‘What time was this?’
‘A little past midnight.’
Luther seemed to reconsider things. ‘Well, go ahead,’ he said gruffly. ‘What happened?’
‘The guy jumped me as I came in.’
‘You don’t look that bummed up,’ Luther said casually. ‘Did he rob you?’
‘No,’ Ben said. ‘He wasn’t interested in that.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘He was interested in the girl.’
‘What girl?’
‘That colored girl we found in the ballfield.’
Luther’s face tightened. ‘The guy that jumped you was interested in that?’ he asked unbelievingly.
‘That’s right.’
‘What’d he want to know?’
‘Everything. Whatever I’d found out about her.’
‘What’d he ask exactly?’ Luther demanded with a sudden heightened concentration.
‘He wanted to know where she was.’
‘You mean her body?’
‘Where she was before she died,’ Ben said. ‘At least that’s what I think he meant.’ He shrugged. ‘Or maybe he just wanted to know where we found her.’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t know for sure.’
‘Did he want to know who killed her?’
‘I guess he wanted to know everything,’ Ben said. ‘But he didn’t ask about that.’
‘What’d you tell him?’
‘That I hadn’t found out very much.’
‘Could it have been some crazy relative?’ Luther asked. ‘Was the guy colored?’
‘No.’
Luther shook his head despairingly. ‘This is bad, Ben. This is real bad.’
‘It’s worse,’ Ben said bluntly.
Luther’s eyes flashed toward him.
‘He was a cop,’ Ben said.
Luther laughed nervously. ‘A cop?’
‘Yes.’
‘You must be nuts, Ben.’
‘There’s no doubt about it, Captain,’ Ben said resolutely.
‘And just how do you know that?’ Luther demanded.
‘By the way he handled me,’ Ben said. ‘He went right by the numbers. You get the guy on his knees, then on his belly. He even kicked my feet apart.’
‘Anybody could do that,’ Luther said doubtfully.
‘When he forgot to pat me down before I hit the floor, he noticed that he’d done things in the wrong order.’
‘That could be military training,’ Luther said dismissively. ‘Or any other police department.’
‘He left my pistol hanging on the fence outside.’
‘So?’
‘Why do you think he did that, Captain?’
‘Who knows?’ Luther replied with a shrug.
‘It’s the first thing I thought about,’ Ben told him.
‘Why?’
‘Because a cop in our own department would know that we have to buy our own weapons, that if he’d taken it with him, then I’d have had to replace it out of my own pocket.’
Luther’s face slackened visibly, but he said nothing.
For a moment the two of them stood silently beneath the heavy limbs of the large oak in Luther’s yard.
‘So what do you really think, Ben?’ Luther asked finally.
‘That somebody in this department is scared.’
‘Because of the girl.’
‘Maybe the way we’re looking into it. The way we’re being serious about it.’
‘But all you’ve got’s that Bluto fellow.’
‘Maybe we’re missing something.’
‘What?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘So what do want to do about it?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You want off the case?’
‘No,’ Ben said immediately, offended by the question. ‘Why would I want that?’
‘In case it all has something to do with a brother officer in the department,’ Luther said. ‘I mean, we could turn the whole thing over to the State Police.’
Ben laughed. ‘Lingo’s men?’
‘They may not all be like what we’re used to seeing lately,’ Luther told him. ‘At least you wouldn’t be looking into things that could involve people you know.’
Ben shook his head. ‘No, I want to stay on it.’
‘Okay,’ Luther said quietly. His eyes drifted upward toward the tangled overhanging limbs. ‘Things are too complex for me these days, Ben,’ he said unhappily. ‘Too mixed up for a simple mind.’ He looked at Ben determinedly. ‘Just remember. I’m right behind you.’
Ben nodded quickly, turned away, and walked back to his car. From behind the wheel he could see Luther’s large figure as it stood facing him darkly from beneath the tree’s gently sloping limbs, and as he watched from behind the dusty windshield, he could sense that the old pattern of the world had shifted suddenly into a more dangerous and complicated weave, and he realized that he could no longer tell for sure whether Luther’s last remark was meant to comfort or to threaten him.
TWENTY-FOUR
When Ben arrived downtown early the next morning, the blocks around police headquarters were already teeming with firemen in full duty gear. They wore black slicks, rubber boots and hard hats, and as they huddled together in small groups beside their gleaming red trucks, they reminded Ben of the swarms of crows that had plagued his grandfather’s cornfields – nervous, squawky, their heads continually jerking left and right, always ready to leap into the air at the slightest sound.
Teddy Langley and Sammy McCorkindale stood at the entrance to the building, both of them staring expressionlessly in the general direction of Fourth Avenue.
‘What’s all this, now?’ Ben asked as he walked up to them.
‘Just more bullshit,’ Langley said bitterly.
McCorkindale laughed. ‘What do you want to do, Teddy, mow them all down with machine guns?’
Langley looked at Ben pointedly. ‘Maybe just one would do. What do you think, Ben?’
McCorkindale shook his head. ‘You beginning to sound like a racist, Teddy,’ he said. He smiled jokingly. ‘I think you’re turning mean in your old age.’
Langley frowned irritably, hunched his shoulders and stalked off down the stairs toward his car.
‘Everybody’s wearing down, Ben,’ McCorkindale said as he watched Langley walk away. He glanced toward Ben. ‘How you doing?’
‘Well as anybody else, I guess,’ Ben said.
‘Still working that dead girl?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Let me know if you need a partner,’ McCorkindale said tiredly as he started down the stairs. ‘I’m getting tired
