Streets of Fire

TWELVE

Sammy McCorkindale was standing outside the detective bullpen when Ben arrived the next morning. He smiled brightly as Ben approached.

‘Well, the joke’s on me, Ben,’ he said. He shook his head with slight embarrassment. ‘You know that little girl you found in that ballfield?’

Ben nodded.

‘You know how I said nobody’d report her missing?’

‘Yeah.’

The grin broadened. ‘Well, I reckon the joke’s on me.’

‘Somebody’s asked about her?’

‘As I live and breathe, Ben,’ McCorkindale said with a hint of genuine wonder in his voice. ‘First time I ever heard of such a thing coming out of Bearmatch.’

‘Who was it?’ Ben asked quickly. ‘Who asked about her? Did you get a name?’

‘Better than that,’ McCorkindale said. ‘I got the thing itself. She’s sitting by your desk this very minute.’

Ben pushed through the doors instantly and saw a slender, well-dressed black woman sitting in the chair beside his desk. She wore a dark-red, short-sleeved blouse and long, loose-fitting skirt that fell all the way to her ankles. Her hands were folded primly in her lap, and her eyes stared straight ahead.

‘Good morning, ma’am,’ he said to her as he stepped up to his desk. ‘I’m Detective Wellman.’

She started to rise, but he stopped her.

‘No, no,’ he said, ‘sit down.’ He pulled his chair from beneath his desk and sat down. ‘I understand you’re interested in a missing person.’

She stared at him steadily, her lips tightly pursed.

‘Could you tell me a little bit about that?’ Ben prodded.

‘Everybody warned me not to come down here,’ the woman said evenly.

‘Why is that?’ Ben asked politely.

‘They said it was useless, and that it might be dangerous,’ the woman told him. Her voice was crisp and precise, despite the Southern accent, and there was a kind of flame which seemed to burn continually behind her eyes.

‘Are you from Birmingham, ma’am?’ Ben asked.

‘Not always. My family came from New Orleans.’

‘Been here long?’

‘Since I was fourteen,’ the woman said. ‘Why?’

Ben suddenly realized that his questions might seem threatening rather than casual, a way to break the ice. He shrugged, almost playfully. ‘Just wondered,’ he said.

The woman’s face suddenly grew more agitated, as if something were coming to a violent boil in her mind. ‘It’s my niece,’ she said finally.

Ben smiled quietly and took out a sheet of notepaper. ‘And she’s been missing?’

‘Yes.’

‘Since when?’

‘She’s been gone for two days.’

‘About how old is she?’

‘She’s twelve.’

Ben felt a slight tremor in his fingers. ‘Would you happen to remember what she was wearing the last time you saw her?’

‘Just a plain white dress.’

‘How about shoes?’

‘Brown shoes.’

‘Lace-ups?’

‘Buckle.’

‘Any socks?’

‘White socks.’

Ben wrote it down, then looked up. ‘And her name?’

‘Doreen,’ the woman said. ‘Doreen Ballinger.’

He knew that the two halves of her picture were in his jacket pocket, but for a moment he could not bring himself to take them out. ‘Would you say she’s about four and a half feet tall?’

‘Something like that, I guess.’

‘With her hair tied behind her in a little bun?’

The woman’s face stiffened suddenly. ‘Yes,’ she said softly. Then she leaned forward very slightly. ‘How come you knew that?’

Ben did not answer. He dropped his eyes to the paper. ‘May I have your name, ma’am?’

‘Esther Ballinger,’ the woman said immediately. ‘How come you knew about my niece’s hair?’

‘And could I have your address, Miss Ballinger?’

Her whole body grew rigid. ‘Tell me what you know about Doreen,’ she demanded.

Ben said nothing.

She shot out of her chair and glared down at him. ‘I’m not some dull-eyed, grinning nigger that you can sweet-talk and be polite to and then send on her way,’ she said fiercely. ‘Now I want to know what’s happened to Doreen.’

Ben nodded slowly. ‘Sit down, Miss Ballinger.’

She did not move.

‘Please,’ Ben said, almost in a whisper.

For a moment she continued to look at him resentfully. Then she eased herself back down into her chair.

