Streets of Fire

Missing Persons had never been more than a single metal desk stuck in the back corner of the detective bullpen. Along with a lot of general paperwork, it was Sammy McCorkindale’s private beat, and as Ben shifted around the chaos of crowded desks and chairs, he could see McCorkindale’s enormous frame in the distance. He was leaning back in a padded swivel chair, his eyes scanning the sports page of the Birmingham News.

‘How you doing, Ben?’ he asked as Ben stepped up to his desk. He smiled. ‘I’m surprised you’re not working the demonstrations, like everybody else.’

‘I was on surveillance,’ Ben said, but they pulled me off of it’

‘Why’s that?’

‘Somebody found a little girl. Dead. Shot in the head.’

‘Where is she now?’

‘The diggers picked her up,’ Ben said. ‘I guess she’s at the morgue by now.’

‘Find any identification?’

‘Nothing around her,’ Ben said. ‘That’s why I thought I’d check with you.’

McCorkindale ponderously eased himself forward and rooted his elbows on the top of his desk. ‘Well, run the description by me.’

‘I’d say between eleven and maybe thirteen years old,’ Ben said.

McCorkindale took a pencil and paper and began to write it down. ‘Did you see any distinguishing features?’ he asked. ‘You know – warts, moles?’

Ben shook his head.

‘All right, go on,’ McCorkindale said.

‘Dressed in a white, flowered dress, brown shoes, white socks,’ Ben continued.

‘Okay, good,’ McCorkindale said, his eyes following the pencil as its tip scurried across the page.

‘The body was found buried in a football field off Twenty-third.’

The flight of the pencil slowed.

‘Negro,’ Ben said.

The pencil stopped. McCorkindale looked up. ‘You mean you got a little Bearmatch girl here?’ he asked.

‘That’s right.’

The pencil dropped to the desk and McCorkindale leaned back in his chair. ‘How old are you, Ben? Thirty-five? Forty?’

‘Thirty-seven.’

‘And been living in Birmingham all that time?’

Ben nodded.

‘Then you ought to know better than to waste your time on something like this,’ McCorkindale said. ‘They don’t report nobody missing out of Bearmatch.’ He squinted slightly. ‘Haven’t you ever done that beat before?’

‘No.’

McCorkindale shook his head. ‘Well, they got their own way of doing things over there. They don’t come to us with things like this. Right or wrong, they just don’t do it. If they got somebody missing, they do all the looking their own selves.’

‘This little girl had to belong to somebody,’ Ben said.

‘I’m not saying she didn’t,’ McCorkindale said. ‘But it just don’t matter, because they don’t report nobody missing out of Bearmatch.’ He shifted slightly in his chair, and the springs groaned painfully under his weight. ‘How long you been a detective, Ben?’

‘Five years.’

McCorkindale smiled confidently. ‘Well, I been sitting at this same desk for a lot longer than that, and they’s not ever been a missing person report done for anybody out of Bearmatch. They just don’t come to us with stuff like that.’

‘Well, it’s not just a missing person,’ Ben said, ‘it’s a murder case. Somebody shot this little girl in the back of the head.’

McCorkindale smiled slyly. ‘And the guy that did it, he’ll end up with a bullet in his own head, too, or sliced up like a big old piece of pie.’ He laughed quietly. ‘Don’t worry, Ben, he won’t get away with killing no little girl. Not in Bearmatch. Not for a minute. Because they’ll handle it among themselves, and to tell you the truth, they’ll get the job done a lot faster than we ever could.’

Ben stared at him, unconvinced.

‘I mean it,’ McCorkindale said emphatically. ‘They’ll give the son of a bitch a real fair trial. Probably in some alley somewhere, or in the back of a shothouse. Then they’ll cut his goddamn throat and that’ll be the end of it.’

‘All right,’ Ben said wearily. It seemed useless to argue any further. ‘But if anything does come in, let me know.’

‘You’ll be the first to hear about it, Ben,’ McCorkindale assured him. ‘The very first.’

* * *