Violation

by Sally Spencer

  But Jerry hadn’t returned, and it was an hour before a neighbor found him, battered and violated, just two blocks from his home.

  *

  Patricia Walker’s parents had an arrangement under which they would each pick her up from school on alternate days.

  “Only, see,” Jack Walker explained, “I’ve been struggling to keep my business afloat, and I somehow got it into my head that it was Wednesday ‘stead of Thursday. Oh Jesus, I’ll never – never – forgive myself for what happened!”

  And he probably wouldn’t – but that wasn’t going to be a great deal of help to his daughter Pattie, who was discovered, sobbing and bleeding, in a deserted back alley over in Riverhead.

  *

  Annie Caughlin – only six, and thus the youngest of them all – was the fifth victim.

  “I was supposed to be goin’ to Lucy’s house, but Lucy was sick, so her mom didn’t come to school,” she told me, in a tiny cracked voice.

  It was a week since the attack, three days since the doctor had given me the all-clear to talk to her, but a haunted expression was still filling her face.

  “Why didn’t you tell your teacher there was no one to meet you?” I asked.

  “Mrs Ball was real mad me with ’cos I’d spilled some paints. I didn’t want to get into no more trouble.”

  And so she pretended that her own mom was meeting her, and slipped away in the confusion of waiting parents – right into the arms of the pervert who was lurking only a couple of blocks away.

  *

  It was after the attack on Annie that the nightmares started.

  Maybe it was because she was only six.

  Maybe it had something to do with the fact that now I have only to walk through the Korean grocer’s door for him to reach for a bottle of bourbon.

  I don’t know.

  The only thing I am sure of is that I wouldn’t wish dreams like them on anybody – not even Chief Ringman.

  They start round about three a.m. I know they’re coming, because even though I’m asleep, I can tell that I am sweating and that my heart is beating out a frenzied drum solo. Sometimes it is only one of the kids I see, and sometimes it is more. They have left their poor violated bodies behind them, and are just floating heads which swirl and glide around my troubled sleeping brain. And then they stop sweeping and simply hover, so that they are staring straight at me – accusing me.

  *

  I turn my back on Jackson Square, and gaze at the mountain of files which is still sitting on my desk. Somewhere in the middle of that mountain is the answer, and I know that I have to find it.

  Soon.

  Before I go over the edge.

  4

  It is only ten-thirty in the morning, but already the mercury in the squad room thermometer has climbed way up into the mid-seventies. I run the back of my hand over my sticky forehead and then look across at Williams, whose desk we have moved so that it is now right next to mine. My reluctant partner is plowing her way through a thick pile of reports, like she hopes – even though we’ve been through them a hundred times before – that she’s going come up with something new.

  You have to give her due, I tell myself – I still don’t like her rule-book approach to policing, but over the last few weeks she has proved that she deserves an A+ for effort.

  A young clerical officer, with damp patches already forming in the armpits of his khaki shirt, walks over to my desk and holds out a cheap brown envelope to me.

  “What’s this – the Oscar nominations?” I ask, forcing my reluctant features into a grin.

  The khaki grins back. “Don’t think so, Lieutenant. Don’t rightly know what it is, ’cept that it just arrived, and the desk sergeant thought you might want to see it a.s.a.p.”

  I take the envelope from his hand and read what is written on the front:

  ‘LUTENANT KALETA, HARRISBURG POLICE.’

  Just like that. Block capitals and written in pencil. I feel my instincts start to tingle, like this is finally the break we’ve been praying for.

  “Do anything else for you, Lieutenant?” the khaki asks.

  I shake my head, and do some more studying. The postmark tells me that the letter was mailed locally, from the central post office on Davis. I slit the envelope open and carefully extract the single sheet of paper from inside. There is a short message written on it, and, like the writing on the envelope, this is also in pencil and capitals.

  Holding the note by one corner, I stretch over and lay it on Williams’ desk.

