The Night Crew

into a canvas chair. ‘‘Anna.’’ Her name came out of the sky.
    She looked up, and saw Hobart Page looking down from his second-story sundeck next door. ‘‘We’re having
margaritas. Come on up.’’
    ‘‘Thanks, Hobie, but, uh, I had a friend die. I just want to sit and think for a while.’’
    Another voice: Jim McMillan, Hobie’s live-in. She could see his outline against the eastern sky. ‘‘Jeez. You okay?’’
    ‘‘Yeah, yeah. Bums me out, though,’’ she said.
    ‘‘Well, come over if you need company.’’ She’d just finished the drink when the phone rang—the home phone, the unlisted number. Creek or Louis, maybe her father, or one of a half-dozen other people, she thought.
    But it was the cops: ‘‘Ms. Batory . . . Lieutenant Wyatt.’’
    ‘‘You’re working late,’’ Anna said.
    ‘‘We’re just wrapping up here,’’ he said.
    ‘‘Wrapping up? Did you find out who did it?’’
    ‘‘Afraid not. We did locate his apartment, not much there. Unless we get a break, we’re not gonna be able to do much with it . . . it looks like dope, or just random.’’
    ‘‘So you’re giving up?’’
    ‘‘No—but right now, we’ve got nothing,’’ Wyatt said. ‘‘We checked out the ShotShop and I think he might have been killed there. He could’ve been dropped right out the back window into the water, and the window was unlocked, which it wasn’t supposed to be.’’
    ‘‘Was there any blood? He was pretty beat up . . .’’
    ‘‘Not visible blood, but there was a roll of photo paper in the back—you know, one of those printed scene things?’’
    ‘‘Yeah . . .’’
    ‘‘Anyway, the owner said it was back there, half unrolled, and now it’s gone. Maybe he was killed on the paper, and the paper was thrown out the window. It would’ve sunk . . . So we’ve got crime scene guys looking for blood, and checking around to see if the paper’s under the pier, but even if we find it, it won’t be much. We’re looking for anyone who saw anything, but we haven’t found anyone so far.’’
    ‘‘Did you talk to the fishermen out there? There are always a few . . .’’
    ‘‘Yeah, yeah, and we’ll talk to more of them tonight. But listen—I didn’t call to update you. We found O’Brien’s next of kin, an aunt and uncle out in Peru, Indiana. I don’t think they’re too well off, but, uh . . . They’d like to talk to you.’’
    ‘‘Me? What for?’’
    ‘‘I think they’d like you to make the arrangements for a funeral and so on . . .’’
    She rubbed the back of her neck: ‘‘Aw, jeez . . .’’
    ‘‘Well, you’re the only friend we can find,’’ Wyatt said. ‘‘There was nothing of value in his apartment—some electronic gear and an old bike, clothes. Anyway, I didn’t want to give them your unlisted phone number, but told them I’d ask you to call back.’’
    ‘‘All right, give me the number.’’ Nancy Odum answered the phone in Peru and passed it off to her husband, Martin. Martin Odum said, ‘‘We don’t fly, and it’s a long way to come to get a stereo set. If you could handle the arrangements, we’d be happy to pay you somethin’ for your time.’’
    ‘‘No, that’s okay,’’ Anna said, thinking, No it’s not . She’d never arranged a funeral, and hoped she’d never have to.
    Martin Odum continued in the same glum tone: ‘‘His mother and father are buried here in Peru, we thought maybe . . . cremation? We could sprinkle the ashes on their graves. If that’d be okay with you.’’
    ‘‘I’ll take care of it,’’ Anna said. ‘‘He had a few hundred dollars coming from my company, I’ll use that for the cremation and to ship the remains. Uh, his stuff, do you want me to sell it? I don’t know how much I’d get, but I could send you whatever it is.’’
    ‘‘That’d be nice of you, ma’am.’’
    They worked out the rest of the melancholy details, the phones making funny satellite sounds; and the Odums sounded as morose as Anna felt. When they were done, she hung up, mixed another drink, thought about making it a double and did. Back outside, sitting in the canvas chair, she let her mind drift: and it drifted, under the influence of the alcohol, to the last funeral she’d been to, so long ago . . .
    Anna had grown up on a farm in south-central Wisconsin, a 480-acre corn operation that lay in the crook of the Whitewater River, not far from Madison.
    Her mother was a piano teacher, and