Cooked Goose

Granny scaring her granddaughter witless with tales of cannibalistic witches, cross-dressing wolves, and cinder girls whose only ambition was to charm a prince into supporting them for the rest of their happily-ever-after lives, such tales were part of a Southern girl’s upbringing.
    Savannah betted on the fact that Charlene Yardley’s mom had read her to sleep with such stories, and the tears in Charlene’s eyes had proven she was right.
    Once, half an hour ago, Savannah had slipped out to make a phone call to Dirk. They had already spent the after- noon together, going over the victims’ files. But when she had told him she was at the hospital and had something new, he had said he would be over as soon as possible. She had decided to wait until he arrived to discuss her latest finding with him.
    He didn’t disappoint her. Five minutes later, he stuck his head into the room and seeing the sleeping Charlene, tiptoed over to the side of the bed.
    “Thanks for coming,” Savannah whispered, laying the book aside. “I couldn’t wait to show you this.”
    “Yeah, I wanna see it,” he replied. “But you may wanna show me and then get the hell outta here.”
    “Why?”
    “The captain was standing by my desk when you called. When I hung up, he wanted to know what you had told me. I described the bruise, like you did, and he got all interested... said he was gonna drop by himself to look at it.”
    “Since when does Bloss take an interest in the details of a case?”
    He shrugged. “Mostly when it’ll irk your butt.”
    “Yeah, no kidding.”
    Charlene stirred and moaned slightly. They waited until she was completely still and her breathing was slow and even before Savannah nudged Dirk closer to the bed.
    “Have you got your penlight?” she asked.
    He pulled the small flashlight from his pocket and handed it to her.
    Flipping on the small switch, she leaned over the sleeping Charlene. Shielding half of the light with her hand to keep it out of the woman’s eyes, Savannah directed the beam on the lower part of Charlene’s right cheek.
    “Take a look at that,” she said, “just above her jawbone.”
    He leaned close and squinted, then he quirked one eyebrow. “I’ll be damned. You’re right,” he said. “Did you ask her about it?”
    “Yeah. She has no idea how it got there.”
    “Hmmm...”
    Charlene stirred again, and Savannah snapped off the flashlight. “Come on,” she whispered. “Let’s talk outside.”
    She gave Dirk back his light, scooped up her storybook, and followed him out of the room.
    They walked down the hall several yards, to get out of earshot of the formidable Officer Morton O’Leary and a couple of nearby nurses who were chatting over some patient charts.
    “You were right,” he said again. “That’s one helluva patriotic bruise. A star—-distinctive as can be—and some stripes. How the heck do you suppose she got that?”
    “Yeah, what are you talking about, a star?” said a nasal, twangy voice behind them that set Savannah’s teeth on edge. She turned to see Captain Bloss, who had just rounded the corner, coming from the elevator bank. Apparently, he had overheard Dirk’s comment; he was all ears—except for his bulbous, varicose-veined nose and little piggy eyes.
    “The victim has a very distinctive bruise on her cheek,” Savannah said, swallowing her distaste and resisting the overwhelming urge she had every time she saw the cursed man to spit in his eye. Granny Reid would not have been proud.
    “It looks like a... star?” he asked.
    “Yeah,” Dirk interjected. “A five-pointed star with some long, spaced out stripes beside it.”
    “That’s pretty weird.” Bloss sniffed loudly and wiped his nose with the back of his hand. Deliberately, he turned away from Savannah to face Dirk. “What do you make of it, Coulter?”
    Dirk shrugged. “Don’t know. I just saw it. Like you said, it’s weird.”
    Savannah decided to talk, whether she was being addressed or not. “I think the rapist slapped her, wearing a ring with a prominent star on it. The stripes are where his fingers struck her. Some of our other victims were sure he was right-handed. If he was facing her when he backhanded her, the marks would be on the right side of her face. That’s where they are.”
    Bloss studied her thoughtfully for a long moment, then gave her a sarcastic smile that made him, if possible, even less attractive. Her palms itched to slap the look off his face.
    “Well,