Yesterday's News

the radio on and then let it play. So I called her, but I could hear the phone ringing, like I said before, and she wasn’t answering. So I went down the back stairs to the kitchen and knocked and called out her name, but she didn’t answer that either, so I walked through the kitchen and—”
    “Wait a minute. The lights were all on?”
    “Well, not all on. I mean, Jane did have some respect for the electric, and it never seemed to me to make sense to have the company come in and do separate meters. That’s always a waste so long as you don’t have some sloth down there, doesn’t know how to turn off a lamp.”
    “But some lights were on?”
    “Yes, and then I moved through into the living room and she was on the couch. Lying on it, dead.”
    “You were sure she was gone?”
    “You grew up when I did, sonny, you learned what to look for. And smell for, more’s the pity. I remember clearly my mother herding my brother and me in to see Gramp on his deathbed. That’s where the expression comes from, you know. In the old days, people actually died in their beds, even when they knew it was coming. They didn’t go to some hospital, lying on some stranger’s sheets and being felt all over by some stranger’s hands. No sir, you sent for the doctor once, and if he said, ‘That’s it,’ you didn’t waste anybody’s money or the dying person’s dignity on some hospital. You let them stay right where they were, in their own house, in the bosom of their family. They could die where they lived, not behind some canvas screen in a cold room. The husband passed on in the hospital, then got dumped into a green bag and wheeled onto an elevator, God rest his soul.”
    “So you knew Jane was dead?”
    “Aren’t you listening to me anymore? You watch enough people die, you know what dead is.”
    “What did you do then?”
    “Well, I looked around. But all I saw was some cocoa in a mug long gone cold. So I said a prayer for her right there, though I knew she was damned for taking her own life. I thought I ought to, being I knew her and I didn’t see any family of hers likely to arrive before they took the body away.”
    “There was no note?”
    “Note? Well, none that I saw, but I couldn’t have read it of course, even if there was one. Had on the distance specs, not the close-ups. I try to go downstairs wearing the reading glasses, and it’s me what they’d be finding stiff at the bottom of the steps.”
    “Mrs. O’Day, did you tell the police all this?”
    “As much as they’d hear. They didn’t seem to have quite the patience you do.”
    “Well,” I said, “I appreciate all the time you’ve given me.”
    “My pleasure. Good to talk with a sensible young man for a change. Don’t you want to see her place before you go?”
    “The police didn’t seal it off?”
    “My goodness, no. It was just a suicide.”
    “In that case, I will, thank you.”
    “Just don’t break anything. I’m not worried about a man like you stealing, but I’d be embarrassed if you broke something.”
    “A woman at the newspaper is arranging Jane’s funeral. I’ll call you when I know the details.”
    “Don’t trouble yourself. Funerals depress me. Be sides, she was a suicide, remember? The Church wouldn’t like for me to be going to one of them.”
    Except for the narrower sitting room to accommodate the first-floor expanse of staircase outside her door, Rust’s apartment was the twin of Mrs. O’Day’s. The bedroom contained a pine four-poster with a bedspread that looked like an heirloom. The dressers matched the bed. On top of the lower dresser was a nearly empty jewelry box, some change in a large seashell, and framed, stand-up photos. The first shot was a shorter-haired Jane with a longer-haired Liz Rendall, both in swimsuits. Each had an arm draped around the other’s shoulder, Jane looking sheepish and Liz brash.
    The second showed an older woman and a much younger Jane, probably in her early teens. They stood at the comer of a house with a flat meadow background that disappeared only at the horizon.
    The third photo caught a current Jane handing a drink to a skinny, hippie-like guy sitting on what appeared to be her living room couch. Coyne, maybe?
    I plodded around the apartment enough to tell that no forensic team had been there. Nothing apparently was missing except Rust’s body. If my client had been killed as part of a “police conspiracy,” someone should have tossed the rooms, searching