Scalpers

'Sid, you need some corroboration here. If these are your scissors, and they've been missing—'

'All right ... all right.'

Dyer's face went from confusion to wonder in the process of Dean's interrogation. “What gives?'

'I didn't know the scissors were missing until I went to look for them. I don't know what happened to them, and now ... well, I must've dropped them somehow.'

'Dr. Corman,” said Dyer, “this'll have to be reported.'

'Dyer,” said Dean, “can you just give us time to run the scissors through routine tests first? They may not be Dr. Corman's. In fact, they may have the killer's fingerprints on them.'

'Or mine,” added Sid.

'Do you know of any reason anyone would deliberately set you up, Sid?'

'I've got my share of enemies in the department, sure, but this?'

'Who'd be in a position to get hold of your surgical equipment?'

'Any number of lab techs, attendents—you name it.'

'What about it, Detective Dyer?” Dean asked again stalling for time.

'Dyer! Corman, why in the hell didn't you contact me about this?” shouted someone from above them on the ridge, making Dean look over his shoulder. It was Chief Hodges, and beside him loomed the tall, slender figure of Dr. Hamel, the two of them looking like angry Gestapo figures out of an old movie. “I told you men I wanted first notice on this case!'

'We tried to reach you, Chief,” Dyer began to explain, but Hodges exploded.

'More goddamned excuses, Frank! I don't want to hear them. I want this freak caught.” Hodges and Hamel came down from the police barricade where reporters and people had gathered to gawk and speculate and wonder.

'We're finished here, medic,” Dean announced to the waiting attendents who moved in to take the body to the morgue. Dean urged Sid off. A glance in Dyer's direction told them nothing. They could only hope that Frank Dyer would cooperate, at least for now.

Before they could successfully escape, however, Chief Hodges cornered Sid and began to ask questions. “Anything new, Corman? What can you give me?'

'Nothing right now, Chief, except to say that it does look like the work of more than one man.'

'Great ... a lot of help. Am I supposed to give that to the friggin’ papers?'

'I don't give a sand flea's fart what you give the—'

'Sid, Sid,” Dean urged him off, saying to Hodges, “Look, Chief, this has been rough on us all, and the best thing for everyone now is to get Dr. Corman and me back to the crime lab.'

Hodges frowned but backed off and went for Dyer's jugular, transferring his questions and anger to the detective. Dean saw that Park stood far off, shaking his head, while the quiet, unassuming Dr. Hamel was on his knees over the victim, where he'd managed to get the medics to lay the stretcher down in the grass. Hamel looked like he was praying over the dead girl. Dean thought the psychiatrist was dedicated for a man in his position, to come out to the crime scene and view the body in such a way. It wasn't in his job description, Dean was certain, and yet the work of the Scalpers had affected them all very deeply, hadn't it?

Park had lit up a cigarette and stuffed his hands in his pockets.

A sergeant rushed down the incline to Chief Hodges, pleading in a polite way for the Chief to speak to the reporters. Dean and Sid watched from a distance, Sid saying sourly, “Hodges likes to play bigshot for the press and cameras.'

'Is that right?'

'He has real ambitions to climb.'

'Close to the Mayor?'

'He likes to make you believe it.'

Dean wondered about the Mayor's poor redheaded relation.

'The man knows how to stroke the press. It was he who convinced the Mayor to allow the photos of his niece to be splattered on the front pages. Convinced His Honor that it'd be like that television show, you know, America's Most Wanted, and it might have the effect of getting the whole city involved in this manhunt, but all it's done is cause chaos and panic.'

But to Dean's observant eye, Hodges didn't look like a man who relished the idea of facing reporters now. Still, he pulled himself upward, heaving up both stomach and shoulders, and marched toward the crowd.

'Let ‘em through to take their pictures,” Hodges said, knowing this would appease the press more than any statement.

'I can't believe he's doing that,” said Dean, amazed.

'Watch, he'll turn it into hay. On camera he'll plead for anyone watching who might recognize the dead girl to come forward. Who knows, maybe someone will.'

'Then Jane Doe'll have a name, at least ... and people to bury her.'

'I'm starved,” said Sid as they drove for the Municipal Center and Sid's lab. With them they had all the samples taken from the crime scene. As always, when Dean had every shread of evidence gathered and every hair vacuumed from a body, every fiber and print and clipping, he felt like the custodial guardian angel of the deceased: the one long shot, the only possible hope remaining that the victim might have left her own message to her scientific pallbearer, and hidden within the folds of that message, the answer to the questions of who had so ruthlessly robbed her of life.

'How Brando about you?” Sid asked.

'What?'

'Hungry ... are you hungry?'

'Yeah, I guess I could eat, but—'

'In the lab, you mean, right?'

'I'm anxious to get started on what we've got,” Dean told Sid. “I need coffee and something in my stomach, and I need to telephone Jackie, and check in with my own lab, and maybe call Kelso in Chicago.'

'Hey, my phone is your phone, Dean ... my office is your office, and please treat it as such.'

'Thanks.'

'Ahh, you're a pain in the ass sometimes.'

'How's that?'

'You stand on ceremony too damned much, Dean. Cool it—relax a little. Di and I are taking you to Church Street Exchange, tonight ... whaddya say?'

'Church Street?'

'Orlando's newest attraction, kinda like Bourbon Street in New Orleans. Al Hirt-type bands playing, good food and drink.'

'Sounds great!'

'You'll love it, and it's just a block or so from here.'

'You think after a day like the one we've got ahead of us, we'll be up for partying?'

'Hell, Dean, we got to eat a sit-down meal sometime ... it might as well be I n a good restaurant. I'm paying.'

Dean replied that he could, at the moment, use coffee and a roll. “But I'm damned anxious to look over what we've got here.'

'We'll have some coffee brought in.'

'Any word on the Carson woman at Mercy?'

'Nothing yet, but I'll be the first to know. I have friends at Mercy.'

They pulled into Sid's parking place and took the elevator up to the labs, carrying with them the oversized black valise that contained vials, packets, and bags filled with samples. Dean carried a mold of a single footprint which Dyer had been able to locate after all.

'Damned footprint is probably mine, too,” said Sid.

Dean had taken the mold from Dyer just before leaving the crime scene, and he and Dyer had been the only ones who'd actually examined it closely. It seemed only half a foot, or a fist driven into the earth, or the ball of a child's foot, it was so small.