was the last of it. He went right out the gate.’
‘And what time did you say this was?’
‘I’d put it right at nine o’clock.’
‘Did you see him come back?’
‘Yeah, I did,’ the guard said. ‘It was only about an hour later.’
‘Around ten?’
‘’Bout then,’ the guard said. He smiled. ‘And, my God, did that ole boy look happy.’
‘He came through the main gate?’
‘No, he didn’t,’ the guard said. ‘I figure he caught the way I looked at him when he done that before.’ He shook his head. ‘No, he didn’t use the gate no more. I guess he must have come back through the fence.’
‘Where did you see him?’
‘When I made my final rounds,’ the guard said, ‘I always say goodnight to him before I go home. That’s what I went over to the pipe for.’
‘Was he in the pipe?’
‘He was sort of cleaning it up,’ the guard said. ‘Straightening things out. He was sanging, too.’
‘Did he say anything?’
‘Said, “Hey, boss, what you think about my new TV?”’ the guard told Ben with a chuckle. ‘Somebody’d probably wanted that ole thing toted off, so they fooled him into thinking it’d work without no electricity or anything like that.’
‘And that’s the last you saw of him?’
‘That was it.’
‘Did you see anyone else around?’ Ben asked. ‘I mean, a girl maybe?’
The guard laughed. ‘A girl? What would a girl be doing around Bluto?’
‘The one he was talking about marrying,’ Ben explained.
The guard waved his hand. ‘Oh, that was just Bluto’s way of saying things. He didn’t have no sense when it come to talking to people.’
Ben straightened himself slowly. ‘That hole in the fence,’ he said. ‘The one he used. Where is that?’
‘Right close to the pipe,’ the guard said. ‘You want to go look at it?’
‘Yeah.’
The guard turned and pointed to the southeastern corner of the lot. ‘Right out there,’ he said. ‘You can’t miss it if you walk along the fence.’
‘Thanks,’ Ben said as he stepped out of the shade of the guardhouse and headed out across the flat dirt field.
It took him only a few minutes to pass beyond the still littered drainpipe and find the hole in the fence. It looked as if it had been made long ago with a pair of industrial wire-cutters. The tips of the severed fence were rusted over, and the hole had been widened over the years as Bluto’s large body had passed in and out of it. The ground around it was smooth and grassless, and a narrow footpath could be seen as it snaked from the opening back to the ditch and its exposed drainpipe. Ben allowed his eyes to move up and down the path. He could not imagine Doreen having ever walked down it. He leaned against the fence, then he pulled himself up again and walked along the trail to the edge of the ditch. He could see the drainpipe below him, and as he stood, staring into its dull gray eye, he tried to put the events in some kind of chronological order. Bluto had left the plant through the front gate at around nine. By then he’d come up with the idea of a wife. At ten, he was cleaning his place, as if in preparation for her arrival. A few hours later, both he and Doreen Ballinger were dead.
Ben lowered himself onto the stony ground, his eyes still staring into the cement cave of the drain He tried to imagine what must have gone on there at some time between nine and midnight only a few days before. ‘She’s coming later,’ Bluto had told the guard, and it seemed to Ben that this meant that he had expected someone to arrive of her own free will, a woman for whom he had cleaned what amounted to his house, trucked home a battered television, and for whom he had seemed to feel in his own childish way an unparalleled delight. ‘She’s coming later,’ Ben repeated in his mind. But had he expected her to come by herself, or be delivered to him by someone else and placed into his hands, like a prize?
TWENTY-SEVEN
The few people who were seated inside Smiley’s Cafe turned instantly toward Ben as he stepped through the door. They seemed frozen in place, stunned into a strange and utterly motionless silence.
‘I’m looking for Esther Ballinger,’ Ben said quietly as he closed the torn screen door behind him.
‘She’s out back,’ said the small man behind the counter. He wiped his hands on the soiled apron which hung from his neck. ‘What you want with her, boss?’
‘It’s police business,’ Ben said. ‘About her niece.’
The man glanced questioningly at the others as if unsure of what to do next. ‘Well, I guess you ought to see her then,’ he said finally, his eyes darting away from Ben’s. ‘Just go on round back. She out there throwing away the garbage.’
Ben turned and walked out immediately, then headed around the corner of the building to the alley which ran behind it. He could see Esther at a large wooden bin. She was breaking down a large assortment of cardboard boxes, then tossing them into the bin.
‘Afternoon, ma’am,’ Ben said politely as he stepped up to her.
Esther looked up from her work but did not speak. She continued to tear at the boxes, pulling at the locking flaps until they were flat. She wore a light-blue blouse, and a line of perspiration swept in an arc across her chest. Her hair was pulled back and knotted, and in the bright summer light she looked suddenly much younger than in the past few days. Only the expression in her face aged her, the weariness in her eyes.
‘I’m still working on your case,’ Ben said to her, ‘and I’ve found out a few things.’
Esther wiped her forehead with her arm, then began breaking down another box. ‘Go ahead, then,’ she said, almost absently, as if there were greater things to consider now, her niece’s death reduced in her mind to a small incident in a larger history.
‘Well, I may have found out who raped Doreen,’ Ben said. ‘It was a colored man. A guy named Bluto. Ever heard of him?’
‘No,’ Esther replied crisply.
‘He’s dead.’
Esther suddenly began to rip more violently at the box in her hands, tearing at its cardboard flaps.
‘Shot,’ Ben said. ‘Might have done it to himself.’
Esther nodded curtly and tossed a large piece of cardboard into the wooden bin at the back wall of the cafe. ‘Is that the end of it, then?’
‘I don’t think so,’ Ben told her.
‘Why not?’
‘Well, there’s something that keeps bothering me,’ Ben said matter-of-factly.
‘What?’
‘I can’t figure out how Doreen got to his place,’ Ben said. He picked up one of the boxes, tore apart one of the flaps and broke it down. ‘So I’d like to just ask you just a few more questions.’ He threw the box into the bin. ‘Is that all right with you?’
‘Go ahead,’ Esther said, her eyes turning from him oddly, as if she did not want him to see what was in them.
‘Did Doreen ever give you the idea that somebody was watching her or keeping track of her in any way?’
Esther shook her head. ‘I think she could have let me know if somebody was scaring her.’
Ben pulled out a picture of Bluto. ‘Have you ever seen this man?’
Esther stared expressionlessly at the photograph. ‘Is that him?’
‘Well, this was taken at the morgue,’ Ben said, ‘so it doesn’t look quite right. But, yes, it’s him.’
‘The man who raped Doreen?’
‘Maybe.’
