Crime Scene by Rick R. Reed Page A

dots. A summer outfit, made from cotton. Who knew the color? Everything had melded into the unsympathetic gray of a crime scene photo. A tiny ruffled skirt and matching sleeveless midriff top. The skirt had white polka dots, while the top contrasted, with polka dots the color of the solid part of the skirt, on a white background.
    She wore white patent leather shoes. Anklet socks, rimmed in lace.
    And she had been strangled.
    The homicide detective’s notes said that the little girl had been strangled by her mother.
    She stared at the photograph for longer than she should have. Maybe if she had flipped to another page, horror and sorrow making her recoil, she would not be a prisoner of this image. But she had stood in the air-conditioned chill of the bookstore, unable to tear her gaze away from the little girl lying on concrete, lips parted and eyes staring at nothing forever.
    * * *
    It was hot. One of those days where the box fan in their apartment window did nothing but blow the hot air around, wasting electricity and offering not even the smallest refuge from the heat and humidity. The sky was an overturned teacup of milky white, trapping the shimmering waves of heat near the concrete three stories below them, keeping every bit of moisture in the August air down low…mugginess so real it was palpable, like living inside a sponge.
    And it was only nine o’clock in the morning. It had broken 100 degrees the past three days and, unless they had a storm, it would do so again today. She was listening to the radio, a Pall Mall burned down to the filter between her fingers. WNBR, out of Brooklyn. She had listened, with closed eyes, to Brenda Lee singing “I’m Sorry”; Roger Miller, “King of the Road”; and Burt Kaempfert, “Red Roses for a Blue Lady.” Maybe she wouldn’t be such a blue lady if someone had given her red roses. But they would have only wilted in the heat. And the only one who would have ever given her red roses was gone. But thinking about him only made the pain behind her eyes greater, as if he had stuck around to throw a final punch. She had placed a tepid dishrag across her forehead, thinking it would help, but all it did was force her to breathe in the smells of wiped-up Maxwell House and burnt toast crumbs.
    Her head pounded, throbbed. The music didn’t help. The dishrag didn’t help. The fan didn’t help. Her right eye felt swollen, the pain coming in waves.
    There was nowhere to go to escape the pain and the heat.
    “Mama…”
    She shut her eyes tighter. Lucy. Lucy was awake and now the real fun would begin. She stubbed out her cigarette in the ashtray and got up from the Formica-topped table, the back of her aluminum chair sliding with a shriek across the chipped linoleum floor.
    “Mama…”
    “I’m coming, honey.” She paused long enough to light a fresh Pall Mall and continued down the grimy hallway to her daughter’s bedroom. Outside, an ambulance or a fire truck wailed, an open fire hydrant hissed in protest to children’s voices screaming as they played in the water.
    Lucy lay in bed, brown curls plastered to her forehead with sweat. The poor kid.
    “Mama, I’m hot.”
    “You and me both, honey.” She crossed to sit on the bed. Lucy was small, even for seven, but pretty, like a doll. Sandy hair that fell in ringlets to her shoulders, naturally. She never used rollers or even her fingers to make the tight sausage curls that sprouted from her daughter’s head: a wild riot of hair that set off the elfin features—the button nose and big brown eyes.
    She ran her hand across Lucy’s mop of hair, already damp, almost soaking near her neck and forehead.
    “Can we go to the beach today?”
    “Aw honey, I don’t know.” She wondered from where the fare for the train would come. The task of packing up Thermos, blankets, radio, swimsuits, towels, and snacks daunting with the way her head ached, with how the heat made her languid, each movement real effort. She wanted to lie in