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something important I need to tell you before you head out to school.
 Watch our manners. Always pay attention in class, even if the teacher s
boring. Lead with our left if it ever comes to a fight in the school
yard. Jannie offered with a wink.
I rolled my eyes.  What I was going to say, 1 said,  is that you should be
especially nice to Ms. Johnson today. You see, last night, Christine said that
she d marry me. I guess that means she s marrying all of us.
At that point, everything became hugging and loud celebrating in the
kitchen. The kids got chocolate milk and bacon grease all over me. I d never
seen Nana happier. And I felt exactly the same. Probably even better than they
did.
I eventually made it to work that morning. I had made some progress on the
John Doe homicide, and early on Tuesday morning I learned that the man whose
body had been dumped on Alabama Avenue was a thirty-four-year-old research
analyst named Franklin Odenkirk. He worked at the Library of Congress for the
Congressional Research Service.
We didn t release the news to the press, but I did inform Chief Pittman s
office as soon as I knew. Pittman would find out anyway.
Once I had a name for the victim, information came quickly and, as it usually
is, it was sad. Odenkirk was married and had three small children. He had
taken a late flight back from New York that evening, where he d given a talk
at the Rockefeller Institute. The plane landed on time and he deboarded at
National around ten. What happened to him after that was a mystery.
For the remainder of Thursday and Friday, I was busy with the murder case. I
visited the Library of Congress, and went to the newest structure, the James
Madison Building, on Independence Avenue. I talked to nearly a dozen of Frank
Odenkirk s coworkers.
They were courteous and cooperative and I was told repeatedly that Odenkirk,
while haughty at times, was generally well-liked. He wasn t known to use drugs
or drink to excess; wasn t known to gamble either. He was faithful to his
wife. He hadn t been involved in a serious argument at the office for as long
as he d been there.
He was with the Education and Public Welfare Division and spent long days in
the spectacular Main Reading Room. There was no apparent motive for his
murder, which was what I feared. The killing roughly paralleled the Jane Does
so far, but of course the chief of detectives didn t want to hear it. There
was no Jane Doe killer, according to him. Why? Because he didn t want to
shift dozens of detectives to Southeast and begin an extensive investigation
on the basis of my instincts and gut feelings. I had heard Pittman joke that
Southeast wasn t part of his city.
Before I left the Madison Building I was compelled to stop and see the Main
Reading Room once again. It was newly renovated and I hadn t been there since
the work had been done.
I sat at a reader s table and stared up at the amazing dome high over my
head. Around the room were stained-glass representations of the seals of
forty-eight states; also bronze statues of figures, including Michelangelo,
Plato, Shakespeare, Edward Gibbon, and Homer. I could imagine poor Frank
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Odenkirk doing his work here, and it bothered me. Why had he been killed? Had
it been the Weasel?
The death was a terrible shock to everyone who had worked with him, and a
couple of Odenkirk s coworkers broke down while talking to me about his
murder.
I wasn t looking forward to interviewing Mrs. Odenkirk, but I drove out 295
and 210 to Forest Heights late on Friday afternoon. Chris Odenkirk was home
with her mother, and also her husband s parents, who had flown in from
Briarcliff Manor in Westchester County, New York. They told me the same story
as the people at the Library of Congress. No one in the family knew of anyone
who might want to harm Frank. He was a loving father, a supportive husband, a
thoughtful son and son-in-law.
At the Odenkirk home, I learned that the deceased had been wearing a green
seersucker suit when he left home, his business meeting in New York had run
over, and he was nearly two hours late getting to LaGuardia Airport. He
generally took a cab home from the airport in Washington because so many
flights arrived late.
Even before I went to the house in Forest Heights I had two detectives sent
out to the airport. They showed around pictures of Odenkirk, interviewed
airline personnel, shopworkers, porters, taxi dispatchers, and cabdrivers.
Around six I went over to the medical examiner s office to hear the results
of the autopsy. All the photos and sketches from the crime scene were laid
out. The autopsy had run about two and a half hours. Every cavity of Frank
Odenkirk s body had been swabbed and scraped and his brain had been removed.
I talked to the medical examiner while she finished up with Odenkirk at about
six thirty. Her name was Angelina Torres, and I d known her for years. We had
both started in our jobs at about the same time. Angelina was a tick under
five feet and probably weighed around ninety pounds soaking wet.
 Long day, Alex? she asked.  You look used and abused. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]