an appointment book, then flipped back through it a few pages.
'Yeah, here you are. She started coming on the twenty-second of last month…' He flipped through the pages, running his finger down the list of names each day. 'And stopped last Monday. Fifteen days in a row. I remember her pretty good now. Didn't say a whole lot. You could tell she was uncomfortable with her weapon. Personally, I would've sold her a .25, certainly nothing heavier than a .32. That .38 was a lot of gun for her.'
'How'd she do?' Johnson asked.
'I can teach a Dodge pickup to shoot straight in two weeks,' Bennett said with a smile.
'So she done good, that what you're sayin'?' said Irving.
'She was really interested in becoming proficient at short ranges. Twenty-five yards. Yeah, she could blow the heart outta the target at twenty-five. Something happen to her?'
'Not her,' Irving said. 'But I'll tell you this, you taught her real good.'
Johnson and Irving got into the police car and headed back towards Back of the Yards.
'You wanna good-guy, bad-guy her, Shock?'
'Christ, we're not talking about Roger Touhy here, Irving, it's a fifty-year-old-woman, for God's sake.'
Irving shrugged. 'One in the pump, one in the noggin,' he said.
'So she owns a .38 and took shooting lessons. Do you know how many women in this town fit that bill? A lot of scared ladies out there.'
'A lotta scared everybody out there. But they don't all have a key to Delaney's place and they all ain't been kicked out on their ass to make room for Little Annie Fanny. It's lookin' awful good to me, Cap'n.'
'We'll talk to her, Si.'
'One in the pump, one in—'
'Yeah, yeah, yeah.'
'Do we read her her rights?'
'Damn it, Si, we're just talking at this point!'
'Okay, okay. I just don't want that fuckin' Vail pissin' in my ear over this. If we're gonna get into the gun, I say give her her Miranda.'
'Let me worry about Vail.'
What Johnson had first thought was fatigue in Edith Stoddard's face took on different connotations as she sat across the desk from the two officers. Her eyes were flat and expressionless. The lines in her face seemed to be lines of defeat. It was the face of a woman who had been dealt badly by life; a woman tied to a crippled husband, trying to get her daughter through college, and suddenly thrown out of a prestigious job that was absolutely essential to the welfare of her family. What Shock Johnson saw in Edith Stoddard's face was humiliation, betrayal, anxiety, frustration - everything but wrath. Her anger, if she was angry, had been satisfied, if not by her, by someone.
Irving saw guilt.
He was tapping his pen nervously on the table, waiting to get past the amenities to go in for the kill. Johnson reached over without looking at him and laid his hand gently over the pen. Mrs Stoddard sat stiffly at the desk with her hands folded in front of her. Johnson repeated the same instructions he had given to the other interview subjects earlier in the day.
'You understand,' he said, 'if, at some point in this interview - see, we could stop and read you your rights, ma'am, but I don't say that as any kind of a threat. By that I mean we aren't planning to do that at this point, we tell everyone the same thing when we start, so I don't want you to feel that bringing it up now means we're going to go that far. Okay?' She nodded.
'Please state your name.'
'Edith Stoddard.'
'Age?'
'Fifty-three in May.'
'Are you married?'
'Yes.'
'Where does your husband work?'
'He's disabled. He has a small pension.'
'Disabled in what way?' Johnson asked.
'He's a quadriplegic. Crippled from the neck down.'
'I'm sorry,' Johnson said.
'Charley loved to work around the house. He was fixing some shingles on the roof and slipped and landed flat on his back on the concrete walk. Broke his back in two places.'
'When was that?'
'In 1982.'
