Where Is Bianca? Read Online Free Page A

Captain?”
    So Corrigan told him.

3
    â€œI suppose I’d better warn you, Mr. Lessard,” Corrigan said on their way to the morgue. “The body is in very poor condition.”
    Lessard swallowed.
    â€œDo I have to?” he gulped. “Do I have to?”
    â€œI’m afraid so. Not that I’m very hopeful, considering. But it’s just possible you may see something that will enable you to make an ID—an identification.”
    â€œHer face,” began Lessard.
    Chuck Baer said suddenly, “She has no face.”
    Lessard looked at the big detective, but not as if he saw him. The beautiful eyes were rolled back slightly. His complexion by now was pale green.
    Corrigan said nothing.
    The drawer in the morgue had a Jane Doe tag on it. The attendant in the white smock slid it open. Even he looked a little sick at the sight of the bleached muslin shroud. He twitched it off. He had seen the body before.
    Between Korea and the Main Office Squad Corrigan had seen enough mutilations of the human housing to harden him—he would have said—against anything. But this time he found himself fighting his stomach. Even a body blown apart by a direct mortar hit was not so traumatic a sight; in such tragedies nothing human was left.
    The girl’s body had been half eaten away.
    There’s something about rats, Corrigan thought. To this day, for all his experience with the vile, he could not see a technician pick up a laboratory rat without wondering how the man was able to do it. He remembered a story his paternal grandfather had once told him. It had happened in his grandfather’s boyhood on the East Side, in the ’80s, when the boy had been locked in an empty coal bin of the public school cellar for some infraction of the rules, and the janitor had forgotten about him and gone home. The boy had sat up all night in a corner of the filthy bin fighting off rats as long as his arm. Corrigan remembered as a child wondering if that was why his grandfather had snow-colored hair. He still had nightmares about it.
    Chuck Baer took one look and turned away.
    Vincent Lessard took one look and fainted.
    Corrigan caught the man under an armpit as he slumped. Baer reacted almost as quickly. Lessard dangled between them.
    The attendant hastily restored the shroud and shut the drawer. Dr. Samuelson, a city pathologist, the other member of the group, gestured and said, “Take him in there.” He preceded them to a nearby office, Lessard’s toetips dragging.
    They laid him on a couch, neck and head flat, feet resting in an elevated position on the arm of the couch, at Dr. Samuelson’s direction.
    The doctor administered aromatic spirits of ammonia to Lessard’s nose. At the first whiff, Lessard thrashed back to consciousness.
    â€œMy God,” he mumbled. “My God.”
    He tried to sit up.
    â€œEasy,” the doctor said. “Don’t rush it. Lie there a few minutes.”
    Lessard lay staring at the ceiling.
    â€œNo,” he said. “No.” Then he said, “It couldn’t be Bianca. Not my lovely Bianca. Is it Bianca, Captain?”
    â€œThat’s what we hoped you could tell us,” Corrigan said.
    â€œBut her face.” Lessard began to breathe rapidly. Samuelson stooped to give him another whiff. Lessard pushed the doctor’s hand away.
    â€œBianca.… No wonder she didn’t come back. She went out. It was late. The streets were dark. She was alone. And some mugger.…”
    â€œWe don’t know what happened to her,” Corrigan said. “Not yet. Are you up to looking at the ring now?”
    â€œRing?”
    â€œThe Mayan ring. You said she was wearing it when you last saw her.”
    â€œAll right,” Lessard said listlessly.
    Dr. Samuelson went out.
    â€œThe ring is unique. Without duplicate. It was handmade by an old family retainer for the Mexican girl. If that … thing in there was wearing