Paper Doll

chapter thirty-three

FARRELL CAME INTO my office in the late afternoon, after his shift.

“You got a drink?” he said.

I rinsed the glasses in the sink and got out the bottle and poured each of us a shot. I didn’t really want one, but he looked like he needed someone to drink with. It was a small sacrifice.

“First we went back over Cheryl Anne Rankin again,” Farrell said.

He held his whiskey in both hands, without drinking any.

“And we found nothing. No birth record, no public school record, no nothing. The woman who worked in the track kitchen is gone, all we got is that her name was Bertha. Nobody knows anything about her daughter. There’s no picture there like you describe, just one picture of Olivia Nelson with a horse, and nobody remembers another one.”

“Anyone talk to the black woman that worked there?”

“Yeah. Quirk talked with her while he was there. She doesn’t know anything at all. She probably knows less than that talking to a white Northern cop.”

“Who’s doing the rest of the investigating?”

“Alton County Sheriff’s Department,” Farrell said.

“You can count on them,” I said.

Farrell shrugged.

“Per diem’s scarce,” he said.

He was still holding the whiskey in both hands. He had yet to drink any.

“You hit one out, though, on Tripp,” he said. “He’s in hock. First time around we weren’t looking for it, and nobody volunteered. As far as we can find out this time, he has no cash, and his only assets are his home and automobile. He’s got no more credit. He’s a semester behind in tuition payments for each kid. His secretary hasn’t been paid in three months. She stays because she’s afraid to leave him alone.”

“What happened?” I said.

“We don’t know yet how he lost it, only that he did.”

“How about the family business?”

“He’s the family business. He managed the family stock portfolio. Apparently that’s all he did. It took him maybe a couple hours, and he’d stay there all day, pretending like he’s a regular businessman.”

“Secretary sure kept that to herself,” I said.

“She was protecting him. When we showed her we knew anyway, she was easy. Hell, it was like a relief for her; she couldn’t go on the rest of her life taking care of him for nothing.”

“What’s he say about this?”

“Denies everything absolutely,” Farrell said. “In the face of computer printouts and sworn statements. Says it’s preposterous.”

“He’s been denying a lot, I think.”

Farrell nodded and looked down at the whiskey still held undrunk in his two hands. He raised the glass with both hands and dropped his head and drank some, and when he looked up there were tears running down his face.

“Brian?” I said.

Farrell nodded.

“He died,” I said.

Farrell nodded again. He was struggling with his breathing.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

Farrell drank the rest of his drink and put the glass down on the edge of the desk and buried his face in his hands. I sat quietly with him and didn’t say anything. There wasn’t anything to say.