'I didn't do nothing!' Fitzpatrick thrust his jaw at me.
'We're doing that to rule out your prints if we find any on the garbage can.'
He nodded, as if he knew that all along. I went back out into the fray, my headache pulsing with every heartbeat, my eyes feeling as if they'd been rubbed in sand. Maxwell Hughes was peering at the body in the can with professional detachment that can only come from constantly being around corpses. On his nod, two gloved assistants tipped the garbage can over.
The girl plopped onto the sidewalk, cocooned in a shell of bloody garbage. Two uniforms moved in, bagging and tagging, while Hughes knelt down and searched for a pulse that he knew wasn't there.
I walked over, staring down at the body, trying to imagine it walking and talking and being a person. I couldn't do it. Death robs people of their personalities. It turns them into, for lack of a more sympathetic word, an object rather than a human being.
This girl had hobbies and dreams and hopes and friends. But none of that meant a thing anymore. All that was left was the further indignity of an autopsy, in the hopes that her corpse would somehow lead to her killer.
From dreamer to evidence. And it was no easy trip.
I'd seen a thing or two. Shotgun deaths. Gangland murders. A guy who killed his kid with a hot iron. But as the garbage was peeled away, I had to turn away for fear of losing my stomach.
It was obscene, the traumas inflicted on this poor girl.
'We're missing some parts,' Hughes said to his men. 'I'm looking for two ears, four fingers, and all ten toes. Check inside cans and wrappers.'
'Tell me this was done after death,' I said to Max.
'I don't think I can appease you there, Jack.' He spoke sadly. 'See these cuts on her palms? From her own fingernails digging in while she clenched her fists. Consistent with most torture deaths. I don't see any ligature mark around her neck like the first one either. My guess would be she died of shock as a result of massive blood loss.'
I blinked away the image of organs oozing up through the slits in her belly.
'Lieutenant,' someone said.
Happy to focus on something else, I gave attention to one of the patrolmen sifting through the trash. He was holding, in his gloved hand, a gingerbread man cookie.
I wiped my nose and rubbed my temples and stared a challenge into the crowd of onlookers, daring one of them to meet my gaze. None did.
'I talked to Mr. Raheem.' Herb was putting away his cell phone. 'He also had a kid in the store who had some kind of attack, about two hours before Donovan found the body.'
I gave myself a mental kick in the ass for missing that.
'The surveillance tape?'
'We've got it in Evidence. We checked it up until an hour before the body was found. Maybe we should check the whole thing.'
'We know this guy hires outside help. He proved that with me last night. He might have hired the same kid to do both distractions...'
'Then maybe he has a partner.'
'And maybe we have a lead.'
It was still iffy at best. The kid might not have a record, and we might never find him. Even if we did, there was a chance that he was hired the same way Floyd was, with little or no information about our perp.
But at least now we had something to do other than wait for new victims.
Herb eyed me sympathetically. 'You want to meet me later, get some rest first?'
'Naw. Wouldn't be able to sleep anyway. I could use something to eat, though. Hungry?'
'When am I not hungry?'
I looked at his stitches. 'Doesn't it hurt to eat?'
'Hurts like hell. But a man doesn't give up breathing just because he has a cold. I know a place that serves great falafel.'
'Falafel?'
'No, I don't feel awful.' Herb grinned. 'I feel pretty good.'
I gave him deadpan. Herb pouted.
'Come on, Jack. I've been waiting two weeks to use that joke.'
'Should have kept waiting.'
We took Herb's car, buying some White Castle cheeseburgers at a drive-thru and eating them back at my office. I called up Evidence, and Bill was only too happy to bring up the surveillance tape from the first 7-Eleven.
'I hear you're a free woman again, sugar buns.' Bill grinned at me, showing off his unnaturally white dentures.
'I'm not free, but my rates are reasonable.'
'How much for, say -- three and a half minutes?'
