Chapter 4

July 23, 1996

Late Tuesday morning

"You're too young to remember, but in the fifties there were a lot of really trashy newspapers and magazines. Far worse than what you see at the grocery store today. They'd run stories about Vera every so often. A lot in the fifties and then less and less. It was always a little frightening, worrying that they'd mention Patrick. That one of them might decide he was the one who'd killed her."

"Your brother never married?"

"Oh no, there was no one but Vera. He was too heartbroken. I tried to fix him up with one of my girlfriends once, nice girl, divorced only one kid, but he was mortified. Couldn't face the idea. It's so romantic, don't you think?"

I wasn't sure I agreed but decided to say "Yes," since disagreeing with her seemed a bad idea. I did wonder if it was possible he had killed Vera. If he regretted it that would explain why he never married. Ronnie's theory aside.

And then we were in the small parking lot for Our Lady of Angels Care Home. It looked like a country club. The architecture was Spanish, in the same vein as the co-op Ronnie and I just bought. Except, well, it was a whole lot nicer. Perfectly maintained. Even before I walked inside, I was thinking the place must cost a fortune.

Sheila lit an unfiltered cigarette the minute we got out of the truck. We walked over to the steps and paused while she smoked. At one point she picked a piece of tobacco off her lip like an old-fashioned movie star.

"This place looks pretty pricey," I said.

"Patrick had some investments, certainly. The boys set up a trust and we moved those over and then sold the house. Patrick can live to a hundred and ten if he wants. Of course, he won't. Which I suppose is a blessing."

Sheila stomped out her cigarette, and we walked up the steps and into the lobby. The lobby was large and had a half dozen empty sofas for patients and visitors to sit on—though it looked like no one ever sat there. We stopped at the reception desk and signed in. We walked across the lobby and into a hallway that seemed to have patient rooms on either side.

At the end of the hallway was a large dining room with tables covered in white tablecloths. It was about a quarter full of patients eating their lunches. We turned a corner and walked down another hallway with rooms on either side. Halfway down Sheila stopped and opened a door.

"Patrick, darling, it's Sheila. I've brought a friend with me."

We stepped into the room. It was quite large with a full-sized hospital bed. Something I wasn't sure I'd ever seen before. There was a small table with a couple of chairs, a dresser big enough to hold a new nineteen-inch Sony Trinitron on top. The TV was on, playing a soap opera. There was a reclining chair in which a very old man sat. He had very little hair left, and his scalp was a shocking pink with a couple of scabs in the front. His eyes were rheumy and his lips slack.

In front of him was one of those hospital-style trays on wheels. It held his lunch tray; he hadn't touched it. He seemed to be focusing all his attention on understanding the soap opera on the TV.

"Patrick, say hello to my friend Dominick Reilly."

He looked up just a bit and asked, "Who are you?" It took me a moment to realize the question was directed at his sister.

"It's me, Sheila, your sister."

"No," he said simply.

"Patrick don't be like that. You know it's me."

"No."

To me she said, "He gets like this. I'm never sure if he's forgotten me completely or if he's just being stubborn. Patrick, Mr. Reilly wants to ask you a few questions about Vera."

"Vera. I killed Vera."

"No, dear, you couldn't poss?—"

I held up my hand to stop her, then said, "Patrick, can you tell me about killing Vera?"

Sheila gasped. She must have been worried he'd launch into some macabre, detailed account of killing the poor girl. It was such an obvious question I wondered why no one had asked it.

"I killed her."

"Can you tell me more than that?"

"We went to Malibu."

"It happened in Malibu?"

"Ocean. Beach. Bathing suits."

"You went to Malibu with Vera?"

"No."

I glanced at Sheila. She shrugged. I decided to change directions.

"How did you meet Vera?"

He struggled. He seemed to be digging around in his mind for an answer. Finally, he said, "Dancing."

"Do you remember when that was?"

"Hot."

"Summer. What year was it?"

That was met with silence.

"Do you remember what car you were driving?"

"Cadillac convertible. Ivan's."

"Who's Ivan?"

"Ivan."

