If I hadn’t had a nun with me, I doubt she would have left his side, so the lady at the front desk had done me a favor. Barbara got up slowly and walked out of the room with me.
“How is he?” I asked her in the hallway.
She shrugged. “He’s what they call semi-comatose. Every hour they come in and give him neurological tests-see if his pupils respond to light and if he reacts to mild pain-like having his skin pricked, things like that. So far, he has. They tell me that’s good,” she said woodenly.
“And what about you?”
“I’m okay. I try to talk to him and read to him. The nurses told me Kenny might be able to hear me.”
We walked in silence for a moment. We passed a couple who sat in a waiting area, tension etched into their faces. Who could help wondering about the stories behind the people in hospital hallways and waiting rooms?
“Barbara, if you need to get some sleep or do some errands or something, maybe I could come down and give you a break. I would be grateful if you’d let me help you out a little.”
“I’m okay,” she said again. After a moment she said, “But thanks.”
She was anxious to get back to the room, so we turned around and headed back. Sister Theresa walked me out the main entrance, right under the receptionist’s surprised nose.
“Patience, Irene,” she said to me as I left.
“Not my strong suit, Sister, but I’ll try.”
On the walk back to the paper I thought about Barbara’s devotion to Kenny. Had she stayed secretly attached to him through the years of being divorced? Or was she just so lonely now that she was happy to be needed by someone, even someone who could make no response? I wondered if my own anger with Kenny made it impossible for her to tell me that she would, in fact, jump at the chance to be back with him. She did complain about him to me, but maybe it was that brand of complaining that turns about-face if you agree with the complainer.
I had never thought Kenny treated her well, and though I couldn’t help being softened in my attitude toward him by his current condition, I wondered what would come of it-for Barbara’s sake. Could I have been wrong about him? Like any other couple, they had a life of their own together, a private one that I could not learn of from family gatherings and the like.
Truth be told, somewhere inside me a voice that would like to be mistaken for my conscience said, “You wished this on him.” All those times Barbara had cried to me on the phone about him, all those times I’d said, “Don’t worry, Barbara, someday Kenny will get his. It’s only a matter of time before he crosses someone who’ll teach him some manners.”
Of course, I hadn’t expected Amy Vanderbilt to be carrying a baseball bat, but I hadn’t exactly wished him well, either. So now he lay half-dead, while my sister spun a web of fragile hope around him.
14
THIS KIND OF THINKING is not good for one’s optimistic outlook in life, so I was a little down when I reached the door of the Wrigley Building. As I opened it, I saw Frank politely signing in for Geoff, who took no one at his word. As he pushed the clipboard back across the counter, I realized how happy I was to see him. He gave me a smile. Just what the doctor ordered. “Sign him back out, Geoff, I’m making him take me to lunch.”
Geoff, another member of the “Coalition of Those Who Are Terribly Concerned About Irene Still Being Single,” gave me a knowing look.
Frank walked me out to his car, a battered, old gray Volvo. “Is this thing going to make it to L.A.?” I asked, trying not to laugh out loud. “What’d you do, steal it from Columbo?”
“Well, excuse me, Princess Di. Here I am, being a nice guy and offering to take you to lunch, and you give me grief about my car. I’m not a glutton for freeway driving-I’ll let you take us in your car, if you prefer, your highness.”
“I love to hear men talk that way. No, you can drive, and I promise to try not to make jokes about your car.”
“I just drive this thing to make the taxpayers feel good, anyway.”
Despite its external appearance, the car was very comfortable and clean on the inside.
“So where are we going for lunch?” I asked, as we pulled out of the parking lot.
“You’ll see,” he said. “By the way, I got in touch with Hernandez.”
“And?”
“He talked to O’Connor twice last month, once in person, once on the phone. O’Connor had come down to the morgue about the middle of May, to start gathering information for his Hannah article. The anniversary of the day they found her is next weekend-June seventeenth-and I guess that’s the day he does the write-up on the John Does. Hernandez told me it was the first time he’d met O’Connor, and he took a real liking to him. He wasn’t too happy when I told him what had happened.”
“So what happened in May?”
“Not much, I guess, except that Hernandez had never heard the Hannah story, so O’Connor told him all about it and about the annual articles. Hernandez talked to him about a couple of stiffs they haven’t been able to identify, and they shook hands like pals and said so long.”
Frank broke off long enough to negotiate getting on the 405 Freeway going north. Traffic was, as usual, ridiculously heavy. Where could all of these people be going at noon? We hunkered down for some “slow and go,” and Frank took up the conversation again.
“I guess O’Connor managed to spark his interest. He just took a real liking to the guy. Talked to each other for a couple of hours. They’re starved for the company of folks that can still breathe down there in the coroner’s office anyway-not too many people just go down there for a chat-and he said O’Connor was quite a talker.”
“That he was.”
“So after O’Connor left, Hernandez figured he’d go check out this Hannah story. He dug out the case file, and saw a reference to an evidence number. He was especially interested in the dental section of the report.”
Frank stopped talking, and seemed to be watching something in his rearview mirror for a moment. I turned around and looked behind us. A dark car changed lanes, and began to pass us on the left.
“Don’t do that,” Frank said. “It’s not the Lincoln.”
“Don’t do what?”
“Don’t turn around and stare at somebody if you think I’m looking at them in the rearview mirror. If they’re following us, I’d like to know for sure before you spook them off.”
“Sorry.”
“It’s okay. I’m pretty sure they’re just in a hurry to get past us.”
This seemed to be the case, as the car continued to weave in and out of traffic, moving on ahead of us.
“So what happened with Hernandez?”
“He got curious and put one of the assistants on the task of finding the evidence file. I guess the assistant wasn’t too happy with the job, since it was down in the morgue’s basement somewhere.
“Hernandez starts reading through the remarks about Hannah’s teeth. The autopsy report says that although her front teeth were broken, they found all the fragments and were able to reconstruct the jaw. No sign of decay, or of any dentistry work. Now, in 1955, Hernandez thinks, this isn’t too common, but it’s not unheard of.
“So he reads on. There were some tobacco stains, according to Woolsey. Hernandez looks back through the rest of the autopsy report and notices that there was no sign of nicotine in her blood work and that her lungs were clear and undiseased. He sets it aside and goes to work on something a little more recent.”
“And that’s it?”
“No, there’s more. Over an hour goes by, and the assistant comes back, mad as hell because he’s had to really dig around to find this evidence file. He’s carrying a box labeled ‘Jane Doe 6-17- 55’ with the matching evidence number on it. Hernandez opens the box, and guess what he finds?”