  “Don’t touch it,” I warn her. “There may be prints.”

  But even as I say the words, a voice in my head is telling me that there is nothing on the paper worth dusting for.

  Williams reads the note and frowns. “What do you make of it?” she asks.

  I scan it a second time:

  ‘BOBBIE HOPGOOD IS THE ONE YOUR LOOKIN FOR.

  HE DONE IT TO ALL THEM KIDS AN IT AINT RIGHT.’

  “Could just be some nut,” I say.

  “So you don’t want to pursue it any further?” Williams asks, sounding disappointed.

  “No, we might as well check it out,” I tell her.

  After all, we haven’t got a hell of a lot else to do.

  *

  We go through the criminal records again.

  Nothing known on a Bobbie Hopgood or even a Robert Hopgood.

  We check the electoral register, and he isn’t listed.

  “Maybe he’s too young to vote,” Williams suggests.

  “Or maybe he doesn’t exist,” I counter.

  But if the writer of the letter was just trying to give us the runaround, surely he’d have fingered a real person.

  I pick up the phone book.

  “Let’s make some calls,” I say. “I’ll start with the ‘A’s, you start with the ‘N’s’.”

  The first guy I ring is called Aaron Hopgood. He works nights, and is real delighted to be woken up and asked questions about someone he’s never heard of. I have no more luck with Bart, Dwayne, Edna, George, Harold or Henry Hopgood, but with my seventh call, to Mrs Katharine Hopgood, I strike oil.

  “Yeah, sure I know him,” this Mrs Hopgood says. “Why wouldn’t I? He’s my kid.”

  In the background, I can hear the sound of a television.

  “Is he there now?” I ask.

  “Nah, he’s at work.”

  “Where does he work?”

  “The Good-4-U supermarket, out at the Mall. Shifts things around for ’em.”

  Williams, who has started listening to the call on the other line, drops her phone and goes over to the wall map. For a while, she just studies the blue circles which indicate the sites of the five attacks, then she takes out a red marker and makes two crosses.

  “Look at this,” she says excitedly. “The crosses are his home and the Mall. What do you notice?”

  “Nothing. Can you see some sort of pattern?”

  “None of the attacks took place near where he lives or works.”

  “So?”

  “So you don’t crap in your own back yard.”

  The link is tenuous. On any other investigation, I’d have told Williams she was losing her judgment. This time I don’t. This time I jump at the idea as eagerly as she has – which only shows how desperate we both are.

  *

  Since Williams and I have reached the point in our partnership where we can tolerate being in the same vehicle together, we leave her car at headquarters and set out for the mall in my three-year old LeBaron.

  We join the Interstate where it meets Jefferson, and have soon left Harrisburg behind. For a while the countryside is flat and monotonous, with only the Blue Ridge Mountains in the distance to show us that this empty plain does not go on until the end of the world. Then we draw level with Prosperity Park.

  Prosperity Park! If there was ever a name designed to mock the place it belongs to, Prosperity Park is it.

  I glance at the old tobacco factory which used to turn out
thousands of cartons of Mustang every day.

  “Mustang – the cigarette that gives you a wild ride!” I say automatically.

  Mustang never had a big chunk of the market, but it was doing well enough until the Surgeon General started slapping those subversive warnings on the packs, and smokers started reading them and taking notice.

  The tobacco giants had diversified into other fields by then, and that gave them a cushion, but little Mustang had never gone beyond its core business. There was a slump and Mustang went under, dragging with it all the smaller companies which fed on it.

  The evidence is all here:

  ‘Harrisburg Trucking – this building for rent.’

  ‘Power Cardboard – Makers of cartons for the famous Mustang cigarettes – site for sale.’

  ‘Tobacco Technology Machinery Inc. – this plant closed until further notice.’

  Broken windows, smashed-in doors, roofs with so many tiles missing that I can see the dark shape of the steel girders – Prosperity Park is almost a wasteland.

