Goodnight, Irene ik-1

by Jan Burke

  “When he talked to me about his sister, he told about how it had driven his mother crazy; it was hard on the whole family, not knowing for those five years. He was really close to this sister. I guess he usually walked her home from work, but he had a hot date that night. Lots of guilt over what happened. On top of everything else, the date stood him up.”

  “So because of his sister, he got caught up in the story of this Jane Doe without the hands?”

  “Right. The old bulldog kept trying to figure out who she was. It was an obsession, really. When the coroner’s office got tired of holding her in the morgue, O’Connor spent his own money to arrange for a decent burial and a tombstone for her.

  “He would even use his vacations to try to figure out where she had come from, what she might have been doing here. Every year, on the anniversary of the day they found her, he’d write his famous ‘Who Is Hannah?’ story. He wrote about her case and any recent Jane or John Does lying around in the morgue. Sometimes the story would get picked up by out-of-town papers. He actually helped to get the identification on a couple of bodies. But nobody ever claimed Hannah. Every year someone looking for a missing daughter or sister or wife would contact him, but it wouldn’t turn out to be Hannah. Now and then he’d tell me he thought he had a lead on it, but I don’t think he ever really learned much.

  “‘Irene,’ he’d say, ‘somebody misses that girl. Every night they go past her room and wonder if she might still be alive, if maybe she has amnesia, if she secretly hated them and ran away, if she has been tortured or treated cruelly. They miss her. And somewhere some black-hearted bastard knows he killed her, knows where her hands and feet are buried. I aim to make him feel a little worried.’”

  Frank stretched and sighed. “Thirty-five years ago. The killer may not even be alive now, let alone worried.” He stood up and walked around a little. “I guess O’Connor ruffled a few feathers along the way.”

  “I’ve thought about that,” I said, standing up too. “This town’s so thick with potential enemies, you can’t stir ’em with a stick. Lots of people who didn’t like what he had to say about them, people with the power to do something about it. He got death threats occasionally. Didn’t mention any lately, though.”

  There was a knock at the front screen door. We turned to look, and it appeared that no one was there.

  “Cody. Wild Bill Cody, my cat,” I explained. “He’s got a cat door, but this way he can make a nuisance of himself.” I opened the door and let him in. He pranced over to sniff Frank’s shoes — shoes must be to cats what crotches are to dogs, although cats are more delicate about it — and Frank bent down and picked him up. Cody is a sucker for affection, and even with the heat he was happy to be scratched between the ears. Frank stood there holding Cody and looking out the window. He seemed to be staring at something, when suddenly he dived toward me and knocked me to the floor, landing on top of me and knocking my breath out. Cody went tearing out from between us just as three gunshots blew out the window.

  3

  FRANK LIFTED HIS HEAD and I saw blood on his face. I started to cry out, but he put his hand over my mouth. He was listening for something. We heard the car drive off. He scrambled up off me and pulled out his gun, looking outside quickly before going out the front door. I got up a little more slowly. There was glass all over the place and a gaping hole in the back of my armchair. That really pissed me off. Trying not to step on any glass, I went out to the front porch.

  The gunshots had been loud enough to draw a few of my neighbors out for a little rubbernecking. “Frank, get in here, you’re scaring the neighbors.” Not every day they saw a bloodied man with a gun standing out on my lawn. “Nothing to worry about, folks, he’s a cop.”

  “You’re a real laugh riot. I guess that means you’re not hurt.”

  “Thanks to you, I’m not.”

  He managed a quick smile and said, “All in the line of duty.”

  He was looking out at the street in front of the house next door. Suddenly, I saw what he was staring at. A red Corvette.

  “That your neighbor’s?” he asked.

  “No,” I said in disbelief, “but it looks just like Kenny O’Connor’s.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I was thinking.” He walked over to it, took a quick look through the windshield that apparently didn’t reveal anything special, and came back to my house. “Let’s go back inside,” he said.

