Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced from Analog Science Fact & Fiction May 1962. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.
NOR IRON BARS A CAGE....
Iron bars do not confine a Man—only his body. There aremore subtle, and more confining bindings, however....
JONATHAN BLAKE MACKENZIE
ILLUSTRATED BY SCHOENHERR
Her red-blond hair was stained and discolored when they found her inthe sewer, and her lungs were choked with muck because her killerhadn't bothered to see whether she was really dead when he dumped herbody into the manhole, so she had breathed the stuff in with her lastgasping breaths. Her face was bruised, covered with great blotches,and three of her ribs had been broken. Her thighs and abdomen had beenbruised and lacerated.
If she had lived for three more days, Angela Frances Donahue wouldhave reached her seventh birthday.
I didn't see her until she was brought to the morgue. My phone chimed,and when I thumbed it on, the face of Inspector Kleek, of HomicideSouth, came on the screen. His heavy eyelids always hang at half mast,giving him a sleepy, bored look and the rest of his fleshy face sagsin the same general pattern. "Roy," he said as soon as he could see myface on his own screen, "we just found the little Donahue girl. Themeat wagon's taking her down to the morgue now. You want to come downhere and look over the scene, or you want to go to the morgue? Itlooks like it's one of your special cases, but we won't know for sureuntil Doc Prouty does the post on her."
I took a firm grip on my temper. I should have been notified as soonas Homicide had been; I should have been there with the HomicideSquad. But I knew that if I said anything, Kleek would just say,"Hell, Roy, they don't notify me until there's suspicion of homicide,and you don't get a call until there's suspicion that it might be thework of a degenerate. That's the way the system works. You know that,Roy." And rather than hear that song-and-dance again, I gave myselfthirty seconds to think.
"I'll meet you at the morgue," I said. "Your men can get the wholestory at the scene without my help."
That mollified him, and it showed a little on his face. "O.K., Roy,see you there." And he cut off.
I punched savagely at the numbered buttons on the phone to get anintercommunication hookup with Dr. Barton Brownlee's office, on thethird floor of the same building as my own office. His face, when itcame on, was a calming contrast to Kleek's.
He's nearly ten years younger than I am, not yet thirty-five, and hishandsome, thoughtful face and dark, slightly wavy hair always make methink of somebody like St. Edward Pusey or maybe Albert Einstein. Notthat he looks like either one of them, or even that he looks saintly,but he does look like a man who has the courage of his convictionsand is calmly, quietly, but forcefully ready to shove what he knows tobe the truth down everybody else's throat if that becomes necessary.Or maybe I am just reading in