I handed back the picture. “I hope you realize that I’m not revisiting her death but trying to find Steve Sawyer, the man who was convicted of killing her. You said on the phone you hadn’t been happy with the verdict.”

“No, I wasn’t, and I did try to go to the police when I learned about the arrest.” Sister Frankie frowned over her teacup. “You see, Harmony and I were marching next to each other when she suddenly collapsed. I thought at first it was the heat. You have to understand, the noise was so intense, and the heat, and the hate … We couldn’t hear each other, let alone any individual voices from the mob. But all the young men from the neighborhood, all those gangbangers, they were clustered around the leadership—Dr. King, Al Raby, and so on—near the front of the march.”

She flashed a wry smile. “We women were at the back … Women and children last, you know, when it comes to public action or recognition … Harmony got hit from the side. At the moment, it was so shocking, I couldn’t think at all, let alone analyze what happened or even think about looking for a killer.

“Later, though, after the funeral, after the horror of the march and Harmony’s death subsided a little, I started thinking it over. The missile had to have come out of the mob, out of the crowd surging around us. All the gang members were up front, you see, around Dr. King and Al Raby. The person who killed her was at the side, and that meant it couldn’t have been a black person. The mob would have murdered any black man if he’d been in their midst.”

I felt let down. I’d been pinning my hopes on something substantial, an explicit identification. “So you didn’t see who hit her?”

She shook her head. “I offered to testify at the trial, but Steve Sawyer’s attorney wouldn’t put me on the witness list. I tried to insist, but my bishop called me and told me I was out of line. The cardinal was trying to calm passions in the city, and, there I was, stirring them up.” She smiled sadly. “Nowadays, that wouldn’t stop me. But then, I was only twenty-six, and I didn’t know how far I could go before the hierarchy would stop me.”

“What was it you thought you could add, your opinion about where the gang members were standing relative to you and Harmony?”

“No. It was something else. One of the boys had a camera. He was taking pictures of us, and I hoped—”