‘While you were stopped, did you notice anyone hanging around?’
‘No.’
‘I was thinking of a large man.’
‘You mean, you already have an idea of who might have done this?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Colored man?’
‘Yes,’ Ben said. ‘But he’s already dead.’
Davenport looked at Ben quizzically. ‘Dead?’
‘Yes,’ Ben told him.
‘Am I to take it that this death was not of natural causes?’
‘It could have been a suicide,’ Ben said. ‘Or a murder.’
Davenport’s mind appeared to be running through a series of quick calculations. ‘Well, that would tie it up nicely, wouldn’t it?’ he said after a moment.
‘Tie what up?’
‘The case.’
‘I guess it would,’ Ben said. He looked at Davenport closely. ‘Your driver has a drinking problem.’
‘Like his daddy before him,’ Davenport said tiredly.
‘Is there any reason to think that he might have hurt Doreen?’
‘Why would he?’
‘To get even.’
‘With her?’
‘With you.’
‘What for?’
‘Well, you fired him the day you took Doreen home.’
‘That’s true,’ Davenport said, ‘but that was over something else entirely. It had nothing to do with Doreen. I mean, if Jacob were harboring some resentment over being let go, he’d try to hurt me, wouldn’t he? Or Shannon, maybe. Or my wife.’
‘I guess so,’ Ben said. ‘I’m just trying out all the possibilities.’
‘I understand.’
‘So you left your house at around five, is that right?’
‘Yes.’
‘And about what time would you say you let Doreen out by the ballpark.’
‘Probably about ten minutes later,’ Davenport said. ‘It doesn’t take long to get to Bearmatch from here.’
‘You’re pretty sure about that?’
‘As sure as I can be,’ Davenport said. He looked at Ben pointedly. ‘You’re working the case very hard, aren’t you?’ he asked.
Ben did not answer.
‘Isn’t that a little bit unusual?’
‘Maybe a little bit,’ Ben replied dully.
‘Of course, things are changing,’ Davenport added. ‘People have to be ready for change. They have to make room for it.’
Ben said nothing.
‘Are you the only one working this case?’ Davenport asked after a moment.
Ben nodded.
‘Everybody else’s pretty busy, I guess.’
‘Yeah, they are,’ Ben said quietly.
Davenport smiled limply, then glanced at his watch. ‘Is there anything else I can do for you?’
‘I guess not,’ Ben admitted.
Davenport stood up immediately and offered Ben his hand. ‘Well, it was nice meeting you,’ he said.
Ben shook his hand politely. ‘Thanks for your time.’
‘Let me know if you need anything else,’ Davenport said as he walked Ben to the door.
‘I will,’ Ben said.
‘We’ll miss Doreen,’ Davenport said softly. ‘Especially Shannon.’ He shook his head. ‘It’s a tragedy when something like this happens.’
Ben stepped out into the foyer of Davenport’s office. ‘Yes, it is.’
Davenport shook his head sadly. ‘Poor little Doreen. She sure was a sweet little girl.’
The Coroner’s Office had the results of its work by early in the afternoon, and Ben went over to Hillman Hospital to pick them up.
Patterson was working at one of the tables when he came into the dissecting room.
‘Fellow comes into Hillman with a little touch of pneumonia,’ he said, ‘and twelve hours later he’s dead as a doornail.’ He looked up at Ben and winked. ‘You know what that means? Full autopsy.’
‘You said you’d finished with that man we found in the storm drain?’
‘Yeah,’ Patterson said. He pressed the blade down near the man’s throat. ‘Reports on my desk.’ He made a large vertical incision down the chest. ‘Everything checks out.’
Ben walked to the desk and picked up the envelope.
‘His blood type matches the semen we found in the girl’s body,’ Patterson said from across the room. He glanced over toward him. ‘I guess we’ve got our man.’
Ben tucked the report under his arm. ‘Thanks, Leon,’ he said as he stepped away from the desk.
‘The gun’s there, too,’ Patterson said quickly. ‘You might as well take it over to Property.’
‘What’d the lab have to say about it?’
‘It’s the same gun for both of them,’ Patterson told him. ‘The little girl and this Bluto character.’ He moved the knife steadily downward and to the right. ‘From the angle on the man, I’d say it was definitely self-inflicted.’ His eyes shifted over to Ben. ‘You got a lot of powder burns, too. A nice little gray circle right about the hole in his head.’ He looked at Ben. ‘Maybe the guilt got to him, what do you think?’
‘Maybe,’ Ben said. He glanced about the desk. ‘Where’s the gun?’
‘I put it in a plastic bag,’ Patterson told him. ‘It’s in the left-hand corner of my desk.’
Ben pulled open the drawer and took it out. ‘Thanks again, Leon,’ he said. He started toward the door.
‘One more thing, Ben,’ Leon said.
Ben stopped instantly and turned toward Patterson.
‘I got a call late last night,’ Patterson said. ‘From the State Pathology Unit down at the University in Tuscaloosa.’
‘What’d they want?’
‘The man said he was checking to find out how long a man’s race could be determined after he’d been buried,’ Patterson said. ‘You wouldn’t have thought he’d have needed to call Birmingham to find that out, would you?’
‘No.’
‘It struck me as a funny Question,’ Leon said. ‘Especially the way things are around here these days.’
Ben said nothing.
‘Anyway, I told him that it depended on a lot of things. Whether the man had been embalmed, how long he’d been buried and in what kind of ground, whether he’d been exposed to the weather, to animals, whether it was summer or winter, the state of decomposition, soil chemistry, details like that. You know, important.’
Ben nodded.
Patterson brought his scalpel to a halt and looked directly at Ben. ‘But after I was finished, I sort of got to wondering about it all, and so when I got to work this morning, I called down to the university, and it was just like I thought.’
‘What?’
‘They don’t have anything called the Pathology Unit down there, Ben,’ Leon said with a sudden ominousness. ‘They don’t have anything that even sounds like that.’
Ben looked at Patterson intently. ‘What do you think, Leon?’
