Goodnight, Irene

I handed Frank his iced tea and sat down again. “Sorry-I should have thought of offering you something sooner. I’m a little distracted, I guess. What do you want to know?”

“It’s okay. I guess I’m distracted too. Anyway, you saw O’Co

“Yeah, we went out to Banyon’s. He was in a festive mood, you might say. He did quite a bit of drinking, but I was driving, so I quit after a Gui

“Anyway, we talked and watched people dance, and left sometime after midnight, probably about twelve-thirty. I drove him home. Got there around one. He got out of the car, sang ‘Goodnight, Irene’ to me on his way in. He likes to-he liked to sing that to me.”

Why was it so hard to tell something that I’d been thinking about all day? I looked out the window again; the blue car-a Lincoln, I noticed-was going slowly back up the street.

“Did you walk up to the house with him?” Frank asked.

“No, but I watched him go up the porch steps-he wasn’t too steady on his feet. There wasn’t any package there. Ke

“What was O’Co

“The paper wouldn’t tell you?”

“Haven’t been over there yet-figured you’d know more about what he was really up to than that jackass Wrigley.”

I had to smile at that. “You’re not just trying to get on my good side by saying that about the esteemed editor of the Express, are you?”

“No, I decided he was a jerk long before Mark Baker told me why you left the paper. That just confirmed it.”

“Well, he is a jackass. But maybe it was a mistake to leave the paper. I probably shouldn’t have let him get to me. O’Co

“Same thing happens to cops,” Frank said.

“I know. We all get to see the underside of the rock, I guess. Hard to remember there’s anything else sometimes. Of course, in the line I’m in now it’s all sunshine and lollipops. God, I hate public relations work. I spent most of last night bitching about it to O’Co

“You’ll do what you need to do.”

“You sound like O’Co

“I didn’t really know him,” he said. “Just met him once or twice. Saw him around City Hall now and then, used to catch his column once in a while. One or two of the old-timers in the department told me O’Co

“Oh, you mean Ha

“Well, ten years earlier, O’Co

“When he talked to me about his sister, he told about how it had driven his mother crazy; it was hard on the whole family, not knowing for those five years. He was really close to this sister. I guess he usually walked her home from work, but he had a hot date that night. Lots of guilt over what happened. On top of everything else, the date stood him up.”

“So because of his sister, he got caught up in the story of this Jane Doe without the hands?”

“Right. The old bulldog kept trying to figure out who she was. It was an obsession, really. When the coroner’s office got tired of holding her in the morgue, O’Co

“He would even use his vacations to try to figure out where she had come from, what she might have been doing here. Every year, on the a

“‘Irene,’ he’d say, ‘somebody misses that girl. Every night they go past her room and wonder if she might still be alive, if maybe she has amnesia, if she secretly hated them and ran away, if she has been tortured or treated cruelly. They miss her. And somewhere some black-hearted bastard knows he killed her, knows where her hands and feet are buried. I aim to make him feel a little worried.’”

Frank stretched and sighed. “Thirty-five years ago. The killer may not even be alive now, let alone worried.” He stood up and walked around a little. “I guess O’Co

“I’ve thought about that,” I said, standing up too. “This town’s so thick with potential enemies, you can’t stir ’em with a stick. Lots of people who didn’t like what he had to say about them, people with the power to do something about it. He got death threats occasionally. Didn’t mention any lately, though.”

There was a knock at the front screen door. We turned to look, and it appeared that no one was there.

“Cody. Wild Bill Cody, my cat,” I explained. “He’s got a cat door, but this way he can make a nuisance of himself.” I opened the door and let him in. He pranced over to sniff Frank’s shoes-shoes must be to cats what crotches are to dogs, although cats are more delicate about it-and Frank bent down and picked him up. Cody is a sucker for affection, and even with the heat he was happy to be scratched between the ears. Frank stood there holding Cody and looking out the window. He seemed to be staring at something, when suddenly he dived toward me and knocked me to the floor, landing on top of me and knocking my breath out. Cody went tearing out from between us just as three gunshots blew out the window.