Read Online Darktown by Thomas Mullen - Free Book Online

the nearest call box, Boggs said a prayer for her. He asked that the Lord keep her spirit, whoever she was. He asked that she find peace. And he prayed for the Lord’s forgiveness, because he had seen her in that car with the white man who hit her, and he hadn’t done anything to help her.

4
    SERGEANT MCINNIS WAS the first to join them at the site. Two of the other colored officers, Wade Johnson and big Champ Jennings, made it minutes later.
    â€œYou’re sure she’s the same girl?” McInnis asked.
    â€œPretty sure,” Smith replied.
    â€œThought you said you couldn’t see her face that night.”
    â€œCan’t really see her face anymore either, Sergeant. But she has the same dress and locket and hair.”
    McInnis crouched beside the corpse while Boggs shined a light. The body was bloated and purpled and not recognizably human. Pieces of it were missing, sometimes in chunks and sometimes little pecks, in accordance with the size of the scavengers that had feasted on it.
    â€œDamn. Couple days, I’d say.” McInnis stood back up. “Garbage collection is supposed to be once a week in this neighborhood, ain’t it?”
    â€œThat might be official policy,” Smith said. “But I live a few blocks away, and it ain’t the case.”
    â€œWell, I want you to call in to Sanitation and find out the most recent time they’ve been by.”
    â€œYes, sir.”
    After three months of working under McInnis, none of them knew quite what to make of him. He had the exasperated air of a man who was perpetually one card shy of a royal flush, his patience thinned by that one maddening, missing card. He had a wife and, they’d heard somewhere, kids, yet he never spoke about them. His short dark hair had never noticeably grown or been cut, which meant either he trimmed it incessantly or it just somehow didn’t grow. The hair was free of gray, though he had wrinkles around his eyes, the weathered look of a fellowwho’d been scowling for years until it became permanent. He was thin and—the few times any of them had occasion to see him pursue a subject on foot—startlingly fast. He was their boss. He called all of them by their last names and never asked about their home lives. None of them had ever heard him say “nigger” or “coon” or “monkey” or “ape,” yet they all felt certain those words were familiar to his tongue. He didn’t smile much. He ate meticulously constructed sandwiches that his wife (they assumed) wrapped in waxed paper for him, never going out for a meal, which (they assumed) was because he did not want to patronize the local colored establishments. He was in all likelihood the only sergeant in Atlanta who had eight rookies to deal with, regardless of race. They each sensed that he hated his job, at least since they’d been hired.
    â€œYou’ll have to take the body out,” he said. “And then you’ll have to go through this whole mess for the murder weapon or anything else.”
    â€œShould we wait for Homicide, sir?” Jennings asked. “We don’t want them criticizing us for disturbing a crime scene.”
    â€œThey’ll criticize you regardless of what you do. And this crime scene appears pretty well disturbed already. Besides, if we wait on them, we could wait so long the sanitation trucks beat them to her.”
    They didn’t need him to translate: white detectives couldn’t care less about a dead colored girl, especially one found in a dump.
    â€œSomeone should question the fellow she was with that night,” Johnson chimed in.
    â€œBrian Underhill,” Boggs said.
    â€œHe was in your report?” McInnis seemed interested in that name.
    â€œYes, sir. Dunlow and Rakestraw took over once he was pulled over the second time.”
    â€œI’ll look into it.” McInnis considered something, eyes down. “C’mon,