I kept searching. I came across a set of O’Connor’s notebooks I hadn’t seen before. They ranged over a number of years. I smiled to myself. If I had seen them in 1978, I probably wouldn’t have known enough of his shorthand and code to figure them out. I glanced through the first few and saw that they were devoted to one story: the events connected to that night in January 1958.

They began not with Corrigan’s beating, as I had thought they might, but with O’Connor meeting Dan Norton at the home of Katy and Todd Ducane. His notes brought to mind the day we had toured the house with Max, and I wondered if Lillian still kept it as a museum.

I glanced at my watch and decided I needed to get my ass back to the paper. I’d have to live with Ethan and his gloating over the Harmon story, with Lydia and her anger. I had work to do.

I fed the dogs and Cody and hurried out. Overhead, gray clouds thickened, and darkened the sky. I went back in and grabbed an umbrella.

As I drove, O’Connor’s voice echoed in my thoughts. I missed that old man as much as I missed my own father. Perhaps because of Ethan’s story, a memory came to me-of the night he told me about his missing sister.

I slowed the car a little, but kept driving.

By the time I reached the paper, rain was falling. I hurried inside.

My plans were twofold: to spend some time reading up on the Ducanes, and to look back at the articles O’Connor wrote about Harmon.

The presses were already running, sending their pulse through the building. As I climbed the stairs, I half-hoped Lydia would be gone for the day, then decided that was not only extremely unlikely, but showed a sad lack of courage on my part.

When I got up to the newsroom, she was arranging furniture, helping Ethan move his desk nearer to her own. She saw me right away. She ignored me after that.

I went down to the morgue, as much to get away from the newsroom again as to do some homework. Hailey was there, but she was focused so intently on whatever she was reading, I didn’t disturb her. The rumble of the presses was a little louder here. I found it soothing.

I asked the librarian to get microfilm for specific dates in 1936, 1958, and1978.

“The 1978 reels-I’ve got them right here. Haven’t had a chance to file them again.”

“Again?”

He sighed. “That asshole Ethan-you know him?”

“Yes.”

“He’s in here looking through back issues all the time. Pesters the hell out of me.”

“He was probably doing background work on the Harmon story.”

The librarian shrugged. “Maybe. Seems to be an old news epidemic. Hailey has the reels for 1936 over there,” he said.

Hailey looked up at that, apparently only then noticing my presence. “I’m working on the story about Helen Swan,” she said. “I’ve already called her to set up a time for an interview. I’m going over to her house on Monday night.”

“Good. She was married to Jack Corrigan, you know. She used to teach journalism at the university.”

She knew nothing of her, I realized, other than what she had just read- but at least she already had an admiration for Helen from the stories she found in the old issues of the News. I gave her a quick rundown of the News Express staff, at least what I knew of it. “I didn’t get to know many of the people who worked here before I came to the paper in 1978,” I said.

“What happened to Wildman?” she asked.

“Killed in a car accident,” I said. “He was drunk. Family in the other car didn’t make it, either.”

“That really sucks.”

“Yes.”

She let me have the reels for April 1936, near the date of O’Connor’s childhood story “What I Saw in the Court.” I looked back a few weeks before the beginning of his first diary and came forward. It didn’t take long to find it, big and bold across the front page. An A-1 headline, as befit a story written by Jack Corrigan, the star reporter of the Express. I imagined an eight-year-old Irish kid shouting the headline from a street corner:

YEAGER BROTHER TRIAL BEGINS TODAY

58

THE STORY TOLD OF THE OPENING OF THE TRIAL OF MITCHELL YEAGER, the twenty-one-year-old brother of Adam Yeager, who had been convicted earlier that year of receiving stolen goods, the biggest charge local officials seemed to be able to bring against him. He was currently serving time, it said, in San Quentin. Mitch Yeager had been arrested on a bribery charge in connection with his brother’s arrest. Apparently, he had made his offer to the wrong official. Corrigan also noted that the defense in Mitch Yeager’s trial had asked for a continuance, due to the illness of the defendant’s brother. The motion was denied.

Illness. I had imagined a prison fight or escape attempt.

I watched for mention of Adam’s death as I scrolled on, and kept reading. I wasn’t surprised to see that Mitch Yeager’s first trial was declared a mistrial, given what I had read of O’Connor’s account of what he had seen in the courtroom. Yeager, who had previously been granted bail, had his bail revoked and was taken into custody pending a trial on charges of jury tampering. A new trial on the bribery charges was also ordered by the judge.

I learned from Corrigan’s accounts that the charges of jury tampering were later dismissed. No one could prove that Yeager had ordered a man everyone knew to be his lackey to intimidate the juror. Deep in the story, in a last paragraph more than a page in, Corrigan noted that Adam Yeager, the defendant’s brother, had recently died of tuberculosis. I was surprised, and wondered if there had been other complications or if he had been denied treatment.

I used a terminal in the morgue and looked up the history of tuberculosis treatment on the Internet. Effective anti-TB drugs were not in use until after 1944. Adam Yeager became ill eight years too soon.

The second bribery trial resulted in a conviction, but the conviction was later overturned. Mitch Yeager was free.

The large and sympathetic-to Yeager-article on the overturning of the conviction was not written by Jack Corrigan. I didn’t recognize the name of the reporter. The story seemed to go out of its way to quote Yeager on his own innocence. I noted the dates so that I could cross-check the story in the News.

I asked Hailey if she’d like to help me out with some stories about old crimes that might be solved thanks to DNA technologies, and she jumped at the chance.

“Here’s the deal,” I said. “First, I’ve got to clear it with John and Lydia. Second, you have to promise me you’ll keep your files and notes secure- especially from Ethan.” We talked for a while about how she could do that- codes, using paper instead of the computer when possible, frequently changing passwords, clearing her Web browser’s history files, keeping her notes with her-I think the espionage aspects interested her more than the story itself.

I reviewed the stories from 1958, distracted by memories of looking at these same reels in 1978, and working with O’Connor.

At ten o’clock, the librarian wanted to lock up, and I decided to call it a day. Hailey had left some time before.

I thought I’d make another stab at patching things up with Lydia. She was gone, as was almost everyone else. The paper had obviously gone to bed. Only a handful of people were still around. John Walters was one of them. He had just come back from the press room, where he had been checking the “firstoffs”-the first papers off the press. “Got a minute?” I asked him.

“To settle a catfight? Hell, no.”

“Since no one asked you to do that, no need to let the very thought of women disagreeing cause you to pucker up.”

“Okay, what’s the problem, then?”

I looked over my shoulder at the four or five people still in the newsroom, all of them pretending too hard to be busy with things that kept them within earshot. “How about holding this discussion in your office?”