Free Streets of Fire by Thomas H. Cook Page A

Maybe the biggest I’ve ever seen.’
    Ben continued to look at the prints. Wide gray whorls spiraled upward from the black negative and finally formed a rounded nub at the apex of each finger.
    ‘He’s not exactly a giant,’ Patterson said, ‘but I wouldn’t want to bet my house that I could beat him arm-wrestling.’ His eyes darkened. ‘And I guess that’s why she was torn up so. You know, in her privates.’
    Ben returned the prints to the envelope.
    ‘And we found this, too,’ Patterson added. He handed him a rectangular microscope slide. ‘Some kind of sticky stuff was on the ring. I’m having it tested tomorrow.’
    Ben took the slide carefully between his thumb and index finger. He could make out a granular yellowish powder which had been smeared across the glass. ‘What do you think it is, Leon?’ he asked.
    Patterson shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Could be something like pine pollen. There’s plenty of that around in the summer.’ He smiled. It could be that yellow stuff that sticks to your fingers after you eat a bag of Korn Kurls.’ He shrugged again, this time more helplessly. ‘In other words, it could be just about anything.’
    Ben handed back the slide. ‘Well, let me know what you find out.’ He looked into the adjoining room. He could see the plain wooden box where the girl now lay, the little blue dress covering the thick black stitching which he knew ran in an upside-down Y formation from her throat to head to her abdomen.
    ‘What do you want to name her, Ben?’ Patterson asked suddenly.
    ‘Name her?’
    ‘For the record, I mean,’ Patterson said. ‘Unless you want me to just use a number. Plenty of times that’s what I do.’
    ‘No,’ Ben said. ‘A name.’
    Patterson sat down at his desk, picked up a pencil and held it poised an inch or so above a sheet of white paper. ‘Well, what’ll it be? Give me a name.’
    Ben looked at him wonderingly. ‘Me?’
    ‘Why not,’ Patterson said offhandedly. ‘Hell, Ben, you’re as close to being her daddy as anybody else right now.’
    For a moment he allowed a list of names to flow featurelessly through his mind. He thought of movie-star names, then those of the colored singers he’d heard of. Nothing seemed to fit the way he wanted it to, but he finally called her ‘Martha,’ after his own mother.
    ‘Okay,’ Patterson said, as he wrote it down. ‘And what about a last name?’
    He glanced back toward the small wooden box, then returned his eyes to Patterson. ‘Give her mine,’ he said.
    A large middle-aged white man walked into Patterson’s office a few minutes later. He was followed by two young blacks, both of whom were dressed in the uniforms of the city jail.
    ‘I’ve come to pick up a body,’ the white man said. He squinted hard at Ben and Patterson. ‘Who do I see about that?’
    ‘Me,’ Patterson said immediately. ‘Where’s Kelly?’
    ‘Kelly who?’
    ‘Kelly Ryan from the Property Department,’ Patterson told him. ‘He usually does the colored burying.’
    The man shrugged. ‘I don’t know nothing about that,’ he said. ‘I work with the Highway Department. I just got a call to pick up a couple of hands from the jail and then come on over here for a body.’
    ‘You know where the cemetery is?’
    ‘They got a place dug for it in Gracehill,’ the man said.
    ‘They give you a plot number?’ Patterson asked.
    The man shook his head. ‘They didn’t say nothing but come over to Hillman and pick up a body.’
    ‘Okay,’ Patterson said wearily. He led the three men into the freezer room and stood beside the coffin. ‘This is it.’
    ‘A kid?’ the white man asked.
    ‘That’s right,’ Patterson told him. ‘And it’s a murder, too, so I want you to remember where you put her. Find a tree or a stump or something and remember where it is. I’ll get a plot number later.’
    Ben stepped up beside the two young men. ‘I’ll go, too,’ he said.
    The white man nodded quickly. ‘Well, with the