say HATE to a Jew, and I figured Adam, who was Jewish, would see it my way. He didn’t. Instead, he dreamed up some theory about ritual Navajo shit, on account of the swastika being backward. Anyway, they buried that girl, and the case went cold.
Adam was never right afterward. Started talking to himself, and when I asked, he’d just say there was a ghost hitching a ride in his head and not to pay any attention. Then he decided, six months ago, that he liked the taste of gunmetal.
And, oh yeah— he blew his brains out in Rock Creek Park.
Coincidence? I’m superstitious. All cops are superstitious. Too much coincidence: Halloween, the Hebrew. Rock Creek. Bad karma, that’s what.
God, I missed Adam. Damn him.
My phone sputtered as I turned left on Indiana. I thumbed it on. “Saunders.”
“Jason.” It was Kay. “We’ve started the cut.”
“That was fast, Kay.”
“It’s a kid. Anyway, we found something.”
The autopsy suite was cold and smelled of disinfectant. After I gowned and put on a blue surgical cap and paper booties, I walked over to the autopsy table where they were doing the boy. Kay was there, along with the chief ME, a guy named Strand who’s been there about a thousand years.
“Detective Saunders.” Strand held a small circular saw, and I could see that they’d done the baby’s chest and abdomen. The boy’s neck was braced with a block from a two-by-four, his scalp peeled from his skull front and back. Strand powered up the saw. The saw hissed, like the pneumatic drills they use in dentist’s offices. “You’re just in time. Tricky job on a newborn, on account of the skull being so soft.”
“Uh-huh,” I said. Strand is not my favorite person.
“Over here, Jason,” Kay said. She thinks Strand’s an asshole too. She stood at a stainless steel counter along the far wall.
I walked over. Behind us, the whine of the saw dropped as it bit bone. “What do you have?”
“This.” She laid out an evidence bag. Inside the bag was a three-inch square of tan cloth. “We found it under the tongue.”
“Tongue?”
“Folded nice and neat. You took so long, I called for someone to laser it.”
“And?”
“No prints. Blood matches the baby’s. There’s something written on it. Drawn, anyway.”
“You’re kidding.” I turned the bag over, and felt my stomach bottom out.
In the center of the cloth was a Star of David. In the center of the star and at the three uppermost points were Hebrew letters. Below the star was a crude drawing of a bull’s-eye set atop a pole. Along the pole were six phalanges, curved up like scimitars: three to a side.
“First the tattoo,” said Kay. “Now this. This case is getting weird, Jason.”
I let my breath out a little at a time. “Yeah.”
There was a Behavioral Sciences guy worked a case with Adam and me a few years back. A holy shit case is an FBI name for something religious. You know: seven deadly sins in blood, that sort of crap. If you’re unsure, there’s probably a movie in the multiplex, bring you right up to speed.
So here’s what I had: a dead baby. A strange tattoo. A cloth with a Jewish star and Hebrew. Like I said, Holy Shit .
Before I left the morgue, I went into Kay’s office and called Rollins. As I suspected, he’d come up empty on the tattoo. I told him about the cloth. “So I’m going to fax a copy. I want you to run it against the gang symbols we’ve got in our database. Start with the star. That ought to be easy. I can think of a couple groups right off the bat, like Gangster Disciples, or Folk Nation. The New Breed Black Gangsters use the star along with three L s. And I want you to call Gold. Tell her we want a formal statement. Have her there by four.”
“But tomorrow mor—”
“Just call her.”
“Okay. And you’ll be . . . ?”
“Checking something out.” I thumbed off, folded my phone, and tucked it into an inside pocket. Then I fed the fax.
Kay caught me as I left. “Photos of