  Almost, but not quite.

  In the corner furthest from Harrisburg, there is new life – new hope. A bright, shiny new billboard announces that Craddock Industries is, on this very piece of land, constructing a new electronics plant to be opened in the spring. And just to prove that this miracle will actually occur, heavy machinery has already begun excavating the ground for the foundations.

  *

  Another two minutes driving and we reach the mall, which is all shining glass and concrete, marble floors and fountains. There’s no sign here that just a few miles down the road is the city which has spawned the suburbs which have spawned the mall – a city which is struggling for its life.

  The Good-4-U supermarket is on the South side, just next to JC Penny’s. It is a quiet time of day, midway between the pre-lunch shopping and the late afternoon rush. The cashiers sit at empty check-outs, elbows resting on the conveyor belts, discussing the meaning of life.

  I flash my shield. “We’d like to see the manager.”

  One of the cashiers, a plump girl with frizzy hair, presses a button on her desk. A door next to the baked bean mountain opens, and a thin, balding guy appears.

  “Yeah, Joyce?” he says.

  “Police,” the cashier replies, but because she is chewing gum, it comes out slurred. “Powiche.”

  She is clear enough for the manager to understand, and he starts looking worried. But then guys like him always look worried – guys like him probably get issued with a set of ulcers at birth.

  “You better come into my office,” he says.

  We follow him into a room half-filled with shaky towers of cartons. He points to two chairs in front of a battered desk. “Take a seat.”

  We sit, and discover we have a fine view of the car park. The manager walks round to the other side of the desk and lowers himself into an old swivel chair.

  “So what’s this about?” he asks nervously.

  “Bobbie Hopgood.”

  His sigh of relief seems to fill the room.

  “Bobbie don’t work here no more,” he says. “I had to let him go.”

  “Why?”

  “ ’Cos he let me down just once too often.” He shrugs, defensively. “Look, I didn’t want to fire him. I felt sorry for the kid. That’s why I took him on in the first place.”

  “Why did you feel sorry for him?” Williams says, almost like she’s wondering out loud.

  The manager looks embarrassed.

  “You don’t know Bobbie, do you?” he asks, and when Williams shakes her head he says, “Well, see, Bobbie’s what you might call one sandwich short of the picnic.”

  “You mean he’s retarded?” Williams says, and there’s a hard edge to her voice which surprises me.

  “Yeah, retarded,” the manager agrees. “Hey, don’t get the wrong idea, lady. I’m not puttin’ him down. I mean, we can’t all be brain surgeons.”

  “What was Bobbie’s job?” I ask.

  “I had him in warehousing. He was slow, but he was strong, and as long as you explained real careful, he did all right. But you’ve got to understand that this is a cut-throat business. You don’t get the customer’s favorite Wheatie-Puffs on the shelf exactly when he wants them, he’s gonna to take his entire order someplace else.”

  “What exactly did Bobbie do wrong?” I ask. “Get things mixed up?”

  “No, it’s like I said – as long as you told him real slow what you wanted him to do, he was fine.”

  “So what was the problem?”

  “He started taking time off without telling me. One minute he’d be there, the next he’d be gone. I wouldn’t see him again till next morning.”

  “Did he always disappear at the same time?”

  “Yeah,” the manager says, like that’s never occurred to him before – and maybe it hasn’t. “Yeah, he’d go sorta mid-afternoon.”

  Just before the grade school kids were let out.

  “And how often did he do this?”

  “Four, maybe five times.”

  Five times …

  … Jeannie

  … Chuck

  … Gerry

  … Patricia

  … and Annie.

  “Which was it? Four times or five?” Williams asks.

  The manager rubs his bald spot. “Five, I guess.”

  “Have you got the dates?”

  The manager shrugs again – apologetically this time.

  “I’ll level with you guys,’ he says. “The way we work it here, the employees have this little plastic card – kinda like a credit card – that they put into the time clock when they arrive or leave. That feeds the information into the computer in the central payroll office in Richmond, where all the checks are drawn up.”

