Goodnight, Irene

30

THE PAPERS from the fifties were on microfilm, and so I used one of the aging machines down in that darkened area of the morgue to check the reels for the first two months of summer in 1955. The same thing happened this time that happens to me every time I go down to the morgue. I got hung up reading old articles and advertisements that caught my eye. The first one I came across was for a 1955 Packard-“The Patrician.”

“One phone call delivers a new Packard to your door,” the ad said.

Then I started wondering if porterhouse and T-bone steaks really were eighty-five cents a pound, like the “women’s-pages” ads said. If they were, I supposed I could believe that a quart of ice cream was forty-five cents, too. There was a dress offered by a department store for $10.95, and it looked pretty snazzy. The models all wore gloves, hats, and pearl chokers. But what I really wanted was the “Davy Crockett Study Lamp” with six action scenes from his adventures.

I started paying more attention to news items. Neither the paper nor the town were as big in the 1950s as they were now, but there was still enough print to make me feel dizzy as the pages flashed across the screen.

Some of the headlines in mid-June 1955 looked sort of familiar, such as “Middle East Peace Talks Proposed,” “County Budget Proposal Is Largest Ever,” and “Soviet Minister Visits U.S.,” while others caught my attention because I knew how they turned out: “Peron Claims Argentine Rebellion Finished,” “Salk and Sabin Testify on Polio Vaccine,” and a much smaller article, “South Vietnam Reds Tell U.S. ‘Go Home.’” The local news included items such as “Downey Women’s Club Honors HUAC Members” and “Committee Studies Fire-Department Integration.”

Marilyn Monroe could be seen in The Seven Year Itch if you were willing to drive into L.A. to watch it at Grauman’s Chinese. Locally, it was easier to catch Jungle Jim and the Moon Men or The Creature with the Atom Brain.

I don’t know why I should have been startled by the large-type headline that proclaimed “Woman’s Mutilated Body Found Under Pier” on the front page of the June 18, 1955, issue. It was big local news, and there wasn’t a chance that it would have received less sensational coverage. But now, knowing the future of this case-and having met the mother of the victim-I couldn’t help but feel disturbed. O’Connor might have felt compassion for this anonymous victim and her family, but he had not been the only writer on the story; the other coverage was unflinching in its detail.

In issues over the next few days, the story had died down. With no clue to her identity surfacing, and little other progress being made, there was not much to feed to the public. Las Piernas City Councilman Richard Longren rallied his fellow council members to invest in better lighting by the pier and an expansion of the police force to increase beach patrols. I sat back thinking that our current mayor never missed a political trick, even then.

I rewound the microfilm to the date of Hannah’s murder and went more slowly through each issue for that week. Page after page of reports that ranged from Congressional hearings to meetings of the Fuchsia Society. Then, in the local news section for Tuesday, June 21, 1955, I found my Lazarus:

Eyewitness to Fatal Accident Found

Coroner’s Wife Will Not Be Charged

Police announced today that no charges will be filed against Mrs. Blanche Woolsey, wife of Las Piernas Coroner Dr. Emmet Woolsey, in an accident that killed two last Sunday. A witness, whose identity was not revealed by police, saw the car of Mr. and Mrs. Henry Decker cross over a double yellow line and hit Mrs. Woolsey’s vehicle at a curve on Hampstead Road before going over a cliff.

While other witnesses had earlier identified Mrs. Woolsey’s car as the one seen weaving down the same road in a reckless fashion, this witness is apparently the only person to see the accident itself. Police refused to comment on why the witness might have delayed stepping forward until now.

Mrs. Woolsey remains hospitalized for injuries received in the accident.

So Woolsey’s wife was saved from charges in what looked to be a felony drunk-driving case. But who had provided the witness? Could Frank find the witness’s name in police records?

I kept looking through the issues for that week to see if anything more had been written on the accident, when I came across the society pages for Sunday, June 26. Over two different pages, large photographs, and lavish detail were given to what must have been the major wedding of the last half century in Las Piernas: the marriage of Elinor Sheffield to a young man who had been recently appointed to the staff of the district attorney’s office-a young Harvard Law School graduate by the name of Andrew Hollingsworth-on the previous day.

Thinking of the Hollingsworths reminded me of Guy St. Germain and our plans for that evening. I was starting to wonder if it had been a mistake to accept his invitation. I kept asking myself why I had this urge to confess to Frank that I was going out with another man. Then I asked myself why I thought of it as confessing. It wasn’t as if we were involved with one another in some exclusive arrangement. We really hadn’t dated or anything. All we had done was have a picnic together. And been shot at and nearly killed in a car chase.

I rewound the microfilm and put it back in its box. I turned off the machine and sat there in the dark for a minute.

I didn’t want to tell Frank, and I wasn’t sure why. But I knew for damn sure that I didn’t want him to hear about it from Pete Baird. Hell, considering Pete’s basic buttinsky nature, I might already be too late to be the one to tell Frank about it. If I decided to tell him.

Nuts.