‘The one you turned back into Property,’ McCorkindale said impatiently. ‘They’d marked it wrong, though.’
‘Who had?’
‘Morgue.’
‘Are you talking about a twenty-two pistol?’
‘That’s right. Cute little thing.’
‘It was used in a murder.’
McCorkindale laughed. ‘No way, Ben.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because it was missing from Property,’ McCorkindale said. ‘That’s where it came from. Same serial numbers. It was the only weapon that was missing when I was logging everything in a few days ago.’
Ben felt his body rise almost involuntarily. ‘Missing? You mean it had once been in Property?’
‘That’s right,’ McCorkindale said. ‘Confiscated in a holdup.’
‘Who made the arrest?’
‘Breedlove,’ McCorkindale said casually. ‘Good old Charlie Breedlove.’ Then he flipped off the lights.
THIRTY
The heat was still hanging like a thick web in the air as Ben pulled up just across the street from Breedlove’s house. It was dark, with the shades drawn tightly down over the windows, and not so much as a lone porch light to relieve the surrounding night. The plain gravel driveway was empty, and because of that, Ben knew that Breedlove was not at home. Like almost everyone else in the city, he lived by his car, and when it wasn’t at home, neither was its owner. He looked at his watch. It was almost midnight. He leaned forward slightly, wrapping his arms loosely around the steering wheel. The windows of Breedlove’s house were tightly closed, despite the heat, and Ben wondered if it was possible that Breedlove’s family, his wife and young son, were also gone.
For a long time he simply sat in his car and watched the house. Slowly, the long day’s weariness began to overtake him, a heaviness in his legs and arms that seemed to press him down in the seat. To relieve it, he stepped out of the car, lit a cigarette and walked for a while down the narrow, tree-lined street. All the houses were dark, their windows staring toward him like bruised eyes. The world was asleep, it seemed to him, but only fitfully. The tension in the city had not been washed away by the water hoses, and as he continued down the winding, cracked sidewalk, Ben tried to imagine what the next step might be. He could see the Chief’s white tank as it circled Kelly Ingram Park, and Black Cat 13 as it prowled the back streets of the Negro district like a marauding beast, slow, sullen, sniffing the air for prey. It was as if something had gone so deeply wrong in the past that it was no longer recoverable, and so the old weight only grew heavier with each day, sinking the city with it, drawing it down forever.
He made a right, walking silently, then another and another until he found himself back at the car. He pulled himself in behind the wheel, sighing heavily with the heat and his own still unrelieved exhaustion, and fixed his eyes on the house until the first hint of early morning light began to gather around it, betraying its flecked paint and torn screens, its pitted driveway and bleak, untended yard.
The light was still barely visible in the air when the first car came up the street only a few minutes later. Ben sat up, rubbed his eyes quickly and watched as it nosed around the far corner, moved slowly up the street, then halted in front of Breedlove’s house.
Ben leaned forward and rubbed the dewy mist which had gathered on the inside of the windshield with the sleeve of his jacket.
The car was black and dusty, like so many others, and Ben didn’t recognize it at all until he saw Luther pull himself out from behind the wheel, then walk hurriedly up the walkway, linger for a moment on the porch, his shoulders hunched over, his back to the street. He knocked several times, but the door remained closed.
Ben checked his watch. It was five-fifteen. He rolled the ache out of his shoulders, rubbed his slightly burning eyes again and glanced back at the house. The door was still closed and the windowshades remained securely drawn.
For a while Luther remained on the porch. Then he turned back toward the street, glanced left and right and finally stepped off the porch and headed hurriedly toward his car. He had already opened the door when he saw Ben coming toward him. For an instant he froze, his eyes fixed intently on Ben’s face.
‘What are you doing here?’ he asked sternly.
Ben stepped up onto the walkway beside him. ‘I was waiting for Breedlove.’
‘Why?’
‘That gun, the one that killed the little girl,’ Ben told him. ‘It came out of the Property Room. It was taken in a robbery. Breedlove’s case. I thought he might know whose gun it was.’
‘How do you know it was missing from Property?’
‘McCorkindale did some kind of inventory a few days ago,’ Ben told him. ‘He logged everything. It was the only gun that was missing.’
Luther continued to stare at Ben expressionlessly. ‘Is that all?’
It seemed an odd question, but Ben answered it anyway. ‘Yes.’
‘And you’ve been waiting here all night?’
‘Most of it.’
Luther thought for a moment. He took a deep breath. ‘All right, Ben. Since you’re here, you might as well come with me.’
‘What are you talking about?’
Luther nodded toward the car. ‘Get in,’ he said softly. ‘I have to go look at something.’
Ben got into the car and sat silently as Luther headed down the street, turned left, then continued northward until the short, brick skyline of Birmingham was miles behind them.
‘We’re going out of our jurisdiction, Ben,’ Luther told him. ‘But I guess you have to say that things like that have gotten sort of blurry lately.’
There was a strained quality in Luther’s face, a determined stiffness, as if he were trying to keep himself under control. Sometimes it looked like fear, sometimes anger, but whatever it was, Ben realized that it was different from anything he’d ever seen in Luther before.
‘I was born up here,’ Luther went on. He smiled gently as he looked at the landscape which surrounded them. The morning light had now brightened enough to reveal the thick green woods which spread out to the north of the city. Lines of gently rolling mountains rose on either side of the road, and the sound of crows and hawks could be heard occasionally over the rattle of the engine and the whir of the wind that poured through the open windows.
‘Where are we going?’ Ben asked.
‘Used to fish and swim,’ Luther went on obliviously. ‘Met my wife up here. She was a mountain girl.’
‘Where are we going?’ Ben repeated.
Luther cleared his throat roughly. His eyes shifted over to the left, out the side window, then returned almost immediately to the road. ‘I got a call this morning. The sheriff up here, he’s an old friend of mine.’ He smiled briefly. ‘He had the sweets for my wife way back when, a million years ago, when everybody still had a little piss and vinegar in their goddamn veins.’
Ben leaned toward him slightly, his eyes watching him closely. ‘What were you doing at Breedlove’s this morning?’ he asked.
‘I got a call, just like I said,’ Luther replied.
‘About what?’
‘About Breedlove,’ Luther said. He turned back to the road, slowing the car more and more until they came to a narrow unpaved road. Then he made a hard right turn and headed down it until they reached a clearing to the right. He pulled far over to the side, vines and low-slung tree limbs brushing across the side of the car.
‘Get out,’ he said as he brought the car to a stop.
Ben suddenly felt himself trapped in some sort of net he had not seen.
‘Get out?’ he asked.
Luther nodded. ‘That’s right.’