  “So?”

  “The thing is, Bobbie wasn’t actually on the payroll. I mean, to work here you gotta do aptitude tests and stuff. Well, I knew Bobbie wasn’t gonna pass no exam, so I took him on unofficial and paid him out of petty cash.”

  “No plastic card, no records?” I say.

  “Yeah,” the manager agrees. “I’m real sorry about that.”

  “You can’t even give us a rough idea of when he did his disappearing act?” Williams asks.

  “A rough idea? Oh sure! Lemme see … first time was in April. Last time, when I fired him, was Tuesday.”

  My partner and I exchange glances.

  “Tuesday was the day Annie was attacked,” Williams says.

  The manager has finally figured out where our questions are headed, and it blows his mind.

  “You don’t think that Bobbie … I mean, what happened to them kids … that couldn’t have been him.”

  “Why couldn’t it?” I ask.

  “It … it just couldn’t, is all.”

  “Right,” I agree. “Because nobody in the whole world actually knows a pervert, do they? Perverts don’t have mothers or fathers or friends. They don’t live next door to anybody – they just suddenly appear out of thin air!”

  The manager gets the point – and I see the first flickerings of doubt starting to cross his face.

  5

  Judge Hanson – a big, square guy with short black hair – looks at me over the top of his half-moon glasses, and frowns.

  “So you’re asking me to issue a search warrant based solely on an anonymous letter?” he asks.

  “Not solely on the letter,” I argue. “There’s the lack of an alibi—”

  “Possible lack of an alibi,” the judge corrects me. “You can’t be certain that this Hopgood boy was missing on exactly the same days as the attacks occurred.”

  “… and the geographical pattern of the attacks,” I add, trying to make it sound like Williams and I have been real scientific.

  But even to me – the guy who is just bursting to toss Hopgood’s home – the argument I’m putting forward sounds weak.

  “Warrants cannot be issued without probable cause,” Hanson lectures me. “I don’t know ho
w they do things in New York …”

  The phone rings and Hanson picks it up, leaving me time to wonder if anybody in this whole fucking town is ever going to forget that I once worked in the Big Apple.

  “Yes,” Hanson says into the mouthpiece. “Yes … I understand … But I can’t just … If you insist. But I want it made plain if that if there’s any … Yes, I’ll see to it.”

  He slams down the phone, and forces a weak smile to his face. “My broker,” he explains. “Sometimes they act like it’s their money, not yours.”

  “Being rich can be a trial,” I tell him. “That’s why I’ve always avoided becoming even moderately prosperous.”

  I curse myself the second the words are out of my mouth. Here I am, trying to squeeze a warrant out of a reluctant judge, and then I come out with some smartass comment which could have been custom-made to piss him off.

  But, strangely enough, Hanson doesn’t seem to take offence. Instead, he is looking all serious-judicial again.

  “A search warrant is an infringement of individual liberty,” he says, “and the only possible justification for it is that in curtailing the liberty of the one, you are actually protecting the liberty of the many.”

  “Yes, sir, I understand that,” I say, trying to regain some of the ground I lost with my wisecrack.

  “And I think that particular argument may apply here,” he continues. “Very well, Lieutenant Kaleta, I will issue the warrant. But you owe me one.”

  *

  As I leave the judge’s chambers, I am listening to a mental replay of the telephone conversation I have just overheard.

  ‘Yes … I understand … But I can’t just … If you insist. But I want it made plain if that if there’s any … Yes, I’ll see to it.’

  What can’t he do?

  And what gives his broker the right to insist on anything?

  Clearly, it wasn’t some suit from Wall Street who he was talking to – so who the hell was it?

  I don’t know – but I get the feeling that issuing the search warrant is less about Hanson doing me a favor than it is about him paying back a favor to the guy on the other end of the line.