"No, Betty," he said, moving quickly to her side and putting his hand over the phone to stop her from calling her husband. "Detective Hanrahan is just doing his job. He suspects me. He suspects Ken. He suspects you."
"Ken? Me?"
Mrs. Franklin sat in a chair across from Rozier, played with the cigarette in her fingers, and looked up.
"That is absurd," she said. "We were at the recital. You saw me. You saw Ken. And we saw you."
"You saw each other the entire night?" Hanrahan said. "I'm just trying to eliminate even the slightest suspicion, you understand."
"Why not check with the ushers or Mrs. Gabriel?" Rozier asked. "Someone must have seen…"
"We checked," said Hanrahan. "No one noticed if any of you left the concert hall."
"We glanced at Harvey frequently," Mrs. Franklin said with indignation. "We knew he was concerned about Dana and we wanted to be ready to leave if Harvey wished to do so."
"And I will vouch for the Franklins," said Harvey, "but I think Detective Hanrahan is considering the possibility of an accomplice actually killing Dana."
"Maybe two accomplices," said Hanrahan. "There were two sets of unidentified footprints in Mrs. Rozier's blood. One set led to the broken dining room window and down the driveway. The other set led to the back door and disappeared. Strange. The killers go in different directions and one seems to have taken off his shoes at the back door."
There was little that could be called distraught in Rozier. In fact, Hanrahan felt that the man was reassessing him, considering what the proper response should be. There wasn't a type Hanrahan had not seen in his more than twenty years as a Chicago cop. A pause. Rozier decided.
"Please, go look for the ipecac," he said, rising, his voice quivering just slightly. "And please be quick. And please go out and find the person or persons who killed Dana. And please do not come ringing my doorbell at night without calling first."
"Can't you see the man is in agony?" Betty Franklin said to the policeman.
"Yes, ma'am," Bill Hanrahan said, but he felt that he was watching a man pretending to be in agony. "Now, if we can… T "I'll go with you," Rozier said, meeting Hanrahan's eyes and making it clear that no underpaid policeman was going to wander unattended through his house. "Betty, please stay here."
Betty Franklin had placed the cigarette in her mouth but hadn't lit it. Rozier touched her shoulder to reassure her and handed her a lighter, which she accepted with a nervous nod.
Less than three minutes later Hanrahan had found the small bottle in Dana Rozier's dressing table. Hanrahan took a zippered sandwich bag from his pocket and slipped it around the bottle, easing it inside the plastic without touching the bottle.
"You don't mind if I take this, do you?"
"No," said Rozier, arms folded, watching. "Why would Dana keep something like that?"
Hanrahan pocketed the bottle and shrugged.
"Bulimia, fear of being poisoned-who knows? I've heard the damnedest reasons for the damnedest things."
"Are we finished?" Rozier asked.
"We are," said Hanrahan, looking around the tastefully antiqued bedroom. "Just one more question."
"Ask your question, Detective. And then go find Dana's killer."
"You didn't find a box, something about this wide and mis long, on the floor in the kitchen before the police got here?" Hanrahan said, moving his hands to show the approximate size of the object that had been outlined in Dana Rozier's blood. "I mean after your wife died and before the police came."
The puzzled look came almost instantly but not quite fast enough. Hanrahan was sure he saw a tic of something, maybe fear, in the face of Harvey Rozier.
"No," he said. "Why?"
Hanrahan shrugged and didn't answer. He turned away from Rozier, looked around the room, and then walked slowly out with Rozier behind him.
At the bottom of the stairs, Mrs. Franklin was standing in the hallway, nervously smoking as she waited.
"Well?" she asked.
"We found the ipecac," said Harvey Rozier, coming down the stairs. "Did you know that Dana had this? Or why?"
"No," said Betty Franklin.
"Sorry to have bothered you," Hanrahan said, meeting Rozier's eyes and extending a hand.
They both knew that Hanrahan was not in the least sorry.
They shook like gentlemen and the policeman let himself out 'I'm going to ask Kenneth to complain about mat man," Betty Franklin said, putting out her cigarette and glaring at the door. "You should be getting rest, not harassment"
"He's doing his job," said Rozier, stepping toward her.
"He could do it more politely," she said. "They can't find Dana's killer so they intrude on you. I think you've had enough for one day. Harvey, you should go to bed."
"I agree," he said with a yawn, "but on one condition."
"Yes?"
"That you come to bed with me," he said.
Betty Franklin moved into his arms and opened her mouth to his kiss.
Hanrahan drove and listened to the radio. Late-night meaningless talk. All-night meaningless talk. A voice in the night as he drove. He couldn't bring himself to turn on the radio at home, but in the car he would listen to almost any voice in the night.
It was still early, not much past eleven, and there were thoughts, feelings that didn't want to be named, that wanted to swim in the numb of amber Scotch.
Ten minutes later he stood in front of the Blue Parrot Lounge on Broadway, no more than five blocks from the Rogers Park Station. Hanrahan didn't know where the sweat began and the rain took over. He stood in the near cover of the overhang before the entrance, a soothing neon-red-and-gold rinse on his skin, the smell of ribs from Wesley's across the street and in front of him, beyond the familiar door, the sound of rhythm vibrating without melody from the jukebox.
Bill Hanrahan rubbed his eyes. The neighborhood stank and was getting worse, but only one ignorant hold-up man had made the mistake of stepping through the double doors and pulling a third-rate piece from his pocket. That was four years ago. It had taken the gunman only a second look to realize that he had screwed up royally. The place was stacked with cops, all of them looking like cops, a few of them in open-collared uniforms. By then it was too late and the gunman, whose name was Robert Jefferson Davis Jointz, had taken three bullets in the leg and one in the right chest, taking out his lung. Jointz was now breathing heavy and doing time in Stateville.
Memories of the Blue Parrot, its smell, its soothing brown lights with promises of Silver Bullets over the bar, returned fast and sharp. Hanrahan pushed open the doors and stepped inside.
The music sounded no better inside, some raspy-voiced wailer from the sixties. Elvis, the Everly Brothers, Cree-dence Clearwater, and early Johnny Cash would be along in a minute or an hour.
In the booth near the jukebox, Applegate and Acardo, Black and White, were arguing. Applegate's finger was in his partner's face. Both held partly filled glasses protectively.
Ernie Cadwell was at the bar talking to a woman from Vice whose name Hanrahan couldn't remember.
"William," a voice called over the whant-waink-thud of the guitar and drum from the glowing jukebox.
Nestor Briggs was in the booth beyond the arguing Acardo and Applegate. Nestor was holding up a stein of beer and waving at Hanrahan. Hanrahan made his way past three full tables of people, most of whom were cops, almost all of whom he recognized. Nothing had changed.
Nestor was alone. Hanrahan slid in across from him and a woman with enormous breasts, frizzy blond hair, and the serious look of a priestess appeared almost immediately.
"What'll it be tonight, Irish?" Ramona asked.
As if he hadn't been gone for almost half a year. She hadn't noticed the six months that had seemed a life sentence to hard time.