"What happened to the Devil's Brigade? Didn't they go to Spotsylvania too?"
"The Battle of the Wilderness was the first and last time they was heard of. The stories and rumors say that Longstreet himself was so appalled by what they had done
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that he ordered them disbanded and gave special orders that they wasn't to be mentioned again. So the only accounts we have are those of eyewitnesses on both sides, and as you probably know the Wilderness was not a place where the common soldier could see much of what was going on, because the woods was so dense, and the underbrush was almost impossible to penetrate."
He looked again at Sandra's drawing. "I only ever saw one other drawing of the Devil's Brigade, and that was done by an artist lieutenant from Kershaw's division, who sketched all thirteen of them when they was gathered at Parker's Store, just before the battle. So I'd very much like to know who did this, and where they got their reference from, especially if they're in actual possession of the uniform. That would be worth thousands, and I'd be willing to make them an offer."
Hicks checked his notebook. "You say the Battle of the Wilderness was in May?"
"That's correct."
"Must have been pretty warm then, in May. So why did the Devil's Brigade wear greatcoats ?"
"Good question," Billy Joe said. "By that stage of the war, you wouldn't have recognized what most of the Southern soldiers was wearing as uniforms at all. They threw away everything that hindered their marching—their greatcoats, their hats, their spare blankets, even their boots, sometimes. They didn't have much use for their bayonets, either, so they stuck them in the ground for the quartermasters to pick up afterward.
"All I can say is that the Devil's Brigade must have been privileged not to march with the main multitude; but why they wore greatcoats I can't imagine. I've got two greatcoats right back here . . . you try putting one on and see how damn heavy it is."
* * *
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As they drove eastward, back to the city center, Decker said, "This is getting weirder by the minute. Even supposing Sandra didn't see the So-Scary Man, even if she only imagined him, how come she managed to draw such an accurate picture? If Billy Joe Bennett has only seen one other drawing of the Devil's Brigade, and he's an expert in Civil War memorabilia, where the hell did Sandra ever see one?"
"Maybe you should try asking her," Hicks suggested.
"1 don't know. I think we're looking at this all the wrong way. There's a key to this somewhere, but it's like in Alice in Wonderland. It's way up on top of the table and we're trying to find it on the floor."
He took a left on Belvidere Street and headed toward Monroe Park. Hicks looked up from his notebook and frowned. "Where are we going?"
"Back to your house, sport. You have a birthday party to go to, remember?"
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CHAPTER TWELVE
He dropped off Hicks at his small rented house off Valley Road. There were twenty or thirty small children playing in the front yard, and colored balloons tied to the porch. As Hicks walked up the path, a young, pretty woman in a pink dress came out onto the front steps. Hicks obviously told her who Decker was, and she gave him a smile and a wave. Decker waved back. Very tasty, he thought. Some guys have all the luck.
His cell phone played Beethoven. "Martin."
"It's Maggie. I just wanted to tell you that I'm-thinking of you."
"You're a bad woman, Maggie. Thank God."
"Listen, Cab has to go to Charlottesville on Tuesday afternoon. How about calling by for some of that sweet, sweet stuff you're going to be missing this weekend?"
"Sounds tempting."
"I'll hold you to it," she said, with a thick, dirty laugh.
* * *
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His shirt was sticking to his back and he felt like going home and taking a shower. He could use a couple of shots of tequila, too. But he couldn't stop thinking about what had happened in the men's room with Mayzie. He saw it over and over in his mind's eye, an endless video loop. Instead of Mayzie, Cathy lifting her face and smiling at him, her face as white as clouds and her eyes yellow. Then her head silently exploding, in a welter of blood and bone fragments and flesh. Then lifting her face again, and opening her eyes, and smiling again, and exploding again.
When he reached the intersection with Franklin Street he hesitated. A driver behind him blasted his horn and Decker mouthed asshole at him and gave him the finger. Then he turned right and drove back to headquarters. He collected a cup of strong black coffee from the vending machine at the end of his corridor, and walked along to his office, sipping it. He switched on his computer and hung his coat over the back of his chair while it booted up.
And she lifted her face, and smiled at him. And then her head slowly burst apart like a pumpkin, so that he teas lacerated by flying teeth and splattered in blood.
He had looked up this file so many times before, but it still baffled him and it still hurt. Case number CZS/448/3251, Catherine Meredith Meade, aged twenty-nine years and two months. Right at the top of the report were several color photographs of the crime scene. That familiar bedroom at 318 West Broad Street, with its pale duck-egg walls. The dark blue woven throw, dragged to one side, and the cream-colored pillows that looked as if somebody had splashed a bucket of dark red dye all over them. Cathy's body, on the floor, one leg twisted behind her, her white nightshirt speckled all over.
It had happened at 1:30 on the morning of February 7. Decker had been called out to a suspicious drowning on
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Brown's Island. While he was away, somebody had entered his apartment either by picking the lock or using a passkey. There was no sign of any forced entry. The perpetrator had gone directly to the bedroom, approached the bed, and fired three soft-nosed slugs that blew Cathy's head to pieces.
Cathy had been all smiles and sunshine. Even her previous boyfriend—although he had been desperately upset to lose her—still adored her. The only possible explanation for the killing had been that somebody had been gunning for Decker, and had mistakenly shot Cathy in the darkness—or else they had shot her to teach him a lesson that he would never forget.
The time that it happened, Decker had been involved in a complicated series of homicide investigations in the Jackson Ward. He had suspected that the murders were connected with a vicious power struggle between two of the ward's most ruthless criminal organizations, the Strutters and the Egun. He had persuaded three witnesses to give material evidence against Queen Aché, the leader of the Egun. But when Cathy was killed, Decker had been so grief-stricken that he had been forced to take six months' sick leave, and his witnesses had all contracted irreversible amnesia.
So why were all these thoughts of Cathy coming back to him now? He couldn't understand what they meant—the nightmares, the waking hallucinations, that bizarre business of the fruit-and-chicken face on the chopping board? He scrolled down through the incident report. Maybe he had been reminded of Cathy's death because Cathy's killer had left absolutely no evidence—just like the killer of Alison Maitland and George Drewry. Cathy's killer had even avoided detection on the video monitors in the lobby, in the elevators, and in the corridor right outside their apart‑
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ment door. No suspects were ever arrested, and the case was still open, though inactive.
Decker was almost ready to leave when Cab came in. "How's it going?" Cab asked him.