Chapter One

        "It's gonna rain all over our dead guy," said Olson.  
        The sky was the color of a nasty bruise, serious contusion gone a deep wicked purple, a day or so after a bad beating.  Somebody beat the hell out of that sky, thought Dooley.  "Turn your headlights on," he said.
        Olson reached for the knob. "They'll never get that ball game in.  They've already had a couple of delays and they're gonna run out of daylight soon."
        Dooley watched lightning flicker in the void far out over the lake.  "Who they playing?"
        "Astros.  Jenkins throwing for us.  They win today, that's six in a row."
        "Break out the champagne."
        "Hey, it's their year.  Who's gonna beat 'em?  You gonna tell me the Cards are gonna catch 'em?"
        Dooley shrugged.  "What'd he say, Weed?"
        "Weed and the river.  Just south of North."
        "You shoulda took Elston."
        "Why?  Weed's on this side of the river."
        "Now you gotta double back on North.  From Elston you come on east across the river and you're there."
        "Ah, what's the difference?  We'll get there."
        "Not before the rain, we won't."  
        The sky had opened up again by the time they found the squads parked at the end of Weed Street where it dead-ended at the river in an industrial nowhere of train tracks, chain-link fences and long factory blocks.  Nobody wanted to get out and stand in the rain, but they all did eventually, Dooley and Olson and the four officers from the squads, huddling together in the lee of a warehouse.  "Those two little colored kids found her," said one of the uniforms, nodding at the farther squad.  The dome light was on and Dooley could see two small dark figures on the seat through the streaming glass.  
        "A woman, huh?" said Olson.  
        The copper gave a single shake of the head.  "I didn't get too close.  But it looked like a woman to me.  Through the fence there."
        There was a fence at the end of the street but nobody had mended it where the wire had peeled away from the post and there was a gap big enough to step through with a little bit of a stoop.  Dooley took a look at the trampled grass around the gap.  "You guys go through here?" he called back to the nearest uniform.
        "Just far enough to see the body.  There weren't any prints or anything."  
        Not now there aren't, thought Dooley.  He ducked through, trying to step over the trampled patch, and stood where the riverbank fell away into brush and debris down to the revetment four feet above the water. Rain stippled the leaden surface of the river. Small trees clinging to the bank gave a little shelter.  Dooley stood with his shoulders hunched, hands in the pockets of his raincoat, looking down at the problem.  All he could see was an expanse of naked back, pale in the twilight, and a tangled mass of hair.  Through the fence Olson said, "I don't know how he can be so sure.  You seen the hair on some of these hippie guys these days?"
        "That's a woman," said Dooley.
        "If you say so."
        Dooley stood and looked down the slope for a long moment, scanning for signs but finding nothing but rivulets of water taking evidence into the river.  Rain spattered on leaves above his head. Dooley pulled a handkerchief out of an inside pocket and wiped water off his forehead.  "She's nestled right into the weeds.  There's no trampling."
        "Yeah.  So somebody just threw her down there after she was dead."
        "Or she walked down there and laid down to die."
        "Without her clothes?"
        "I didn't say it was likely. Who gets to get his shoes dirty?"
        Olson said, "I just bought a new pair of Florsheims.  And you're already there."
        Dooley moved up the bank, away from the body, looking for a place to go down where he wouldn't disturb any evidence.  When he'd gone ten or twelve feet he stepped onto the slope and slipped, going to a knee to stop the slide.  "To hell with your Florsheims," he said.  "I just got this suit cleaned."  Where the slope leveled off at the edge of the revetment, Dooley found some footing and started working his way back along the bank toward the body, trying to ignore the rain in his face.  He saw the soles of two feet, smudged black; he saw the swell of one bare buttock above the weeds.  Dooley knelt, a hand to the ground for support, and felt for that place inside him where he could regard this poor massacred soul as nothing but a paycheck.  When he had it he bent closer and parted the weeds. "Ah, shit," he said gently.
        The woman lay face to the river, legs and arms drawn up in front of her.  Beneath the tangle of dark brown hair there was a face still there, but nobody was going to look at it and say "That's my girl."  The eyes were closed, swollen to the size of plums and about the same color, and the nose had been smeared sideways. The lips looked like blood sausage, split open in a couple of places. Looking at the dead woman's face Dooley saw the color of the sky.
        Olson called down, "What's she doing, saying her prayers?"
         "She's tied up."  Dooley tugged gently at the taut twine at the ankles.  "They hog-tied her."
        Olson said,  "Call it a homicide, Professor?"
        "I don't think we're gonna get an argument on that.  Get a wagon, get the mobile lab over here, call the sergeant."
        "Roger wilco.  Don't fall in there, 'cause I ain't pulling you out."
        Dooley heard Olson hustling away to get out of the rain.  He knelt there with water trickling down the back of his neck and ran his fingertips over the dead woman's back.  Her skin was cold and slick, the smooth white surface dotted with small round patches of discolored skin, rough to the touch.  Dooley shifted his feet, rose to a crouch. He grabbed a tree limb for support and leaned over the woman, looking at the mottled patches of dark skin on shoulder and hip.  He took another long look up the slope and bet himself the evidence technicians weren't going to find much today.  
        Back at the end of the street Dooley spoke to the nearest uniform.  "Let's have a word with your witnesses."  
        On the back seat of the squad sat two boys maybe eight or ten years old, big white eyes in small black faces.  They looked wet and cold and either scared or thrilled to death, Dooley couldn't quite make up his mind.  He slid onto the passenger seat in front and put an elbow over the back of the seat, wiping his face with the handkerchief.  "How you boys feeling?"  In response he got one OK and one widening stare.  "What's your name, son?" he said to the one who had managed to answer.
        "Jerome."
        "Jerome what?"
        "Jerome Hayes.  We gonna get in trouble?"
        "No, you're not gonna get in trouble.  I just need you to tell me how you came to find that lady down there."
        The silent one piped up all of a sudden:  "She's dead, ain't she?"
        Dooley nodded.  "I'm afraid she is."
        "What happened to her?"
        Dooley thought of two or three different things he could say while he stared at the kid. "Something really bad," he said finally.

