Avenger

Forensics and Homicide arrived at the culvert around the same time, thirty minutes later. The medical examiner was five minutes after that. Dawn came, or what passed for dawn, and a drizzle set in.

Lamport was driven home to shower off and make a full statement. The coffee brewer made a statement, which is to say he could only aver that he had heard and seen nothing during the night.

The ME quickly established death, that the victim was a young Caucasian female, that death had almost certainly occurred somewhere else and the body been dumped, presumably from a car. After the police photographer took shots of the body in situ, he ordered the attendant ambulance to take the cadaver to the state morgue in Norfolk, a facility that served all six cities.

The local homicide detectives took time out to muse that if the perpetrator or perpetrators, who seemed to have a moral code on the level of a snake's navel and an IQ to match, had driven three miles farther on, they would have entered the swamp country at the head of Back Bay. Here, a weighted body could disappear forever and no one be the wiser. But they had seemingly run out of patience and dumped their grisly cargo where it would be found quickly and start a manhunt.

At Norfolk, two things happened with respect to the corpse: An autopsy was done to establish cause, time of death, and if possible, location, and an attempt was made to secure identification. The body itself yielded nothing to the second search: some skimpy but no longer provocative underwear, a badly torn and slinky dress. No medallions, bracelets, tattoos, or purse.

Before the forensic pathologist began his task, the face, which bore lesions and contusions compatible with a savage beating, was again photographed. The photo would be passed around the vice squads of all six cities, for the girl's clothing seemed to indicate a possibility that she had been involved with what is euphemistically called "night life."

The other two details the ID hunters needed and got were fingerprints and blood type. Then the pathologist started. It was the fingerprints the police pi

The six cities came up negative on the prints. Details went to Richmond, where prints covering the whole of Virginia are stored. Days went by. The answer came back. Sorry. The next step up was the FBI, covering the entire United States. It uses IAFIS-the Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System.

The pathologist's report made even hardened homicide detectives queasy. The girl appeared not much more than eighteen, if that. She had once been pretty, but someone, plus her lifestyle, had put an end to that. Vaginal and anal dilation was so exaggerated that she had clearly been penetrated, and repeatedly, by instruments far larger than a normal male organ. The terminal beating had not been the only one; there had been others before. And heroin abuse, probably dating back no more than six months.

To both Homicide and Vice detectives in Norfolk, the report said "prostitution." It was no news to any of them that recruitment into vice was often accompanied by narcotic dependency, the pimp being the only source of the drug. Any girl trying to escape the clutches of such a gang would certainly be punished; such "lesson learning" could involve forced participation in exhibitions featuring brutal perversions and bestiality. There were creatures prepared to pay for this, and thus creatures prepared to supply it.

The postautopsy body went into the cold room, while the search for the girl's identity continued. She was still Jane Doe. Then a Vice detective in Portsmouth thought he recognised the circulated photograph, despite the damage and discoloration. He thought that she might have been a hooker going under the name of Lorraine.

Enquiries revealed that " Lorraine " had not been seen for several weeks. Prior to that she had worked for a notoriously vicious Hispanic gang, who recruited by using goodlooking gang members to pick up girls in the cities to the north and entice them south with promises of marriage, a lovely vacation, whatever it took.

The Portsmouth Vice Squad worked on the gang but with no result. The pimps claimed they had never known Lorraine 's real name, that she had been a professional when she arrived, and that she had left voluntarily to return to the West Coast. The photograph was simply not clear enough to prove otherwise.

But Washington did identify the girl. They came up with a firm ID based on the prints. Amanda Jane Dexter had tried to fool the security of a local supermarket and shoplift an item. The security camera won. The juvenile court judge accepted her story, backed by five classmates, and let her go with a caution. But her fingerprints were taken. They were with the NYPD and had been passed on to IAFIS.

"I think," muttered Sergeant Austin of the Portsmouth Vice Squad when he heard the news, "I might be able to get those bastards at last."

It was another filthy winter morning when the phone rang in the apartment in the Bronx, but perhaps a good enough morning to ask a father to drive three hundred miles to identify his only child. Cal Dexter sat on the edge of the bed and wished he had died in the tu

He could not wait for a flight out of La Guardia for Norfolk International; he could not have sat and waited if there had been a flight delay due to fog, rain, hail, or congestion. He took his car and drove. Out of New York, across the bridge to Newark, O through the country he knew so well as he had been hauled from one construction site to another: out of New Jersey, through a chunk of Pe

At the morgue in Norfolk he stared down at the once lovely and much loved face and nodded dumbly to the homicide detective with him. They went upstairs. Over coffee he ascertained the basic outlines. She had been beaten by a person or persons unknown. She had died of severe internal haemorrhaging. The "perps" had seemingly put the body in the trunk of a car, driven into the most rural part of the First Precinct, Virginia City, and dumped it. "Enquiries are proceeding, sir." He knew it was a fraction of the truth.

He made a long statement, told them all about "Emilio," but it rang no bells with the detectives. He asked for his daughter's body. The police had no further objections, but approval had to come from the Coroner's Office. It took time. Formalities. Procedures. He took his car back to New York, returned, and waited. Eventually he escorted his daughter's body, riding in the hearse, back home to the Bronx.

The casket was sealed. He did not want his wife or any of the Marozzis to see what was inside. The funeral was local. Amanda Jane was interred just three days short of her seventeenth birthday. A week later Dexter returned to Virginia.

Sergeant Austin was in his office in the Portsmouth police headquarters at 711 Crawford Street, when the front desk phoned to say there was a Mr. Dexter who wished to see him. The name did not ring a bell. He did not co

Portsmouth is the oldest of the six cities; it was founded by the British well before the Revolution. Today it slumps on the southwest side of the Elizabeth River, mainly lowbuilt redbrick buildings, staring across the water at the high-rise modern glitz of Norfolk on the other side. But it is the place many of the servicemen go if they are looking for "a good time" after dark. Sergeant Austin's Vice Squad was not there for decoration.