Hard News

house itself.

    chapter 17    
     
    RUNE FILLED SAM HEALY’S KITCHEN BASIN WITH WATER and gave Courtney a bath. Then she dried the girl and put on the diaper she wore to bed. By now she’d gotten the routine down pretty well, and, though she wouldn’t admit it to anybody, she liked the smell of baby powder.
    The little girl asked, “Story?”
    Rune said, “I’ve got a good one we can read. Come on in here.”
    She checked outside to make sure Healy’s Bomb Squad station wagon wasn’t back yet. Then they walked into the family room and sat on an old musty couch with tired springs. She sank down into it. Courtney climbed into her lap.
    “Can we read about ducks?” Courtney asked. “The duck story is really crucial.”
    “This is even better,” Rune said. “It’s a police report.”
    “Excellent.”
    The girl nodded as Rune began to read through sheets of paper, stamped “Property of the 20th Precinct.” There were some photos of Hopper’s dead body but they were totally gross and Rune slipped them to the back before Courtney saw them. She read until her throat ached from keeping her voice in a child-entertaining low register. She’d pause occasionally and watch Courtney’s eyes scan the cheap white paper. The meaning of the words was totally lost on the child, of course, but she was fascinated anyway, finding some secret delight in the abstract designs of the black letters.
    After twenty minutes Courtney closed her eyes and lay heavily against Rune’s shoulder.
    The subject of the reading matter apparently didn’t matter much to Courtney; ducks and police procedures lulled her to sleep equally quickly Rune put her into bed, pulled the blankets around her. She looked at the U2 poster that Healy’s son, Adam, had bought Healy for his birthday (a great father, the cop had immediately framed and mounted it in a nice prominent location). She decided to sink some money into a Maxfield Parrish or Wyeth reproduction for Courtney’s room on the houseboat. That’s what kids needed: giants in clouds or magic castles. Maybe one of Rackham’s illustrations from
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
.
    Rune returned to the report.
    I’d just come back from Zabars. I walked past my living room window. I see these two men standing there. Then one pulls out this gun…. There was a flash and one of the men fell over. I ran to the phone to dial 911, but I’ll admit I hesitated—I was worried it might be a Mafia thing. All these witnesses you hear about getting killed. Or a drug shooting. I go back to the window to see if they were just kidding around. Maybe it was young people, you know, but by then there’s a police car
….
    The report contained the names of three people interviewed by the police about Hopper’s murder. All three lived on the first floor of the building. The first two hadn’t been home. The third was the woman who’d given the report, a clerk at Bloomingdale’s, who lived on the first floor of Hopper’s building, overlooking the courtyard.
    That was all? The cops had talked to only
three
people? And only
one
eyewitness?
    At least thirty or forty apartments would open onto the courtyard. Why hadn’t they been interviewed?
    Cover-up, she thought. Conspiracy. Grassy knolls, the Warren Commission.
    She finished the report. There wasn’t much else helpful. Rune heard Healy’s car pull into the driveway and hid the file. She looked in on Courtney. Kissed her forehead.
    The girl woke up and said, “Love you.”
    Rune blinked and didn’t speak for a moment then managed, “Like, sure. Me too.” But Courtney seemed to be asleep again by the time she said it.
    “ FUNNY THING,” SAM HEALY WAS SAYING THE NEXT morning.
    “Funny?”
    “This practice grenade disappeared from the Bomb Squad and, next thing, there’s a report of one found on the street near the Twentieth.”
    “Funny.”
    He’d just come in from mowing the lawn. She smelled grass and gasoline. It reminded her of her childhood in the suburbs of Cleveland, Saturday morning, when her father would trim the boxwood and mow and spread mulch around the dogwoods.
    “Don’t think I heard anything about it on the radio,” Rune offered.
    “The report said a young woman and a baby found it. I seem to remember you stopping by the Bomb Squad yesterday, didn’t you? You and Courtney?”
    “Sort of, I think. I’m not too clear.”
    Healy said, “You’re sounding like those defendants. ‘Yeah, I was standing over the body