Ben took out the torn photograph and handed it to her. ‘Is this your niece?’ he asked.

For a while she didn’t answer, but only stared silently at the photograph, her eyes growing suddenly very dark and still.

‘Yes,’ she said finally. Her eyes lifted toward Ben’s, and for an instant they struck him as intensely beautiful. ‘What happened to her?’

‘Somebody shot her, Miss Ballinger,’ Ben said.

Something seemed to collapse behind her eyes, the walls of a tiny burrow, which she instantly shored up again.

‘Do you know who did it?’ she asked resolutely.

‘No.’

‘Are you trying to find out?’

Ben could hear the accusation in her voice, and it was like an arrow going through him.

‘Yes, I am,’ he said determinedly. ‘I most certainly am trying to find out, Miss Ballinger.’

He couldn’t tell whether or not she believed him, so he simply went on according to the formula of such investigations, went on as he would in any other case.

‘When was the last time you saw Doreen?’ he asked.

‘Sunday morning.’

‘Where was she?’

‘She was in her room — getting ready for work.’

‘Work? What kind of work?’

‘She baby-sits for this family over in Mountain Brook,’ Esther told him. ‘A rich white family. She goes over there every weekend.’

‘Saturday and Sunday, both?’

‘Yes.’

‘What’s the family’s name?’

‘Davenport. Mr and Mrs Horace Davenport. My mother worked for them all her life.’

‘And the address?’

‘2407 Carlton Avenue.’

‘How did she go to work? By bus, something like that?’

‘They have her picked up,’ Esther said. ‘They have her brought home. It’s the usual thing. And they give her toting privileges.’

Ben looked up from the paper. ‘Toting privileges?’

Esther shrugged. ‘It’s an old custom among the rich white people,’ she said. ‘You bring a little tote bag to work with you, and they drop a few things in it before you leave. Soap. Maybe some flour, a few hamburger patties. Anything that’s around that they want to give you.’

Ben watched for a moment as Esther’s eyes drifted back down toward the photograph. Something of her previous energy seemed to drain into it, and when she looked up, she seemed older than herself, older than him, older than the world.

‘Did she ever bring home a ring?’ Ben asked.

She looked at him oddly. ‘A ring? What kind of ring?’

‘Sort of a cheap ring, with a big purple piece of glass in it.’

She shook her head. ‘No.’

‘Did you ever see her with something like that?’

‘No. Why?’

‘We found one in her dress,’ Ben said. ‘Large heavy thing. Way too big for Doreen.’

‘I never saw her with anything like that,’ Esther said. She glanced down at the photograph. ‘You got any tape?’

‘I think so,’ Ben said. He fumbled through the top drawer of his desk until he found it. ‘Here.’

She took the tape and carefully mended the photograph. Then she turned away from it for a moment and fixed her eyes on the windows at the far end of the room.

‘Where is she now?’ she asked.

‘She’s been buried, Miss Ballinger,’ Ben said. ‘The state does that if no one claims a body.’

‘Where?’

‘Gracehill.’

Esther’s eyes closed slowly. ‘It’s not very nice up there,’ she said.

‘We didn’t have anything else to do,’ Ben said quickly. ‘You can have her moved if you want to.’

Esther shook her head determinedly. ‘No.’ Her lips curled down bitterly. ‘Let her rest.’

‘Would you want to see the grave, then?’

She did not hesitate in her reply. ‘Yes, I would.’

Ben got to his feet. ‘I’ll take you.’

They were halfway out of the building before Luther came rushing up to them, his huge face wild and agitated as if still shaking from the storm the day before.

‘They’re all gathering over at First Pilgrim,’ he said breathlessly. ‘Get over there right away.’

Ben nodded toward Esther. ‘This is that little girl’s aunt,’ he said to Luther. ‘I’m taking her to see where they buried her.’

Luther seemed barely to notice the woman. He kept his eyes on Ben. ‘That can wait,’ he said. ‘Get on over to that rally right away.’

‘Yes, Captain,’ Ben said.

He moved forward quickly, tugging Esther gently along with him until they were both standing in the garage beside his car.

‘Get in,’ Ben said when Esther stopped at the door.

