Dear Irene

My turn not to answer.

“It’s okay,” he said, putting an arm around me and pulling me closer. “Go ahead and cry.”

“No way,” I said stubbornly.

He started laughing. “You are one of a kind.”

“Thanks, I guess.”

“John said that to me today. ‘Kelly’s one of a kind.’”

I had to smile at his imitation of John’s gruff voice.

“That’s what I meant by ‘fatherly,’” he went on. “I think with your dad and O’Co

“Of all the damned nerve!”

“Take it easy. It didn’t really bother me. He’s right. From the outside, it probably looks dicey. Look at it from his perspective. A cop and a reporter. Who would think it could work?”

“The people on the inside. The only people who count.”

He smiled. “I move that the people who count call it a night.”

Motion carried unanimously.

LIFE LEVELED OUT again during those first weeks in December. There were no more letters from Thanatos. True to John’s prediction, the story about the murder and Thanatos’ contact with me had sold a lot of papers. In spite of earlier prohibitions, I had been allowed to cowrite the first few stories on the case with Mark Baker.

I did a lot of reading on the subject of Greek mythology. Jack loaned me books by Edith Hamilton and Robert Graves, along with translations of Ovid, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Homer. He was kind enough to spend several evenings talking with me about what I read. I also spent hours searching the newspaper’s computer files from every different angle I could think of, looking for something that would have co

He had his own problems. As the investigation of the Blaylock murder went on, it focused primarily on the professor herself. It became clear that Edna Blaylock had enjoyed the extra-curricular company of several of her male graduate students. Six of them eventually admitted to sexual liaisons with her. The professor had been a little more devoted to her students than others had imagined.

But the six lover boys were all able to account for their whereabouts on that Wednesday night, which was during the last week before finals, and Thanatos remained undiscovered.

I GOT A few phone calls from men pretending to be Thanatos, but they were not the synthesized voice. At the request of the police, we had left that detail out of news reports. Two other factors helped to identify them as crank calls. They contained more references to sex acts than to Greek mythology. And they all came through the switchboard.

But three times, just as I returned from lunch, someone called me through the direct dial then hung up without speaking. Those three silent calls bothered me more than the obscene ones.

They occurred on what I started to refer to as my “paranoid days.” These paranoid days had a pattern of their own. Lydia and I would leave the building to walk to lunch; as I hobbled down the street, I would become convinced that someone was watching us. I started looking over my shoulder. During a downtown lunch hour, there are plenty of people walking around, so inevitably I would see some man walking behind us. Never the same man. Never anyone who showed more than passing interest in us.

You look odd, I told myself. People are going to watch someone who is limping along in a cast and wearing a splint. Stop acting crazy.

Sometimes I could talk myself out of it.

FRANK PUT IN long hours on the Blaylock case, as did everyone else assigned to it. He made sure someone – usually Jack or Pete – was with me if he couldn’t be. I had mixed feelings about the protection, but didn’t protest.

As the days went on and Thanatos’ trail grew colder, I gradually felt more relaxed. I put any anxious energy I felt into my physical therapy. I was bound and determined to put the days of injury behind me as quickly as the healing process would allow. I could tell that my shoulder was greatly improved, but my right hand seemed hopelessly weak. I was told again and again not be discouraged. By people with two good hands.

But as it turned out, the cast and the splint came off early, a little more than a week before Christmas. I felt like someone had freed me from chains. I still had to spend a lot of time squeezing a rubber ball with my right hand, but that exercise was a small price to pay.

Frank and I celebrated that Friday night by going out to an evening at Banyon’s, a local watering hole shared by the police and the press. There were lots of familiar faces on hand. The band was on a break, so it was relatively quiet, which meant you could still hear yourself think over the rumbling mixture of boisterous conversations and a distant jukebox speaker.

“Well, look who’s here!” a voice called out over the din. I looked across the room to see a sandy-haired man with boyish good looks gri

“Well, lass,” Kevin said, hoisting a pint of Gui

That brought a cheer, but for a free drink, most of them would have cheered anything short of the words “last call.” One of the reporters bent close to Kevin and whispered something to him. Kevin turned to us in surprise. “What’s this? Engaged?”

“It’s true,” I said.

“And how many times did you have to beg him on bended knee before he said ‘yes’?”

I laughed and answered, “Believe it or not, he asked me.”

“Well, now, listen up!” he called in his carrying voice, then stepped up on a chair, so that he towered above the crowded bar. As the buyer of the aforesaid round, he had their grateful attention. The bar was so quiet, you could actually hear what was playing on the jukebox. Kevin glanced at Liam, who promptly unplugged it.

“There’s a nasty kind of rumor going around,” Kevin began, then paused, turning to Frank.

“Tell us!” A cooperative crowd. They’d heard him before. Frank looked a little uneasy.

Kevin looked back to the crowd. “It’s said that the men in the Las Piernas Police Department have lost their courage!”

“No!” This chorus from the cop contingent, all of them gri

“‘Courage among our policemen?’ they say, ‘Why, it’s easier to find a politician who wants to make a good Act of Contrition.’”

“No!” the chorus supplied.

“Yes, that’s what’s being said. I’m told the police so lack courage, they’ve become as useless as a snake’s glovemaker!”

“No!” Again the chorus, but through laughter.

“Nearly as useless as reporters,” Kevin said, causing an outbreak of shouts and laughter.

“Impossible,” more than one voice called.

“I’m here to tell you that the rumor is false – absolutely false – and I can prove it,” Kevin said. He pointed to Frank. “This man, Frank Harriman – Detective Frank Harriman – is employed by our very own Las Piernas Police Department. And I’m telling you, he has more courage than any man among you. He’s the bravest, most stouthearted, brass-balled sonofabitch I know! Do you know what he’s done?”