“My daughter-in-law is home.”

“Detective,” Louis said, “I think you want to tell me something.”

“You’d better leave now, Mr. Kincaid.”

Louis stood up. “Okay, I get it. You got a lot of uniforms looking up to you. Maybe you don’t want your name brought up in this mess. I can understand that. But don’t leave me hanging on this. Jack Cade was convicted of killing Kitty Jagger. And this whole damn town is about to convict him for another murder.”

Ahnert looked suddenly very tired. Louis drew in a breath, angry at himself for getting angry.

“Detective, please,” Louis said.

Ahnert pursed his lips, then nodded. “There are two things in the file you should look at.”

“I don’t have the time to keep going through a file looking-”

Ahnert’s hard blue eyes silenced him. “You have more time than I had, Kincaid.”

Louis took a breath, forcing himself to calm down. “Okay, what about the file?”

Ahnert hesitated. “There is something in there that should make you ask why is this here? And the other is something that should be there, but isn’t.”

Louis felt his anger rising again. “Come on, man, don’t pull this Deep Throat act with me.”

The front door opened. A moment later, a woman appeared at the door of the den, her arms filled with grocery bags. Her eyes went from Louis to Ahnert and she smiled.

“Hey Dad, I see you got a visitor,” she said.

“Yeah, but he’s just leaving,” Ahnert said. “Let me help you with those, Brenda.”

“There’s more in the car,” she said, heading off to the kitchen.

Ahnert went out the front door. Louis followed him out to the station wagon in the driveway. As Ahnert was about to reach in for a bag, Louis grabbed his arm.

“Give me something real, someone to talk to,” Louis said.

“Talk to Kitty,” Ahnert said.

“Come on, Detective.”

“That’s all I’m saying,” Ahnert said. “Talk to Kitty.”

Louis let go of Ahnert’s arm. He thought of the sign outside Vince Carissimi’s autopsy room: Mortui Vivos Docent. The dead teach the living.

“What, the autopsy report?” he asked.

“Talk to Kitty,” Ahnert repeated. “But be careful.”

“Of what?”

Ahnert hoisted a bag of groceries up into his arms. “That you don’t start hearing Kitty talking back to you.”

Chapter Fifteen

The beeper went off. Louis grabbed it off his belt and tossed it on the passenger seat. He knew without looking that it was Susan again. He would eventually have to break down and call her. But not now.

Now he wanted to calm the demons that had been swirling around in his brain since leaving Bob Ahnert’s house, and he didn’t want Susan yanking on his chain trying to reel him back to the Duvall case, deal or no deal.

Talk to Kitty. Okay, he would go back and look at the autopsy report again. But he knew Ahnert meant more than that. Ahnert knew what every detective knew: Walk in the dead person’s shoes and you’ll find the killer.

So now he was on his way to find Kitty Jagger’s home. And her father-if he was still alive.

It didn’t take Louis long to find Edgewood Heights. It was north of downtown, an old neighborhood of small homes with the cookie-cutter, slapdash look of the Levittown boxes that had sprung up in the ’50s. It might have been a nice neighborhood in its day, populated by young couples just starting out. But now most of the homes needed work and had iron bars on the windows and rusted trucks in the drives. Louis suspected it had probably looked much the same when Kitty lived here.

Louis pulled up in front of 5446 Balboa. The house was a small rectangle, a faded gray that had probably been blue once. There were empty flower boxes under the plain windows. As he went up the cracked sidewalk, Louis noticed the overgrown shrubs and bare flowerbeds, the brick edgers scattered in the dirt. A sun-bleached plastic flamingo lay by the front door.

He knocked. He was about to give up when he heard the lock turn. The door opened and an old man squinted in the sunlight.

“Yeah?”

Louis knew from the police reports that Willard Jagger had been only forty-five when Kitty was murdered. This guy looked at least eighty.

“Mr. Jagger?” Louis asked.

The man retreated behind the door. “What you want?”

“My name is Louis Kincaid. I’m an investigator and I’d like to talk to you about your daughter.”

“Daughter? Ain’t got no daughter.”

“You’re Willard Jagger, Kitty Jagger’s father?” Louis asked.

Something passed over the man’s face. “Kitty?” he said. “You’re here about Kitty? Something happened to Kitty?”

Louis hesitated. The guy was really confused, or sick maybe.

“Mr. Jagger, may I come in?” Louis asked gently.

Willard Jagger’s milky blue eyes were searching Louis’s face, like he was desperately trying to recognize him. He started to close the door. But Louis realized he was just unhooking a chain. The door swung open. Louis went in.

Willard Jagger was standing in the middle of a small living room, looking back at Louis. He was wearing old baggy pants, a short-sleeved sports shirt and beat-up slippers.

“I’m sorry. I get mixed up sometimes,” he said. He rubbed his stringy gray hair vigorously, his eyes moving around the room and coming back to Louis.

“Who’d you say you were again?”

“Louis Kincaid. I’m a private investigator.”

“Like Mannix? Don’t care for that show too much. Too much violence. .”

Louis wasn’t sure how to handle this. It was clear Williard Jagger wasn’t well.

“Can I get you an apple juice?” Willard said suddenly.

Before Louis could say no, Willard shuffled off to the kitchen. Louis sat down on the worn sofa, letting his gaze travel around the living room while he waited for Willard to come back.

The furniture was old Danish modern, the cushions a threadbare turquoise, the drapes a pattern of orange and turquoise squiggles. The carpet was worn orange shag, and a turquoise vinyl Barcalounger sat in one corner, guarded by a goosenecked floor lamp that looked like something out of The Jetsons. Over the sofa hung a large fake oil painting of Venice and every surface was covered with little ceramic dogs. There was an old blond Zenith console TV, a stack of albums resting against its side. Off in one corner, a large rotating fan sent the stale air swirling around Louis’s ankles.

The room wasn’t dirty. But it felt like it was, like it hadn’t been opened to sunlight in years.

Willard returned empty-handed. “I’m out,” he said.

“That’s okay,” Louis said.

Willard looked upset, but he settled into the Barcalounger across from Louis.

“Could we talk about your daughter, Mr. Jagger?”

“My daughter?”

“Kitty. . can we talk about Kitty?”

Willard’s eyes were wandering around the room. “The home care lady comes once a week. On Fridays. I’ll have to tell her to get apple juice. The fella who brings me the box food, he never remembers the apple juice.” He was sitting rod-straight in the lounger, eyes on the dead TV, hands tapping lightly on the armrests.

The fan whirred, stirring the fetid air.

Louis hung his head. He wasn’t going to get anything out of this. He was about to get up when Willard spoke again.

“Kitty. .”

Louis looked up at Willard.

“She didn’t call,” he said. “She always called when she was going to be late. But she didn’t call.”

Louis leaned forward. “She was working at the drive-in that night,” he said gently.

Willard nodded. “Took the bus. She gets it right at the corner of McGregor and Linhart. Leaves her off at Evans Street. Only three block walk from there. She always took the bus. The number five down MacGregor. Only three blocks. .”

“Maybe she went out with friends that night after work?” Louis prodded.

Willard shook his head. “She always called.”