The nurse wrote it down, but not like that. She accepted the brusque words and phrases and transformed them into neat, precise and formal statements on paper. Something involving the correct medical terminology. I couldn’t read it from where I was sitting but she put down more than nine words.
The coroner added in a conversational tone, “Also pregnant.”
The nurse smiled at the vial she had been studying and wrote down a single word.
But the State’s Attorney jumped. “The hell you say!”
“Yes, the hell I say.”
“How much?... I mean, how long?”
Several seconds later, “Oh, nine to twelve weeks.” The nurse jotted that down.
“Suicide?” I suggested.
“I doubt it. There is the knot on the head.”
“Meaning...?”
“Indicating she fell in head first, striking her head on the broken ice, rather than jumping in feet first.”
“Yeah,” Thompson added, “the water is only three feet deep around that hole. If she had jumped in the skates would have been driven into the mud on the bottom; her head would have remained above water — or ice.”
“So she tumbled in head first. But maybe she was unconscious from the bump on the head?”
“No,” Burbee objected. “Don’t forget the burnt match. That was sucked in while she was under water — through the mouth. She lacked the remaining strength to spit it out.”
I studied the match in the dish.
“Damn funny place for a match.”
“I know a man who lost his upper plate in that lake,” the State’s Attorney offered.
I got out of there.
I’m too damned sentimental. I know that and you know it, Louise. It hits me the wrong way. And two hours of sitting here in the office, doing nothing but moping and batting this letter off to you hasn’t pulled me out of the blue dumps.
Let me hear from you — fast. Please, I feel awful.
Boone, Ill.
Early Thursday A.M.
Dear Louise:
Baby, I’ve been places and had my eyes opened!
As you can easily guess from that, things are beginning to pop. I’ve been to Chicago and back, I’ve just paid a very informative visit to our county jail, I’ve been picked up by another girl in a coupe—
But wait a moment; if I keep on like this I shall succeed in only confusing you. For clarity’s sake, perhaps I had better start yesterday afternoon before I caught the Chicago train. Bear with me, this might be rather long-winded.
The inquest into the death of Harry W. Evans had gone as I’d predicted and the pronouncement meant nothing at all. I immediately called the Croyden attorney to point out my honors as a prophet, but he had commented nothing at all. A second telephone call to the boys’ agency in Croyden had found Rothman in, but he knew nothing at all. He promised to wire if anything turned up; he said Liebscher was out scouting around.
By midaftemoon Boone was giving me a gorgeous case of the jitters. And over nothing at all. That’s what rankled: there was nothing stirring. I had been in and out of Thompson’s so often Judy was giving me the suspicious eye. The colored porter audibly made remarks about my tracking in the snow.
The upshot of it was a clean shirt and a pair of sox stuffed into my traveling bag and a quick trip to the railroad station. The station was jammed. The Illinois Central man behind the ticket agent’s window was wearing a pained expression even before I asked about getting a ticket. He pointed out in rather helpless tones that apparently everyone in Boone and their grandmother was trying to get to Chicago that afternoon, and what in the hell was going on, anyway?
I paid for that ride! The train was a local, one of those milk-and-mail casuals that stopped at every wayside station it happened across; if none were to be found the engineer imagined he saw one and stopped anyway. If I didn’t know better, I’d be willing to swear the train crew often climbed down and helped the farmers with the milking.
I never succeeded in getting a seat, but a woman with five children — the lot of them occupying two adjoining seats — allowed me to sit on the arm of the seat which held three of the kids. All of the kids were sucking noisily on large chocolate suckers. My suit is going to the dry cleaners as soon as I can get out of it.
It required four hours and forty-five minutes for that train to reach Chicago, which is a record the road may be proud of: Boone being only a hundred and sixty-odd miles south of it.
In the LaSalle Street station I sought out the Travelers’ Aid booth and told the girl the address I wanted to find. She dug out from racks beneath the counter a huge map of Chicago and turned it around to me. She read it upside down.
“Go right outside and take the elevated,” she rattled rapidly. “Out that door. Get a Loomis train and ask for a transfer. Ride all the way to the end of the line. A half-block north, get a 63rd streetcar going west. Watch for Sacramento, it’s just past the third traffic signal. Two or three miles, maybe four.”
And she folded up the map and put it away, mildly surprised to find me still standing there.
I said thanks and walked out “that door.”
