"That much bitterness? After all these years?"
"Oh, it's not Jack. I was too young to understand at the time, but he was the devil's disciple himself. He probably deserved whatever he got. Did you meet her? I hear she's still there. And strong as ever."
"We did. She seemed like a nice old lady."
"Old? I wonder how old she really is."
"About eighty-five, I guess. She only looked about sixty, though."
"At least she's aged some."
"I don't understand."
"When it happened… whatever happened with Jack… she looked about forty…"
"Early thirties, I heard, but you're the only one I've talked to who knew her then."
"About forty. And even then there wasn't anybody who remembered when she didn't live there. Her house was built when that part of the city belonged to the private estate of a Mary Tyler. When I was a child, the old folks said it'd been built right after the Civil War."
"I figured the eighteen eighties, just guessing."
"My grandparents came over in eighty-three. She and the house were there then, and had been for a long time. My grandmother told me she'd heard that there'd been a man who was supposed to be Fiala's father. He disappeared too, I guess. Miss Groloch told people he went back to the old country. Nobody ever heard which one it was. She used to get out and around in those days. Didn't lock herself in till after Jack disappeared."
"The name sounds like eastern European." He wasn't really hearing the sister. That Miss Groloch might be 130, or even older, seemed so ridiculous that her words just floated across his consciousness like unsinkable ice. His only reaction was to make a note to tell John to check the tax and building records on the Groloch house.
Harald returned. "Okay. All set, Norm. Got to hit it now, though. The morgue people are spooked about having the stiff around so long."
"Sister?"
"I'm ready."
During the trip downtown Cash tried to draw the woman out on her feelings toward Miss Groloch. He failed. She retreated into a shell not at all in keeping with the warmth and spirit she had shown earlier.
Sister Mary Joseph made the sign of the cross again when the attendant rolled the corpse out. Several times. Cash feared she would faint.
But she got a grip on herself. "Do you have his clothes?"
Harald spent a half hour hunting them up. Then the Sister merely glanced at them. She found a chair, sat, thought for several minutes. Finally, "You'll think I'm crazy. And maybe I am. But that's Jack. Those are the pants he was wearing the day he disappeared. I remember. I was sitting on the front steps with Colin Meara from upstairs. Jack gave me a dime and told us to get a soda before the old man heard about us holding hands on his own doorstep. He winked at Colin and went off whistling. He had his lucky tarn on, and his hands stuffed in his pockets. Sergeant, it's him. How can that be?"
Harald grinned like a Little Leaguer who had just pitched a no-hitter. Cash just sat down and put his face in his hands. "I don't know, Sister. I don't know. This thing's getting crazier and crazier."
"How did he die?"
"Scared to death, the coroner says."
"Is that possible? I mean…?"
"It's possible. Not common, but possible."
"But how'd he keep so long? They didn't have freezers."
"He died March third. About 9:30 p.m."
"This March? That's impossible."
"I know it. You know it. But that there Jack O'Brien don't know it. Didn't know it. He was barely cold when they found him. His body heat had melted the snow…"
"But it's impossible. Fifty-four years…"
"I know. I know. I know."
John continued to grin-with worry beginning to nag around the edges as he recognized more and more improbabilities. Cash and the sister sat in an extended silence. Finally, she said, "I think you'd better take me back now." To the puzzled attendant, who had been hovering about all along, "What do I have to do about the body? About arrangements?"
She was convinced.
Railsback was at his foulest when they returned. He looked, Cash thought, like a tornado about to pounce on a trailer park.
"Cool it, Hank," Cash said. "Sit down and shut up till we're done. We just bought a time bomb."
Railsback recognized distress, was reasonable enough to realize a tantrum was inappropriate. "Talk to me," he said.
"We got a claimant for our John Doe. Guy's sister. Positive ID. Absolutely no doubts. But…" And Cash gave him the buts.
As was becoming more common, Railsback thought before he growled. But he growled anyway. "Norm, I don't want anything to do with it. Get it out of here. There's got to be some way we can dump it on somebody else…"
"There's still a murder file open."
Railsback pulled a bottle of pills from a drawer, gobbled a couple. "Who knows? You and Harald. Me. The sister. Anybody else? This hits the papers and TV, they'll clobber us."
"Not today's developments. I guess the wives are current through yesterday. Oh, and there was the attendant at the morgue, but he didn't know what the hell was going on."
Railsback rubbed his forehead. He got headaches when the pressure was on. He was an ulcer man, too. He ate Valium like candy. "Too many. It's going to leak somewhere. All right, you guys dug it up, you bury it. One way or another, you get out there and prove she's a nut. Maybe we can't find out who he is, but we damned sure better find out who he isn't."
"How? "John asked.
"I don't care. It's your problem. Use your imagination. Roust this Fiala Groloch. Way you describe her, she's got trunks full of mementoes. Look for prints. Do whatever you have to, but do something."
VI. On the Y Axis;
Through 8 August 1964;
The Chinese Puzzle
A man named Huang Hua, whose true name was something else entirely, spent the years 1956-1973 in virtual self-imprisonment in a two-room office in a basement in Peking. He was a veteran of the Long March and the engineer of the POW defections during the Korean War.
One room was living quarters. It contained his bed and toilet. The other contained cooking facilities and a small desk with a single telephone. Along one wall stood a bookcase containing numerous looseleaf notebooks of western manufacture, each filled with the tiny, precise characters of his pen, plus several hundred books, mostly in English. Along the base of another wall were cartons of office supplies, more than Huang could use in two lifetimes. He was a hoarder.
Only four men knew why Huang had gone into hibernation: himself; the chairman; Lin Piao; Chou En-lai.
In 1971 Lin would feel compelled to let the Muscovite revisionists in on the secret. Air Force fighters caught his aircraft over Mongolia on September 12.
Huang's telephone linked directly with a small underground establishment in Sinkiang. It was the only regular connection. Security was more strict than at the Lop Nor facility.
Huang's life and project reflected the Chinese character. He had failed in Korea. Certain that other chances would arise, he had kept his project going and growing. Not once did the policy-makers ask him to justify the expense or necessity. Tibetans, Indians, recalcitrant regionalists, old Nationalists, even a few Russians from the 1969 clashes on the Ussuri River, and Burmese from the border skirmishes there, came to his facility. He learned. He polished. He refined. He persevered.