And that’s who came to bury Felicity, Dill realized. Cops and the wives of cops. The cops themselves were young and middle-aged. I guess there aren’t any old cops anymore, except for the chief of police. I guess they put in their twenty or thirty years, take their pension, and get out. Detective Dill. Sergeant Dill. Captain Dill. Chief of Detectives Dill. Chief of Police F. F. Dill. Well, who knows. It might have happened.
On the aisle seat in the next to the last row sat Fred Y. Laffter, the ancient police reporter. He rose and sidled up to Dill and in a hoarse whisper said, “We’re gonna go with the stuff on your sister’s insurance policy and the money she paid down on her duplex and all that crap. Any comment you wanta make?”
Dill stopped. “What d’you mean ‘we’?”
Laffter pointed a finger skyward and shrugged. “They tell me upstairs they wanta go with it, so we go with it. I can still work you in a graph, if you want, although that’s my idea, not theirs.”
“No quote,” Dill said. “Nothing.”
“For God’s sake, Laffter, not now,” Colder said and inserted himself between Dill and the old man.
“I’m doing him a favor,” Laffter said.
“Not now, damnit,” Colder said.
Laffter stared at him coldly. “It’s my job, sonny,” he snapped, stepped nimbly around Colder, and again confronted Dill. “No hard feelings, kid.”
“Get the fuck out of my way,” Dill said.
Chapter 20
Led by the two dozen Harley-Davidsons, which were themselves led by a green-and-white squad car with its bar flasher on, the mile-long funeral procession rolled at a stately fifteen miles per hour toward the Green Glade of Rest cemetery that once had been a hardscrabble farm on the eastern outskirts of the city.
The centerpiece of Green Glade was a none-too-complicated maze about one-quarter the size of a football field. The maze was composed of swamp privet hedge eight feet tall and a couple of feet thick. There were also gravel paths for strolling and stone benches in convenient nooks where mourners could sit and rest and think long thoughts about life and death and what it all meant. However, the gravel was hard to walk on, the stone benches uncomfortable, and the maze was usually shunned by those who visited the cemetery.
In the past five years the police department had buried seventeen of its slain officers at Green Glade of Rest. Detective Felicity Dill would make it eighteen. Before the department had bought its own cemetery plot, KOD policemen were buried all over town. KOD stood for Killed on Duty.
Virtually all of those who had been at the church service also attended the graveside ceremony. As promised, the ceremony was brief. A police chaplain read the Twenty-Third Psalm. A squad of sharpshooters fired a rifle volley. A bugler played “Taps” on a cornet. The stalwart honor guard, doubling as pallbearers, folded the American flag covering the casket into a neat triangle and presented it to Dill, who had not the slightest idea of what to do with it. And then it was over, the dead sister buried, and the time was not yet noon.
The police department’s KOD plot was up on a slight knoll. With the services over, the mostly uniformed mourners began to walk slowly back down to their cars, skirting the maze. A few lingered on to shake Dill’s hand and murmur their sorrow. As Dill and Anna Maude Singe slowly made their way to the waiting limousine, he shook the offered hands and politely thanked the murmurers.
Dill and Singe found themselves almost alone not far from the maze when someone tapped Dill on the shoulder. He turned, as did Singe. They found themselves bathed in the angelic glow of the smile that belonged to Clay Corcoran, who had loved the dead sister.
“I just couldn’t keep away, Mr. Dill,” Corcoran said.
“Ben,” Dill said.
“Ben,” Corcoran agreed and turned his warm smile on Singe. “How you, Smokey?”
Singe said she was fine. The big man’s dazzling smile went away and he turned serious. “I thought it was a swell funeral,” he said. “I think Felicity might’ve giggled a little here and there, but everything went off real nice.”
Corcoran seemed to be soliciting Dill’s confirmation, so Dill said that he, too, thought it had all gone very well. Corcoran glanced over the heads of Dill and Anna Maude Singe. Behind them the police in their summer uniforms were moving past the maze toward their cars, although at least a fourth of them, mostly those who had brought wives, were now gathered in small gossipy groups.
Corcoran dropped his deep voice down into what he must have hoped was a confidential mutter. “I told you I was going to snoop around a little?” He had made it a question, so Dill nodded in reply.
“Well,” Corcoran went on in the same tone, “I think I might’ve come up with something.” Again, he glanced over their heads as if afraid of being overheard. Apparently satisfied, he added, “But I’ve got to ask you a couple of questions first.”
“Okay,” Dill said.
“There’s this guy called Jake Spivey who—” Corcoran never finished his sentence, and later Dill thought the big man’s reflexes had been incredible. Corcoran threw a hip into Dill that sent him sailing. He landed four feet away. It was Dill’s first brush with contact sports and he found it strangely exhilarating.
Before Dill had even landed, Corcoran used his left arm to clothesline Anna Maude Singe and send her sprawling. The pleasant look had fled and Corcoran’s frightener’s scowl was back as he dropped to one knee and clawed at something beneath his right pants leg.
Dill looked where Corcoran was looking. He saw the large fist and the small gun poking through the thick swamp privet hedge thirty-some feet away. Or perhaps, Dill later thought, the smallness of the gun made the fist look large. He saw the gun fire. He heard the sharp nasty crack of a single shot. Dill turned and saw that it had caught the kneeling Corcoran low in the throat. The big man dropped the small flat.25-caliber automatic he had just snatched from the ankle holster on his right leg. He pressed both hands against the wound in his throat. A moment later, he removed his bloody hands and stared at them in amazement.
Corcoran knelt there on one knee for two seconds, three seconds, four seconds, then sighed, and slowly lay down on the grass. Blood pumped from his throat. Dill, rising, looked around. The only persons still standing were the wives of the policemen. The policemen themselves had dropped to the grass. Some had dropped flat. A dozen others knelt, their right or left pants legs up, revealing white hairy calves and the small leather holsters that were strapped to them.
A dozen pistols, mostly flat little automatics much like Corcoran’s, had suddenly blossomed in big fists. The cops with the pistols were swiveling their heads, searching for someone to shoot, someone to arrest. But all they found was other cops — and a lot of them strangers — who were also waving pistols around.
Dill later thought the silence after the single shot had lasted no more than three or four seconds and not the hour it seemed at the time. One of the policemen’s wives finally screamed at the sight of Corcoran lying on the grass, his knees drawn up almost to his chest, the blood still pumping from his throat. After the scream, the shouting and confusion began.
Dill was the first to reach Corcoran. The big man’s green eyes were still open, but not quite focused, although he seemed to recognize Dill. He tried to speak, but instead blew a large pink bubble which burst with a tiny plop. Corcoran’s lips moved again and Dill bent to listen. Those watching later said they thought Corcoran managed only three or four words before the blood finally stopped pumping from the wound. Out of Corcoran’s mouth came one last sigh. It formed another pink bubble that popped almost immediately. Then the heart ran out of blood, stopped, and Corcoran was dead.