‘I got a call late last night,’ Patterson said. ‘From the State Pathology Unit down at the University in Tuscaloosa.’
‘What’d they want?’
‘The man said he was checking to find out how long a man’s race could be determined after he’d been buried,’ Patterson said. ‘You wouldn’t have thought he’d have needed to call Birmingham to find that out, would you?’
‘No.’
‘It struck me as a funny Question,’ Leon said. ‘Especially the way things are around here these days.’
Ben said nothing.
‘Anyway, I told him that it depended on a lot of things. Whether the man had been embalmed, how long he’d been buried and in what kind of ground, whether he’d been exposed to the weather, to animals, whether it was summer or winter, the state of decomposition, soil chemistry, details like that. You know, important.’
Ben nodded.
Patterson brought his scalpel to a halt and looked directly at Ben. ‘But after I was finished, I sort of got to wondering about it all, and so when I got to work this morning, I called down to the university, and it was just like I thought.’
‘What?’
‘They don’t have anything called the Pathology Unit down there, Ben,’ Leon said with a sudden ominousness. ‘They don’t have anything that even sounds like that.’
Ben looked at Patterson intently. ‘What do you think, Leon?’
Patterson’s voice turned solemn. ‘If I had to make a guess, I’d say that maybe somebody’s got a colored guy they want to get rid of,’ he said.
TWENTY-FIVE
The firemen had disappeared by the time Ben got back to headquarters. The outside of the building was completely surrounded by a grim cordon of highway patrolmen, but the inside was almost wholly deserted.
Only the jails remained choked with people. Hundreds of demonstrators were still crammed together in the tiny, sweltering cells. Ben expected to find Coggins among them, but as he walked down the corridor, he saw him standing quietly in front of McCorkindale’s desk.
‘I’m out for now,’ Coggins said to him. He shifted his eyes over to McCorkindale and glared at him. ‘But I’ll be back.’
McCorkindale grinned. ‘Sure you will, boy. I can’t hardly wait.’
Ben touched Coggins’ shoulders. ‘Come with me a second,’ he said. ‘I want to ask you something.’
Coggins glanced at his watch. ‘Okay, but let’s make it fast. They need me back over at the church. That’s why they bailed me out.’
Ben walked him out of the building. At the top of the steps, Coggins waved to a waiting car. Several men waved back.
‘They’re here to make sure I get from the steps to the car,’ Coggins said to Ben.
‘I want you to keep an eye on everybody, Leroy,’ Ben said. ‘Just like those guys are keeping an eye on you.’
Coggins looked at him darkly. ‘Can you be more specific?’
Ben shook his head. ‘Somebody called the Coroner’s Office with a strange question. He wanted to know how long you could tell if a man was a Negro after he’d been buried.’
Coggins shivered. ‘Oh, God.’
‘I don’t know what it means,’ Ben warned, ‘but just keep a close watch. And tell everybody else to do the same.’
Coggins nodded, his eyes oddly quiet. ‘Do you think they’re after me?’
‘It could be anybody.’
‘I meant it, you know – what I said,’ Coggins told him. I’m ready to die. I really am.’
Ben smiled. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘Just try not to, that’s all.’
McCorkindale was flipping through the newspaper when Ben returned to his desk.
‘Here’s that gun I was telling you about,’ Ben told him as he set it down on McCorkindale’s desk.
McCorkindale gave it a quick glance. ‘Okay, I’ll log it in after a while,’ he said. He looked up at Ben. ‘You know, I think that Coggins boy really likes you.’
Ben glanced about the empty room. ‘Where is everybody?’
‘Over at the park,’ McCorkindale said, his eyes returning to the newspaper. ‘They’re expecting a lot of trouble this afternoon.’
‘More than usual?’
‘I guess so,’ McCorkindale said absently. ‘Word is, the Chief’s come up with some new idea on how to handle things.’
‘What new idea?’
McCorkindale shrugged. ‘Beats me,’ he said. ‘But I guess we’ll all know soon enough.’
‘Yeah,’ Ben said dully as he turned away.
He walked back to his desk in the detective bullpen and sat down to consider his next move. He thought of Doreen, Coggins, the city’s long fury, and suddenly he felt more locked within its grip than he ever had before. It was as if the fingers of some invisible fist were tightening around his throat. He could sense its presence as animals sensed an approaching storm and then either retreated into their burrows to wait it out, or dug their feet into the ground, tightened every muscle and slowly turned their faces toward the wind.