Thomas Cook - Streets of Fire

‘No,’ Ben said. ‘But Charlie Breedlove was.’

Tod’s lips parted silently.

‘I found Breedlove’s ring in that little house on Courtland,’ Ben said. ‘The one you and Teddy play your little games in.’

Tods eyes widened. ‘You think it was us?’

‘Where’d that ring come from?’ Ben asked coldly.

Tod stared at Ben, dumbstruck.

‘You better come up with some answers, Tod,’ Ben warned him.

Tod shook his head. ‘Oh, God Almighty,’ he breathed. ‘They ain’t no way I had anything to do with that. I been too sick. I been practically flat on my back for two days.’ He started to whimper. ‘I told Teddy we shouldn’t have hung them flags and stuff. I told him it was too much for the average person to deal with.’

Ben remained silent, watching Tod crumble slowly before him.

‘I been puking all over myself,’ Tod bawled. ‘Got the runs too.’ He glared at Ben resentfully. ‘You pick up stuff when you work Bearmatch. You pick up things they brought with them from the jungle – diseases and stuff like that.’

Ben leaned against the door jamb, his eyes trained on Tod.

Soaking wet with fever,’ Tod went on. ‘And I been that way for a long time.’

Ben straightened himself. ‘You got a thermometer, Tod?’

Tod stared at him, baffled by the question. ‘Thermometer?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Yeah, I got one in the medicine cabinet.’

Ben walked back through the narrow corridor, retrieved the thermometer and handed it to Tod.

‘Put it in your mouth,’ he said stiffly.

‘What for?’

‘Just do it,’ Ben commanded.

Reluctantly, his eyes filled with confusion, Tod placed the thermometer in his mouth and waited nervously until Ben finally plucked it out.

‘What is it?’ he asked excitedly. ‘What’s my temperature?’

‘A hundred and two,’ Ben said quietly.

‘See, see!’ Tod cried jubilantly. ‘And I been like that for two whole days.’

THIRTY-EIGHT

Tod and Teddy Langley were both relieved of duty and Teddy was arrested a few hours later. For the rest of the afternoon Ben and Luther made their way through the three tiny rooms of the house on Courtland Street.

‘I gave McCorkindale your old job,’ Luther said as he slit open the mattress beside the window. ‘I didn’t figure you’d go back to watching King anyway.’ He shook his head. ‘And if Sammy goes to sleep in his car, Daniels’ll be there for backup.’

Ben checked the rooms for hidden compartments, tapping lightly and listening for any hollow spaces which might have been dug out, then covered over, within the solid plaster walls.

Luther pulled a huge wad of stuffing from the mattress and felt through it for solid objects. ‘If they kept Breedlove’s ring,’ he said, ‘they could have kept anything. The pistol they used on him, anything. Once people start doing stupid things, they’s no limit to it.’ He stopped and stared at Ben pointedly. ‘And killing a brother officer, that’s real goddamn stupid.’

Ben continued to move along the walls, monotonously tapping them with the knuckles of his hand. In his mind, he could still see the thin red line of the thermometer as it inched up to one hundred and two. It was the sort of fact that argued against almost all the other facts that could be arrayed against it, a grudging, insistent detail that clung to him like a small note pinned to his suit.

‘If you ask me,’ Luther said as he tossed a handful of ragged stuffing onto the floor, ‘they set Breedlove up. They lured him out here, killed him, then took him out in the country.’

Ben said nothing. He bent down and ran his fingers along the floor, searching for loose boards. As he worked, he tried to move back through what he knew of Breedlove’s death. Once again, he saw the body hanging limply from the tree, the bloody letters carved in his chest, his shattered face, the small dot of light that peeped through from the hole in the back of his skull.

Luther shook his head. ‘That’s the way it is when you get too hot on something. It makes you crazy. Shit, Ben, there’re times when I think it makes the Chief himself crazy.’

Ben straightened himself, then moved on to the next wall, his mind still working the case, methodically moving through each sketchy detail. He could feel a steadily increasing unease. Too many questions were still rising from places where they should have normally been put to rest. He decided to ask one of them to someone other than himself.

‘Why do you think they called it in?’

Luther continued to tear at the mattress. ‘Called what in?’

‘Breedlove’s body.’

‘You mean, to the sheriff?’

‘Yeah.’

Luther stopped, thought a moment, then went back to the mattress, sinking his hands deep inside. ‘’Cause they were proud of it,’ he said sullenly. ‘They wanted somebody to see it.’

‘They pinned his badge to his shirt,’ Ben added.

‘Yeah.’

‘Why?’

‘Hell, Ben, how do I know?’ Luther said. ‘For God’s sake, they hung him up like a trophy. They’re out of their goddamn minds. You don’t deal with reasons for things when you deal with people like them.’ He threw the last of the stuffing onto the floor, then stood up and stretched. ‘I guess all hell’s breaking loose in the park by now.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Demonstration was supposed to start at three sharp.’ He ran a few calculations through his mind. ‘I figure by now they’re just about at the park.’

Ben looked at him. ‘You can time it that close?’

‘Got to,’ Luther said. ‘Time is everything in a situation like this.’ He nodded toward the far wall. ‘You done that one yet?’

‘No.’

‘Well, I’ll give it the once-over,’ Luther said. He walked over to the wall and began tapping at it. ‘You ask me, Teddy’s not smart enough to think of a hiding place.’ He thought for a moment, his hand suddenly holding motionlessly in the thick hot air. ‘Course, that ring was pretty well hid.’

‘Why’d he take it?’ Ben asked.

Luther resumed his search. ‘I don’t know. Maybe for a souvenir. Something to remind himself of what a big tough guy he was.’ He shook his head disgustedly. ‘But he should have just kept his attention on Bearmatch. It don’t take much to be a tough guy with the colored people. They’re already beat down too much. But when you start screwing around with a brother officer, you better be ready to pay the price.’ He stopped his tapping again and looked pointedly at Ben. ‘If the Langleys did kill Charlie Breedlove, they’re going to the electric chair for damn sure.’

Ben nodded slowly, then went back to his search. He inspected each room in turn, emptied drawers, checked closets, opened the few cardboard boxes that were stacked here and there, heavy with undistributed books and pamphlets. Finally he went over the floors, probing for loose wooden slats. He found nothing but the trapdoor to the crawlspace beneath the house. He shined his flashlight into its darkness, then lowered himself down onto the dusty ground. The yellow beam swept left and right, lighting the most distant corners, but there was nothing at all beneath the house but the bare red clay, which, from all that he could tell, had rested entirely undisturbed for at least a hundred years.

He pulled himself up out of the crawlspace, then bent forward to slap the reddish-orange dust from his pants. The trapdoor was still open, its underside clearly visible in the light that poured in from the open shutters. He could see his own handprint clearly etched across its smooth surface, a dusty pattern of palm and outstretched finger. A few inches to the left, there was another handprint, dustier, less clearly visible, but unmistakably there, and which had been left when another, entirely different hand had pushed upward from the crawlspace. It was slightly larger than his own, the fingers longer and more slender, and for an instant it seemed to reach toward him, thrust out violently, as if desperately to cover his eyes.