After the technician was finished with his initial work on the trunk, there was the tricky job of removing the bodies. I heard Lefebvre speak sharply to one of the coroner’s assistants. I caught one word of what he said: “Three.”
Three bodies? I was fairly sure I had only seen two, but I hadn’t really been able to study the contents of the trunk in the way the police investigators did.
The assistant brought out a small body bag. A child’s bones?
Other media started arriving just as the car itself was placed on a flatbed tow truck. Eventually, a lieutenant from the Las Piernas Police Department arrived, and after conferring with Arden and Lefebvre, made a brief statement to the press-remains thought to be human had been found, an investigation into the matter was now under way, but no further comments would be made until the coroner’s office had been given a chance to study the remains. Lots of questions were shouted at him, but he didn’t answer any of them.
I glanced at my watch. I had a deadline to make and lots of questions to ask, too, but now that the lieutenant was on the scene, Lefebvre might not be able to answer any of them. I wondered if any ID had been found on the bodies. If not, I wanted to get back to the morgue at the newspaper-where articles and photographs and past issues of the paper were kept on file-to see if I could find out who disappeared during the years when that Buick was new.
I found myself thinking about O’Connor. Every year, he wrote about missing persons. He had been writing these stories since 1956. A Jane Doe had been found beneath the Las Piernas fishing pier the year before-and never identified. Someone had nicknamed that woman “Hannah.” O’Connor covered the story of the discovery of her body in 1955, then on the anniversary of the day they found her, wrote the first of his “Who is Hannah?” articles. They were some of the most powerful stories I had ever read.
They weren’t just about her, but about all the John and Jane Does-and about the other side of the equation, missing persons cases. Now, more than twenty years later, Hannah’s case was still unsolved, but O’Connor had helped police to close a number of other cases through that column. If anyone in Las Piernas knew who was still missing, it was O’Connor.
Wrigley would probably give this story to him.
I told myself it could go to worse hands than O’Connor’s. If he got it instead of Wildman or Pierce, at least it would be given the care it deserved.
I still didn’t like the idea of losing it to anyone, though.
Maybe if I showed O’Connor a little respect, we could start over. I had nothing to gain from being at odds with him, and a lot to lose. For one thing, the paper wouldn’t keep me on if I continued to make life miserable for one of its stars.
I looked at my watch again and sighed. A badly thrown bowl of strawberries had probably screwed up my chances of seeing this story through.
27
O ’CONNOR GLANCED AT HIS WATCH. SHE HAD ALREADY BEEN AT THE scene on her own for several hours now. Would he be able to convince Wrigley before deadline brought her back here?
Wrigley tapped a pencil against his desk as he looked at the cardboard box O’Connor had set on it. Written in felt pen, in a hand few others could decipher, was a single word, a name: Jack.
Wrigley had thought it said “jerk.”
O’Connor was watching the pencil, not the box. He had learned, over the years, that he could anticipate the outcome of any meeting with the publisher of the Express by gauging the speed of this tapping. Slow tapping, he was inclined to favor your proposal. Rapid tapping, you were doomed.
This was somewhere in between. Outcome uncertain.
“Tell me, Conn-do you happen to remember shouting-shouting, mind you-at me a few weeks ago?”
“Well-”
“Loud enough for the entire newsroom to hear you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Sir, is it? I believe I was Win not five minutes ago.”
O’Connor said nothing.
“What were you shouting at me about?”
“You wanted to give Ms. Kelly a skirt on that school chemicals story.”
“A generous mention, noting her contribution, at the end of a story you had reworked and greatly expanded. That seemed wrong to you.”
“She deserved a byline. Her enterprise brought the paper’s attention to the matter. That’s all I was saying.”
“Oh no, that wasn’t all. I remember it almost word for word, Conn, because I may catch an earful from Wildman once in a while, but you don’t tend to be a shouter. That impressed me. Made me see the error of my ways. You told me it was clear that H.G. and John and I were ‘wasting her talents’- wasn’t that it?”
With a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, O’Connor nodded.
“Yes. And you said she could handle tougher assignments than the ones we were giving her, and let me see, now… what was it?” He faked concentration, then opened his eyes wide. “Oh yes! How could I have forgotten?”
“How indeed,” O’Connor murmured.
“Yes, this was one of my favorites-you said that ‘the next time Kelly stumbles onto something big’-that was a little insulting to her, wasn’t it, Conn? Stumbled? But you said that if she stumbled onto something big, we ought to let her run with it. Well, Conn, she has stumbled onto something huge.”
O’Connor leaned over and picked up the box.
“Put it down,” Wrigley said. When O’Connor hesitated, he said in a gentler tone, “If you don’t mind listening to me for a few more moments, put it down, please.”
O’Connor set it back on Wrigley’s desk.
“Despite all that lecturing, you want me to give you the story she’s working on now. Is that it, Conn?”
“You know how hard I’ve tried to find out what happened that night. How hard, all those years ago, I looked for some sign of that car. Prayed I’d find it. Two decades, Win.”
“Yes, I do. And if I doubted there was a God, this alone would restore my faith, Conn. Because not only has it been found but the green reporter I’ve kept hoping you’d take under your wing was right there when it was discovered.”
“Proof of the devil, more like.” He frowned. “I think I’ve just heard an echo, though. Have you been talking to Helen Swan?”
“So what if I have? She’s an old and dear friend of mine.”
“Look, it’s my own fault, I admit it, but-Kelly won’t have a thing to do with me.”
“I wonder if that’s true.”
“It’s true. She can’t stand me, and lately…”
“You can’t stand yourself.”
O’Connor looked away.
“I’ll give you a choice,” Wrigley said after a moment. “You go out to the site and ask for her permission to involve you in this one-or wait until she comes back and let me ask for you.”
“Win-”
“Take it or leave it, Conn.”
O’Connor stood. “I’ll be on my way to talk to her, then.”
Wrigley smiled. “Don’t forget your box.”
“I haven’t, Win. Not for a long time.”
She was talking to Lefebvre.
That alone was nearly enough to send him back to the car. It had taken him months to establish rapport with
