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.
The holding cells on the third floor of City Hall were packed with demonstrators, and they were singing loudly as Ben made his way down the corridor to the last cell on the right. It was quiet, and almost entirely empty, and as he looked in, his eyes staring between the bars, he could feel the sullen isolation that came from it, powerful as an odor, raw and resentful.
Teddy Langley sat upright on the edge of the upper bunk, his back curled forward, his eyes glaring at the seatless toilet bowl which rested near the center of the room. He looked oddly lifeless and shrunken, as if some vital force had been drained from him. He did not seem to hear the joyous singing which rocked the cell-blocks all around him or feel the sweltering heat. He still wore his police uniform, the top button of his shirt still tightly snapped, the tie pulled snugly against his throat.
‘What are you doing here?’ he asked snidely as Ben let himself into the cell and closed the door behind him.
A burst of cheers followed the end of the song, then a long, sustained clapping of hands. Ben waited until it had all died away into the next rollicking hymn. Then he walked over to Langley and offered him a cigarette.
Langley glanced at the cigarettes but didn’t take one. ‘Is this where you’re supposed to come in and sweet-talk me into a confession?’
‘Not unless you have something to confess,’ Ben told him.
‘Well, I don’t,’ Langley snapped. ‘So why don’t you just go on home.’
Ben said nothing.
‘’Bout time for the evening shift anyway, right?’ Langley asked.
‘More or less.’
‘What is it, five or six, something like that?’
‘About five-thirty.’
Langley nodded. ‘Yeah, that’s what I figured.’ He slid backward on his bunk, pressing his back against the hard cement wall. ‘What you doing here, Wellman?’
‘I thought I might talk to you a minute or two,’ Ben said.
‘What about? You figure I killed Breedlove, right?’
‘Maybe.’
‘’Cause he was an informer,’ Langley said. ‘That’s what they’ll use for motive.’
‘Could be,’ Ben admitted.
‘Did they arrest Tod yet?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘We’re keeping an eye on him,’ Ben said. ‘But the mail we found in the house, it was all addressed to you.’
‘So there’s nothing to connect him to the killing.’
‘Nothing yet.’
‘Except that he’s my alibi,’ Langley said. ‘Of course, he could be telling a lie on that, right?’
‘He’ll go in on a perjury charge if he swears to it,’ Ben said. ‘He could be hit with an accessory if he knew 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.