Streets of Fire (30 page)

Patterson stared at him suspiciously. ‘Which means what, exactly?’

Ben did not answer.

Patterson smiled slyly. ‘They don’t have anybody else they can trust, do they?’

Ben remained silent.

Patterson shook his head. ‘Is it really that bad?’

Ben shook his head. ‘It’s complicated, Leon,’ he said.

‘Like everything else lately.’

‘I guess so.’

Patterson stood up. ‘Well, what do you want to know?’

‘I’d like to take a look at the body.’

‘Okay,’ Patterson said. He led Ben back into the freezer room, opened the vault and pulled back the cover. Breedlove’s body lay naked on the stainless steel carriage.

‘He was shot in the mouth,’ Patterson said. ‘Then they cut him up and tied him to the tree. He was dead when they did that.’

‘Has he been officially identified?’

‘By his wife,’ Patterson said.

‘His wife? She came down here?’

‘Yeah.’

‘When?’

‘About an hour ago,’ Patterson said. ‘And she was real upset. And not just about her husband. Other stuff.’

‘Like what?’

‘Well, when the body came in, the wedding ring was missing,’ Leon said. ‘She made a big stink about that. I even made sure that he’d worn a ring.’ He lifted Breedlove’s left hand and held it up to the light. ‘He’d had a ring all right,’ he said as he pointed to the faintly pale circle around Breedlove’s finger. ‘But I never saw it.’

‘Where do you think it is?’

‘Could have fallen off during all that was happening to him,’ Patterson said. He returned the hand to the carriage. ‘Who knows?’

‘I’ll call the sheriff up there,’ Ben said. ‘Maybe they found it in the field or in his car or something.’

‘Were you up there?’ Patterson asked as he pushed the carriage back into the wall.

‘Yeah.’

‘Pretty soggy, I guess.’

Ben looked at him. ‘Soggy?’

‘Well, from the look of Breedlove’s shoes.’

‘It was a grassy field,’ Ben said. ‘It wasn’t soggy.’

Patterson’s eyes took on a sudden intensity. ‘Well, Breedlove’s shoes were covered with some kind of thick, pasty clay. White clay.’

‘Then he picked it up somewhere else,’ Ben said. ‘Did you run any tests on it?’

Patterson shook his head. ‘No.’

‘Find out what it is,’ Ben said quickly, ‘and let me know as soon as you can.’

Susan Breedlove answered the door almost immediately. She was a small, but slightly overweight woman, with reddish hair and pale complexion. Her son stood at her side, staring silently into Ben’s eyes.

‘I’m sorry to bother you, Mrs Breedlove,’ Ben said as he took off his hat.

‘Who are you?’

Ben took out his identification. ‘Ben Wellman,’ he said.

Mrs Breedlove stared at him suspiciously. ‘Did you know Charlie?’

‘Yes.’

‘I never seen you with him.’

‘We weren’t exactly friends,’ Ben said. ‘Not like Daniels.’

The woman’s eyes continued to watch Ben apprehensively. ‘Well, thank you for coming,’ she said at last. Then she stepped back and began to close the door.

Ben caught it in his hand. ‘I’d like to talk to you for a minute.’

‘What about?’

‘I understand that Charlie’s wedding ring was missing.’

Mrs Breedlove’s body grew taut. ‘Somebody stole it.’

‘It might have fallen off.’

She scowled bitterly. ‘They stole it. The people that killed him.’ She shook her head resentfully. ‘There’s no way that ring fell off. It was too tight for that. Somebody pulled it off Charlie, that’s what happened.’

‘He had twenty dollars in his wallet,’ Ben said, ‘nobody took that.’

For a moment Mrs Breedlove considered Ben’s remark. ‘I don’t know how to explain it,’ she said finally. ‘I just know that it didn’t fall off my Charlie’s finger. Somebody pulled it off.’ She glanced down at her son, then ran her short fingers through his light-brown hair. ‘Go on out in the back, Billy,’ she said.

The child backed away reluctantly, his eyes still on Ben.

Mrs Breedlove waited until he had disappeared into the back of the house. ‘Are you looking into all this?’ she asked, once the screen door had sounded and she knew the boy had made it to the backyard.

‘Yes.’

‘How come it ain’t Harry?’

‘They figure he’s too close to it, I guess,’ Ben told her.

She looked at him quizzically. ‘Wouldn’t that be a good thing, though?’

‘It might be,’ Ben said.