I looked again at Sheila. She was frowning. "Ivan was a friend of his from when he was younger. He mentions him from time to time."

"Ivan was there the night you met Vera?"

"Doris Day."

Sheila shrugged. "It's always like this."

Patrick said, "‘Buttons and Bows'."

"Ah. That's what you were dancing to?"

He closed his eyes and looked like he was remembering something important.

"What are you thinking about, Patrick?"

His eyes sprung open. He seemed angry I'd interrupted him. "Who are you?" he asked. This time it was directed to me.

"You can call me Dom. I'm trying to find out what happened to Vera Korenko."

"I killed her," he said, as though that was apparent.

Sheila sighed, frustrated and upset. "I'm going to step out for another cigarette. I'll be on the front steps when you're finished." She kissed Patrick on his forehead, saying, "Goodbye Patrick. I'll be back soon."

I waited until she left the room, then I said, "You haven't touched your lunch."

He gave his lunch the raspberry. It looked like meatloaf with gravy, mashed potatoes and green beans. On the side was a Jell-O cup and a tiny milk carton. His review might be deserved.

"Do you like Mexican?"

His eyes lit up.

"If I come again, I'll bring you tacos."

"Come back."

He stared at me for a long moment. For a moment I felt like he really saw me, though I wasn't sure what he saw. He licked his lips.

"I want Ivan. Where is he?"

"I'm sorry, I don't know."

That made me wonder if Ronnie's gaydar had been on point. And if he and Ivan were lovers, well, what would that have to do with Vera's death? And Patrick thinking he was the one who killed her?

Now he was looking at the television again. It was obvious he couldn't follow whichever soap opera it was. Honestly, I wasn't sure I could. I decided I'd gotten as far as I could. Which was not very far. I tried one more question. "Patrick, how did you kill Vera?"

That seemed to confuse him. Then he said, "It was my fault."

And there it was. Something a little bit different. It was his fault Vera was dead. He killed her. But did he murder her? Or did he just feel responsible for her death?

"Why was it your fault?"

"I killed Vera."

"But you didn't. You just said it was your fault. That's different."

"I did it. I killed her."

"It was your fault. But you didn't actually kill her, did you?"

More confusion.

"Who actually killed her?"

He flinched, as though I might hit him, and said, "Me. It was me."

I thought about asking more questions but, honestly, I wasn't getting anywhere. I said good-bye and left the room.

Working my way back to the lobby, I found Sheila standing near the receptionist's desk with a short, wide woman holding a clipboard. Sheila was a bit red in the face. She was saying, "I don't know what I can do about it. He barely knows who I am. I don't think I can influence his behavior." She glanced at me and said to the woman, "Mrs. Carper, this is Dominick Reilly."

"Hello," she said.

"Apparently, Patrick has been touching the nurses inappropriately. They want us to do something about it, but… he doesn't listen to me. I don't know what I'd say if he could understand what I was saying. Do you think if a man said something…"

It took me a moment to realize she meant me. "Oh." I thought about it, I didn't really want to walk all the way back there. Then I had a hunch. To Sheila I said, "Do you mind if speak with Mrs. Carper alone?"

"Please. I'll be outside." She walked away.

"So, Mrs. Carper, can you tell me, are we talking about the female nurses or the male?"

She blushed. "The male nurses. I didn't want to say that to Mrs. Karpinski. Not directly."

"No, that's fine. Are they really upset or are they just reporting what happens?"

"They have to report it. We have rules about such things."

"When does it happen? What time of day?"

"Around dinner mostly, I think. The three to eleven shift."

"I've only spoken to Patrick once. I think Mrs. Karpinski is right. I don't think anyone can say something that will get through to him. But… I'll talk to the family and see if they can't think of something to balance things out."

"I don't know what you mean by that."

"I'm not sure I know either. Let me work on it, though." I walked away and out of the building.

Outside, Sheila was just putting out another cigarette. "What did she say?"

"Not much really. If I were you, I'd try sending a nice basket every few weeks: muffins, candies, one of those fruit bouquets. Put in a card about how much your family appreciates them caring for your brother. Make sure it's delivered in the evening. That'll probably take care of it."