She looked at him questioningly. ‘I thought you had to go somewhere else.’

Ben opened the passenger door, then stepped back to let her in. ‘I’ll get there in time,’ he said.

A line of thunderclouds had begun to advance along the northern horizon by the time Ben pulled the car to a stop near the grave. A small cooling breeze rippled through the dense waves of kudzu that swept down along the sloping hill or spiraled upward into the surrounding pines.

‘We buried her last night,’ Ben said as he escorted Esther to the edge of the grave.

‘Who did?’ Esther asked.

‘Well, I was here,’ Ben said, ‘and there were a few others. A preacher said a few words over her.’

Esther said nothing. She gazed down at the little mound of red-clay earth, then shook her head gently.

‘I’m sorry we couldn’t find you before we had to bury her,’ Ben added quietly.

Esther remained silent.

‘And her other relatives,’ Ben added.

‘There’s just me and her grandfather,’ Esther told him. ‘My brother — Doreen’s father — ran off when she was three years old. Her mother died last year.’ She looked at Ben. ‘That’s why I moved in with them. My father’s too old now to see after a little girl.’ She took a deep breath and looked out toward the horizon. ‘I was going to take her someplace with me one of these times. New York, maybe. Someplace like that. But I just couldn’t get up the money.’ Her eyes fell back toward the grave, and she smiled bitterly. ‘You can’t save up much on toting privileges.’

Ben nodded silently and watched as Esther bent forward, took a handful of dirt and sprinkled it over the grave.

‘I’ll bring some flowers up here tomorrow,’ she said.

‘I don’t guess you’d have any idea about who might have done this,’ Ben asked cautiously.

Esther shook her head. ‘No, I don’t.’

Again, Ben fell silent while he watched Esther closely. If she were grieving for her niece, it was the oddest grief he’d ever seen, cold, stony, the sort he’d seen in the army when things had been bad for so long that only the hard nub of feeling remained, along with a hatred so raw it seemed to bite into every nerve.

‘Did you ever see anybody hanging around Doreen?’ he asked finally.

Esther looked at him. ‘Hanging around?’

‘Like he might be interested in her,’ Ben added hesitantly, ‘a man, I mean.’

Esther’s lips parted slowly, but she said nothing.

‘Like somebody who might want to force himself on her,’ Ben said.

Esther turned away from him instantly and faced the line of stormclouds that was now billowing darkly over the city. ‘Somebody raped her? Is that what you’re trying to say?’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

He saw her shoulders lift suddenly, tremble very slightly, then fall again.

‘I’m awfully sorry to have to tell you this,’ he said.

She kept her back to him and said nothing.

‘It could have been a very big man,’ Ben added. ‘So big it would be noticeable. Did you ever happen to see anybody like that hanging around your house or following you on the street?’

‘No.’

‘White or black, it’s all the same to me,’ Ben said, because he knew he had to.

She turned slowly and faced him. ‘Do you think I believe that?’ she asked hotly.

Ben stared at her evenly. ‘I’m not an animal,’ he said, this time with a measure of his own tingling resentment. ‘I didn’t kill your niece. I didn’t hurt her.’ He could hear his voice shaking almost inaudibly beneath his breath. ‘And I’m trying real hard to find out who did.’ His anger was like a hot wind in his face, fierce, enveloping, moving toward explosion. ‘And maybe I’d like a little help from you,’ he added in a voice that seemed to break suddenly at the very edge of rage, ‘but I’ll go on, Miss Ballinger. I’ll go on whether I get it or not.’ He turned abruptly, strode back to his car and got in.

For a moment, he tried to regain control of himself. Through the dusty film of the windshield, he could see Esther as she continued to stand at the edge of the grave, her arms now folded around her waist, hugging tightly, as if trying to protect an unborn child. He could imagine what she felt, but he realized that he could not grasp it in its entirety, that a certain portion of her grief would always lie beyond the farthest reach of his sympathy, that something in the darkness of her skin was lost to the pallor of his own, so that he could hope for little more than her distant, grudging aid. He knew that if it came, it would be apprehensive and suspicious, but it was no less than he could ask for, and no more than he deserved.