Rebel in Time

The police station was modern and clean and nothing at all like the rundown wooden dumps that you saw in the television serials. Lieutenant Anderson was no TV hero either. He was scrawny and well past fifty, his short-cropped grey hair and granny glasses making him look more like a school teacher than a cop. He was also very, very black.

'Sit down, lieutenant,' Anderson said in a soft Virginia accent. 'I'm getting some coffee — want some?'

'Yes, please.'

'Sorry to drag you out like this, but we are having trouble running down a lead on a double homicide. Now, I've come to believe that maybe you could assist us. All at once it appears that the military are in the picture.'

'Glad to help. It has been a rotten Monday morning so far. If I can do anything constructive…'

'Good.' Anderson pulled over a thick file and opened it. 'At first it looked like we had an ordinary break and entry, with homicide as a fringe benefit. The incident occurred in an apartment out on Connecticut past the park. Fire escape window kicked in — there's a big Fox lock on the front door but no bars on this window — they never learn. Place torn apart, valuables missing, girl name of Marianne Sobell beaten to death with a steel poker on the living-room floor. Looks like she surprised the party or parties unknown and got wasted for her interest. Had a roommate, one Tricia Broderick, who apparently walked in on all this fun and got choked for her troubles. This is the kind of thing we get too often, a couple every day.'

'I don't see how this has anything to do with the military. Either girl work for the Army?'

'Nope. Just wait a moment, then I'll tell you about the Army connection. First off, a couple of things interested us, like why was the electricity turned off at the fuse box? It didn't fit the MO. Then it appears that the killer, or killers, went out through the front door, since it was slammed shut and the safety locks weren't locked. But the thing that we found most interesting was this.' He took a photographic print out of the file. 'We found this written on a mirror by the door.'

Troy took the photograph and his eyes narrowed. OAFFEY PIGS DIE. He threw it back.

'So what? So a black did it. Some militant with his head screwed on wrong. Who doesn't even know how to spell ofey. Probably doesn't even know that it is pig-latin for "foe". Is that special? You're a little dark for a Kluxer, aren't you…'

'Peace, brother,' Lieutenant Anderson said. 'I got this assignment by routine of rota and I didn't know what you looked like until you came through that door. I'm not trying to make a racial case out of this. But someone else is. Let me show you what smells bad about this, what really stinks. Here's a photograph of the first murdered girl, Marianne.'

It was bad, but he had seen a lot worse. Of course in Nam they weren't good-looking girls like this. But death was death. There was too damn much of it. 'And this is the other girl, Tricia.' Troy took the photograph and looked at it — and froze. His eyes rose slowly to meet Andersen's.

'Goddamned son-of-a-bitch,' he breathed. Anderson nodded agreement.

Tricia Broderick was a black girl. She was — or had been — a dark skinned, black haired beauty. Still lovely in death.

'It has to be a cover-up of some kind,' Troy said. 'This is no ordinary break-in.'

'My thoughts exactly. Deliberate murder made to look like homicide during a burglary. Some grey-skinned bastard trying to disguise it as a race killing to get the pressure off him. I don't know what the killer had in mind, but I did know that I wasn't going to put this case on the spike and have it forgotten. That's when I started to dig deeper into it myself. I investigated both girls and found Tricia's boyfriend first. He drives big crosscountry rigs. He's just back from a run and he and the girl had a date that night. They were going to be married next month. He's really broken up. And he's not a suspect since he was at the garage at the time of the killings. He sent Tricia home from his parents' house in a cab. His garage is just two blocks away so he walked. He called her from there, always does, to see if she got home all right. No answer. He's on a tight schedule. He took out his rig, but was worried. Called again an hour later from an all-night eatery out on Interstate Ninety-five. Still no answer, so he telephoned the police. Which is how we got onto the case so fast.'

'How fast is fast?' Troy asked, staring grimly at the photographs. Anderson sighed.

'Never fast enough. I've reached a dead-end with Tricia, but we found a possible lead with the other girl, Marianne. In her typing pool. She has no real friends, but there are a couple of girls there that she talks to during coffee breaks. It appears that she has had a new but steady boyfriend for the last few months, an Army officer…'

'The military connection?'