"Be good to know how he got out to Pemberton," I said.
"He says he wasn't there."
"Be good to know where he was."
"He says he was with a woman, doesn't know her name. Her place. Can't remember where it was. They were drinking."
"Hell of an alibi," I said.
"Don't you think if he'd done it, he would have had a better one?"
"Not necessarily. Not everybody in jail is a thinker."
I drank a little coffee. It was just as good as if it were caffeinated. Or almost just as good. At least it was hot.
"What was the case against Ellis?" I said.
"Two eyewitnesses picked him out of a lineup."
"Two?"
"Yes, a Pemberton undergraduate and her boyfriend. They said they saw him drag Melissa Henderson into a car near the campus."
"They call the cops?"
"No, not then," Marcy said. "They thought it was just some kind of lover's quarrel, and they didn't want to seem racists, you know, a black man and a white woman?"
"Which was a racist thing to worry about," I said.
Marcy frowned, and looked puzzled, and looked as if she wanted to argue. She settled for a shrug.
"But they appeared after Melissa turned up murdered," I said.
"Yes. They went to the Pemberton Police and reported what they'd seen."
"How'd they connect to Ellis?"
"Pemberton Police got an anonymous tip."
"And they grabbed Ellis and put him in a lineup and the two witnesses pick him out."
"Yes."
"And the arresting officers find the victim's underwear in Alves's room."
"Yes. The DNA tests proved they were hers."
"What's Ellis say about that," I said.
"Says the police planted them."
"They ever find the rest of the clothes?"
"No."
The waitress rushed by again and dropped off some carrot soup for Marcy and a ham sandwich for me. There was a small paper cup of coleslaw on the platter beside it. Marcy got a dinner roll with her soup.
"There's something else," Marcy said. "It sort of got me what you said about the eyewitnesses not calling the cops-that it was a racist assumption anyway."
"You sort of thought deep in your heart that Ellis was guilty," I said. "So you overcompensated because you know that it was an impure racist thought that you were harboring."
"How did you know?"
"I'm a trained sleuth," I said.
"I was terrified of him, too."
"Probably with good reason," I said.
"Maybe, but I was, no, I am, ashamed of it."
"Well, you've confessed it to me," I said. "Maybe that'll help. You got a home phone in case I need to reach you after hours?"
"Yes. I've written it out for you. And I wish you wouldn't laugh at me."
"Sorry," I said. "It's a character flaw. I laugh at nearly everything."
She handed me a piece of lined yellow paper with her name and address and phone number handwritten on it with a felt-tipped pen in lavender ink. Maybe Marcy was more exotic than she looked.
Chapter 3
I WAS THE only white guy in sight, sitting in an Area B cruiser on Seaver Street, near the zoo, with a cop named Jackson, who was the Community Service officer for District 2. He was a slow, calm, burly guy with gray hair. He had one of those profound bass voices which
adds portent to everything said, though he didn't talk as if he knew that.
"Ellis got the same story most of the kids you can see got," Jackson said. He made a graceful inclusive gesture with his right hand.
"His mother's about fifteen years older than he is. She and him live with her mother, his grandmother. Nobody's working. Don't know who the father is. Mother does some dope 'cause she got nothing else that she knows how to do. Grandmother does what she can. Which ain't much. She's got no education. She's got no money. She don't know who fathered her daughter. When Ellis was born, his grandmother was about thirty-two. Ellis don't go to school much. Nobody at his house seems able to get up early enough in the morning to get him there. He's a gang banger soon as they'll have him. Ran for a while with The Hobarts. By the time he's a grown-up he got his career mapped out. He does strong arm, dope dealing, small-time theft. For recreation he molests women. Anybody he seen in his whole life, that he actually knows, who's a success, that's what they do. Michael Jordan may as well be from Mars."
"You think he did the woman in Pemberton?"
"Could have. Don't much matter to me. He's where he should be. I don't never want to see him get out."
"His lawyer thinks he was railroaded because he was black."
Jackson shrugged.
"Probably was. Happens a lot. Because he's black. Because he's poor. Either one is bad, the combination is very bad."
I watched the kids walking past us on the sidewalk. They looked pretty much like any other kids. They were dressed for each other. Oversized clothes, sneakers, hats on backwards, or sideways. Most of them tried to look confident. Most of them were full of pretense. All of them were a little overmatched by the speed at which the world came at them. But these kids weren't like other kids, and I knew it. These kids were doomed. And they knew it. Jackson watched me as I looked at the kids.