Monument to Murder - Margaret Truman [9]
“I don’t remember much about him. Fairly young, twenty-four, twenty-five. I reviewed the crime-scene photos in preparation for testifying at her sentencing. Good-lookin’ fella, came from Atlanta. Autopsy showed plenty of drugs in his system, no surprise since he was hanging out at Augie’s.”
“Good-looking enough that he didn’t need to rape anybody for sex?”
“I’d say so, but you never can tell what a junkie’ll do.”
Brixton stretched and grimaced, rubbed his right knee.
“When are you gonna get that knee replaced?” Cleland said.
“One of these days.”
It had happened during Brixton’s final year on the force. He and his partner had been dispatched to pick up a parole violator and were met with a hail of bullets, one of which hit Brixton in the knee. His partner killed the fugitive and called for backup. After undergoing surgery, Brixton had spent the next six months in rehab, and had been assigned to a desk job until his retirement papers came through.
There wasn’t much else he could ask Cleland, at least at that juncture, and they settled into easy conversation about their days together on the streets of Savannah. Cleland took Brixton out a back door to show off his vegetable garden, which Brixton dutifully admired. Of all the things he enjoyed doing, gardening wasn’t among them. An hour later Cleland walked him to the front door. Brixton looked up the quiet street at a small, red pickup truck parked at the curb. He’d noticed what he assumed was the same truck behind him on the highway on his way to Cleland’s. Sun on the windshield obscured the driver’s face. Brixton clapped his former partner on the back before he got into his car and drove off. The red truck remained parked.
His visit with Joe Cleland hadn’t resulted in his learning anything tangible, but it did accomplish one thing.
He believed Eunice Watkins.
CHAPTER 4
Brixton dialed the number he’d been given for Eunice Watkins. He wanted to see whether Louise’s mother was home and up for a visit. An answering machine picked up his cell phone call. He didn’t bother to leave a message, deciding to stop by her house anyway if only to get a feel for the atmosphere in which the daughter had been brought up.
The address was in the Pinpoint section of Savannah, about eleven miles from downtown. Inhabited primarily by African-Americans, it had been established by freed slaves following the Civil War and was one of the last bastions of Gullah-speaking people, a Creole language patterned after several West African languages. As Brixton entered the town he saw a sign proudly proclaiming that it was the birthplace of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
The Watkins place was one of a dozen similar homes that sat side by side on a tree-lined street. He pulled up in front of the house number he had and surveyed his surroundings. The only activity was a few school-age kids playing and a delivery truck from which furniture was being carried into a house across the street. A recent vintage Ford sedan was parked in the Watkins driveway.
He got out and went to the front door, rang the bell. Based upon his unanswered call, he didn’t expect to find her at home. But a curtain on a narrow vertical window next to the door was pulled aside, the sound of a sliding deadbolt was heard, and she opened the door.
“I hope you don’t mind my just stopping by,” Brixton said. “I tried calling but got your answering machine.”
“I’ve been letting the machine take calls,” she said.
To avoid bill collectors? he wondered.
“Please, come in,” she said, stepping aside to allow him to enter.
An air conditioner in a living room window exhaled barely cool air into the tidy, pleasantly furnished room. A spinet piano occupied a short wall at the base of stairs leading to the second level. The hardwood floor glistened from a recent waxing, its center covered by a hooked rug of various colors. An older-model TV with its bulky back sat on a TV cart with wheels across from a couch covered in a green-and-white-striped fabric. Two chairs in a matching pattern flanked it.
“Please, sit down,