Westermann caught two hours of sleep, woke up in his clothes, and made it to headquarters in time for Frings’s anonymous call reporting the body on the riverbank in the vicinity of a cluster of derelict ware houses just downstream from the Uhuru Community shanties. There were some jurisdictional complications, but this was not a promising case and no one objected much to Westermann’s claim.
Without the dark to fill in the spaces, the area around the Uhuru Community was remarkably empty. The Community shantytown, from the outside, was a low amalgamation of scrap lumber, sheet tin, and assorted other found building materials. It spread for more than two hundred yards across flatland. Several hundred yards of weed-infested asphalt, abandoned road, and empty lots teeming with bugs and rodents lay between the Community and a district of ware houses abandoned when the railroad supplanted the river as the main route for cargo transport. Vultures and crows hovered above, searching for a meal.
The sun out here was merciless. In the field near the shanties, two young Negro girls, their hair in braids, fanned a cow with leafy branches. The cow was white and brown and sickly. Westermann saw that three of the cow’s legs were brown and the fourth was white. Odd, to notice something like that.
Uniformed cops were already at the site, taking photos and sifting through the surrounding weeds for evidence that Westermann knew did not exist. He walked across the no-man’s-land with two of his detectives. Westermann had six detectives under his authority and he’d brought the two best with him, Larry Morphy and Torsten Grip. They cut an interesting profile walking toward the riverbank. Westermann and Morphy were both well over six feet, but where Westermann was lanky and languid in his movements, Morphy was broad shouldered and strutted with a big man’s confidence. By contrast, Grip was just over five and a half feet, built like a keg, and walked as if he were trying to punish the ground with each step.
“How’d you pull this case?” Grip asked, his voice rasping with cigarette damage.
“Statistically anomalous homicide,” Westermann said, forcing a half smile, trying to hide the anxiety. Grip chuckled. Morphy, not generally one for a lot of conversation, took in the surroundings as they walked. Smoke came from different points in the Community, and the smell of burning wood and spiced meats drifted across the field to them.
They arrived, dripping sweat, at the riverbank. The uniformed cops taking photos of the body and examining the rocks made way. Westermann flashed on six hours earlier, the same body but lying differently. This time she’d made shore facedown, held in place against the current by jutting rocks, black hair fanned out in the water like a starburst. He had the animal urge to grab her, get her away from the water; destroy a crime scene that, however improbably, could point to him.
“The fuck are these assholes doing?” Grip said, jerking his head toward the uniforms searching the brush farther off the shore. “They think someone dragged her all the way over here, dunked her, and then pulled her back up on the bank? Jesus. They get paid for this?”
Morphy snorted and shot a contemptuous look at the uniforms.
“No stone unturned,” Westermann said, climbing down on the rocks to get a better view of the body.
“Right. Turn over every fucking stone,” Grip said. “Hey, you assholes done taking pictures of the girl?”
One of the police photographers answered in the affirmative and Westermann watched Morphy, sitting on a rock, take off his shoes and socks and then stand, remove his jacket and his pants, and fold them neatly on top of his shoes.
“What the hell are you doing?” said Grip.
Morphy, in shirt, tie, and boxer shorts, looked back at Grip. “You going in the water?”
Grip shook his head, muttering, “Jesus Christ,” and walked upstream.
Westermann watched Morphy wade into the river to get a better vantage on the corpse. Westermann had done much the same inspection just a few hours prior and knew what Morphy would find. No trauma. Presumed death by drowning. But those blisters and her weight … Wait for the coroner’s report.
It was goddamn hot out in the sun without any cover. Westermann took off his jacket and held it by a finger over his shoulder as he walked closer to the body. “What do you think?”
“Drowned.” Morphy didn’t look up as he moved the woman’s chin. Westermann noted leaves and other small debris stuck in her snarled hair.
Emaciated. Ended up in the Uhuru Community. He had moved the body. Was it too late to take it back? What if he confessed now, to Morphy? He caught himself. Fatigue. It kept him from thinking straight. Calm down.
Morphy climbed back up onto the bank, amber water dripping from his legs. He shrugged at Westermann. “The coroner can do his job.”
The uniforms got to work bagging the body for delivery to the morgue.
Morphy dressed, sitting on a rock to pull on his socks and shoes. Westermann paced, uncomfortable with nothing to do, ready to get out of there. He looked upriver and saw Grip standing on a rock at the river’s edge, watching as the current pulled detritus downstream.
Back at the station, Westermann sent Morphy and Grip to handle the paperwork and headed to the bathroom to douse his face and neck with cold, rust-tinged water from the tap. He checked himself in the mirror: bags under his eyes, two days’ growth. He ran his wet fingers through his hair, smoothing it back into place. He’d made it through the first step. He needed sleep so that he could think more clearly.
The bathroom door swung open and a cop in uniform entered and took a sink two down from Westermann’s. Westermann rolled his neck and noticed the cop glaring at him in the mirror. He knew this guy, an anticommunist fanatic named Ed Wayne.
Westermann said, “Something I can help you with, Sergeant?”
Wayne sneered.
Westermann checked out their reflections side by side in the mirror—Westermann tall and broad shouldered; Wayne stocky, a little overweight, but with a brawler’s look about him; thick neck under his fat, red face.
Westermann turned to leave, walking by Wayne on his way to the door. The two men exchanged stares until Westermann winked and walked out, heart pounding, forcing a chuckle.