A Visible Darkness - By Jonathon King Page 0,26

top.

“Absolves the office if you get hurt. Sign the bottom.”

“I think you’ve got the wrong impression of me and my propensity for getting hurt,” I said.

“No, I don’t,” she answered, grinning as she shifted into drive.

We pulled onto the street and headed west. The strip centers were single-story and second-rate. A carpet outlet. A fish market. “Jiggles” nightclub with “Girls, Live Girls.”

We turned north onto a side street and a block and a half off the main thoroughfare we were into residential.

There were no sidewalks but street lamps were set every two blocks. At this time of night cars were parked in most of the driveways, some on the grassless swale. Richards punched off the headlights and swung onto another cross street. Two houses in she twisted the handle on the door-mounted spotlight and snapped it on. The beam caught the black maw of an open doorway and she swept across the windows that were boarded up with plywood.

“Crack houses,” she said. “We try to keep them boarded up. But they rip the stuff down faster than we can get it up. The owner who lives god knows where won’t keep it sealed even if it is the law.”

She flashed back over the doorway and the light picked up some movement inside.

“You arrest them for trespassing or possession and they’re out by Friday.”

She flipped off the spot and pulled the headlights back on and kept going. As a patrolman in Philly I’d done the same thing. It was exactly the same neighborhood only one-story instead of two. Less brick. More trees. Same despair.

“Your husband work this zone?” I asked and immediately wondered why the question came into my mouth.

The dash lights gave her jawline a sharp edge. Her nose held a small but not indelicate hump. A touch of mascara showed at the corner of her eye, which stayed focused ahead.

“Sometimes,” she finally said. “But he preferred the eastern zones. He wasn’t much for the action. He worked a lot with kids in the Police Athletic League.”

And got shot by a kid, I silently finished the sentence for her.

She turned another corner.

We rolled through an intersection and Richards slowed again to a crawl. Every city has a dope hole and this was theirs. Nearly eleven o’clock and there was a busy nonchalance that showed in the slow spin each man did as the green-and-white slid by. Drag from a cigarette. “I ain’t give a shit about no cop,” but the cupped hand helps hide the face. The older ones sitting on empty milk crates, elbows on knees, something too interesting to stare at in the dirt but proud enough to raise their jaws in defiance as the back fender glides by. The young ones who don’t hide. They goof and throw signs with twisted fingers and pull at the loose fabric in their crotch and their eyes say “Ain’t no big thing” and their justification is “All I’m doin’ is bidness.”

We got some extra scrutiny; two new faces on the night shift. But I knew Richards wasn’t showing me this for the dealers. Dope dealers don’t kill old ladies for life insurance money. They also don’t need to rape and murder. There are enough addicts who will give it up for whatever the dealer wants. Richards was looking past them, into the back corners and at the side of houses for the desperate ones.

“We tried to set up surveillance, watch the customers drive in and out, check the plates, run the names through NCIC looking for a hit with a sex crime conviction. Nothing.

“We’ve got some liaison with the community leaders who are trying to clean things up, appealed to their sense of safety, hoping to pick up at least some rumor. Nothing.”

“Too scared?”

“And distrustful,” she replied.

“And scared,” I repeated.

“And probably tired as hell of nothing ever changing.”

She tightened her jaw and we turned again. She seemed to have a destination in mind. A few more blocks and we pulled to a stop next to a dark, undeveloped field of overgrown grasses and brush. The orange glow of the street lamps had little effect on the interior of the empty land.

“Not exactly an urban park,” I said.

“The land was originally bought by the city for some kind of trash transfer station,” she said. “But the commissioner who represents this area fought it. So now they’re waiting for someone to come up with the money to develop it.”

“Been waiting long?”

“Years.”

She flipped on the spotlight and swung it into the darkness. A