Free Downriver by Loren D. Estleman Page A

ball all over the community court and bringing that hoop down like he mad at it and I think, slow down, Richie. It was like watching your own boy run out into traffic.”
    “You think he was in on the robbery?”
    “Not for the money. Well, some. You see neighbors never even jaywalked all their lives throwing bricks and grabbing anything they can throw their arms around you get to thinking whatever you take ain’t half what’s owed. It wasn’t the money, though. It was the taking.”
    “His story is he never even knew the robbery was going down. He started the fire just to start the fire. He thinks he was set up.”
    “Not by Davy.”
    “Not by Davy. Have you ever seen this man?” I showed him the printout photograph, pointing at Alfred Hendriks.
    “I seen him somewheres. On TV, I think.”
    “Anywhere else? Twenty years ago, maybe, and much younger?”
    “Son, my mother died fifteen years ago. I don’t hardly remember what she looked like.”
    “Just a stab.” I put away the printout. “Where were you Wednesday afternoon, Mr. Jackson?”
    “Over at the A ’n’ P. I do the shopping Wednesdays.”
    “Anyone see you?”
    “What happened Wednesday?” he asked.
    “Someone tried to stop DeVries on the road outside Marquette. I was there. So was someone else, and the description he gave of the man behind it could fit you.”
    “Be a tough fit. I never been that far north. I ain’t drove a car in eight years. You see anything in my driveway besides what the neighbor’s dog left there?”
    “It wasn’t much of a description. It just occurred to me someone might blame DeVries for your son’s death.”
    “ I do.”
    This was a new voice. I looked at the top of the uncarpeted staircase by the front door, where an old black woman in a floor-length yellow nightgown trimmed with lace stood supporting herself on the railing. Her hair was white and sleep-tangled and her face had the startled look that faces sometimes take on when their owners can’t get over the fact that they’ve become old. She was trembling fit to shake the whole second story.
    “Woman, what you doing up without your walker?” Jackson braced his hands on the arms of his chair.
    “Richie killed our Davy,” she said.
    I put out my cigarette in the candy dish. I felt as if I’d been caught smoking behind the barn.
    “I can understand your thinking he’s responsible, Mrs. Jackson.”
    “Responsible? He killed him. Killed him.”
    Jackson made a little noise that took my attention off his wife. His eyes were shut tight, making a cracked mud sculpture of his face. Only his knuckles turning yellow on the chair arms showed life.
    “Tell him, Cleveland.”
    He opened his eyes slowly. I swore I could hear the lids grating like old shutters. Then he breathed, and it really was like watching a statue become animated, the dead cells blinking on like tiny lights. “It wasn’t nothing.” He rubbed his palms up and down the arms of the chair. “Something that big lieutenant said.”
    “What lieutenant?” I asked.
    “The one that come to talk to us after Davy got killed. What was his name, Emmaline?”
    “Orlander. Lieutenant Floyd Orlander.” It sounded like a catechism.
    “Orlander, that was it. He said the cops didn’t shoot Davy and neither did the ’Guards. The bullet they took out of him at the autopsy didn’t belong to any of their guns. Orlander thought one of the other robbers shot him.”
    “DeVries.”
    “Maybe. The stickup was like right around the corner and them ’Guards didn’t have their eyes on Richie the whole time, what with their attention being split between them. Davy was backshot behind the building running away.”
    “Why kill one of your own partners?”
    “He wanted it all,” said Mrs. Jackson. “Greed, that’s one of the sins.”
    “Nobody ever said it was him done it, woman. He didn’t have no gun when they picked him up.”
    “He threw it in the fire.”
    “Somebody else got the money,” I