Southern Cross (26 page)

“No way it could have been here long enough to decompose without someone spotting it before this morning.”

“Oh, so now you’re a medical examiner.”

“Maybe it was dumped. You know, the victim’s been dead for a while, is getting ripe and the killer dumps her.”

“It’s a her?”

“Maybe.”

“Dumps her
here?”

“I’m just throwing things out.”

“Yeah, asshole, ’cause you want the rest of us to write them down and make fools out of ourselves.”

“Then what stinks so bad?”

“Chief Hammer?” a reporter raised his voice without getting any closer. “Can I get a statement?”

“Don’t talk to them!” Bubba said to her in a panic. “Don’t let them do this to me! Please!”

“Truth is, I think our source is him,” a reporter broke the news. “Look at his pants. Not all of that’s camouflage.”

“Shit, man.”

“See!” Bubba hissed.

“How can she stand there like that? It’s bad enough way back here.”

“I’ve heard she’s tough.”

“I’m interested in your vanity plate,” Hammer said to Bubba.

Officer Horace Cutchins wasn’t interested in anything except his pocket Game Boy Tetris Plus as he drove the detention wagon at a good clip along Leigh Street.

He’d been on duty only three hours and had already transported two subjects to lockup, both of them gypsies caught burglarizing a Tudor-style home in Windsor Farms. Cutchins didn’t understand why people didn’t learn.

Gypsies passed through the city twice a year on their migrations north and south. Everyone knew it. The press ran frequent stories and columns. Sergeant Rink of
Crime Stoppers
offered impassioned warnings and prevention and self-defense tips on all local television networks and radio stations. “Gypsies Are Back” signs were prominently posted as usual.

Yet wealthy Windsor Farmers, as Cutchins jealously called them, still went out to get the newspaper or worked in their gardens and yards or sat by their pools or chatted with neighbors or frapped around the house with alarm systems off and doors unlocked. So what did they expect?

Cutchins was just turning into Engine Company #5’s back parking lot, where he was looking forward to resuming his puzzle game, when the radio raised him.

“Ten-25 unit 112 on Tenth Street to 10-31 a prisoner,” the communications officer told him.

“Ten-4,” he answered. “Fuck,” he said to himself.

He’d heard the mayday earlier and knew that Rhoad Hog was involved in an altercation with a disorderly female. But when it appeared that an arrest had been made, Cutchins just assumed the subject would be transported in a screen unit.

After all, it wasn’t likely that a female could kick out the Plexiglas, and even if the partition didn’t fit right
because the numb nuts with General Services had taken one from a Caprice, for example, and retrofitted it for a Crown Vic, it didn’t matter in this case. A female prisoner was not equipped to pee on the officer through gaps and spaces caused by improper installment.

Cutchins made a U turn. He shot back out on Leigh Street, stepping on it, wanting to get the call over with so he could take a break. He swung over to 10th and rolled up on the problem as Detective Gloria De Souza climbed out of her unmarked car.

Rhoad Hog and three other uniformed guys were waiting for Cutchins, their prisoner an ugly fat woman who looked vaguely familiar. She was sitting on the curb, wrists cuffed behind her back, hair wild. She was breathing hard and looked like she might do something unexpected any minute.

“Okay, Miss Passman, I’m going to have to search you,” said Detective De Souza. “I need you to stand up.”

Miss Passman didn’t budge.

“Cooperate, Patty,” one of the officers urged her.

She wouldn’t.

“Ma’am, you’re going to need to stand up. Now don’t make this harder than it has to be.”

Passman wasn’t trying to make things harder. She simply could not rise to the occasion on her own, not with her hands shackled behind her.

“Get up,” De Souza sternly said.

“I can’t,” Passman replied.

“Then we’ll have to help you, ma’am.”

“Go ahead,” Passman said.

De Souza and another officer got Passman under each arm and hoisted her up while Rhoad hung back at a safe distance. Cutchins hopped out of his white Dodge van and went around to the back to open the tailgate. De Souza bent over and briskly slid her hands up Passman’s stout legs, over sagging pantyhose with runs, feeling her way up into areas where no woman, other than Passman’s
gynecologist, had ever gone before. Passman tried to kick De Souza and almost fell.

“Get the flex cuffs!” De Souza demanded as she held Passman’s legs still. “You do that again, ma’am, and I’m gonna hogtie you!”

De Souza held on as an officer looped the plastic flex cuff around Passman’s ankles, jerking it tight as if she were a tall kitchen bag.

“Ouch!”

“Hold still!”

“That hurts!” Passman screamed.

“Good!” Rhoad cheered.

Detective De Souza resumed her search, running experienced hands over Passman’s topography, into its crevices, through its canyons, between its foothills and under and over them while Passman cursed and yelled and called her a diesel dyke and cops helped Passman to her feet.

