Mary hit a key for the next article, read more quotes by Steere, then kept at it, article after article. She checked the clock. 6:15. Mary kept scrolling and reading, her heart sinking. She wasn't finding anything and it was getting later. Her head began to thud, a caffeine hangover. Still she kept reading, skimming each article until the boldfaced Steere.
6:31. Almost 7:00, and Mary still had no answer. She paused, rethinking the problem. Maybe she was using the wrong search. She'd been researching articles that contained the name Steere and was getting a civics lesson. Maybe she needed to approach it from a different direction. She tried to formulate a new search request, her eyes scanning her office for inspiration.
The office was small, tidy, and efficient. An antique quilt hung on the wall next to framed diplomas from Penn undergrad and law school and some honors certificates. There were two simple chairs opposite a pine farm table she used as a desk; her law books stood upright as altar boys on wall-mounted wooden shelves. Mary had decorated her office to inspire confidence in her clients while not offending corporate sensibilities. It was designed to make no statement but "HIRE ME PLEASE, YOU COULD DO A LOT WORSE." Which was precisely what Mary thought of her legal abilities.
Mary's gaze fell on her desk, atypically cluttered with papers from the Steere case, which had taken over her office the way it had taken over her life. She hated the case. A carjacking ending in death. Knives. Guns. Awful. Mary remembered the police photos with nausea and it hurt to look at the autopsy photos. Mary had seen too much death; her husband, and later. The Steere case wasn't helping to leave those memories behind. The next person who said "healing process" to her was getting a fat lip.
She stared at the Steere file and flashed on the photo of the dead homeless man, crumpled on the street in the fetal position. His eyes were open in death, his mouth an agonized black hole in a dense beard. Wild cords of his hair were soaked with blood. He wore baggy pants and no shirt. He'd had no ID or last known address, no friends or relations. The police had learned his name from the neighbors who lived near the Twenty-fifth Street Bridge.
His name was Heb Darnton. Mary had done the factual investigation on him and had interviewed the neighbors. They'd told her Darnton lived under the bridge, drunk most of the time. He used to shout at the passing cars but nobody thought he'd do any harm. The black community rose up at Steere's killing him. They demanded that Steere be charged with murder and demonstrated at the Criminal Justice Center, an inner-city counterpoint to the white suburban NRA members. Police with riot gear and German shepherds had to be called to keep order; for the cops and the press, the victim's identity became a detail as man morphed into symbol. Heb Darnton was forgotten in the fracas, but Mary never forgot a victim and never would. Because once upon a time the victim had been someone she loved.
The victim. Maybe that was it. Mary deleted the old search, typed in DARNTON, and hit GO.
Your search has found 2238 articles, reported the computer.
Ugh, no. She read the first couple, skimming for information about Darnton. The homeless man was mentioned only as Steere's victim. She read the next five articles. Nothing. She narrowed the search and put in Heb Darnton.
Your search has found 1981 articles, it said.
Mary skimmed the first few. They were the same as in the earlier search, but included Darnton's first name. Her brain was too tired to think and she drained her mug. She'd run out of gas. Christ. What kind of a name was Heb anyway? A nickname? She took a flyer, typed in HEB, and waited while the hard disk ground away. Then she caught the typo in the search request.
EB.
Damn it! Mary never could type. She'd tried to teach herself on that Mavis Beacon program, with no luck. She bought the software because she liked the pretty, entrepreneurial Mavis on the box cover and wanted to support her efforts. But Mary couldn't find the time to cyberpractice and then she found out Mavis wasn't even a real businesswoman, just a model. It was disillusioning.
Your search has found 23 articles.
Mary was about to delete the search request when her gaze slipped to the first article, about a farmer in Lancaster County outside of Philly, an Amish man named Eb Stoltzfus. Eb and his friends were reportedly having problems with corn borers. Real helpful. Mary thought a minute. Eb. Ebenezer. She clicked to the next article. Sure enough.
" 'Ebenezer Squeezer' was my favorite song," said Jillian Cohen, a second grader at Gladwyne Elementary School. "I liked it the best in the whole recital."
Mary jolted to alertness. Eb, not Heb? Ebenezer Darnton. Maybe that was the real name of the homeless man. The only way anyone knew his name was that he had told it to the neighbors. Maybe the neighbors were hearing Heb but he was saying Eb. The cops had followed their procedures for identifying him, but Mary had been more thorough herself in her neighborhood survey. She searched EBENEZER DARNTON and pressed GO!
Your search has found no articles.
Shit. It was 6:50. Maybe Marta would be late. Maybe Marta would die. Think, girl. If the search is too narrow, broaden the time. Mary hit a key to search all archives from 1950 to present.
Your search has found no articles.
What to do? Last try. She typed in EBENEZER and punched GO!
Your search has found 3 articles.
Yes! Mary punched up the first article. It was the police blotter from February 7, 1965. Her heart leapt with hope until she read:
A brown 1964 Oldsmobile was reported to be stolen from a parking lot on Joshua Road in Plymouth Meeting. Ebenezer Sherry of the Plymouth Meeting Police reported that this was the twelfth automobile stolen from township residents this year and feared that auto theft was on the rise, even in the suburbs of Philadelphia.
News flash. Crime spreads to suburbs. Mary sighed and hit a key for the second article. Maybe this was a bonehead idea after all.
Ebenezer Yoachim, 68, died today at Sinai Gardens Convalescent Home. Mr. Yoachim owned the Yoyo Dry Cleaners on Cottman Avenue and until his illness was a baritone in the barbershop quartet called the Troubadours. Mr. Yoachim is survived by his wife, Rachel Newman Yoachim, and his son, Samuel.
Mary felt let down. An obit. Couldn't be Darnton. One story left. She hit the key without enthusiasm. It was from April 12, 1965, and appeared in the business section.
Ebenezer Darning, of Greene Street in Center City, was promoted to teller at the main branch of Girard Bank.
Mary blinked, surprised at the similarity of the names. Darning/Darnton. She sat up straighter and scrolled down the page. Underneath the blurb was a thumbnail photo of a young man with a confident smile and a smooth chin. EBENEZER DARNING, said the caption. The man in the news photo was black, like Darnton. It was surprising. A black man promoted in that era? That was around the time of the Civil Rights Act. Racial discrimination was rampant then. Darning must have had brains and guts.
Mary leaned closer to the computer screen to see the bank teller's face. She couldn't tell what he looked like from the tiny photo, so she moved the computer mouse and clicked the cyber-magnifying glass over the man's face. The photo blossomed into pixelated squares but was still too small. The man's eyes looked closed, as if the shutter had been snapped at just the wrong moment. Mary clicked the mouse button again.
My God. She stared at the enlarged photo on the screen. The sight pressed her back into her desk chair. It was a photo of a young Eb Darning, but she could have been looking at an autopsy photo of Heb Darnton, his eyes sealed in death. Without the beard, there was a clear resemblance around the eyes, a protruding of the brow and a largish nose. It looked like the same man, over thirty years younger. Was Eb Darning the same man as Heb Darnton?