take her out.â
Boggs and Smith exchanged a quick glance, then got on with the unfortunate business. The body was rock hard, and they heard ugly snapping sounds, what might have been bone or tendons, and the gross expulsions of gas as they wrestled her out. They carried her past the dump and the jungle of weeds, lowering her to the alley floor as gently as they could manage. Boggs trying very, very hard not to think about what they were doing, not to fully grasp it.
The body was filthy, covered in everything from coffee grounds to wet newspaper to what appeared to be maggots. Jennings backed up a step, hand raised to his mouth.
McInnis, handkerchief covering his nose and mouth, knelt down beside her. He tried to move her head, couldnât, and settled for rearranging the hair that had been covering her face. It was foul and nightmarish and despite all the missing flesh there didnât seem to be anything shaped like a bullet hole.
He moved to her chest now, and there it was, a bullet hole leading to her heart. Not difficult to find at all, since the top of her dress was soaked black. There only appeared to be one, and the sight of it seemed enough for McInnis, who apparently figured the coroner could look for any others.
McInnis used his flashlight to beam the ground, looking for a blood trail, evidence sheâd been dragged, anything. But the area was so unkempt that the search was useless. If sheâd been dragged and bled somewhere, the blood was long since washed away.
Clock-out time was supposed to be two, but it was nearing seven and Boggs and Smith were still filling out paperwork on their Negro Jane Doe in the basement of the Butler Street YMCA.
The Y was a six-story brick structure that, in addition to serving as a gymnasium, rooming house, neighborhood meeting place, and political headquarters for the colored community, had for the past three months also become the de facto precinct for Atlantaâs eight Negro police officers. The same city fathers who had finally extended the badge to Negroes still could not imagine a world in which colored cops sat beside white cops, or ate with them, or showered and dressed in the same locker rooms, or defecated in the same toilets. Surely a riot would ensue.
The fact that the Y was their HQ had spawned a range of slang terms among the officers. Walking a beat was ârunning laps.â Being chewed out by McInnis was âgetting benched.â Doing paperwork was âlifting weights.â
The Y was managed by Herm Eakins, an older man whoâd come down from New York ten years earlier. He told people he wasnât a political sort, but heâd been spurred into action by the white cops, whofrequently busted his door down and demanded that he admit them into the rooms of his various boarders, whom they suspected of having committed some crime or another. The cops never had a warrant and seldom even had a name, and Eakins seldom seemed to have any rights. He had reinstalled his door twelve times after cops had kicked it down, the story goes, one for each tribe of Israel. After the twelfth time heâd had to replace itâhad to painstakingly rebuild the entryway and put in new screws and chisel the side of the wall and install new anchorsâthat twelfth time was the last. He reached out to Reverend King, Reverend Holmes Borders, and Reverend Boggs, informing them that whatever they needed from him to help get some Negro cops in this neighborhood, he was their man.
Thatâs when Lucius first met him, more than a year ago, at one of the Citizenship School sessions Reverend Boggs helped organize. The white primary had just been abolished by the Supreme Court, which meant white people could no longer bar Negroes from voting in the Democratic primary, the only election that mattered. At least, in theory white people couldnât bar them (the ruling didnât stop Governor Talmadge from proclaiming that the best way to keep Negroes
Boggs and Smith exchanged a quick glance, then got on with the unfortunate business. The body was rock hard, and they heard ugly snapping sounds, what might have been bone or tendons, and the gross expulsions of gas as they wrestled her out. They carried her past the dump and the jungle of weeds, lowering her to the alley floor as gently as they could manage. Boggs trying very, very hard not to think about what they were doing, not to fully grasp it.
The body was filthy, covered in everything from coffee grounds to wet newspaper to what appeared to be maggots. Jennings backed up a step, hand raised to his mouth.
McInnis, handkerchief covering his nose and mouth, knelt down beside her. He tried to move her head, couldnât, and settled for rearranging the hair that had been covering her face. It was foul and nightmarish and despite all the missing flesh there didnât seem to be anything shaped like a bullet hole.
He moved to her chest now, and there it was, a bullet hole leading to her heart. Not difficult to find at all, since the top of her dress was soaked black. There only appeared to be one, and the sight of it seemed enough for McInnis, who apparently figured the coroner could look for any others.
McInnis used his flashlight to beam the ground, looking for a blood trail, evidence sheâd been dragged, anything. But the area was so unkempt that the search was useless. If sheâd been dragged and bled somewhere, the blood was long since washed away.
Clock-out time was supposed to be two, but it was nearing seven and Boggs and Smith were still filling out paperwork on their Negro Jane Doe in the basement of the Butler Street YMCA.
The Y was a six-story brick structure that, in addition to serving as a gymnasium, rooming house, neighborhood meeting place, and political headquarters for the colored community, had for the past three months also become the de facto precinct for Atlantaâs eight Negro police officers. The same city fathers who had finally extended the badge to Negroes still could not imagine a world in which colored cops sat beside white cops, or ate with them, or showered and dressed in the same locker rooms, or defecated in the same toilets. Surely a riot would ensue.
The fact that the Y was their HQ had spawned a range of slang terms among the officers. Walking a beat was ârunning laps.â Being chewed out by McInnis was âgetting benched.â Doing paperwork was âlifting weights.â
The Y was managed by Herm Eakins, an older man whoâd come down from New York ten years earlier. He told people he wasnât a political sort, but heâd been spurred into action by the white cops, whofrequently busted his door down and demanded that he admit them into the rooms of his various boarders, whom they suspected of having committed some crime or another. The cops never had a warrant and seldom even had a name, and Eakins seldom seemed to have any rights. He had reinstalled his door twelve times after cops had kicked it down, the story goes, one for each tribe of Israel. After the twelfth time heâd had to replace itâhad to painstakingly rebuild the entryway and put in new screws and chisel the side of the wall and install new anchorsâthat twelfth time was the last. He reached out to Reverend King, Reverend Holmes Borders, and Reverend Boggs, informing them that whatever they needed from him to help get some Negro cops in this neighborhood, he was their man.
Thatâs when Lucius first met him, more than a year ago, at one of the Citizenship School sessions Reverend Boggs helped organize. The white primary had just been abolished by the Supreme Court, which meant white people could no longer bar Negroes from voting in the Democratic primary, the only election that mattered. At least, in theory white people couldnât bar them (the ruling didnât stop Governor Talmadge from proclaiming that the best way to keep Negroes
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