The Innocent Victims

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Tate had forgotten his carton of cigarettes, had left them in his locker, and that was how he happened to be at precinct when the kid came in, in what the doctor later described as a case of shock. Barney was on the desk and in his heavy-footed way he tried to bully the kid into talking coherently. Tate took a look at her torn clothes and bruised face, and he went over and took the hand and wrist that were like ice and took her over to where she could sit down, winking at Barney as he did so, because he didn’t want Barney sore again.

Once he had her sitting down he went back and asked Barney to get hold of a doctor, asked it in such a way that it became half Barney’s idea. Then Tate went back and sat down beside the shaking kid. She was, he guessed, about fifteen. Two years older than his own Adele, four years older than Mike.

She had so much rumpled up hair it made her thin face look small. She had makeup on her mouth, and her clothes looked cheap and new and too tight for her, and she had bleached a streak back through her brown hair. Little kid out for kicks on a summer evening.

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