Flowers From Berlin by Hynd Noel

Author:Hynd, Noel [Hynd, Noel]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Historical Suspense
ISBN: 9780821720608
Publisher: Zebra
Published: 1985-01-01T06:00:00+00:00

PART FIVE

September-October

1939

TWENTY

"Not very pretty to look at, Mr. Cochrane, sir," said Chief Martin Kugler of the Red Bank, New Jersey, Police Department. The two men stepped from a rusting green and white police car on the curb. Nearby there already stood an entire delegation of police vehicles. Men in various uniforms—local police, county sheriff's office, state police—stood with folded arms and waited. Police Chief Martin Kugler led Cochrane through a trail in the woods. The ground steamed with unexpected September heat, and a cloud of gnats pursued them.

Kugler's tones were apologetic. "We knew a boy was missing from the navy yard, but they get AWOL's all the time. Generally they turn up a thousand miles away at their parents' home. Wish it had been the same with this one, right?"

"Right," Cochrane mumbled, looking ahead. Kugler's waddling, measured steps set the pace. The police chief was a squat, sincere, balding little man with thick arms, an imposing paunch, and a .45 that hung like a cannon at his left side. This was Chief Kugler's second homicide in nine years, and the first that did not fit into a neat pattern of victim-knowing-killer. He and Cochrane neared a group of men standing around a body in the center of the woods.

Kugler continued. "We read all the F.B.I. circulars, you know. Read them carefully. Think they had your name on them."

"They did," Cochrane answered.

"Well, you know. Since the Adriana went down we been looking for anything funny around here. Then this morning two kids are playing in the woods and they find this."

Billy Pritchard's corpse was in a middle stage of decomposition. The skin was dark and ulcerated, the teeth horribly accentuated by the rotting flesh of the lips, and the hair matted badly from dirt and rain. The entire corpse crawled with insects.

Cochrane stared. The body of an American boy in his underclothes was more real than a thousand ships exploding at sea.

Kugler stared also. The last few hours had been unpleasantly unique in his experience. First the body had been discovered in the woods. He had immediately filed the homicide report with the state police in Trenton. The state police—noting the proximity of the body to the navy yard, that an American sailor was still AWOL, and the events surrounding the Adriana —called it in to Washington.

Moments later, Chief Kugler had found himself talking long distance to someone named Special Agent Cochrane who wanted more of the specifics.

"See, I don't want to make something out of nothing, Mr. Cochrane, sir," Kugler had offered, "but the boy's uniform is gone. Now, you know that British boat that blew up? I was thinking. . ."

"Don't touch anything," answered Cochrane. "I'll be there in three hours."

Cochrane telephoned the Newark Bureau office and asked for two special agents, Mike Cianfrani and Jim Hearn, whom Cochrane knew from New York, to be placed on local special assignment. As Cochrane took a taxi to Washington's Union Station, Cianfrani and Hearn took their own car to Red Bank to safeguard the crime scene.

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