The Graving Dock Read Online Free PDF

his own son.
    Both gestures were probably equally futile.
    A CHILD IN A BOX . In other quarters the situation would have called for mourning, or for prayer. In this meeting, though, the focus was Departmental politics, even if nobody wanted to spell it out.
    They sat in the small, cramped office of Balfa’s boss, Detective Sergeant Larry Riordan. The thin, mournful-looking man presided behind his desk, rubbing his jaw with a characteristic pained expression. Above him rested one of the chief reasons for his pain: a big board marked with a box for each case. The victim’s name was written in black if the case was open, and then changed to red if the detectives managed to close it. A squad supervisor’s job was to provide the bean counters down at One Police Plaza with as many red boxes as possible, and he was reminded of that fact with stressful frequency. Even so, Riordan was a veteran of street work who did his best to protect his team from the vagaries of the paper cops, which was more than Jack could say for his own boss, who had dropped by for this confab. Sergeant Stephen Tanney was only thirty-seven, with a full head of curly red hair and an immaculate mustache. The man was relatively new to the homicide task force; so far he seemed most interested in pleasing the higher-ups.
    Riordan opened with a question for Jack. “What do you make of this?”
    Jack sat forward and rested his forearms on his knees. “I think we should press hard now, so we’ll have a good jump on things by the time the M.E. finishes the autopsy. I’d be glad to stay on tonight and see what I can find out.”
    “Hold on,” Tanney said. He always reminded Jack of a tame actor doing his best to play a tough guy. “Let’s not start talking overtime before we even know what this is.” If the M.E. ruled out unnatural causes, the local precinct would still have the case, but the homicide task force would be off the hook.
    It’s a dead child, Jack wanted to say. Stop worrying about your goddamn budget and do the right thing. He held his tongue, though. He had had conflicts with his boss before, and was reminded of a sign in his local hardware store: PRESS BUTTON TO REGISTER A COMPLAINT. The button was mounted on top of a mousetrap. “We did our best to secure the scene,” he said, “but I think I spotted a guy from the Daily News .” He watched as the little career-impact calculator in Tanney’s brain clicked away. Press interest meant public interest, which meant Department interest, which meant that jobs might be on the line.
    Tanney frowned. “All right. Why don’t we send some uniforms out, do a waterfront canvass? I’ll see if we can get some manpower from the next shift, and of course we’ll run the kid through Missing Persons…” He turned to his fellow sergeant. “Can you spare some people?”
    Riordan nodded. He turned to his own detective, who ultimately owned the case. “What do you think, Tom?”
    Balfa just shrugged. “Sure. Let’s find out who the little bugger was.”
    AFTER HIS DAY TOUR was over—and after his boss went home for the day—Jack dropped into One Police Plaza in Manhattan and volunteered several hours of his own time, checking computer databases to see if he could discover the boy’s identity. He had his work cut out for him: At any given time, nationally, there were at least a thousand unidentified dead children.

CHAPTER five
    A T HOME, JACK STOPPED in the hallway to listen for signs of activity from his landlord upstairs. The man was eighty-six, a recent widower, and he had suffered a stroke during the past summer.
    Jack heard a door open, and a moment later a pleasant young Jamaican woman came downstairs buttoning up her winter coat. Mr. Gardner’s home-care nurse.
    “How’s he doing?” Jack asked.
    The woman smiled. “Feisty as ever. He says he wants to take me to Atlantic City.”
    Jack grinned. “You can’t keep a good man down.”
    The woman raised her eyebrows. “How about