Debt of Honor - Tom Clancy [152]
"It's her."
"Concur, John," Chavez observed huskily. "It's her." Pause. "Shit," he concluded quietly, examining the face for a long moment that made his face twist with anger. So, Clark thought, he sees it too.
"Got a camera?"
"Yeah." Ding pulled a compact 35mm out of his pants pocket. "Play cop?"
"That's right."
Clark stooped down to examine the body. It was frustrating. He wasn't a pathologist, and though he had much knowledge of death, more knowledge still was needed to do this right. There…in the vein on the top of her foot, a single indentation. Not much more than that. So she'd been on drugs? If so, she'd been a careful user, John thought. She'd always cleaned the needle and…He looked around the room. There. A bottle of alcohol and a plastic bag of cotton swabs, and a bag of plastic syringes.
"I don't see any other needle marks."
"They don't always show, man," Chavez observed.
Clark sighed and untied the kimono, opening it. She'd been wearing nothing under it.
"Fuck!" Chavez rasped. There was fluid inside her thighs.
"That's a singularly unsuitable thing to say," Clark whispered back. It was as close as he'd come to losing his temper in many years. "Take your pictures."
Ding didn't answer. The camera flashed and whirred away. He recorded the scene as a forensic photographer might have done. Clark then started to rearrange the kimono, uselessly giving the girl back whatever dignity that death and men had failed to rob from her.
"Wait a minute…left hand."
Clark examined it. One nail was broken. All the others were medium-long, evenly coated with a neutral polish. He examined the others. There was something under them.
"Scratched somebody?" Clark asked.
"See anyplace she scratched herself, Mr. C?" Ding asked.
"No."
"Then she wasn't alone when it happened, man. Check her ankles again," Chavez said urgently.
On the left one, the foot with the puncture, the underside of the ankle revealed bruises almost concealed by the building lividity. Chavez shot his last frame.
"I thought so."
"Tell me why later. We're out of here," John said, standing. Within less than a minute they were out the back door, down the meandering alley, and back on a main thoroughfare to wait for their car.
"That was close," Chavez observed as the police car pulled up to Number 18. There was a TV crew fifteen seconds behind.
"Don't you just love it? They're going to tie up everything real nice and neat…What is it, Ding?"
"Ain't right, Mr. C. Supposed to look like an OD, right?"
"Yeah, why?"
"You OD on smack, man, it just stops. Boom, bye-bye. I seen a guy go out like that back in the old days, never got the sticker out of his arm, okay? Heart stops, lungs stop, gone. You don't get up and set the needle down and then lay back down, okay? Bruises on the leg. Somebody stuck her. She was murdered, John. And probably she was raped, too."
"I saw the paraphernalia. All U.S.—made. Nice setup. They close the case, blame the girl and her family, give their own people an object lesson." Clark looked over as the car pulled around the corner. "Good eye, Ding."
"Thanks, boss." Chavez fell silent again, his anger building now that he had nothing to do but think it over. "You know, I'd really like to meet that guy."
"We won't."
Time for a little perverse fantasy: "I know, but I used to be a Ninja, remember? It might be real fun, especially barehanded."
"That just breaks bones, pretty often your own bones."
"I'd like to see his eyes when it happens."
"So put a good scope on the rifle," Clark advised.
"True," Chavez conceded. "What kind of person gets off on that, Mr. C?"
"One sick motherfucker,