"Okay. Anything's possible. Slide out when Railsback isn't looking and start checking parish records. I'll cover for you."
"But Railsback is looking," the lieutenant said from behind Harald. "What're you up to now?"
"Not much. A little hobby case, you might say."
"Yeah," said John. "Just a check on a birth certificate. It'll only take half an hour."
Railsback spotted the file. And picture. "Hey, the John Doe. Where'd you get this? Who is he?"
Harald and Cash exchanged looks.
"Well?"
"Name's Jack O'Brien," said Cash. "That man disappeared in 1921. This is the file on the investigation."
"Eh?" Railsback frowned. "What the hell? You're shitting me."
"Nope." Improvising, Cash added, "We thought the John Doe might be a relative."
"Really?" Railsback gave them both the fisheye. "You got the Donalson thing straight?"
"He's in the can, ain't he?"
"Sure. But for how long? Judge'll probably release him on his own recognizance."
They had brought Donalson in for a double murder. He was an enforcer for one of the drug gangs, had been on bond awaiting trial on two previous murder charges when they had grabbed him. One case had gone more than a year without disposition. It was the sort of thing that made them wonder why they bothered.
"The paperwork's current," said Cash. "Won't be anything more till the prosecuting attorney asks for it."
"Okay, you want to chase some crackpot time machine notion, go to it. Just keep in touch, huh?"
John disappeared before the lieutenant changed his mind. Once he was gone, Railsback exposed a bit of his normally hidden human side. "You feeling better now, Norm? Maybe if you get into something really zany like this…?"
"Yeah, Hank. I think we got it worked out now. It hit Annie pretty hard, though."
"I heard she wants to sponsor one of the families."
"We've talked about it." From there they let it slide into shop talk. Railsback had lost his idealism in the trenches of the Us-and-Them War of their business. He had worked his way up from patrolman, and patrolmen often became disillusioned early. They began seeing their lives in terms of cops against the world. Sometimes the people they protected became indistinguishable from the predators. An Alamo psychology developed. Guys who understood what was happening to them usually got out. The others stayed in and exacerbated the profession's bad image.
After fifteen minutes Railsback wandered off. Cash wondered if he were having family trouble again. He had seemed distracted. He did not socialize much on the outside. No one really knew the private Railsback, though it had long been apparent that he and his wife lived in a state of armed truce, which explained why he often worked a double shift. The one time Cash had met Marylin Railsback he had come away wondering what Hank had ever seen in her. The ways of love were as strange as those of the Lord.
What with keeping up on the daily casualty list and not making much headway with parish records, John didn't find anything for a week. Cash's own workload, which now included covering for Harald where he could, gave him no time to get involved. And on his own time he had private problems. Annie kept fussing about taking in a Vietnamese family. For reasons known only to herself, Annie had asked for a police official. Cash wasn't sure he would be able to handle that. Some of them, surely, had earned their reputations.
But John eventually came rolling in. "I've got it: a sister. Twelve years younger than O'Brien, but she's still around. All his other relatives have moved or died. What took so long was, she was married, then her old man got blown away in World War Two, then she went into a convent. Lot of name changes."
"Which one?"
"Saint Joseph of Carondelet."
"Hell, that's right over on Minnesota."
"Yeah. Thought you'd want to go along."
"Damned right. So let's hit it."
They slid out while Railsback was on the phone home, arguing. That didn't bode well for their return.
"Think we ought to take her down to the morgue and spring it on her?" John asked while on the way.
"What for?"
"To look at the corpse."
"You mean they still got it?"
"Yeah. I checked this morning. Since nobody ever claimed it, they just sort of forgot it. Sloppy, leaving a stiff laying around the meat locker like that."
"Isn't that against the law, or something? I mean, there'd have to be all kinds of screw-ups. Should've been an inquest, should've-"
"Probably. Anyway, they're talking about doing something with it now that I reminded them."
"That's the weirdest thing about this guy. Everybody's in a rush to get rid of him, if only by forgetting. Even us. Look how long we let it go. It's like he don't belong and everybody can feel it just enough to want to ignore him. How'd you stop them this time?"
"Told them I thought we'd found a relative."
"John…"
"So I fibbed. Just wanted to see what she thought."
"This is an old lady, John, a nun. Maybe it's too rough…"
Sister Mary Joseph was no aged but delicate flower. A glance was enough to show them that she was a tough old bird. Had to be. She was a first-grade teacher with twenty years service in the witch's cauldron walled by children, parents, and superiors in the archdiocese.
"Sister Mary Joseph? Norman Cash."
"You're the policemen?"
"Uhm. This's Detective Harald. John Junior. His dad was a competitor. Episcopalian."
"Why'd you want to see me?"
"Just to ask a few questions."
She seemed puzzled. "About what? Will it take long? I have classes…"
"This man?" Cash handed her the picture of the corpse, the same one that had gotten a reaction from Miss Groloch.
She frowned. Her breath jerked inward. One hand went to her mouth, then made the sign of the cross.
"Sister?"
"He looks like my brother Jack. But it can't be. Can it? He died in 1921."
"Disappeared," Harald corrected. He presented the picture from the file.
"Fiala Groloch. The heathen foreigner." This time she made a sign against the evil eye, then reddened when Harald and Cash looked puzzled. Cash had never seen an embarrassed nun.
"Sorry. There was a lot of animosity. Would you explain now?"
Cash took it, kept it simple, did no editorializing. "We're playing a long shot. Hoping this man might be your brother's son or grandson."
John added, "We hoped you'd be willing to view the corpse. To let us know if you think that's possible."
"Well, I suppose. Sister Celestine won't mind an extra hour with the children." She smiled a delightfully wicked little smile.
Cash couldn't help observing, "I think you'd like my wife's aunt, Sister Dolorosa. She's a Benedictine. At a convent in northwestern Pennsylvania."
"Oh? Well, I'd better tell Mother Superior. Be right back."
Sister Mary Joseph returned while John was on the phone to the morgue. "I've always had a feeling this would come back on us. Fiala Groloch should've been burned for witchcraft."
Cash didn't respond verbally, but his surprise was obvious.
"I know. That's not charitable. Not Christian. But if Satan ever sent his emissary, Fiala Groloch's it."