about Breedlove before or after.’
‘You think I don’t know that?’
‘No, I think you do.’
‘Tod didn’t know shit,’ Langley said exasperatedly. ‘Hell, I don’t know shit as far as the killing’s concerned.’
Ben pressed the package of cigarettes toward him, shaking it slightly. ‘Sure you don’t want one?’
‘Ah, hell,’ Langley said. ‘I’ll take one.’ He pulled a cigarette from the pack, then leaned forward and let Ben light it.
‘I was over at the house most of the afternoon,’ Ben said as he waved out the match.
‘I figured you would be,’ Langley said. ‘Find anything else? A pair of Breedlove’s underwear, something like that? With his initials on it?’ He shook his head. ‘It wouldn’t surprise me what you found in that house. They could have planted anything.’
‘Trouble is,’ Ben said, ‘how’d they get in?’
Langley shrugged and took a pull on the cigarette.
‘The windows were all nailed shut,’ Ben said. ‘And the doors hadn’t been messed with.’
Langley said nothing.
‘Any other way in that house?’ Ben asked pointedly.
‘I don’t know,’ Langley said. ‘I ain’t been renting it but a few weeks. I didn’t hardly ever go there.’ He laughed bitterly. ‘Maybe somebody came down the chimney. You know, like Santa Claus.’
‘The chimney’s cemented over,’ Ben said. ‘Got any other ideas?’
Langley took another pull on the cigarette, then glanced to the right. ‘Them niggers sure can keep themselves stirred up, can’t they?’
‘You could go to the chair, Teddy,’ Ben said grimly. ‘We’re talking about a cop. Informer or no informer, we’re talking about a cop.’
Langley’s eyes swept over to him. ‘Who wants me dead, Ben?’ he asked almost gently. ‘I can’t figure it out.’
Ben stood silently, staring upward slightly, concentrating on Langley’s face.
‘Put up your right hand,’ he said finally.
Langley looked at him, puzzled. ‘What?’
‘Put up your right hand.’
Hesitantly, Langley lifted his hand, palm outward. ‘Like this?’
‘Yeah,’ Ben said as he placed his own hand over it.
Langley’s was smaller, the tips of his fingers barely reaching beyond the second joint of Ben’s.
‘What’s this for?’ Langley asked. ‘They already got my prints.’
Ben drew his hand away, then stepped back over to the cell door, opened it and walked back into the corridor.
Langley continued to sit rigidly on the bunk, his hand still hovering in the air, fingers outstretched, as if reaching for an invisible bird. ‘I would die for my beliefs,’ he said fiercely. ‘But like a man, Wellman. Like a man. Not led down some hallway like an animal. Not with my legs in chains.’
Ben nodded slowly.
‘Not in the chair,’ Langley added determinedly. ‘Not in chains.’
Ben closed the cell door and locked it.
‘
Several yellow Jefferson County school buses were lined up in the garage, and as Ben headed for his car he could see hundreds of faces behind their windows. Scores of state troopers in full riot gear ringed the buses. Inside the ring, McCorkindale paced back and forth along the side of one of the buses, slapping his nightstick rhythmically against his leg. From time to time he would stop abruptly, wheel around and smack the tip of his nightstick against the window. The faces behind the glass would jerk back reflexively, then stare sullenly as McCorkindale’s enormous belly shook with mocking laughter.
Ben turned away, once again moving in the direction of his car. He was still a few yards away from it when he saw Patterson coming toward him from the other side of the garage.
‘What are you doing over here?’ he asked as they approached each other.
‘I got the lab work on the Breedlove case,’ Patterson said.
‘Where are you taking it?’
‘Directly to Captain Starnes.’
‘Captain Starnes?’
Patterson nodded. ‘He’ll probably take it straight to the Chief.’
‘What’d you find out?’
Patterson hesitated.
Ben stared at him accusingly. ‘What’s going on, Leon?’
Patterson glanced left and right suspiciously. ‘All I know is that Captain Starnes wants me to report directly to him.’
Ben looked down at the small yellow envelope that was nestled beneath Patterson’s arm. ‘What’s in the report, Leon?’ he demanded.
Again, Patterson hesitated, but only briefly. ‘Nothing much, if you want to know the truth. The cause of death was pretty obvious. Like it always is.’
‘Is there anything that wasn’t obvious?’
‘Just that Breedlove must have been on the move a little bit that night.’
‘How do you know?’
‘From what I scraped off his shoes,’ Leon said. ‘He had two different kinds of soil on them. One was a regular loose-grained loam. The kind you find in the fields to the north.’
‘Like the one we found the body in,’ Ben said.
‘That’s right,’ Patterson said. ‘It was stuck to another layer of something else, though. Some kind of whitish clay, very acidic. Those two kinds of ground, they don’t exactly end up side by side.’ He smiled helplessly. ‘I know that’s not much help.’
‘Is there anything else?’ Ben asked immediately.
‘As far as the … well … the mutilation, that was done after he was dead,’ Patterson told him.
‘Anything on the knife that was used?’
‘It had a serrated edge,’ Patterson said unenthusiastically. ‘And the blade was about an inch and a half wide at the hilt.’ He shrugged. ‘That’s about all the help I can give you. Not much, is it?’
‘No.’
‘You making any headway?’
Ben shook his head.
Patterson leaned toward Ben, lowering his voice as he spoke. ‘Is it true he was an informer?’
‘I don’t know,’ Ben said. ‘A lot of people think so.’
‘For the federal boys, you think?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Well, it must have been somebody,’ Patterson said emphatically. ‘I mean, what’s an informer do if he doesn’t report to somebody?’
Suddenly Ben felt a strange night breeze envelop him, saw a dark lake glimmering in his mind.
THIRTY-NINE
The lights of the city blinked brightly behind the large office window, and as Davenport stood before it, they seemed to wrap around him like a shimmering cape.
‘Has there been some break in the case?’ he asked as he shook Ben’s hand.
‘Which case?’
Davenport looked at him, puzzled. ‘Doreen’s case. Isn’t that why you’re here?’