*

        The rain stopped; the sky cleared; the sun went down.  Dooley barely noticed.  While Olson talked into the radio and started bossing patrolmen around, Dooley walked the streets: Weed, Kingsbury, Blackhawk. He stood looking up Kingsbury to North Avenue, thinking I have her body in the trunk and I have her clothes.  What do I do?  The book said canvass the area but there was nobody to canvass, just closed-up factories and warehouses.  He and Olson walked down alleys, checking doors, rattling gates, looking in trash cans, looking for ways through to the river, looking for a shoe, a purse, a bundle or a scrap of cloth.  
        The sergeant arrived, a busy man and a hard one to please; Dooley spent a few minutes justifying his existence and watched the sergeant drive away.  The setting sun found him and Olson half a mile from their murder scene on a twelfth-floor high-rise walkway wired in like the lion's cage at the zoo, knocking on doors and looking for a mother, a grandma, anybody to take charge of his two witnesses and verify an address for them.  They spent a tense fifteen minutes convincing a posse of male relatives the boys weren't being charged with anything but there were procedures to follow; Cabrini-Green was not friendly territory for two white cops. It was a long walk down a dark stairwell and back to the car.
        Dooley watched evidence technicians root through weeds in the fading light; he watched a wagon roll away, in no hurry.  
        "Flip you for it," said Olson.
        Dooley shrugged. Partners had their preferences; Olson could type better than Dooley and he was a good detail man, but he didn't have Dooley's iron stomach.  "Drop me at Polk Street and go get a start on the paper," Dooley said.

*

        The medical examiner was a thin and pale man who looked as bad as some of his customers under the fluorescent lights; the coppers joked that if he ever dozed off on the job the assistants would have him up on a table in an instant.  "Got our make-up smeared a little, did we, dear?" he said to the woman on the table.
        "I need a cause of death," said Dooley.
        "Slow down, cowboy.  I'm looking at a smorgasbord of injuries here.  You're going to have to give me a minute.  You'll notice she's in rigor."  The medical examiner pushed on a knee and let the body rock back, still in its fetal position.
        "I saw that."
        "Which means she's been dead at least eighteen hours.  And looking at this lividity, I'd say she lay somewhere for a while before she was dumped.  Maybe in the trunk of a car.  But then I don't want to prejudice your investigation."
        "So some time yesterday afternoon or evening."
        "Probably.  Stomach contents may tell us more."
        "And what killed her?"
        "You want a wild guess?  Just looking at her neck here?  Cause of death was strangulation."
        "Yeah."  Dooley was looking at her back.  "Somebody used her for a god damn ashtray."
        "And she looks like she went about ten rounds with Sonny Liston," said the examiner.  "With no gloves.  And that was the easy part."   He was pulling gently at limbs, craning to look at what her legs had been hiding.  
        "I'm seeing a lot of blood all of a sudden," said Dooley.  
        "And in bad places."
        Dooley nodded.  "She was alive for all of this, wasn't she?"
        "All but the last bit."  The medical examiner straightened up, a look of faint distaste on his face.  "I'd say strangulation was probably the best thing that happened to her yesterday."

