I had to sit down after that. "You sure, Pat?"
"As sure as you were that she was killed deliberately." He laughed, and said, "I was all hopped up for a while, but it's been turned over to another department and I can relax. Every time I'm on the same trail as you I get the jumps. You ought to be a city cop, Mike. We could use you."
"Sure, and I'd go bats trying to stay within all the rules and regulations. Look, what makes you so sure the kid did it?"
"Well, as far as we can determine, it was the only accident along the avenue that night. Then, too, we have his confession. The lab checked the car for fender dents and paint chips on her clothing, but the kid had anticipated that before he confessed and did a good job of spoiling any traces that might have been left. We had a good man on the job and he seems to think that the unusual nature of the accident was caused because she was hit a glancing blow and broke her neck when she struck the edge of the curb."
"It would have broken the skin, then."
"Not necessarily. Her coat collar prevented that. All the indications point that way. The only abrasions were those caused by the fall and roll after she was hit. Her cheek and knees were skinned up, but that was all."
"What about identification."
"Nothing yet. The Bureau of Missing Persons is checking on it."
"Horse manure!"
"Mike," he said, "just why are you so damn upset about her name? There are thousands of kids just like her in the city and every day something happens to some of them."
"Nuts, I told you once. I liked her. Don't ask me why, because I don't know, but I'll be damned if I'm not going to find out. You aren't going to stick her in a hole in the ground with an 'X' on a slab over her head!"
"O.K., don't get excited. I don't know what you can do about it when there's a full-staffed bureau working on it."
"Horse manure to the bureau, too."
I jammed the butt in my mouth and Pat waited until I lit it, then he got up and walked over to me. He wasn't laughing any more. His eyes were serious and he laid an arm on my shoulder and said, "Mike, I kind of know you pretty well. You still got a bug up your tail that says she's been murdered, right?"
"Uh-huh!"
"Got the slightest reason why?"
"No."
"Well, if you find out, will you let me know about it?"
I blew a stream of smoke at the ceiling and nodded my head. I looked up at him and the old friendship was back. Pat was one of those guys with sense enough to know that other people had hunches besides the cops. And not only hunches. There's a lot of experience and know-how that lies in back of what people call hunches.
"Is she in the morgue now?" I asked him. Pat nodded. "I want to see her."
"All right, we'll go down now."
I looked at Velda, then the clock, and told her to blow. She was putting on her coat when we went out the door. On the way Pat didn't say much. I fought the traffic up to the old brick building and slid out to wait for Pat.
It was cold inside there. Not the kind of cold that comes with fresh air and wintry mornings, but a stale cold that smelt of chemicals and death. It was quiet, too, and it gave me the creeps. Pat asked the attendant for the listing of her personal belongings, and while he ruffled through a desk drawer we waited, not speaking.
There wasn't much. Clothes--but everybody wears clothes. Lipstick, powder and some money; a few trinkets of no account every girl totes in a handbag. I handed the listing back. "Is that all?"
"All I got, mister," the attendant yawned. "Want to see her?"
"If you don't mind."
The attendant went down the row of file cases, touching them with his finger like a kid does with a stick on a picket fence. When he came to the "Unidentified" row he checked a number with a slip in his hand and unlocked the second case from the bottom. For all he was concerned, Red could have been a stack of correspondence.
Death hadn't changed her, except to erase some of the hardness from her face. There was a bruise on the side of her neck and abrasions from the fall, neither seemingly serious enough to be fatal. But that's the way it is. People go under subway cars and get back on the platform, scared but laughing; others pile a car over a cliff and walk away. She gets clipped lightly and her neck is broken.
"When's the autopsy, Pat?"
"There won't be one now. It hardly seems necessary when we have the driver. It isn't murder any more."
Pat didn't see me grimace then. I was looking at her hands folded across her chest, thinking of the way she held that cup of coffee, Like a princess. She had had a ring, but there wasn't one now. The hand it had graced was scratched and swollen, and the marks where some bastard had forced the ring off went unnoticed among the others.
No, it wasn't stolen. A thief would have taken the handbag and not the ring while she had lain in the gutter. And girls aren't ones to forget to wear rings, especially when they're dressed up.
Yeah, Pat was wrong. He didn't know it, and I wasn't about to tell him... yet. It was murder if ever I saw one. And it wasn't just a guess now.
"Seen enough, Mike?"
"Yep. I've seen everything I want to see." We went back to the desk and for a second time I checked the listing of her belongings. No ring. I was glad to get out of there and back into fresh air. We sat in the car a few minutes and I lit up a cigarette.
"What's going to happen to her now, Pat?"
He shrugged. "Oh, the usual thing. We'll hold the body the regular time while we check information, then release it for burial."
"You aren't burying her without a name."
"Be reasonable, Mike. We'll do everything we can to trace her."
"So will I." Pat shot me a sidewise look. "Anyway," I said, "whatever happens, don't put her through the disposal system. I'll finance a funeral for her if I have to."
"Uh-huh. But you're thinking you won't have to again. All right, Mike, do what you want to. It's officially out of my hands now, but damn it, man... if I know you, it will be back in my hands again. Don't try to cut my throat, that's all. If you get anything, let me know about it."
"Of course," I said, then started up the car and pulled away from the curb.
The letter was three days late. The address had been taken from the telephone book, which hadn't been revised since I moved to my new apartment. The post office had readdressed it and forwarded it to me. The handwriting was light and feminine, touched with a gracious Spencerian style.
My hand was shaking when I slit it open; it shook even more when I started to read it, because the letter was from the redhead.
Dear Mike,
What a lovely morning, what a beautiful day and I feel so new all over I want to sing my way down the street. I can't begin to tell you "thank you" because words are so small and my heart is so big that anything I could write would be inadequate. When I met you, Mike, I was tired... so tired of doing so many things... only one of which had any meaning to me. Now I'm not tired at all and things are clear once more. Some day I may need you again, Mike. Until now there has been no one I could trust and it has been hard. It isn't a friendship I can impose upon because we're really not friends. It's a trust, and you don't know what it means to me to have someone I can trust.
You've made me very happy.
Your Redhead.
Oh, damn it to hell, anyway. Damn everybody and everything. And damn me especially because I made her happy for half a day and put her in a spot where living was nice and it was hard to die.
I folded the letter up in my fist and threw it at the wall.
A bumper bottle of beer cooled me off and I quit hating myself. When I killed the quart I stuck the empty under the sink and went back and picked up the letter, smoothing it out on the table top. Twice again I read it, going over every word. It wasn't the kind of letter a tramp would write; the script and the phrasing had a touch of eloquence that wasn't used by girls who made the gutter their home. I've seen a lot of bums, and I've fooled around with them from coast to coast, and one thing I know damn well... they're a definite type. Some give it away and some sell it, but you could pick out those who would and those who wouldn't. And those who would had gutter dirt reflected in everything they did, said and wrote.