Goodnight, Irene

That all started to change when I saw the rising smoke from half a mile away. A slow, cold numbing started in my throat and eventually froze me in place on the sidewalk across the street from his house. Clusters of firemen formed tense huddles with cops. The place was surrounded by fire trucks, police cars, the bomb-squad van, the coroner’s ambulance. The house was smashed as if it were nothing more than an egg; a yolk of mud and debris was spilling out of its broken shell. I wanted to find O’Co

I sometimes hear about people knowing right away that someone they loved has died, that they feel the dead person’s spirit leave or something. O’Co

I heard someone yell “Kelly!” and turned to see a tall black man walking toward me. It was Mark Baker, the reporter sent out by the Express. “Oh, God, Irene, I’m so sorry,” he said in a shaky voice. I wasn’t ready for sympathy, and looked away. He understood and stopped talking, just put one of his burly arms around my shoulders and guided me away from the crowd. Mark took me over to where Frank Harriman was trying to get some sense out of Mrs. Keene, then left to talk to one of the guys from the bomb squad.

Frank and I had met when he was a rookie cop in Bakersfield and I was on my first crime beat as a fledgling reporter. Now he was a homicide detective with the Las Piernas Police Department. I hadn’t seen him for a long time, since before I quit the paper, but this wasn’t the time to renew old acquaintances.

As I stood to one side, Frank noticed me and gave me one of those very protective “are-you-okay?” looks. I tried to avoid his eyes, and turned away from him, but to my horror looked up to see a coroner’s assistant bagging a little piece of something soft.

Thank God I’m not a fainter. I must have looked bad, though, because Frank took me gently by the elbow and said, “Go home, Irene.” I just stared at him.

“You still live in the same place?” he asked.

I nodded, because I didn’t trust my voice. I was also busy with a tug-of-war-one minute I was trying to take it all in, the next, trying to shut it all out. I heard Frank say something about wanting to ask me some questions, later. I figured Mrs. Keene had told him about the previous night’s serenade, but I was past caring. I heard the camera shutters of the forensic team, and out of the corner of my eye kept seeing the coroner’s assistants with their goddamned plastic bags and forceps. I felt sick and weird…disco

Frank was quiet for a minute; then he asked a cop to drive me home, but I shook it off and told him I could manage. I made sure he had my address, then left. I could feel him watching me as I walked to my car. I didn’t look back at Frank or the house as I drove off.

As I rounded the corner I saw Ke

IT WAS A LONG TIME before I asked myself what had made Ke

2

FRANK ALMOST WAITED too long to come over. I was damned restless by late that afternoon.

Most of the time from when I left O’Co

So I paced around, sat and tried to cry, but couldn’t. Got up and paced around again. Cody sat watching me, twitching his fat tail nervously. At one point I felt so wound up, I took off my shoes and hurled them as hard as I could against the wall. I didn’t pitch them anywhere near Cody, but he decided he’d had enough and took off through his cat door-converted from an old ice-delivery slot in the kitchen.

It was hard to find anything worth thinking about. If I thought about the past, I mourned the end of days with O’Co

I knew that the time would come when I could really indulge in this feeling-sorry-for-myself stuff, but now wasn’t the time. If I could just get myself pointed in some direction, maybe I could find whoever did this to O’Co

In the midst of these thoughts I heard someone on the front porch. The silhouetted figure of a tall man stood looking in at me from my front door, shading his eyes with his hand against the screen.

“Irene?”

“Jesus, Frank. You startled me. How long have you been out there?”

“How about letting me in? It’s hotter than hell out here.”

I took off the latch and opened the door for him. I flopped down on the couch and gestured toward my big old-fashioned armchair, but he waved it off and leaned up against a table instead.

“You okay?” he asked.

“I’ll get there. You know me.”

He smiled a little and said, “Yeah, I guess I do.” He was quiet for a minute, then he stood up straight. He was studying me, and I felt uncomfortable. I decided to watch my toes for a while.

He started over. “Look, I know you’re tough, but I also have some idea of what O’Co

I glanced up at him. He had a fu

“Have a seat, Frank.”

He sat down. Tall as he is-somewhere in the neighborhood of six-three or six-four, I’d guess-the back of the chair was still taller. I love that big old chair. Nobody since my grandfather had looked that good in it.

“Go ahead,” I told him. “Take out your notebook. Ask questions. It’ll be good for me. At least I’ll be doing something. Maybe I can help somehow.”

He just sat there for a minute, still quiet, as if undecided. Then he reached into his inside pocket and pulled out a notebook.

“Why don’t you take that jacket off? I’m not so formal here with my shoes off.”

“Thanks,” he said, standing up again for a moment. He took off his suit jacket and folded it neatly over the back of the chair. Even in the long-sleeved shirt and shoulder holster, he looked a lot more comfortable. He sat back down, loosened his tie and flipped his notebook open to a clean page. I felt nervous again.

“Look, how about something cold to drink?”

He gave me that questioning look again. “Sure,” he said.

Hell’s bells, I thought. I’ve got to stop acting like an idiot. I realized that every time one of us was on the verge of discussing what had happened to O’Co

I poured a couple of glasses of iced tea and brought them into the living room.

Outside the big picture window, the heat waves made the street look like a river. A big dark-blue car ferried its way past the window. I could see Cody stretched out in the sun on the lawn.