“Cherie!” I yelled. She was already running toward my house, so I ran to meet her halfway. When we got close enough, I wrapped my arms around her. “Sugar, I am so sorry about what happened to Yvonne and Milton. But you don’t have to worry, they’re going to catch whoever did this and lock them up for a long time.”

“I hope so. I’m sorry Mr. Odell got killed too. My uncle went to the police station this morning. That skinny old peckerwood sheriff told him to wrap up his business here with the undertaker, and don’t interfere with the investigation.” Cherie’s eyes were as red and swollen as mine. She looked so much like Yvonne. Her skin was light brown, but today it was so pale, she could almost pass for white. And her long, straight black hair was hidden up under a homely plaid scarf that made her look much older. Grief had such a powerful effect on people. If a girl as young and pretty as Cherie looked almost like a hag to me, there was no telling what I looked like to her.

“We’ll have to leave it up to God,” I muttered.

“I know. I just hope the sheriff can find out what really happened.”

This poor child didn’t seem confident that Sheriff Potts would solve the case, and I sure wasn’t. Daddy and Reverend Jessup had gone to the police station earlier this morning to see if Sheriff Potts had made any progress. He’d told them basically the same thing he’d told Yvonne’s uncle.

Cherie rattled on and my thoughts wandered. Even though the sheriff kept insisting that some “maniac” had killed Yvonne, Milton, and Odell, the colored folks didn’t agree. And when Daddy went back to the sheriff’s office half an hour after his first visit this morning and asked him if he’d checked the fingerprints on the knife that killed Odell, the sheriff got downright hostile. Daddy trembled as he repeated what Sheriff Potts had said, even imitating his annoying drawl: “ ‘An unknown maniac beat Yvonne and Milton to death with a hammer, and then they stabbed Odell. That’s all the information I can reveal until a suspect has been identified and apprehended. My deputies jumped the gun and picked up the weapons, so the only fingerprints I would have found belonged to them. And who are you to be telling me how to do my job? Now you get up out of here. I’m going to arrest you and the next one of y’all niggers that interferes with my investigation!’ ”

“He told you all that?” I’d whimpered.

“Word for word,” Daddy confirmed.

Sadly, there was no higher authority we could go to without provoking Sheriff Potts.