  He made a phone call to headquarters while I went to get something to clean up his face.

  “Yeah, dark blue, late model Lincoln, no front plate. Probably headed up Ocean Boulevard. Also, check out the registration of an ’87 Corvette, license 3RVE070. Yeah. No, we’re all right. Okay, thanks.” He hung up.

  I sat him down at the kitchen table and then pulled a chair up facing him, and started to sponge the blood off his face with a warm washcloth. He winced a little, and I realized that he hadn’t been cut by glass or shot — he had a lovely deep set of Cody’s claw marks on the right side of his face.

  “Cody got you good, didn’t he?”

  “Not his fault, I scared him. Where is he?”

  “Ran off — if my closet door is open, he’s up on the top shelf. Otherwise, ten to one he’s hiding under my bed.”

  I had some antibiotic ointment and tried to be tender as I put it on the scratches. He was watching me with those beautiful gray-green eyes. He reached up and touched my hair.

  “You’ve got little pieces of glass in your hair,” he said, and gently pulled a bead of it from near my ear.

  “So do you,” I said, and reached into his soft brown hair to retrieve one of them. We took care of each other like a couple of parrots for a few minutes. We were interrupted by a knock at the door by something bigger than a cat and parted, both looking a little sheepish.

  “Detective Harriman?”

  “Yeah, be right with you,” Frank answered.

  He stood up, shook his head, and squared his shoulders, trying to get into his Detective Harriman mode again.

  The young, pink-faced, uniformed officer who came in the door looked as if the heat was about to do him in.

  “Bob Williams, sir. We picked up a call to come over on a drive-by. They said to contact you.”

  He noticed the scratches on Frank’s face and gave me a look.

  A fleeting grin crossed Frank’s face. “Officer Williams, this is Miss Irene Kelly. You’re in her home.” Williams nodded toward me and then looked around. He got wide-eyed when he saw the chair, and I noticed for the first time that Frank’s coat, once so neatly folded, had been blown to shreds.

  “I hope you weren’t sitting there, sir.”

  “Not when it mattered. Anything on the Lincoln?”

  “No, sir, not a sign. We can ask around the neighborhood if you’d like. Forensics will be here anytime now. Also, the Corvette is registered to a Kenneth O’Connor, 803 Randall Avenue.”

  Frank and I exchanged looks.

  “Is that helpful, sir?” Williams asked.

  “Yes,” Frank said, “I think it is. Please try to discover where Mr. O’Connor is now.” He pulled out the notebook and flipped to one of its pages. “When I spoke with him this morning, he told me he planned on staying at the Vista del Mar Hotel down on Shoreline Drive. Find out if he’s been there yet today and if he’s visiting anyone here in the neighborhood. If not, ask if anybody saw him leave the car.”

  Williams noted all of this with care. He looked up and eyed the scratches on Frank’s face again. “Do you need anyone else here with you?”

  “No, we’re fine. Let me know if anyone noticed anything unusual going on. Besides windows being blown out.”

  The young man headed out the door.

  “Officer Williams?” I called to him.

  “Yes, Miss Kelly?”

  “The scratches? From a cat.”

  “Yes, of course, ma’am.” He blushed and left without looking at either one of us.

  Frank and I cracked up as soon as the kid was
out of earshot.

  “We shouldn’t laugh,” I said. “I remember when you were just a rookie yourself.”

  “And I remember a fairly-wet-behind-the-ears reporter.”

  “Yeah. Green as they come.”

  We stood there in silence for a while, remembering. I thought of that spark of attraction between us all those years ago. We were much younger then, not so much in years — Frank and I are about the same age, nearing the final approach to forty, landing gear down — as in experience.

  I thought back to Bakersfield, to the nights when we’d go for coffee and long four-in-the-morning talks at the end of our respective shifts. God, we were both so full of confidence in our ability to change the world.

