anything like that.’
Ben continued to look at the ring. It winked bright-dark, bright-dark as he turned it slowly in the light.
‘Like it was maybe a sacred object or something,’ Patterson went on. ‘What do you think about that?’
Ben placed the ring on the desk, then turned toward him. ‘Any idea where it was made?’
‘Best guess, Cracker Jacks,’ Leon said. ‘Or some circus sideshow where you get a cheap prize if this asshole can guess your weight.’ He shook his head. ‘That ring never saw the inside of a real honest-to-God jewelry store, I can tell you that.’
Ben was about to make the guess that the ring could have been bought at one of the two or three costume jewelry stores that squatted between the barbecue stands, curling parlors and poolhalls of Fourth Avenue when Luther once again dashed into the room. He scanned the empty desks, then marched over to Ben.
‘I got nobody else to give this to,’ he said.
‘What is it?’ Ben asked.
‘I want you to get over to Kelly Ryan’s place,’ Luther said hastily. ‘It looks like the poor bastard killed himself last night.’
Kelly Ryan’s little house looked a good deal like his own, and as Ben pushed himself through the rain toward the front door, he could not help but remember the night before, the way Kelly had seemed to disappear into the night, his shoulders hunched, his back to the world.
A uniformed patrolman was stationed at the front door. He nodded as Ben came up onto the porch.
‘He’s in the bedroom, Sergeant,’ he said quietly as he opened the door.
Ben stepped into the front room and realized that it had been a long time, perhaps years, since anyone but Kelly had been in the house. It had Kelly’s rumpled clutter, his barely controlled drinking, even his odd, distinctive odor, a sweet rubberish musk that had been joked about in the department for years. There was no other smell in the front room, or the little den, or finally the bedroom where he hung motionlessly from a large oak beam.
He had thrown a rope over the beam, knotted it around his neck, climbed up on a small kitchen chair, handcuffed himself with a pair of Police Department issue, and then kicked it from beneath his feet. His face was now a purple-blue and his tongue hung from the side of his mouth like a piece of unchewed meat.
Ben suddenly felt a great wave of weariness pass over him. He slumped down on the bed, folded his hands in his lap and stared toward the single open window of the bedroom. Outside, the rain poured down in dense gray curtains, slapping mercilessly at the little mimosa tree that grew beside the house. He was not sure how long he sat there, but only that when he finally heard a voice in the outer room, it took him a moment to recognize it.
‘Well, this sure puts the cherry on top,’ someone said.
Ben glanced toward the door and saw Daniels and Breedlove standing inside it.
‘Is there any doubt it’s a suicide?’ Breedlove asked as he stepped into the room.
Ben got to his feet. ‘None that I can see.’
The two men circled the dangling body slowly.
‘At least he didn’t mess himself,’ Breedlove said. ‘These twisters usually do.’ He pulled off his hat and slapped it against his coat. A spray of droplets leaped from it and spilled on to the floor. ‘A real toad-stringer we got going out there.’
Daniels lingered at the entrance to the room, his body half-hidden behind the flowering curtain that hung across the doorway. He pointed to Ryan’s wrists. ‘Pretty cut up.’
Breedlove shrugged. ‘Probably changed his mind at the last minute. Strangling gives you time to reconsider.’ He gave the body a sudden small push. ‘No more morning roll calls, Kelly,’ he said.
‘Why don’t you just leave him alone,’ Ben said as politely as he could.
Breedlove looked at him oddly but said nothing.
Daniels stepped from behind the curtain, then shrank behind it once again. ‘Well, it seems to me he’s beyond caring about what anybody does,’ he said to Ben. Then he glanced at Breedlove. ‘Seem that way to you, Charlie?’
Breedlove glanced toward his partner. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Way beyond.’ His eyes darted back to the body, following its line upward from the feet.
Daniels bent down slightly and peered out the single bedroom window. ‘Imagine seeing this every morning,’ he said. Nothing but barbed wire and blast furnaces. No wonder he got tired of it.’
‘Nobody trusted him,’ Breedlove said matter-of-factly. ‘Not after the business with that girl in Bearmatch.’ His eyes shot over to Ben. ‘He ever tell you about that?’
‘No.’
‘Fell in love with a girl over there,’ Breedlove said with a slight laugh.
‘Yeah, he had a problem with that all right,’ Daniels said. He laughed lightly. ‘But you know, I sort of liked old Kelly. He could come up with the craziest ideas.’
Breedlove smiled. ‘Like what, Harry?’
Daniels thought for a moment. ‘Well, one night about four months back, he got about three sheets in the wind at this bar downtown. I wasn’t with him, I just happened to run into him there. He started crying in his cups about some nigger that had disappeared. He claimed he knew for an absolute fact that the Langleys had killed this old boy and buried him in a chert pit in Irondale.’ He laughed mockingly. ‘I said to Kelly, I said, “Kelly, if the Langleys killed a nigger, they wouldn’t even bother to bury the son of a bitch. They’d hang him from a streetlight in Bearmatch.”’
‘That’s the truth, too,’ Breedlove said as the two of them laughed together.
Ben turned away abruptly and walked to the door. ‘You fellows can handle it from here,’ he said.
‘Yeah,’ Breedlove said as the laughter trailed off. ‘It’s a job for the coroner, anyway.’
For a moment Ben paused and looked back into the room, leaning his shoulder against the unpainted door- jamb. Breedlove and Daniels were casually going through the drawers of Ryan’s dresser, as if he might have left a note for them nestled among his underclothes. The body, itself, continued to hang motionlessly above the unswept wooden floor, and thinking back to the night before, Ben tried to imagine if there might have been something he could have said or done to save him.
‘Goddamn,’ Daniels said as he pulled out the bottom drawer of the dresser. ‘You’d think he’d of folded something once in a while. Look at this mess.’
Breedlove glanced quickly toward Ben, then back at Daniels. Then he laughed loudly as he waved his hand dismissively. ‘Aw, that’s just the way you get,’ he said, ‘when you lose your best girl.’
FIFTEEN
The heavy rain had slowed traffic considerably, so it was already early afternoon before Ben made the graceful turn down the circular driveway of the Davenport house. It was a large colonial mansion, complete with tall white columns and a rounded portico. Even in the rain the dark-blue facade appeared grand and inviolate.
The great oak door opened almost immediately, and the woman who stood behind it looked surprised to see Ben standing on her front porch. She was small, with a pale, angular face, and her gray hair was gathered in a small bun which sat at almost the exact top of her head.
‘May I help you?’ she asked.
Ben showed her his badge.
‘My goodness,’ the woman said softly. ‘I am Mrs Davenport. Has something happened?’
‘May I come in?’ Ben asked.
‘Of course,’ the woman said. She stepped out of the door and allowed him to pass into the foyer. ‘Please now, what is it?’ she asked urgently.
‘You have a little Negro girl who works for you, I believe?’ Ben said.
‘Yes,’ the woman said.
‘Doreen Ballinger,’ Ben said.
‘Little Doreen, yes,’ Mrs Davenport said. ‘Has something happened to her?’
‘Yes.’
The woman’s right hand lifted to her throat. ‘What?’
‘She’s dead, Mrs Davenport,’ Ben told her.
The hand curled gently around her throat. ‘Hit-and-run?’