“Get your fucking hands off me, you queer!” Passman shouted.
“That’s right! You sleep with the coach of your fucking queer softball team the Clit Hits and everybody in the entire police department and radio room knows it!”

Cutchins momentarily forgot his puzzle game. He’d always thought it a waste that a good-looking woman like De Souza was
into same,
not that he minded lesbians, and in fact watched them whenever he had access to pay TV. He simply objected to discrimination. De Souza did not share herself with men, and Cutchins didn’t think that was fair.

“Nothing on her but an attitude,” De Souza said.

Unfortunately, Cutchins had parked on the other side of 10th and it was shift change at the Medical College of Virginia hospital. Instantly, traffic was heavy, sidewalks and streets congested with nurses, dietitians, orderlies, custodians, security guards, administrators, resident doctors and chaplains, all of them worn out, underpaid and cranky. Cars stopped to let the tied-up lady and the cops cross to the awaiting wagon. Pedestrians slowed their impatient
get-out-of-my-way steps as Passman awkwardly hopped ahead.

“Fuckheads! What are you staring at!” she yelled to all.

“Go jump!” a secretary yelled back.

“Jumpin’ Jack Flash! Jumpin’ Jack Flash! Jumpin’ Jack Flash!” chanted a group of sleep-deprived residents.

“Hop-a-long!”

“Motherfuckers!” screamed Passman, whose blood sugar was as low as it had ever been while she was conscious.

“Jumpin’ bean!” cried a records clerk.

Passman struggled, writhing like a python, hissing and baring her teeth at her detractors. Officers did their best to move her along while bystanders and drivers got more worked up and Rhoad tagged along out of range.

Pigeon had gotten bored with the cemetery and was rooting through a trash can, where so far he had salvaged part of a 7-Eleven breakfast burrito and a twenty-two-ounce cup of coffee that was half full.

He watched the heartless parade pass by, some woman hopping along as if she were in a sack race. He suddenly felt self-conscious of his stump and was angered by the crowd.

“Don’t pay any attention to them,” he counseled the fat lady as she hopped past and he took a bite of the burrito. “People are so rude these days.”

“Shut up, you crippled garbage-picker!” the woman yelled at him.

Pigeon was sorrowed by yet another rotten example of human nature. He continued his treasure hunting, always drawn by crowds that might throw things away.

De Souza gripped Passman’s arm like a vise.

“He started it!” Passman twisted around to glare at Rhoad. “Why don’t you lock his ass up!”

Cops shoved her inside the wagon and slammed the tailgate shut.

• • •

It was Chief Hammer’s NIJ mission to implement the New York City Crime Control Model in the Richmond Police Department, as she had in Charlotte and would do in other cities should health, energy and grant money allow. Understandably, this created a bit of a dilemma for her.

She was losing stamina and professionalism as she stood close to Bubba and listened to him talk. She wanted out but simply could not and would never pass the buck, look the other way, walk off and make this a problem for someone else. Hammer was here, and that was that. When a cop asks a suspect a question, the cop must listen to the answer, no matter how long and drawn-out it is.

Bubba was telling her about his vanity plate, recalling his trip to the DMV on Johnston Willis Drive, between Whitten Brothers Jeep and Dick Straus Ford, where he had waited in line at customer service for fifty-seven minutes only to learn that
BUBBA
was taken, as were
BUBA, BUBBBA, BUUBBBA, BUBEH, BUBBEH, BUBBBEH, BG-BUBA, BHUBBA
and
BHUBA.
Bubba had been crushed and exhausted. He could think of nothing else that didn’t exceed seven letters. Despondent and emotionally drained, he had accepted that the vanity plate was not meant to be.

“Then,” he seemed momentarily energized by the tireless account, “the lady at the counter said
Bubah
would work, and I asked if I could hyphenate it and she didn’t care because a hyphen doesn’t count as a letter and that was good because I thought it would be easier to pronounce
Bubah
with a hyphen.”

Hammer believed that Bubba had an accomplice named Smudge, and a graphic and believable scenario was materializing in her mind even as Bubba droned on and reporters continued to keep their distance. Bubba and Smudge somehow knew that Ruby Sink and Loraine were headed to the First Union money stop near the Kmart.

Possibly the men had been lying in wait for the wealthy Miss Sink, headlights and engines off, and when she left
her residence, Smudge and Bubba tailed her, weaving in and out of traffic, keeping tabs on each other over cell phones and CBs.

It was at this point that Hammer’s re-creation of the crime became less well defined. Frankly, she couldn’t figure out what might have happened next and was not the sort to make things up. Yet she simply could not, would not walk away with no accountability and tell her troops the murder was their problem.

Somehow, Hammer had to get Bubba to answer the question of Smudge without Bubba thinking she had asked.