It was nice having people around sometimes, Cash reflected, though the children made him nervous. And Carrie and Nancy, who were cousins, made these evenings together a sort of wake. Michael's body might be gone, but his ghost remained very much among them.
Following dinner the children established squatter's rights to the TV while the women caucused in the kitchen, so Cash and Harald retreated to the rathskeller.
"Something bothering you?" John asked, letting Cash pour him a scotch and water.
"The case. The damned John Doe." He repeated Annie's story about Miss Groloch and her mysteriously missing lover.
"Coincidence," said John. "Or a grisly joke."
"That's what Annie thought. Wanted me to check for body snatchings."
"No go. Front page."
"That's what I told her. And how to get it there still warm, during a snowstorm, without leaving a trace?"
Against one wall stood a crude set of shelves, boards on cinder blocks, that Cash had erected for his wife's old mysteries. Somehow, when Michael had gotten married, a lot of his science fiction had migrated into them rather than out of the house. Nancy's people were stodgy. He had preferred to hide his reading tastes the way his father's generation had hidden their Playboys from their wives in the fifties. John pulled out a couple and tossed them onto the bar.
"Tried to read The Time Machine once," Cash said. "Didn't grab me. Never noticed this other one before." It was The Corridors of Time by Isaac Asimov. Its dog-eared look suggested that it had been one of Michael's favorites.
It was Cash's fault that his son had gotten started reading that stuff. He had brought home a book called The Naked Sun, same author, given him by someone at the station who had thought Annie would like it. "But I get your drift."
John looked expectant in the way a pup does when his master catches him peeing off the paper.
Cash shrugged. "There's a more reasonable explanation."
"Tell you what," John replied. "Let's check the files. See what the reports have to say."
"John, I wouldn't know where to look. I mean, sure, they keep the files open forever. Supposedly. But where? We'd really have to dig. First just to find out where they keep records of where they keep records from fifty years ago. And on our own time…" The case bothered him, yes, but twenty-three years of homicide investigations had put calluses on his curiosity. He had not worked on his own time for ten years, since the bizarre rape-murders around Mullanphy School.
John seemed disappointed. "All right. I'll do the digging. If I locate the file, I'll have it sent over."
"Railsback would crucify us just for thinking about it. No imagination, old Hank."
Cash was saved John's stronger opinion of Railsback by Carrie.
"I'm sorry, Norm. We're going to have to go. It's my head, John."
"Didn't you bring your pills?"
"I didn't think…"
"We've got aspirin, Carrie," said Norm.
"No. Thanks. I'm sorry. With aspirin I have to take so. many I make myself sick at my stomach."
"Okay," said Harold. "Get your coat. I'll be ready as soon as the kids are."
Carrie's headaches were genuine, but Cash suspected they were a psychological convenience. Judging from the past, she had gotten Annie and Nancy going on Michael, real soap-opera stuff. Cash had been through a few of those sessions himself. Carrie was good at starting them. But she didn't like being around the people she made unhappy or depressed.
"All right," he said. "I'll see Nancy and the kids get home. John, we'll talk about it tomorrow."
Thursday they got another negative on cars illegally parked and more silence from Missing Persons around the country. FBI produced nothing. Railsback decided to release photos for television and the papers. John got on the phone and started trying to locate Homicide records for 1921. Friday lunch he disappeared, turned up late with a crusty file, thick, handwritten, almost illegible.
They never got into it. The new case, that had held off longer than seemed believable, finally broke. It was a holdup-murder. Two partners in a cheap used-furniture store had been killed, and an officer wounded. One freelance socialist was dead and two more were fleeing on foot, one of them hit. The whole division was on it till dark, and by then they had another. The weekend had begun. It was Tuesday again before Cash had a chance to worry about the mystery corpse.
On Sunday the story hit the papers. On Monday the Channel Four evening newscast mentioned the case in passing. Tuesday morning, at 8:30, Cash got a buzz from Tom Kurland on the booking desk.
"Norm? Got a live one down here. Voluntary confession on that John Doe stiff from last week."
Ah. The genie from the bottle. Cash brightened. "Hey. Good. Bring him up. You made my day, Tom."
"On the way." Mysterious laughter lurked round the fringes of Kurland's voice.
"Hey, John…" he called from his gym locker of an office.
A florid, gray-haired man with the build of an athlete long gone to seed, who looked like he ought to be traveling in a cloud of flies, pushed through the main door. " 'Lo, Beth," he said.
"Winehead Andy," Cash muttered. "The Prince of Hungary. I'll get you for this, Kurland."
Officer Tavares tried stopping the man. He just grinned and kept coming, with a little wrist-flick of a greeting to Old Man Railsback, who was snoring in a chair in a far corner.
"It's all right, Beth."
" 'Lo, Sarge."
"Hi, Andy. What is it this time?" As if he didn't know. The man, who claimed to be a deposed Prince of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (he was neither old enough nor, insofar as Cash had been able to determine, did he speak a word of German or Magyar), was, with a blush, going to admit that, in a fit of madness, he had slain the mystery man. Andy swore that he was the Jekyll-and-Hyde type.
"Can't live with it anymore, Sarge. Had to turn myself in…"
The man had confessed so often that Cash no longer found him amusing.
Neither did Lieutenant Railsback. "What the hell is that wino doing in my squad room?" he thundered from his office.
"The usual," Beth replied, returning to her work.
Rather than come out looking for trouble, Railsback slammed his door.
"All right, Andy. You know the routine," said Cash. "How'd you do it?"
"Knife. In the back. Grabbed him from behind and stabbed him in the heart…"
"Wrong-o, Andy. You lose again. Think it out better next time. That's hard for a right-handed man."
"Just testing, Sarge." He stopped smiling. "I really strangled him…"
"Missed again." Cash shook his head. He didn't understand. Andy's sole ambition seemed to be to get himself put away.
There had been a time when he was a semipermanent resident in the holdover downstairs, especially in winter, but these days every room with a lock on its door was packed with genuine bandits.
"Shot him?"
"Andy, here's two bucks. Go over to the Rite-Way and tell
Sarah I said to give you the breakfast special."
Andy took the money. "Sarge, one of these days you're going to catch me red-handed. Then you'll believe me. It's my mind, see. I can't remember afterward…"
"I know, Andy. Till I do, you'll keep getting away with it. Meantime, I've got to go by the book. Now do me a favor. Go eat breakfast."