Jan Burke - Goodnight, Irene

On the way to Lydia’s, he talked to me about O’Connor, told stories of his own first days on the force, when O’Connor was already a journeyman reporter. Apparently they had lifted a few glasses together at Banyon’s back when Bredloe was a single man. “O’Connor always gave us a fair shake,” he said. “He wasn’t as sympathetic as some would have liked him to be, but he was always fair.” We pulled up in front of Lydia’s house. “A pleasure to meet you, Miss Kelly. I’ll just watch you to the door.”

I thanked him and said goodnight, feeling the stiffness again as I got out of the car. I waved to the captain as I let myself in.

Lydia exclaimed over me, mothered me, fussed over me once again. My weary, lifeless retelling of the day’s events brought further sympathy and care. “Take another hot bath tonight or you’ll be super sore tomorrow,” she advised. I agreed, and went down the hall to run the bath. She came in with a coffee-colored drink.

“What is it?” I asked.

“A B-52-Kahlъa, Grand Marnier, and Irish Cream.”

“Jesus, Lydia, what are you trying to do, embalm me?”

“Trust me.”

My resistance was low. I climbed into the bath and sipped the sweet drink that went down my throat like liquid fire. The bathroom door opened, and in strolled Cody. He climbed up on the edge of the tub and started meowing at me. I scratched his ears and chin with my dry hand, and he rubbed against it and almost fell in. He settled down on the bath mat and watched me. I could hear him purring. It’s nice to be loved.

When the water got cold and my face felt numb from the drink, I crawled out and dried off. Cody pranced ahead of me and jumped up onto the bed. I definitely had a buzz on. I fell asleep quickly, saying a little prayer of gratitude. I don’t know if it was the prayer, exhaustion, the booze, or Cody’s purring, but that night I didn’t have any nightmares.

IWOKE UP at about six the next morning, acutely aware of every muscle in my back and neck. I forced myself out of bed and hobbled into the bathroom. I took a hot shower to help get limbered up a little. I stood there, aiming the water on my neck and then between my shoulder blades, wondering how Frank was feeling, thinking of him lying there in the hospital. I wondered how Barbara and Kenny were doing. Thought about the fact that O’Connor had been killed three days ago. By the time I got out of the shower, I was depressed.

As the steam cleared off the bathroom mirror, I was a little startled to notice my forehead had started to bruise. I looked pretty weird with that and the cuts. For some reason it struck me as comical. I could hardly brush my teeth, I wanted to laugh at my odd appearance so much. “Well, Miss Mood Swing,” I said to myself in the mirror, “get a grip.”

I rode to work with Lydia. She was nice enough to walk at my pace as we made our way into the building. Geoff gave me a look of great concern. I felt self-conscious now that I was exposing the public to this purple band above my eyebrows. “Not as bad as it looks,” I said to him.

“Glad is isn’t. Miss Kelly, the night man left me a message to give you. It says the police checked your car and it’s okay. Here are your keys.”

I thanked him and we took the elevator up the one flight. I knew if I kept moving I would feel better, but stairs were not yet on the program.

One of Wrigley’s assistants stopped me on my way back to O’Connor’s desk. Staring at my forehead, she said, “Mr. Wrigley asked me to give you all of Mr. O’Connor’s mail. I put a couple of letters that arrived yesterday afternoon on his old desk for you.”

“Thanks.”

“John Walters wants to talk to you.”

She was right. I had just picked up the two envelopes that constituted O’Connor’s mail and was about to sit down, when John yelled across the room, “Kelly, get over here.” “Here” was Lydia’s desk; he had apparently cornered her the moment she walked in.

I stuffed the envelopes in my purse and made my way slowly over to Lydia and John. He was leaning his ample behind on Lydia’s desk, watching me. As I got closer, he glanced at my forehead, and said, “You’ll be better off if you don’t sit down for a while. Try to keep moving around a little.” Lydia looked at him in surprise-Walters as caretaker was a rare sighting.

I asked what I could do for him.

“We did a short piece on the car chase yesterday, but I could use more information than I’m getting from the cops.”

So someone at the paper had picked up the calls going out to the accident, I just hadn’t seen any reporter before we left for the hospital. That story was pretty late-breaking, and must have just made the final edition.

“You want me to write it?” I asked.

“Sure, why not? But first tell me about it, so Lydia can get some people on any other angles we might need to cover.”

“It’s a complex story. I’ve got something here that ties in.” I handed him the computer drawings of Hannah.

“Who is it?”

“That’s Hannah.”

“Hannah who?”

“Handless Hannah, the woman O’Connor wrote about every year; the Jane Doe they found under the pier in 1955.”

“What does this have to do with an attempt on the lives of a cop and a reporter?”

“I think it has something to do with the murder of O’Connor as well.”

I told him about Hernandez, the skull, and MacPherson. As I spoke, I could tell I had started to pique John’s interest, but he didn’t have that look that said I had sold something for page one. Nothing to do but finish telling him the story. “I’ve been thinking about it, John. For some reason Woolsey didn’t follow up. Why not? He may have intentionally misled O’Connor for years. I think someone should talk to Woolsey.”

It was the first time I had mentioned Woolsey’s role, and John and Lydia exchanged a wide-eyed look.

“What’s wrong?”

Lydia reached across her desk and pulled a large sheet over-copy for today’s run. She handed it to me.

“Dr. Emmet Woolsey,” I read aloud, “former Coroner for the City of Las Piernas, died of self-inflicted gunshot wounds early Tuesday evening…”

I stood there, re-reading it, trying to let the words sink in. John was telling Lydia that we needed to have someone go back over the Woolsey story. He looked at me.

“Go on with your story, Irene.”

I told him about MacPherson getting the computer images made, about taking the skull and being followed, and the chase.

“Any ID on the guys in the Lincoln?”

“Not that I know of, but I’ll put a call in to Pete Baird-he’s one of the cops working on this with Frank Harriman.”

“What about this Harriman? Is he gonna make it?”

I then told him about Frank’s injuries, trying to sound clinical and shoving away the memories of the wait for the ambulance.

“Hmm. So you want me to run the pictures on A-one in hopes that someone comes forward and says, ‘Oh yeah, this girl stopped in and bought a taco from me in 1955. I remember it well.’”

“You have a lovely way of putting things, John. No, I want you to run the pictures on A-one because it’s tied into everything that happened to us yesterday, and probably everything that’s happened for the last few days to several other people, including Woolsey. I think it will make someone nervous, and nervous people tend to make mistakes.”

“Nervous people can also be dangerous-and if you haven’t figured that out by now, you’ve got a thicker skull than old Hannah there.”

“It’s a break in a case that everyone who ever read O’Connor’s column knows about.”

He made a motion as if waving off a pesky fly. “I’ll think about it. Go back to work.”