'Fourteen or fifteen, huh?'
'Little older maybe.'
'Sixteen?'
'Seventeen, maybe.'
'Nice tits on the black one,' Monroe said.
'Yeah,' Monoghan said appreciatively.
Some distance away from the two Homicide cops, Carella and Kling stood silently, their hands in the pockets of their coats. Carella was a tall man, but his head was ducked and his shoulders were hunched against the cold, and he seemed shorter now than he actually was. In addition, his face was pinched and pale, his downward-slanting brown eyes (which often lent an Oriental cast to his features) were watering, his lips were chapped, he had cut himself shaving, and he looked like a wino searching for a warm doorway. So whereas he normally gave the appearance of a man whose tremendous strength was camouflaged in the deceptively trim body of an athlete, tonight he looked sniveling and scrawny in his leather jacket. He was cold, and he didn't like two hairbags from Homicide discussing those bodies so casually. He took out his handkerchief and blew his nose. Neither the lab technician nor the medical examiner had yet arrived. It was going to be a long night.
Monoghan and Monroe were walking back. 'Got yourselves a regular massacre this time,' Monoghan said,
'Little Big Horn,' Monroe said.
'My Lai,' Monoghan said.
'Must be three or four bullet holes in each and every one of them.'
'Even the baby.'
'The infant.'
'Not a stitch on any of them.'
'Must've plugged them someplace else and then dragged them over here to dump 'em.'
'Probably heading for the river.'
'A watery grave.'
'Burial at sea.'
'Spotted the ditch and decided to get rid of them here.'
'Unless he brought 'em here bare-assed and shot them on the spot.'
'That sounds dubious,' Monroe said,
'But possible.'
'But far-fetched.'
'Who knows?' Monoghan said, and shrugged.
'Anyway, you guys got your work cut out for you,' Monroe said. 'Without no clothes on them, you'll even have trouble getting a positive identification.'
'Unless a basketball team is reported missing,' Monoghan said.
'Only, five people on a basketball team,' Monroe said. 'There's six in the ditch.'
'Maybe the baby was a mascot or something.'
Monroe shrugged. He turned to Carella and said, 'Keep us informed, huh?'
'Sure,' Carella said,
'You don't mind if we split before the M.E. arrives, do you? It's colder'n an Eskimo's ass out here.'
'We'll let you know what he says,' Carella said.
'Anyway, he won't come up with no surprises,' Monoghan said. 'They were shot, and from the looks of the burn marks, it was at close range.'
'Must be some nut,' Monroe said.
'Some madman.'
'Some deranged person. Who else would put three bullet holes in a baby?'
'Three or four,' Monoghan corrected.
'Yeah, three or four,' Monroe said.
'It's got to be some madman.'
The two Homicide cops went back to their car. Carella and Kling watched while they drove off. One of the radio motor patrolmen had gone out for coffee, and he came back with two containers for Carella and Kling. In the empty hours of the night, steam rising from the open containers, steam rising too from the manhole covers in the black asphalt street, they sipped at the hot coffee and waited for the rest of the investigative team to arrive. On the river, a tugboat's horn bleated briefly, and then was silent. It sounded as though someone had hit the button by accident.
Carella and Kling waited.
In a little while, if they didn't freeze first, they would have information from the laboratory technician and the medical examiner.
There were no bullets in any of the bodies, nor were there bullets or cartridge cases in the ditch where the bodies had been found. It had to be assumed (as Monoghan, or Monroe, or both had stated) that the victims had been shot elsewhere and then transported to the lonely side street off the River Harb. The medical examiner ascertained that multiple gunshot wounds had been the cause of death in each case, but he would not go out on a limb concerning the post-mortem interval. Body heat and the absence or presence of rigor mortis are determining factors in establishing the moment of death, and since the stiffs found in the ditch were literally stiff, having been put on ice (so to speak), the M.E. was simply unwilling to even guess at how long the victims had been dead. Nor could he tell from the size or shape of the wounds whether the murder weapon had been a rifle or a pistol, although he was willing to venture (in keeping with the prognostications of those master criminologists Monoghan and Monroe) that judging from the burn marks, the victims had been shot at close range.
The man from the Photo Unit photographed the ditch and the vicinity surrounding the ditch, and the bodies lying in the ditch, and the buildings directly opposite the ditch, and then (after the position of the bodies had been marked) he photographed the empty ditch itself. This last had nothing to do with solving the crime. It had only to do with getting a conviction once the murderer was found, since very often dead bodies in photographs of a murder scene were considered objectionable or highly inflammatory to a jury and were not permitted in court.
Carella and Kling had sketched the murder scene before the M.E. arrived, and had written an accurate description of it as well, including weather conditions, visibility, and illumination provided by street lamps or other light sources. Since the bodies were all naked, and since an examination of hands would be necessary for identification purposes, they covered the victims' hands with plastic bags the moment the M.E. finished his examination. The bodies were carried off to the morgue in two separate ambulances, and Kling, Carella, and the lab technician searched the ditch and the street for possible footprints, tire marks, weapons, anything that might help them to determine how the thing had happened and who had done it. They then made a record of the license plates on all of the parked autos near the scene of the crime, and went back to the squadroom.
The photographer, the lab technician, and the medical examiner were just beginning.
Fingerprinting a dead body (clothed or naked) is no more difficult than fingerprinting a live one. Once you get the fingers unclenched, the rest is duck soup. Taking a picture of a dead body is quite another cup of tea. Dead bodies have a tendency to look dead, you see. If the eyes are open (and there is nothing scarier than walking into a room and finding a dead person staring up at the ceiling), they retreat into their sockets and develop a grayish film over the eyeballs. If the eyes are closed, and the body is photographed that way, the face takes on an entirely different appearance that makes identification by wife or business partner almost impossible. Then, too, the lips are generally bloodless and of the same color as the victim's complexion. And the face, robbed of animation, seems more like a mask than something that had once been alive and warm. When a police photographer is taking a picture of a corpse for identification purposes, he must bring all the skills of a cosmetician to his work. Before lifting or relifting closed eyelids, he will insert glycerin and water into the sockets, to give the eyes a shine that will simulate in death the spark of life, and cause them to resemble false mirrors of the soul. He will daub the lips with dye and alcohol, restoring to them a blush which, if not quite kissable, is at least photograph-able. He will use powder and make-up, collodion or wax to achieve the desired result of having a photographed dead man look the way he might have when he was alive. (And nine times out of ten, when a person is shown such a photograph, he will immediately say, 'He looks dead.')