revolver up to make sure they weren’t going to change their minds. Only when they had gone about fifty yards did he return the gun to its holster.
To the east he could make out the roof of the B&M railroad station and its sister freight station. There was also a smell of smoke in the air, and he looked down the tracks, away from Maplewood Avenue, down by the grove of trees.
He started walking.
The encampment was built on a muddy stretch of ground, up against the marshland that bordered the shallow North Mill Pond. There were automobiles and trucks parked near the trees, and from the condition of most of the tires, it looked like the vehicles had made their final stop. Shacks made from scrap lumber and tree branches were scattered around, most with meager fires burning before them and women tending them. The children playing about were shoeless, their feet black with dirt. The women, with their thin dresses soiled and patched, looked up at him, eyes and expressions dull. It made him queasy, thinking about Sarah and Toby safe and warm back home. He shivered, knowing that one mistake, one bad run-in with a Long’s Legionnaire or some other screwup, could easily put his family here.
A skinny old man came over, his white beard down to his chest, his skin gray with grime, his leather shoes held together by twine. “What are you lookin’ for, fella?”
“Looking for Lou from Troy. Is he around?”
“Depends who’s askin’. You a cop?”
“I am.”
“Town cop, railroad cop, or federal cop?”
“Town cop. Inspector Sam Miller.”
The old man spat. “Haven’t seen Lou since yesterday. He in trouble?”
“No. I just want to ask him a few questions.”
“Huh. Sure. Well, he’s not here. Just me and the kids and the womenfolk. That’s it.”
Sam took in the encampment once more. “Where are the other men?”
“Whaddya think? Out in town. Day jobs. Looking for work. Other stuff.”
“Look, last night, there was something loud coming from here… like gunshots. You know anything about that?”
The old man spat again. “A couple of fellas were drunk, got pissed at each other, fired off a couple o’ rounds. Missed, o’ course. But shit, you tell me you’re worried about that, somethin’ that happened twelve hours ago? Why didn’t you come earlier?”
Sam said, “Other matters had priority, and—”
“Yeah, that’s crap. You cops, you don’t give a shit. If you did, you woulda been here last night instead of comin’ out here the next day to pick up the pieces. Well, the hell with you.”
Without warning, the man took a swing at Sam, the blow landing hard on his left cheek. Sam, stunned, stepped back and, with two hands, shoved the old man in the chest. The old man fell on his butt, snarling, “Fuck you, cop. You and your kind don’t care about us. I was a stonecutter from Indiana, made stone that built this country, and look at me and my family—livin’ like animals, beggin’ for scraps. So get the fuck out of here, leave us be. Shit, better yet, you want to arrest me? Go ahead. I’ll be fed better and will sleep better tonight in your damn jail.”
Sam touched his cheek, then turned away. Suddenly, he heard a man laughing. From one of the shacks a man stepped out, buttoning his fly. A shipyard worker, probably, Sam thought. The man strolled away, whistling, lighting up a hand-rolled cigarette, and then a woman in a gray dress emerged from the shed, holding a dollar bill, an empty look on her tired face. When she saw Sam, she ducked back into the shack, and he heard her say something he couldn’t make out.
He looked at the rails again. Hearing that woman’s voice, a memory had come to him of a time when he had been a patrolman. Along these very tracks, not far from here, he’d been part of a search party seeking an old man who had wandered off when a train rumbled by unexpectedly. Not a B&M train, just a dark locomotive with a series of closed-off boxcars, and from those boxcars, Sam remembered hearing… noises. Voices. Scores of voices, crying out desperately as the train shuttled through the night, going God knows where.
Voices he couldn’t understand.
He looked back at the trampled spot where the dead man had been found.