*

        "So what do we got?" said Olson, leaning back on his chair.  He looked like somebody had chased him around the block a few times.  His brow glistened where his hair had beaten a retreat and he had loosened his tie for comfort. He looked a lot like a homicide dick some time after midnight with nothing to put on paper and a lot of paper to fill.  
        Dooley, who felt worse than Olson looked, shook his head.  All the windows in the third-floor Homicide/Sex office were open but the cool night air wasn't finding its way in.  "We don't have shit," he said.  "We got a dead girl with no face and no name. We got no crime scene, no witnesses.  If she was a nice ordinary girl her prints aren't going to help us.  We got no grieving mamas, no worried girlfriends, no jealous boyfriends.  We don't even have her clothes.  Until somebody tells us who she was, we got nothing at all."
        Olson nodded.  "When it hits the news the phone'll start ringing."
        "Let's hope.  We gotta find the clothes."
        "Think they're down there close somewhere?"
        "Maybe not.  They took them off her before they killed her.  What did they do with them?"
        "Depends on how smart they are.  I'd burn them or put them way down in deep water, a long way from where I put the body."
        Dooley nodded for a few seconds, mechanically, looking far away.  "Well, we got an autopsy to keep us entertained."
        A few seconds went by and Olson said, "Want me to go?"
        Dooley shrugged.  "I'll go.  You get on the missing persons reports."
        Somebody laughed out in the hall; a car hissed by on the rain-washed street outside. Olson ran a hand over his face.  "What do you think, Mike?  It's a pretty short haul from the projects to the river."
        "That's never a bad first guess.  But I don't think Jerome and Claudell had anything to do with it."
        "But they might have an idea who did.  You really think they were back there looking for pop bottles?"
        "I think if they knew who did it they wouldn't have flagged down that squad.  And they had a bag full of pop bottles with them.  I'll tell you what else I think."
        "What's that?"
        "I think they're not going to find any semen in her tomorrow."
        Olson considered that like a man weighing a remark about the weather.  "How come?"
        "I don't think you take take so much time with the rough stuff if you're gonna rape her.  Somebody really worked her over."
        "OK, so the guy can't do it anymore.  That's why he beats her so bad.  The rage.  We've seen it a hundred times."
        "I don't know, all those shallow puncture wounds.  The cigarette burns.  That didn't look like rage."
        "All right, it's late and I'm getting a little punch-drunk here.  What did it look like?"
        "It looked to me like somebody wanted something from her."
        Olson let out a long sigh as his front chair legs hit the floor. He put his hands on the edge of the desk and hauled himself to his feet.  He put his hands in his pockets and stood looking down at Dooley with his washed-out blue Swede eyes.  "I'd like to meet these guys, I really would.  Want to hit J.J.'s?"
        "Sure."  Dooley stood up and reached for his jacket.  "Look on the bright side."
        "What's that?"
        "We probably will, before too long."

