Goodnight, Irene

27

RACHEL CAME IN carrying a blanket, and stopped cold when she saw the lifeless figure in the chair. She walked over and stooped down to look at the face. “Is it Elaine Tannehill?” I asked.

She nodded.

“She’s dead,” I said, realizing as I said it that Rachel knew that already.

Just then, Pete came back. “Bastard tortured her with the iron, then shot her in the back. I didn’t even see the wound till after she coughed.”

“Nothing you could’ve done if you’d seen it, Pete, and you know it,” Rachel said. “Her lungs had probably been filling up with blood the whole time we were out knocking on the door. What about the maid?”

Pete shook his head.

“Irene,” Rachel said, bringing me out of a fog that kept trying to settle over me. “Do you think you can describe the guy you saw? I put out a call on the car, but I didn’t get a look at him.”

I told her all I could remember about him.

She started to go back out to the car when Pete called to her. “Rachel, can you get somebody over to the parents’ house? And maybe check on anybody else in the family? Who knows what the hell he wanted.”

She nodded and left.

Pete looked over at me. “Let’s get you out of here,” he said. I didn’t argue. He led me into another room, where we sat on a couch, not saying anything.

The wail of sirens soon reached us. Pete pulled back a curtain and from the window behind the couch we could see the police cars and ambulance beginning their climb up the road. “Son of a bitch probably watched us coming,” he said angrily.

Soon the house was a swarming hive of activity and uniforms. I tried to stay out of the way of police, paramedics, and other officials who seemed to arrive in an endless stream. I overheard Pete telling someone the maid was downstairs, her throat cut. Rachel walked over to me. “Come on outside. You’ve had enough of this kind of stuff.” She walked me out to the large veranda and sat me down in a shady spot. “You gonna be okay?” she asked.

“Sure, thanks.” She hurried back inside. I fought down that now familiar set of sensations: queasiness, shakiness, weepiness. I forced myself to concentrate on the scenery around me. Before long I could feel my fears giving way before the view of city and farmland below, the distant mesas and muted red and sandy colors of the desert stretching beyond the city boundaries. The sun was hot and bright. Just below the veranda a beautiful garden was laid out in bright splashes of color. Birds and insects chirped as a hot breeze blew my hair around my face. I felt a welcome numbness gradually come over me. Then another siren would go up or down the hill, and I would have to start all over again.

I sat there for a couple of hours, I guess; I’m not really sure how long it was I waited. Eventually Pete and Rachel came walking across the stonework toward me. I noticed they seemed to be quite chummy, gesturing and smiling as they spoke in Italian to one another. They both grew circumspect as they drew nearer.

“Ready to go?” Pete asked. “I called the airline and changed our flight out. Leaves about seven. That okay with you?”

I nodded. “Did they find him?”

They exchanged looks. “Not yet,” Rachel said. “But I doubt he’ll use the airport. He’ll know we’re watching for him. We’ve got people on both the state line and the Mexican border watching for him and the car. The airport too, but I doubt he’ll fly out of here-too risky. You gave us a good description. A guy like this has to have a sheet a mile long.”

“She’s right,” Pete said. “In fact, I remember an old case in Las Piernas where somebody used an iron like that. I wasn’t on that one, though. I’ll have to look up one of the guys that worked it when we get back.”

I stood up, reluctant to leave my little refuge. But I was anxious to get back home to Las Piernas as well.

“I’ll take you back to your car,” Rachel said. “We can talk on the way.”

Pete told me that Mr. Tannehill and the Owenses had been contacted. Everybody was safe and nobody knew why anyone would want to kill Elaine Tannehill or her maid.

“Did you mention Jennifer Owens to them?” I asked.

“Yes,” Rachel said. “At first they were kind of high and mighty about her, but when I told them what had become of her, they changed their tune. They even talked about getting in touch with Jennifer’s mother. They didn’t have any ideas about who got Jennifer pregnant. Maybe this guy you call ‘Hawkeyes’ was just trying to find out what Elaine knew.”

“It obviously isn’t a problem for him to go around murdering people on the off chance they know something about this case,” I said.

“That’s what’s bugging me,” Pete said. “I think Irene’s right. We need to keep searching the Tannehill place, looking for something that connects Elaine to the guy who got Jennifer pregnant. Son of a bitch is really stupid. You know, if he had left things alone, we probably wouldn’t have been able to get much farther than identifying the Jane Doe. It’s an old case; nobody would have spent much time on it.”

“Maybe he has a lot to lose,” I said. “And maybe he got worried about people who might be persistent enough to figure it out, like O’Connor. You know he never would have let it rest. Well, I won’t either. Maybe he knows that.”

“He’s going too far, too fast. He’s bound to screw up.”

“I hope you’re right,” I said, looking out the car window. I wondered if this Mr. X would screw up before I got killed or had my feet ironed. I didn’t feel like talking about it and tried not to think about it. I let my mind go away from it all again. Sensing my mood, Pete and Rachel chatted about other subjects.

When we pulled in at the police department, I decided to give them some time by themselves, and myself some time to myself, so I offered to follow them back to the airport in the rental. Pete immediately approved of this idea, thanking me as he handed over the keys. Subtle guy, Pete.

I drove like a zombie, just keeping the back of the police car in front of me at a polite distance. If another police car had come along, I might have followed it anywhere. Before long we were back at the airport.

We checked Pete’s gun in again and made our way over to the gate, stopping to buy him a pack of gum at the gift shop. Rachel sat with us until they called our flight. I noticed Pete wasn’t powering down any gum.

I went over to a pay phone and called the paper. Lydia was gone by then, but Morry, the city editor, was still on the desk. I gave him what I could by way of an update.

Pete didn’t have to tell me this time to wait to get on, even though none of us believed Hawkeyes would be taking a flight out of Arizona.

When they made the final boarding call, Rachel stood up and gave me a big hug. “You can handle it, Irene. Anyone who can survive a day with this meatball can handle anything.”

“Hey, don’t I get a hug?” Pete asked.

Rachel walked over and grabbed his face, pinching his cheeks and shaking them. “No, you don’t,” she said, laughing, and walked off with a wave.

“Nobody’s done that since I was nine,” he said, watching her go.

We boarded the plane. I fell asleep before Pete had his first stick of gum, and slept all the way to Las Piernas.