The Devil in Gray (10 page)

“I know that, Major. I'm okay. I shouldn't eat sashimi, that's all.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Hicks came back just after five o'clock. His forehead was beaded in sweat, his coat was slung over his shoulder, and he was carrying a can of Diet 7-Up.

“Anything?” Decker asked.

“Nobody
saw
nothing. Nobody
heard
nothing. Nobody
knows
nothing.” Hicks popped open the soda and took four thirsty swallows, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

Decker swung his feet off the desk. “Can't blame people for seeing nothing if there was nothing there to see.”

“I don't know, Lieutenant. I just can't figure it. It's the lack of footprints and fingerprints and fiber evidence that bugs me the most.”

“The perpetrator is a human being, Hicks. No human being can walk through life without leaving some kind of a trail behind him. We'll get him, believe me.”

Hicks looked at his watch. “I need to be going.”

“How's that list of military memorabilia stores?”

“Seven, so far, and seventeen online, although only one of the Internet stores is in the Richmond area.”

“Right! No point in sitting on our asses. Let's start doing the rounds.”

Hicks looked uncomfortable. “I was kind of hoping to call it a day. It's my little girl's birthday party this afternoon.”

“Oh yeah? How old is she?”

“Three.”

“That's okay, then. She'll never remember that you didn't show.”

They parked outside the Rebel Yell on West Cary Street and climbed out of the car. An old-fashioned red-painted frontage was hung with Confederate battle flags. The windows were crowded with sepia photographs of whiskery Confederate officers and tarnished military buttons and replica Colt revolvers and cavalry swords.

A bell jangled as they opened the door. Inside, there was a scrubbed oak floor and rows of glass display cabinets containing rifles and musketoons and cutlasses and all the paraphernalia of war, from dented cooking pots to inkstands to cartridge-rolling papers. The store smelled of wood, and musty old clothes, and wax.

Billy Joe Bennett was standing behind the counter—a huge, big-bellied man, with a gingery gray beard and circular glasses, dressed in a gray artillery coat with epaulets and original eagle buttons on it. He was talking to a round-shouldered middle-aged customer in one of those floppy Woody Allen hats that looks like a wilted cabbage. Billy Joe suddenly picked up a heavy saber and slashed it crisscross in the air, so that it whistled, and the customer said, “Wow,” and backed away.

“Know what they used to call this?” Billy Joe said, in a voice as rich as fruitcake. “The wrist breaker. But it could whop a fellow's head off with one blow.”

“Real neat sword,” the customer said. “How much do you want for it?”

“Couldn't take less than 3,500.”

“Mind if I have a try?”

“Okay … but be careful. Wouldn't want you to do yourself a mischief.”

The customer took the saber and jabbed it in the air a few times. Then he lifted it high over his head and whirled it about like a helicopter rotor. He let out a whoop and a “yee-haaa!” and promptly dropped it with a clatter onto the floor.

“Jee-zus! What are you trying to do, cut your damn feet off?” Billy Joe came bustling around the counter and picked up the saber as tenderly as if it were an infant.

The customer rubbed his wrist and said, goofily, “Guess I misjudged how heavy it is.”

“Let me tell you something, this saber was carried at First Manassas by Captain Tom Hartley of the First Virginia Cavalry, one of the bravest Southern officers as was. He had his left arm blown off below the elbow by a minié ball but he never dropped it, not once.”

“Really? That really gives it some provenance, doesn't it? It's going to look terrific hanging over my fireplace back in Madison. Do you take MasterCard?”

Billy Joe carefully laid the saber back down on the counter, polishing its blade with a soft yellow duster. He thought for a while, and then he said, “MasterCard? Uh-huh.”

“How about American Express?”

“I can't exactly tell you that we take that either. Besides, this saber ain't for sale no more.”

The customer blinked. “What do you mean it's not for sale anymore?”

“Exactly that.”

“Well, how about that sword over there?”

“That's not for sale, neither.”

“It doesn't have a ‘sold' ticket on it.”

“I know. But nothing is for sale. In fact, I've suddenly remembered that we're closed. Good-bye.”

