The Last Government Girl. Ellen Herbert

a word between them, Alonso set his camera down and tugged the glove up Jess’s arm.

      Jess crouched beside the girl her pupils large with surprise, red spots caused by broken capillaries dotted her face, her mouth open as if to scream. Three things struck him, the first that her lipstick wasn’t smeared. Thelma Sykes, the government girl murdered in April, also had perfectly applied lipstick.

      He put his hand on her forehead, closed his eyes, and imagined the terror she felt in those moments before she died, when she realized what was happening, but couldn’t stop it.

      How he wished the dead could speak. In some ways they did. Instead of words they left signs. He studied her fingernails, unbroken without skin or dirt beneath them. Why hadn’t she struggled?

      Alonso screwed a flashbulb in his camera and sent Jess a glance he read like a telegram.

      “You best blinker your horse,” Jess called. The policeman led his horse away.

      Because they had come out of the Deep South, where Jim Crow ruled, they had developed a system. Alonso never told a white person what to do. Conversely, when they dealt with coloreds, Alonso took the lead, and Jess kept quiet. That way they avoided the unnecessary complications brought on by race relations, as bad in Washington as anywhere else they’d been.

      Jess dreamed of a place in America without the color bar, where he and his brother didn’t have to hide their bond of blood.

      The camera flashed from the foot of the grave, turning night to day. Alonso made his way around the dead girl, hat tilted back on his head to make room for the big camera covering his face. A flashbulb exploded with each snap.

      The Park Policemen and the groundskeeper, Mr. Novak, an elderly man with a great shock of white hair, averted their eyes, but stood in place, as if stunned by what had happened on their watch.

      The medical examiner, Dr. Lee, a slender Chinaman, joined the group with a nod to Jess. He stayed in the shadows, clutching his bag, until Alonso finished.

      Jess led Mr. Novak away from the rest and asked, “What time did you find her?”

      “It was almost dark when I look for clippers.” Mr. Novak pointed to shrubs on a nearby ridge. “I trim there yesterday and leave clippers, if not maybe she not found for long long time.” He rubbed his eyes, some of his white eyebrows as long as cat’s whiskers.

      Dressed in a stained shirt and ragged trousers, the man smelled of physical labor under a hot sun. Jess knew that sour odor. He and Alonso had picked cotton in Alabama heat from dawn to dusk on their father’s land.

      Jess squatted beneath a linden tree, using the flat of his thigh to write in his notebook. “Does the cemetery keep a record of the cars and trucks that come through its gates?”

      “No record.” The old man sat cross-legged before him. His hands reached around, tugging at the grass. “Only me and Marek here, six days a week. We trade off Sundays.”

      “Did you see any cars or trucks parked along here today?”

      “No. Today I work in Spanish American War, far from roads. I see no cars, no trucks, no one.”

      “If you see a vehicle, do you check whether it has a right to be here?” As soon as Jess asked, he knew the answer.

      “No.” Mr. Novak shook his head. “Is only me and Marek.”

      Jess leaned against the linden’s trunk, feeling as if he’d absorbed some of the man’s exhaustion. “Okay, Mr. Novak.” They stood. Jess gave him his card. “If you think of anything that might help us find the person who did this, call me, please. And would you ask Marek to do the same?”

      “Ya, I tell Marek.” He pocketed the card. “Terrible sad this young lady…”

      “Yes.” Jess meandered through nearby tombstones, where he made a discovery. “Any of ya’ll put a lady’s pocketbook back here?” he called to the men.

      “No, sir,” the Park Policeman in charge called back. “We didn’t touch anything.”

      Jess picked up the pocketbook by its handle so as not to disturb any fingerprints. He took it into the light, squatted, opened it, and went through the wallet. It contained a government ID from the Pentagon with the dead girl’s photograph and name, Kaye Krieger, as well as her address in Alexandria, Virginia. The address appeared to be a house. Was it possible she was a native?

      The other murdered government girls came from all over the country, so it fell to local police departments to inform their next-of-kin. A dreadful, but necessary duty he’d done before. But with the government girls’ murders, they got no closer to the victim than the friend she had traveled here with. They talked to the girl’s roommates, co-workers, boss, but government girls were strangers to the city, often strangers to each other, strangers surrounded by strangers.

      Inside her purse was a half-smoked pack of Kools and a new matchbook from the Palace Royale Ballroom, a dance place on H Street. Jess opened it. Not one match had been struck. Had she been at the Palace Royale tonight? Is that where she met her killer?

      “Pretty gals give them matchbooks out downtown,” Ray K. said, looking over Jess’s shoulder. “Got one myself even though I never went inside the place.”

      Jess didn’t care how many matchbooks were given out. The Palace Royale would be their next stop. He put her ID in his pocket. They’d show it to the manager, employees, and patrons. If she was there earlier, maybe someone remembered her and possibly could identify the man at her side.

      He searched the purse’s lining, but could find no lipstick. Where was it?

      While lipstick was precious to women, metal was critical to the war effort. Women saved the metal tube their lipstick came in and bought colored refills at stores like Woolworth’s or G.C. Murphy’s.

      Dr. Lee cleared his throat.

      “Ready?” Jess looked up at the doctor’s serious unblinking eyes magnified by thick glasses. Dr. Lee dropped his chin in a polite nod.

      Jess put the contents of Karen Krieger’s pocketbook back, placed the pocketbook in a paper evidence bag to be turned over to the Bureau’s Identification Department, and stepped from light into darkness.

      “Mind if I’m in on this?” Ray K. asked Jess.

      Jess said, “Come along.” Ray K. could make things difficult if he felt left out. And they needed good relations with the MPD.

      “This time is different,” Dr. Lee said to them.

      The three walked up a graveled path to a copse of maples at the cemetery’s edge. The slice of moon slipped from the clouds. Wind rustled the leaves, the smell of rain in the air.

      “Manual strangulation, no belt,” Dr. Lee said. “There is a thumb-size bruise right here.” He brought his thumb to the notch at the base of his throat.

      Ray K. said, “Maybe she wasn’t killed by the same guy.”

      Jess hated the idea there were two killers. Still he wondered why no belt. Did a branch of the service have a beltless uniform? He and Alonso had studied uniforms since they got here, yet he couldn’t recall one like that. But it was important the killer’s pattern had changed. They needed to stop focusing on how the murders were similar and study their differences.

      Away from the lights and group around the girl’s body, moonlight shone on the backs of the tombstones, sending blanket-sized shadows over the dead. Why did he bring her here? Was it significant that this was the oldest part of the cemetery, or that it was near the memorial to the Confederate dead? Maybe he thought her body wouldn’t be found for days.

      “Did he do her like he did the others…you know?” Ray tugged on his cigarette, its red glow pulsing.

      The other girls had been sodomized after death.

      Dr. Lee looked from Ray K. to Jess. “I will know for certain after the post mortem.”