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.
THIRTEEN
Ben was still waiting patiently in the car when Esther finally returned to it, a long dry reed nestled in her hand.
‘I’ll take you home if you want me to,’ he said.
Esther nodded. ‘Maybe you ought to talk to my daddy,’ she said. ‘He might have seen something the day Doreen didn’t come back home.’
Ben nodded slowly. ‘When was that?’
‘She should have come Sunday,’ Esther told him. ‘Late in the afternoon. I was still at work.’
‘Where do you work, Miss Ballinger?’
‘At a little restaurant on Fourth Avenue,’ Esther said. ‘Smiley’s Barbecue. I’m a short-order cook.’ She shrugged. ‘I been doing it for a long time.’
‘What time do you get to work?’
‘About five-thirty,’ Esther said. ‘We have a breakfast crowd.’
‘And your father. What does he do?’
Esther shook her head. ‘Nothing.’
Ben glanced back toward the grave. The air was darkening all around it as the wall of stormclouds drew closer to the city. ‘Would he talk to me?’ he asked.