The customer hesitated for a moment, but when Billy Joe resolutely turned his back on him and noisily started counting out boxes full of military buttons, he looked around at Decker and Hicks and said, “Craziest store I ever heard of, won't sell you anything.”

He hesitated a little longer and then he left. Billy Joe carried on counting buttons, but after a while, with his back still turned, he said, “What can I do for you today, Lieutenant?”

“I don't know. You're closed, aren't you?”

Billy Joe turned to face them, and picked up the saber again. “This isn't just a saber, Lieutenant. This is the glory of the South. And I'm damned if I'm going to sell it to some pigeon-chested nitwit who can't handle it with due respect.”

“Pretty selective way to do business.”

“Well, maybe it was just that particular guy. I hated his hat.”

Decker peered into one of the display cabinets. “What I'm interested in is bayonets and bowie knives.”

“Bayonets? I don't have too many of those. I have a good Kentucky bowie knife, though, with an ivory handle, dated 1863.”

“I don't want to buy anything. I want to know if you've sold any bayonets and bowie knives recently, and to whom.”

Billy Joe scratched his bearded chin. “Last bayonet I sold was a socket bayonet made by Cook and Brother, New Orleans, 1861 or 1862. Very good condition, double-edged, twenty-one inches long. Last bowie knife … I couldn't tell you.”

Hicks took out a photograph of Jerry Maitland. “Ever see this guy before? Ever sold him a bayonet?”

Billy Joe lifted his glasses so that he could focus. “No … sorry.”

Hicks handed him a copy of Sandra's drawing of the So-Scary Man. “How about this character? Ever see him?”

Billy Joe studied the drawing carefully, and then he said, “When was this drawing made?”

“What difference does that make?”

“You don't very often see pictures of these fellows, if at all.”

“These fellows? What do you mean by that?”

Billy Joe pointed to the man's hat. “See them feathers, in his hatband? They're crow feathers.”

“I didn't really take too much notice of them, to tell you the truth.”

“Well, you shoulda, because they tell you a story. And the story is that this fellow is a member of what they called the Devil's Brigade.”

“The Devil's Brigade? Who were they?”

“It's one of those Civil War legends, you know. Half truth and half legend. There was supposed to be thirteen men in all, twelve white and one colored, and they was specially recruited by Lieutenant General James Longstreet in April, 1864, just before the Battle of the Wilderness.”

“Can't say I've ever heard of them.”

Billy Joe handed the drawing back. “You never heard of them because they was like special forces, you know, the Civil War equivalent of Delta Force, and the whole operation was a close secret. Nobody knows who the individual men was, or what exactly they was assigned to do, but the story goes that they was charged with creating all kinds of hell regardless of the usual rules and conduct of war.”

He carefully sheathed the saber and hung it up in one of the display cabinets.

Hicks said, “One of them was colored? That was pretty unusual, wasn't it, for the Confederate army? I didn't think they had any colored troops.”

“Nor did they. The only coloreds who got involved in the war were personal servants that some of the officers took to the front line. I don't know why they made an exception in this particular case.”

“Do you have any idea what this Devil's Brigade actually did?” Decker asked.

“Only stories and rumors. The situation was that the Confederates was being very hard-pressed by the Federals up by the Rapidan River. The Federals had more men and much more equipment. Grant was on the verge of breaking through the Confederate lines, and I guess Longstreet decided that he needed something to tip the balance back in his favor. I don't know if he recruited the Devil's Brigade with Lee's approval or not, but even if the stories and rumors are only half correct, those thirteen fellows wreaked some terrible havoc up there in the Wilderness. There were tales of men being turned inside out, and men catching fire spontaneous, and men being chopped into so many pieces that nobody could tell which piece belonged to who.

“On the night of May seven to eight, the honors was supposed to have gotten so dreadful that there was wholesale panic in the Federal forces, and Grant had to order their immediate withdrawal, before it became a rout. Both armies left the Wilderness and eventually wound up at the battle of Spotsylvania.”

