Streets of Fire
Thomas H. Cook
Language: English
Pages: 214
ISBN: 0399134905
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
At the height of the Civil Rights movement, a young girl’s murder stirs racialtensions in Birmingham, Alabama
The grave on the football field is shallow, and easy to spot from a distance. It would have been found sooner, had most of the residents in the black half of Birmingham not been downtown, marching, singing, and being arrested alongside Martin Luther King, Jr. Police detective Ben Wellman is among them when he gets the call about the fresh grave. Under the loosely packed dirt, he finds a young black girl, her innocence taken and her life along with it.
His sergeant orders Wellman to investigate, but instructs him not to try too hard. In the summer of 1963, Birmingham is tense enough without a manhunt for the killers of a black child. Wellman digs for the truth in spite of skepticism from the black community and scorn from his fellow officers. What he finds is a secret that men from both sides of town would prefer stayed buried.
‘You see this?’ he asked as he lifted it to the crowd. All eyes turned toward the ring, but no one spoke. ‘This ring just might have belonged to the guy who killed that little girl,’ Coggins explained shakily. ‘Yeah, that’s right. And the thing is, it had chalk dust all over it. You know, like you use here on your pool cues.’ A loud, husky voice came from somewhere in the back of the room. ‘What color?’ Coggins’ eyes searched the room. ‘What was that?’ ‘What color was the chalk dust?’ the
things in the wrong order.’ ‘That could be military training,’ Luther said dismissively. ‘Or any other police department.’ ‘He left my pistol hanging on the fence outside.’ ‘So?’ ‘Why do you think he did that, Captain?’ ‘Who knows?’ Luther replied with a shrug. ‘It’s the first thing I thought about,’ Ben told him. ‘Why?’ ‘Because a cop in our own department would know that we have to buy our own weapons, that if he’d taken it with him, then I’d have had to replace it out of my own
do about it?’ ‘What do you mean?’ ‘You want off the case?’ ‘No,’ Ben said immediately, offended by the question. ‘Why would I want that?’ ‘In case it all has something to do with a brother officer in the department,’ Luther said. ‘I mean, we could turn the whole thing over to the State Police.’ Ben laughed. ‘Lingo’s men?’ ‘They may not all be like what we’re used to seeing lately,’ Luther told him. ‘At least you wouldn’t be looking into things that could involve people you know.’ Ben shook
been an act, and it seemed to Ben that to create an atmosphere in which such acting could be called for, in which decency had to wear a grim disguise, was itself a grave and desperate wrong. He wished that he’d known about Breedlove before it was too late, because he realized now that he would have behaved differently toward him, perhaps touched his arm from time to time, or offered him a subtly pointed look, anything that might have let him know that even within the ranks of his fellow
and applause mingled in a single sustained roar which moved back and forth from the church to the streets and back to the church again, building with each pass, feeding on itself, growing stronger with each sustaining wave. Ben looked up from his notebook, his fingers loosening halfheartedly around the pen, his eyes now focused on the church, his ears attentive to the voice. ‘How long? Not long. Because God is tramping through the vineyard where the grapes of wrath are stored.’ The crowd began