  Of course, we saw that world from different perspectives. My job was to get the story, Frank’s was to enforce the law. On some level, we were wary of each other then, as we were both trained to be by our employers. Sooner or later, every cop is burned by some reporter who misquotes or coaxes out too much information. And sooner or later every reporter is given a bum steer by some cop.

  And yet, over time, I suppose we both learned it isn’t always that way; plenty of people manage to maintain a certain professional distance and still be friends with one another. Somehow Frank and I stayed friends. I guess we both had that ideal of doing the public some good.

  I tried to figure out how long ago all that had been. It was about twelve years ago that the Express had offered me the job in Las Piernas, and I had moved back to my hometown from Bakersfield, Frank’s hometown. Seven of those twelve years passed before he got transferred down here; by then we were both seeing other people. He got in touch with me once when he first moved to Las Piernas, but other than hearing word of each other from other cops or reporters every now and again, our lives had stayed separate. The last I had heard of him had been a year or so ago, when Mark Baker told me that Frank had asked him about me, and about why I had left the paper. I wondered if Frank was still seeing the same woman he had been with five years ago. Or any other woman.

  There was another knock on the screen and Frank let the forensics team in. While they talked to him, I walked back to the bedroom to look for Cody. A quick search of the closet revealed nothing, but when I got down on the floor and looked under the bed, I saw a pair of almond-shaped eyes reflecting back from the farthest corner near the wall, out of arm’s reach and harm’s way. I tried coaxing him, but no luck. I got a flashlight and tried to see if he was hurt, and couldn’t see any damage — just irritation and fright. I left him there, thinking that it was better to let him come out on his own time, when he felt safe again.

  I walked back out and watched as the very reserved and professional Detective Harriman started winding things up with the lab guys. It hadn’t taken them long.

  As they left, I realized that I was seething with anger at the folks in the blue car. I walked back to the kitchen and got a broom and started sweeping up the glass to try and work some of it off.

  “Let me do that; you’ll cut your feet.”

  “What will Officer Williams think when he comes back to report?”

  “I’ll tell him it’s a time-proven evidence-gathering method. Officer Williams will never be the same after today anyway.”

  “That makes two of us,” I said, looking for my shoes.

  “No, three,” he said.

  I watched him for a moment, then my thoughts turned back to O’Connor. “Frank, it’s the same people, isn’t it? But why? Why would anybody take a shot at me? Or at my house, anyway.”

  “Hard to say. Somebody was probably watching O’Connor’s house last night before they delivered the package. They may have followed you from there. They may have been watching today, may have seen you talking to me at the scene and figured you were going to tell us too much. They could have followed you from Banyon’s. They may have already known you and O’Connor were close friends and figured they’d call on you just in case he had told you something. Maybe they saw the Corvette and thought Kenny was here.”

  He looked over at the chair and the remains of his suit coat. “If they hadn’t hit so low, and risked it the middle of the day, I’d think this was just a warning, but maybe they didn’t care whether they killed you or not. They can obviously do it if they want to. They succeeded once already and came close to being two for two.”

  I felt a little sick to my stomach. Frank saw the look on my face and set the broom down and came over to me. “Sorry,” he said, “I’m so used to you being a reporter, I wasn’t phrasing things the way I should.” He put an arm around my shoulders. “Got any coffee? Let’s go into the kitchen and I’ll call somebody to board up the window. Getting the glass replaced on a Sunday would cost you a fortune.”

  While we waited for the board-up crew, I made some coffee and poured a couple of cups. We sat back down at the table.

  “Before we were so rudely interrupted by gunfire,” I said, “we were talking about O’Connor. What did you learn from Kenny? Like I said, his car was there last night. This morning, as I was leaving… after the explosion, I mean…”

  I heard my own voice trailing off, as if it belonged to someone else. I could suddenly see the destruction before me again, feel the numbing chill of realizing that it was impossible for O’Connor to have survived it, knowing that he was gone, would never be around again. No more listening or laughing or talking or anything at all.