“What happened to the Devil's Brigade? Didn't they go to Spotsylvania too?”

“The Battle of the Wilderness was the first and last time they was heard of. The stories and rumors say that Longstreet himself was so appalled by what they had done that he ordered them disbanded and gave special orders that they wasn't to be mentioned again. So the only accounts we have are those of eyewitnesses on both sides, and as you probably know the Wilderness was not a place where the common soldier could see much of what was going on, because the woods was so dense, and the underbrush was almost impossible to penetrate.”

He looked again at Sandra's drawing. “I only ever saw one other drawing of the Devil's Brigade, and that was done by an artist lieutenant from Kershaw's division, who sketched all thirteen of them when they was gathered at Parker's Store, just before the battle. So I'd very much like to know who did this, and where they got their reference from, especially if they're in actual possession of the uniform. That would be worth thousands, and I'd be willing to make them an offer.”

Hicks checked his notebook. “You say the Battle of the Wilderness was in May?”

“That's correct.”

“Must have been pretty warm then, in May. So why did the Devil's Brigade wear greatcoats?”

“Good question,” Billy Joe said. “By that stage of the war, you wouldn't have recognized what most of the Southern soldiers was wearing as uniforms at all. They threw away everything that hindered their marching—their greatcoats, their hats, their spare blankets, even their boots, sometimes. They didn't have much use for their bayonets, either, so they stuck them in the ground for the quartermasters to pick up afterward.

“All I can say is that the Devil's Brigade must have been privileged not to march with the main multitude; but why they wore greatcoats I can't imagine. I've got two greatcoats right back here … you try putting one on and see how damn heavy it is.”

As they drove eastward, back to the city center, Decker said, “This is getting weirder by the minute. Even supposing Sandra
didn't
see the So-Scary Man, even if she only imagined him, how come she managed to draw such an accurate picture? If Billy Joe Bennett has only seen one other drawing of the Devil's Brigade, and he's an expert in Civil War memorabilia, where the hell did Sandra ever see one?”

“Maybe you should try asking her,” Hicks suggested.

“I don't know. I think we're looking at this all the wrong way. There's a key to this somewhere, but it's like in
Alice in Wonderland
. It's way up on top of the table and we're trying to find it on the floor.”

He took a left on Belvidere Street and headed toward Monroe Park. Hicks looked up from his notebook and frowned. “Where are we going?”

“Back to your house, sport. You have a birthday party to go to, remember?”

CHAPTER TWELVE

He dropped off Hicks at his small rented house off Valley Road. There were twenty or thirty small children playing in the front yard, and colored balloons tied to the porch. As Hicks walked up the path, a young, pretty woman in a pink dress came out onto the front steps. Hicks obviously told her who Decker was, and she gave him a smile and a wave. Decker waved back. Very tasty, he thought. Some guys have all the luck.

His cell phone played Beethoven. “Martin.”

“It's Maggie. I just wanted to tell you that I'm thinking of you.”

“You're a bad woman, Maggie. Thank God.”

“Listen, Cab has to go to Charlottesville on Tuesday afternoon. How about calling by for some of that sweet, sweet stuff you're going to be missing this weekend?”

“Sounds tempting.”

“I'll hold you to it,” she said, with a thick, dirty laugh.

His shirt was sticking to his back and he felt like going home and taking a shower. He could use a couple of shots of tequila, too. But he couldn't stop thinking about what had happened in the men's room with Mayzie. He saw it over and over in his mind's eye, an endless video loop. Instead of Mayzie, Cathy lifting her face and smiling at him, her face as white as clouds and her eyes yellow. Then her head silently exploding, in a welter of blood and bone fragments and flesh. Then lifting her face again, and opening her eyes, and smiling again, and exploding again.

When he reached the intersection with Franklin Street he hesitated. A driver behind him blasted his horn and Decker mouthed
asshole
at him and gave him the finger. Then he turned right and drove back to headquarters. He collected a cup of strong black coffee from the vending machine at the end of his corridor, and walked along to his office, sipping it. He switched on his computer and hung his coat over the back of his chair while it booted up.