A matter of time

'I talked to the old man at lunch,' Railsback told Cash later, as he and John were about to go home. 'He said there was a Colonel Carstairs on the Board of Commissioners in the late thirties. Came up out of Homicide. That's the only Carstairs he remembered.'

'Probably the same man. Thanks, Hank.'

'What was that?' John asked on the way down to the parking lot.

'Just checking something the old woman said the other day. About a Lieutenant Carstairs. You and Carrie coming by?' Annie had insisted that morning so he had extended an invitation.

'Yeah. We'll bring Nancy and the kids, too. Carrie called Nancy and Nancy said Annie had already called…'

'I get the picture.'

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