Free Streets of Fire by Thomas H. Cook

placed a rusty dustpan in front of the sweepings, then whisked them in.
    ‘The Chief knows exactly where he is in all this,’ Patterson added, his eyes watching Ben intently. ‘But others, they have some problems.’
    The old man winced with pain as he slowly straightened himself. He rubbed his back with a flat open hand. His eyes moved over to Ben, then darted away.
    ‘I hear there’s a lot of unhappy people in the department,’ Patterson said. And not just in the ranks. People in the front office.’ He looked at Ben quizzically. ‘Any truth in that, Ben?’
    Ben turned to him. ‘I don’t know.’
    Patterson shook his head. ‘My God, Ben, you look like the best part of you got flushed down the drain.’
    ‘Did you bury that girl yet?’ Ben asked.
    ‘No.’
    ‘When are you planning to do that?’
    Patterson looked at the clock on the opposite wall. ‘Kelly should be here in about an hour.’
    ‘Kelly?’
    ‘Kelly Ryan. You know, from the Property Department,’ Patterson said matter-of-factly. ‘He does all the colored burials.’
    Ben placed a small paper bag on Patterson’s desk. ‘I bought this little dress,’ he said. ‘It’s not much. Just a little blue thing.’ He shrugged. ‘Hers looked too dirty to be buried in.’
    Patterson’s face softened almost imperceptibly. ‘I’ll put her in it for you.’ He reached for the bag and stood up. ‘I’ll be back in a second.’
    Ben lingered idly in the room outside the morgue. The dissecting tables were all empty, and their polished stainless-steel surfaces took on an icy coldness beneath the hard fluorescent lights. For a moment he thought about the dead woman from Red Mountain, the one whose insurance policy had hung like a bounty above her head. He had no doubt that her body was now nestled in the white satin lining of an expensive mahogany casket, that it was in a room decked with flowers and hung with thick red drapes, that somewhere in the background an organ was playing sonorously while the mourners filed by silently or whispered their farewells.
    ‘All done,’ Patterson said a few minutes later as he walked back into the outer office. ‘Would you like to see her?’
    Ben shook his head.
    ‘Well, I can tell you that she looks real nice,’ Patterson said as he strolled back over to his desk. ‘Real nice.’ He pulled out the top drawer and lifted a small plastic bag from it. ‘By the way, I got this back about an hour ago.’
    It was the ring which had been found on the girl’s body, and Ben could see the cheap glass stone shining pinkish purple in the light.
    ‘What’d they find?’ he asked.
    ‘One set of fingerprints,’ Patterson said. ‘I’m having them traced every way I can.’
    Ben walked over to the desk and took the bag from Patterson’s fingers. ‘Just one set?’
    ‘That’s right.’
    ‘And they weren’t the girl’s?’
    ‘No,’ Patterson said. ‘No trace of hers at all.’ He pulled a manila folder from the same drawer. ‘These are the prints.’
    Ben took them out and held them under the lamp on Patterson’s desk. ‘The ring – was it wiped?’
    ‘Not that I could tell’
    ‘So the girl never touched the ring?’
    ‘That would be my conclusion,’ Patterson told him. ‘And as far as the prints go, it looks like you were right.’
    Ben looked at him. ‘About what?’
    ‘Well, I remember yesterday, how you said that someone a whole lot bigger than the girl came up behind her and put that little pistol upside her head and shot her.’
    ‘What about it?’
    ‘Well, just that if the guy that owned this ring was the one that did it,’ Patterson said, ‘well, then you were right. Chances are he was a whole lot bigger than the girl.’ He smiled. ‘Probably a whole lot bigger than you or me, too.’
    ‘How do you know?’
    ‘By the prints,’ Patterson said. ‘It works like a dog’s paw. Big hand, big man. At least most of the time.’ He glanced down at the prints. ‘And these were real big.