  Again that need to wail like a lost child was welling up within me, that longing to cry and cry. But nothing happened.

  Frank was waiting for me to pull it together, trying not to make me feel self-conscious. He got up to refill his coffee cup. I took a few deep breaths and went on.

  “Anyway, Kenny’s car was parked in front of the house last night, but not this morning. He doesn’t usually get out of bed before he has to — one of the things that drove my sister Barbara nuts when they were married. But he was safely out of the house this morning before the explosion, got back there after you guys were already on the scene. Now his car just happens to mysteriously appear near my house on the same afternoon I’m shot at, and he’s nowhere around.”

  “Yeah, it’s odd, all right, and I’m anxious to talk to him. But he has a legitimate reason for being gone this morning and it checks out… Yes, I checked it myself,” he added, seeing my look of disbelief.

  “Where was he?” I asked.

  “You know I can’t tell you that.”

  I was furious. “Frank Harriman, you’ve got a hell of a nerve coming in here and asking questions and then refusing to give me information in return!”

  “Don’t give me that crap, Irene! This isn’t some goddamned newspaper story. You’re not a reporter anymore and we’re not just involved in an exchange of information. An old man was blown to kingdom come this morning. I’ve been shot at, I’ve had my face scratched by your cat and my best suit coat blown to shreds. All the same I’ve tried to protect you from harm and from what would probably be a much less considerate style of questioning. I don’t…” He stopped.

  I was finally starting to cry.

  4

  IRENE. Irene, I’m sorry…

  “I held up a hand. When I could talk again I said, “Not your fault. Not a good day for either of us. I’m sorry. Excuse me for a moment…"

  I got up without looking him in the face and went back to the bedroom. I closed the door, flopped down on the bed and indulged myself with a good cry. Cody came out from under the bed and crawled up next to me, licked my face and gave little mews of consolation. I was angry with myself for breaking down in front of Frank, felt awkward about the idea of going out red-nosed and froggy-eyed from crying. How embarrassing. But I knew I couldn’t just leave the guy standing out there in my living room.

  I heard Williams come back by, but I couldn’t make out anything they were saying. He left and all was quiet again. A couple of times I heard Frank start down the hall, then hesitate and go back toward the front of the house.

  The doorbel
l rang. I could overhear him talking to the board-up crew and was relieved to have him occupied. I went into the bathroom, blew my nose and splashed a lot of cold water on my face. My blue eyes were puffy and red-rimmed. For a distraction, I twisted my dark hair up off my shoulders and pinned it. My neck was cooler, but a glance in the mirror convinced me I looked like a schoolmarm, so I let my hair down again. I brushed it; the action calmed me. I didn’t look great, but at least I had stopped crying.

  There was a soft knock at the bedroom door, and Cody ran back under the bed.

  “Irene?”

  “Yeah, Frank — I’ll be right out.”

  I opened the door, and he backed up a couple of paces, as if he was afraid of what I might do next. Couldn’t blame him. I didn’t know either.

  It was getting dark, and looking out the back screen door, I could see a bright-red sunset. He leaned against the hallway and watched me. In the background, I could hear the board-up crew break out the remaining glass in the window.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “Yes, I think so. Actually, you’ve been a help. I’ve been trying to cry all day.”

  “Glad it made one of us feel better.”

  “Don’t feel bad, Frank. I know the rules. I’ve covered crime beats and I know better. I’m just… not quite myself right now. I’m so damned angry. Sorry I took it out on you.”

  “Normal to be angry.”

  “God, don’t start telling me I’m normal. I’ve had all the bad news I can handle for one day.”

  He smiled. “You’re not as off-beat as you think you are.”

  The crew was hammering the boards in place, making a hell of a racket.

  “Let’s sit out back,” I suggested. We brushed off a couple of chairs on the back porch and sat down. The winds had died down to a breeze. Crickets had started to sing and the air was laced with the fragrance of jasmine from my neighbor’s backyard.