She opened the door slightly. ‘Well, come on in, anyway,’ she said with a small shrug.

Ben followed her into the small living room. There was a short square television in the corner and a brown, hooked rug on the plain wooden floor.

‘The ring, it looked just like this,’ Mrs Breedlove said as she placed her hand flat beneath a table lamp. ‘It had one of them little blue stones, just like this.’ She smiled to herself, her voice softening as she spoke. ‘Sapphire they call it. Pretty. It stays that same blue forever. At least that’s what the man at the jewelry store said.’

Ben stared at the ring. ‘Did it have anything written on it?’

‘“For Charlie. Love Susan,”’ Mrs Breedlove said. She shrugged. ‘That’s all.’ Her eyes swept the empty house. ‘I don’t have no family,’ she said as she lowered herself into a small, plastic-covered chair. ‘Charlie didn’t have none either. That’s why it’s like this, empty. Nobody to come and comfort us like family people do.’ She shook her head. ‘Course, there’s been a few dropped by. Harry come over, that was one. And the Chief come. And Mr Starnes. Some of the neighbors come over for a few minutes this morning. But that ain’t the same. Besides them, it’s just been me and Billy setting around the house.’

Ben took a seat on a small green sofa. ‘I’m real sorry about Charlie,’ he said. He waited a moment, watching her face, trying to determine what to ask next. ‘May I ask you, ma’am, if you knew what Charlie was doing?’

‘What do you mean, “doing”?’

‘What he was investigating.’

‘No, he didn’t never talk about it.’

‘And last night,’ Ben continued gently. ‘You were away.’

‘Charlie told us to leave for the night,’ Mrs Breedlove said.

‘Why did he want you to do that?’

‘Said it was the colored people,’ Mrs Breedlove told him. ‘Said it was because of all the trouble.’

‘That’s all he said?’

‘He didn’t give no other reason,’ Mrs Breedlove said. ‘He just came home, said he had to take us to the bus station early, picked up our old garden shovel and took us to the station.’

‘He picked up a shovel?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Did he say why?’

‘No. He just put it in the backseat of the car and off we went.’

‘To the bus station?’

‘Uh huh.’

‘And he said he was taking you early because he had someplace he needed to go.’

‘Someplace to go, right, and that he had to get on over to wherever it was.’

‘Did he mention where he was going?’

‘No,’ Mrs Breedlove said. ‘But he never mentioned things like that. He always kept me in the dark about what he was up to. Charlie was like that. Maybe I knew him a little, but I don’t think nobody else did.’

‘What time did he leave that afternoon?’

‘He took us to the bus station at around six, I reckon,’ Mrs Breedlove said. ‘He told me to call him from Hunts-ville when I got there.’

‘To call him at home?’

‘Yes.’

‘Which meant that he expected to be back at around eight?’

Mrs Breedlove nodded. ‘It’s about two hours to Huntsville.’

‘When did you call him?’

‘A little after eight,’ Mrs Breedlove said. ‘But nobody answered. I kept calling every thirty minutes till it was almost morning. By then I was getting real worried. So that’s when I called the police back here in Birmingham.’

‘Who’d you speak to?’

‘Captain Starnes,’ Mrs Breedlove said. ‘He sounded funny.’

‘In what way?’

‘Just jumpy-like.’

‘What did he say?’

‘To come on back home to Birmingham,’ Mrs Breedlove said. She shrugged. ‘I guess he already knew about Charlie by then.’

Ben looked at her sincerely. ‘I’m sorry about all these questions,’ he said.

Mrs Breedlove watched him intently for another moment, then her eyes drifted toward the back of the house. Through a long narrow hallway, the boy could be seen running back and forth, firing a cap pistol. Mrs Breedlove smiled slightly. ‘It’s funny how things work. I never had a daddy, now Billy won’t have one neither.’ She looked at Ben. ‘Did you have a daddy?’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

Mrs Breedlove’s eyes glistened. ‘Was he nice?’

‘Yes, he was.’

She looked away, swallowed hard, then turned back to him. ‘I sure would like that ring, Mr Wellman,’ she said almost pleadingly. ‘You reckon you might be able to find it for me?’

Ben could feel something harden within him, grow almost murderous in its furious resolve. ‘Mrs Breedlove,’ he said, ‘I can tell you this: nobody will try any harder.’

THIRTY-THREE

Ben had just walked back into the detective bullpen when he heard a voice from behind him.

‘What are you doing here, Ben?’

