Prologue
Front Street, Savannah, Georgia
July 4, 1952
Fireworks on the Savannah River: a star-burst of vermillion,
gold and blue cascaded through the inky night, the colors
drifting to oblivion on the breeze that came off the
midnight water. The crowd gathered on the cobblestone walk
along the banks sighed, and sighed again as three more
rockets went off in quick succession, showering glitter with
careless exuberance. Here and there along the cobblestone
street, a scatter of bonfires thrust a fierce orange glow
against the shadows.
One of the fires was moving.
Lt. Edgar OโMalley, shoulders resting against the warehouse
wall, hands shoved into his trouser pockets, pushed his hat
a little further back on his head and narrowed his eyes. He
was off duty, after a sleepless twenty-four stretch on the
Haydee Quinn murder. So what he was seeing wasnโt real. It
was a fragment of nightmare, borne of fatigue. An
hallucination. There was a pint of rye in the inside pocket
of his suit coat; as he reached for it, the screams started:
Just one, at first, the startled shriek of a horrified
woman; then a shout; then the confused clamor of a terrified
horde of people.
The blazing fire moved on. The flames billowed up from the
handcart; some part of OโMalleyโs mind registered it as a
baler wagon, maybe from the Cotton Exchange up on Bay
Street. And he knew the man who pushed it. The cart bumped
awkwardly along the cobbled street, the wheels groaning over
the uneven bricks. The youngster behind it cried out a long
continuous mourning keen, a wail of grief, his head thrown
back, and his mouth wide open to the dark sky above.
Alexander Bulloch. Haydeeโs lover. A briefly-considered
suspect in Haydeeโs death, until Bagger Norris confessed and
the case was done.
The stench from the cart was overwhelming: A roasted stink
of flesh corrupted by flame. The iron wheels groaned,
skidded, and the cart tipped over, throwing flaming logs
across the stones. A blackened human form hung halfway from
the cart. The flames hadnโt yet consumed the hair, which
stirred in the wind as if lifted by a loving hand. Black as
a crowโs wing, black as a starless night, no longer scented
with gardenias, but the scent of burning. Haydeeโs hair.
Haydee herself hung from the cart, the violet eyes now
sockets in her grinning skull, the creamy skin now flaked
into ash.
OโMalley turned and ran up the iron steps, as if pursued by
the corpse itself.
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