*

        J.J.'s had nothing to recommend it to a thirsty copper but its location across the street from the old red-brick station at Damen and Grace.  It had a pool table in the back, a juke box on the wall, and a wide selection of whiskeys kept corked to avoid evaporation.  The two brothers who ran the place were fastidious, abstemious and long-suffering; the only thing the cops loved as much as a drink was a prank.  Dooley had seen horseplay that would make a junior-high kid blush. The brothers put up with the nonsense because a room full of armed policemen was about the best clientele a barkeeper could ask for.
        Tonight there was a celebration going on; Frank Finley had made lieutenant and was moving downtown.  "Whiskey for the gentlemen, please," he called out as Dooley and Olson pushed toward the bar.  Finley and Dooley had shared a patrol beat for a year or so in the early fifties and Dooley respected him.  
        "I'll take one, too," he said.  "When you're through serving the gentleman."  He shook Finley's hand.  "Congratulations, pal."
        "Thanks, Mike. I'll miss you."
        "No, you won't."
        "Nah, you're right.  OK, how's this?  I'll try to remember your name for a while."  Finley was half in the bag and having a good time.
        "That's more like it.  Seriously, you earned it.  I hope you go a long way."  Finley was a good cop, just possibly good enough in Dooley's estimation for his integrity to survive his ambition.
        "I appreciate that."  Finley's grin faded and he leaned in close to Dooley as the whiskey was delivered.  "Listen, Mike.  You could be doing the same thing, moving up.  You don't have to be a homicide dick on third watch for the rest of your life."
        "I don't want to be anything else."
        "Ah, don't bullshit me, Dooley."
        "Third watch is where the action is.  And I get to eat dinner anywhere I want."
        Finley looked at him with drunken benevolence. "You're one stubborn mick, aren't you?"
        Dooley drank and said, "I don't like the games, that's all."
        "Jesus.  So you have to throw a sawbuck in the desk drawer now and then to get the vacation time you want.  It's life, Mike."
        "I know.  I don't have to like it."
        "No, you don't.  Ah, hell, here's to you.  A career dick and one of the best.  God bless you."  Finley practically cracked Dooley's glass with his own, then turned his back on him.
        Dooley nursed his whiskey along for a while, enjoying the banter, mostly listening.  When he finished it off he slapped Olson on the shoulder.  "Bedtime.  See you tomorrow."
        "Sweet dreams."
        "You know it."  Dooley got in his car and drove.  The city had that washed-clean feel after the rain and Dooley rolled the window down and let the damp air blow on him.  The traffic was thin and he made good time out Elston.
        Merrimac Avenue was asleep, happy and ignorant.  Out here in the M streets there were no weeds for bodies to lie in.  Sometimes Dooley felt guilty sneaking home in the middle of the night, bringing corruption and death out to the Northwest Side.  
        Dooley sat in the car in the dark for a while after pulling into the garage.  He made sure to switch off the ignition, tired as he was; one of these nights he was going to forget, fall asleep in the car and die of carbon monoxide poisoning.  Cop's suicide stuns family, friends.  He could see the headlines.  
        After a while he climbed out of the car, pulled down the garage door and felt his way to the door that led into the kitchen, key in hand.  Dooley always tried to leave everything in the dark garage; he hated to bring bad things into Rose's kitchen with the single light on over the sink, dishes shining in the drainer, the table top cleared and the chairs squared away.  He draped his jacket over the back of a chair.
        He made his way through the hall, up the stairs, sticking close to the wall so the steps wouldn't creak, listening for soft voices in the dark.  Once in a while Kathleen or Frank would be awake and call out hi Daddy or hey Pop to him; when he was little Kevin used to do that a lot and Dooley would wonder if he ever slept.  Dooley hated to wake his kids up but liked putting his head in the door and telling them to go back to sleep.
        Rose never called out; she would just wait until he came to her.  Tonight she stirred and murmured "Hi darling," half asleep, as he stepped softly across the rug toward her.  He sat on the side of the bed and leaned down to kiss her, lingering for a moment with his nose in her hair, lips on her soft damp temple.  She found his hand and squeezed.  Dooley straightened up and then just sat there for a while holding her hand, waiting for her to go back to sleep.  This was just about the best part of his marriage these days.
        After a time he kissed Rose again and let go of her hand.  He took off his holster and locked the .38 and his star in the drawer.  He sneaked out of the room and back downstairs and into the kitchen again.  He took the bottle of Jameson's out of the cupboard and got a glass from the drainer.  He poured an inch of whiskey into the glass and put the bottle back.  The clock over the door said two-twenty-two.  Sometimes Dooley sat in the kitchen for his nightcap, just looking at the pattern in the Formica table top, but tonight he walked up the hallway into the living room and found his armchair in the dark.  
        He knew drinking alone in the dark wasn't a good way to drink and he knew that sometime after dawn he would have to get out of bed and piss, long before he had gotten enough rest, but he didn't care because he liked to drink his Jameson's and he figured he had earned it.
        It would be two-twenty-two in the afternoon in Quang Tri province, Viet Nam. Dooley had worked it out looking at a globe: Viet Nam was just about exactly half way around the world from Chicago.  It would be hot, like it had been on Bougainville or Luzon.  Two in the afternoon and hot as hell.  Dooley could still feel it.
        Dear Father don't let anything really bad happen to him, Dooley prayed, the only thing he ever prayed any more.  He took a sip of whiskey.
        One way or another Dooley had been dealing with bad things for a little over twenty-five years, but out in the Pacific he had learned all about degrees of bad.  Getting shot was what you hoped for sometimes.  The first time Dooley had seen a man burned black and crisp, screaming on the ground, he had started to learn about really bad things.
        The woman on the river bank had run into it.  She hadn't been lucky enough to get a knife in the chest, a bullet through the head or a few quick whacks with a baseball bat.  She had run into the thing that Dooley felt had been stalking him since 1943, when the Japanese 17th Army had taken his education in hand on Bougainville, the thing that he feared would not be content until it had his son.  She had run into Something Really Bad.
        I'll find them, Dooley promised her in the dark, raising his glass.