Ben turned toward him. ‘Working a case.’

‘What case?’ Luther asked as he stepped up to him.

‘Same one as before,’ Ben lied. ‘That little girl in the ballfield.’

Luther shook his head. ‘Trail’s too cold on that one, Ben,’ he said. ‘I want you to concentrate on King. He’s made two speeches since this morning, and you weren’t there for either one of them.’

‘Plenty of people were,’ Ben said.

‘That’s not the point,’ Luther snapped. ‘We’re two men down since all this shit got started. First Ryan, now Breedlove. We got to tighten our belts.’

‘How you plan to do that?’

‘By dropping the dead-end stuff right now,’ Luther said emphatically. ‘Fact is, you haven’t brought anything back to the barn on that little girl killing, and the way I figure it, that whole thing is dead in the water.’

Ben said nothing. Luther was right, it was dead in the water. A little girl had gotten out of a car, walked out into a littered ballfield and simply disappeared. It was as if she’d been lifted up into the clouds, murdered and raped, then set down again only a few yards from where Ramona Davies had last seen her.

‘Am I right, Ben?’ Luther asked pointedly.

‘I guess so.’

‘I’m glad you can admit it,’ Luther said. He glanced at his watch. ‘King’s giving a final pep talk at Sixteenth Street in half an hour. Be there.’

For a moment Ben stood in place and watched as Luther spun around and rushed away, his body plunging loudly through the double doors. Then, reluctantly, he felt himself slowly begin to cave in under the weight of the Captain’s authority. But he also recognized that it was a weight which had become more burdensome to him during the last few days, and even as he strode out of the bullpen and headed for his car, he could feel it bearing down upon him in a way that seemed different than it ever had before, heavy, but also willfully malicious, like something chewing at his flesh while it rested on his shoulders.

The mood in and around the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church had changed considerably since the last time Ben had stood outside and listened as King’s voice swept out over the wildly jubilant crowd. The dogs and water hoses had not broken the spirit of the young people who now gathered on the steps and along the cement walkways, but it had changed it visibly. Faces had darkened and grown sullen, eyes more set and watchful. The murmur of the crowd seemed more tense, and the strange, transcending joy he remembered from the day before had been transformed into a grim and bitter determination, one that seemed poised for explosive action.

Not far away, the Langley brothers slouched against Black Cat 13, their eyes scanning the crowd suspiciously. Tod sat on the front fender, his legs dangling toward the ground. Teddy stood beside him, straight and tall, as if at attention before the continually shifting crowd. For an instant he stared rigidly at Ben, his eyes squinting in the light. Then he turned away briskly and walked to the rear of the car. His brother followed him instantly, sliding off the fender, his body plowing through the thick layer of dust that had gathered on the hood. For a time they talked together, huddled closely, their faces nearly touching. Then they parted, Tod going in one direction and Teddy in the other.

The sound of the church choir began almost immediately, and Ben glanced up at the loudspeakers which had been installed outside the building. It was a rousing version of ‘Leaning on the Everlasting Arm,’ but the people on the streets and sidewalks only listened silently, without joining in, their bodies held rigidly erect, rather than swaying to the beat of the old hymn as Ben had seen them do in the days before.

One hymn followed another, and as the singing continued, Ben let his eyes sweep over the crowd once again. He began to see faces he recognized from the streets of Bearmatch. They were the people who’d passed his car while he parked beside the old ballfield, or whom he’d seen along the way, faces that had glanced at him from bus stops, alleyways or tumbled-down porches, always dark with large brown eyes, lost in a blur until his own familiarity had suddenly made them identifiable, faces he’d seen now more than once, faces that had repeatedly marched down Fourth Avenue, confronted the dogs and water hoses, watched him from behind the bars of holding cells or peered at him from the dusty windows of countless school buses. For a little while it was as if he knew everyone around him, had struggled through some common experience with them, shared something fierce, grave, intense, and because of that, now had some small investment in the outcome of their lives.

‘I know you’re tired,’ King’s voice rang out suddenly over the steadily more animated crowd.

‘I know you’re weary.’

A few shouts of ‘Amen’ rose from the crowd, followed by scattered applause.

‘But we must go forward in Birmingham.’

There were a few more shouts of ‘Amen,’ and the smattering of applause increased by a barely audible degree.

‘And I know there are some people that want us to move on.’

‘Yes, Lord,’ someone shouted, and the crowd applauded again, this time with a slightly increased force.