The Blood On Our Hands Read Online Free PDF

Christopher Burke held his superior officer
    “He hasn’t solved a major crime in twenty years,” Dojcsak had once overheard him say to fellow deputy Sara Pridmore. “That says something if you ask me.”
    “He hasn’t had a major crime in twenty years,” Pridmore argued in Dojcsak’s favor. “If you ask me, that says more.”
    Dojcsak endured the young officer’s latent disdain. Burke was no Dick Tracy, but neither was he an Inspector Clouseau.
    Together they walked from the street into the lane.
    “How’s Sheila?” Dojcsak asked, inquiring of Burke’s wife.
    The younger man shrugged. “She’s pregnant, Ed. How would you expect her to be?” he said, as if hoping for a helpful response. Sheila Burke was expecting her husband’s first child. “If it isn’t one thing, it’s another,” he complained. “The kid can’t come too soon for me.”
    “She’s due when?” Dojcsak knew the date but had forgotten.
    “Like I said, not soon enough.”
    Dojcsak sighed, thoughts drifting to his own daughter. He said, “Don’t begrudge the kid before it’s born. It’s too heavy a burden for any child to bear.”
    “She’s been pregnant seven months, Ed, we haven’t had sex for six. Can you imagine what that’s like?”
    Dojcsak simply shrugged his broad shoulders and bowed his large head, an acute sense of privacy rather than pride preventing him from explaining that yes, he could imagine exactly what that might be like.
    “Doctor says it’s a girl,” Burke said.
    “Congratulations,” replied Dojcsak half-heartedly. “A daughter for your wife.”
    The alley was bleak; a narrow corridor flanked on either side by brick, relieved at uniform intervals by shuttered doorways and suspended yellow pot-lamps. There were no windows here and no access to the sunshine that might otherwise illuminate a dreary interior. The buildings were holdover from an era prior to urban renewal, when function triumphed over design; there was a need, a structure erected to accommodate it.
    The entire neighborhood was an outpost on the southern edge of the village, an island of stagnation separated from the more prosperous north by the river that flowed east to west across the horizon, a branch of the Hudson briefly reversing direction before eventually winding its way south toward Manhattan Island.
    As a teenager, Dojcsak had spent his formative years on these streets; his first cigarette, first kiss, and where he had copped his first serious feel , a disastrous experience that left him feeling awkward and ashamed. No one except the locals came here anymore. What remained of the businesses located on this side of town were lucky to squeeze subsistence level earnings from their meager trade. Dojcsak suspected they were anticipating future development, the day a wealthy syndicate might offer ten times face value for their ramshackle holdings. He surveyed the grimy alley; Dojcsak hoped the merchants would not hold their breath too long.
    The fog hadn’t lifted but unlike the street passage here was clear. Rain dropped from a canopy of hanging mist that seemed to broach the gulf above their heads from rooftop to rooftop between buildings. Dojcsak noted the rutted pavement and was careful to mind his step. With his brain still foggy from alcohol, simple obstruction became obstacle, for Dojcsak the inconvenient walk a treacherous journey across a shattered wasteland of cracked asphalt and debris. The alley reeked of neglect, the unmistakable odor of decay.
    “It’s here,” Burke said, interrupting Dojcsak’s observations. “The bin.”
    From a distance he’d seen the halogen arc lamps, courtesy of the local detachment of the State Police. He’d seen them, but not what they revealed: the bin obviously, but not the body.
    “Inside,” Burke said.
    “Inside,” Dojcsak repeated, as if the cadaver’s presence here might be an undesirable but no less unavoidable fait accompli.
    Dojcsak surveyed the activity around him, acknowledged