Patrolman Cassiday had been a full-fledged member of the Miami Police Force less than a month. He was a well-set-up young man who filled out his new uniform snugly. A veteran of the Korean War who had rebelled against the humdrum of a garage mechanic's job after coming back, he was pleased with his new job and extremely proud to wear the uniform and to wield the authority that went with it.
Cassiday's beat was Miami's Bayfront Park. He walked the winding, palm-shaded paths in steady strides, chin up and eyes alert for any sort of mischief a policeman should put a stop to.
It was like walking a guard post in the army, and snatches from the General Orders often fled through his mind as he paced along:
"To walk my post in a military manner… always on the alert.. that takes place within sight or hearing…"
Of course there was nothing much of a criminal nature taking place in the well-lighted park at night, and that's why a rookie cop always drew the beat. But you never knew, Cassiday kept telling himself sternly. Anything could happen in the park at any time.
Those two men with their heads close together on the bench around the turn-they might be desperate gunmen checking their final plans for holding up the First National Bank in the morning. That blowsy old woman who tottered in front of him, wheezing as she walked and leaving a thick smell of stale beer behind her-what if that were a clever disguise to throw off suspicion while she carried out her cunning plan for kidnaping the mayor's young daughter whom she had lured into the park on some pretext?
In the meantime, until some of these hoped-for events happened, the young patrolman strode his post sternly and alertly, secretly amused to see the way young couples sprang apart at his approach, began talking loudly about inconsequentials, pretending not to notice his uniform as he passed, then melted back into one soHd lump in the shadowy darkness behind him as soon as he was ten paces away.
In the beginning, less than a month ago, Cassiday had paused often in his patrol to speak gruffly to such young couples, who hung their heads in abashed silence at his tone. Innocent love-making on a park bench was all right, and he had orders it was to be tolerated up to a point, but how was a young patrolman to know when that point was reached? It was safer by far, he had judged sternly, to nip such little affairs in the bud with a word of warning before they had a chance to go too far.
But that was weeks ago. Before he had met Ann Schwartz. Now he walked his beat as alertly as before, but with much more tolerance for the kisses and caresses under a Miami moon.
Ann Schwartz was a dark little Jewish girl, with elusive laughing eyes, lush breasts and a softly yielding body. He had first met her at a party at his brother-in-law's house two weeks before, and from that day onward his thoughts were all of Ann as he walked the park at night.
Sure she was Jewish, but so what? he argued happily with himself. She didn't really take her religion seriously. She wasn't kosher. She ate bacon with her eggs just the same as any good Catholic, and seemed to have a real yen for all kinds of shell fish.
That kind of Jewish didn't matter if a couple were in love. And he and Ann were. They had decided that the second night he dated her. She wasn't any more wrapped up in her religion than he was in his. A man could go to Mass occasionally, he thought, and his wife could go to a synagogue. Why not? At home it wouldn't matter. Not after the lights were out at night and a man was in bed with Ann.
Tolerance, that's what the world needed more of, he told himself wisely, looking the other way as he saw a dark mass off on the grass beneath a coconut palm writhe in a peculiar fashion. Three weeks ago he would have halted and rapped out a stem warning that would have brought the shame-faced young couple to their feet and out of the park in a hurry, but tonight he looked the other way and even smiled foolishly as he thought how it would be to writhe in the grass beneath a palm tree with Ann.
Not that she was that sort of girl at all. Not with any fellow except the man she was going to marry. But how did he know that couple back there weren't engaged, too? So, why should he interfere?
He pushed his peaked cap back on his forehead as he strode on, looking upward at the faint moon and feeling a great warmth of youth and vitality in his loins. Tomorrow was his night off and he was going to her home in Coral Gables to meet her family. He wasn't worried about the meeting. He felt he knew them already from Ann's ready descriptions of them. He would wear his new double-breasted orlon suit, he decided, with a white shirt and maybe a black tie to give the right sort of impression of sober conventionality in front of her parents.
The rippling water of Biscayne Bay was silver in the faint moonlight on his left through gaps in the shrubbery. Farther out, he could dimly see the riding lights of a few yachts anchored in the bay.
He turned sharply away, threading between double rows of palms whose fronds met over his head, heading westward now toward the end of his beat where there was a call-box for his hourly report.
He slowed his pace sharply as he followed the heavily shrouded path. He hadn't learned yet to curb his pace so he would come out on time at the call-box. The beat had been laid out for older muscles than his, and he always started out taking it slow and deliberate, but, when his thoughts turned to Ann, his stride quickened unconsciously and he was always getting ahead of himself like this.
He was passing the bench without noticing the figure huddled on it when the toe of his shoe struck something in the path. There was a tinkling sound in the gravel off to the side where his foot had kicked the object, and he stopped and thumbed his flash on to turn a circle of light downward.
The beam first picked out a gold lipstick and then a small hand mirror. Beyond them lay a lady's handbag, gaping open. He swung the light back swiftly and something gleamed wetly on the edge of the path beneath the bench.
The beam came up and he saw the girl lying there. TTie pallid face and sightless eyes, the gaping wound in her soft throat from which the red wetness beneath the bench had come.
He stood stricken and unable to move for at least twenty seconds. Time enough for the thought to flash through his mind that the dead girl was no older than Ann, and might well have been as pretty as she before the deadly knife had done its work.
Then awareness came to him, and he plunged headlong toward the call-box under the street light.