"Are you sure?"

"They want your brother's money. They'll smooth it over," I said, just as something else occurred to me. "You sold his house; did you get rid of all his things?"

"I haven't had the heart to go through it all. The boys had it put into storage."

"Do you think I could look through it?"

"Certainly. What would you be looking for?"

"I don't know. But if there's something to find it will probably be there."

On the drive home, I said to Sheila, "While you were out of the room, your brother said, ‘It was my fault.' That makes me think that when he says he killed Vera it's more that his actions may have led to her death. But he didn't murder her."

"Yes, he's said things like that before."

"You don't think he killed that girl, do you?"

"No, of course not."

"Then what do need from me?"

"I need to know what to say to him. You saw him. I need to be able to say, you didn't kill Vera. This person killed Vera."

"You realize you could just lie? Just pick a name and say that's the killer."

"I'm not sure he doesn't know who the killer really is, though. That's why he's saying it's his fault. I think somehow he sent her to her death."

A little more than an hour later I was sitting down to lunch with a book. Well, sitting down in my Jeep with chicken tacos from Poquito Mas and Canyon Girl propped on the steering wheel with the engine running and the air conditioner going full blast.

The first chapter of the book covered the discovery of Vera Korenko's body and details from the autopsy. Her hyoid bone was broken, which often happens during a strangling. Her cheek bone, her jaw and two vertebrae in her neck were also fractured, a severe beating. Had she lived through that she'd have had a long, painful road to recovery.

Halfway through the tacos, I set the book aside. Taking a long gulp of Coke, I worried about whether I should continue with this. It was interesting enough, certainly. But could I give the Karpinskis what they wanted? They wanted me to find out who killed Very Korenko. Despite all the interest in the case, no one had solved it in nearly fifty years. Let's face it, I was unlikely to find the killer.

Then again, I shouldn't quit on the first day. They wouldn't be satisfied by that. I should wait until I was sure Patrick didn't do it. Rather, when I could prove he didn't do it. They were probably going to have to be satisfied with that. As I took my last few bites of taco, I opened the book back up.

Toward the end of the first chapter, it talked about the fact that Vera had been raped. They knew this because they found semen inside of her. That stopped me. Would they have kept it in 1949? Would we be able to test it now? I knew that semen used to be tested to tell what blood type the rapist had, which meant it really only worked to exclude suspects. Did they do that in 1949? And did that mean they kept the semen? Where was it? And could it be tested again? Then I remembered I'd seen that they'd gotten DNA from dinosaur bones, so fifty-year-old semen had to be a snap—right?

I let the idea drift to the back of my mind and continued the book. The second chapter went back to Vera's birth and told the story of her parents arriving in 1912 from the Czech speaking part of Austria-Hungry. There was no Czechoslovakia until after World War I. Philburn noted the family said they were from Czechoslovakia after 1918. Again, this suggested Philburn having contact with Vera's family. They settled for a while in Chicago and Vera was born in 1924. I remembered something Sheila had just said to me, that Vera barely had an accent. But she was born in Chicago, she wouldn't have a Czech accent. Even if she'd grown up speaking Czech, she wouldn't have an accent. Bilingual kids rarely did.

When Vera was a girl her father drove an ice truck—which he continued to do through the Second World War, while her mother took in laundry. She didn't do well in school and was considered ‘boy crazy' in high school. That's when it hit me that Vera was only a few years older than Sheila. She was twenty-five when she was killed, so she'd have been twenty-three or four when she became engaged to Patrick Gill. He was eight years older. Early thirties. Then I wondered, Did Vera know he was gay? Probably not. It wasn't talked about the way it was now. People wouldn't have thought it was possible. He wouldn't have been the first gay man to become involved with an unsuspecting young woman.

"Tempted by the glitter of tinseltown, Vera came West at seventeen to take her chances with stardom."

The book was certainly cheesy. Sheila had said it wasn't exactly true, so I took this with a grain of salt. Either Vera did want to be an actress or it made a better story. It could have been that she just hated snow, but that was hardly dramatic.

Once she got to Los Angeles, she quickly got a job at a munitions factory producing ammunition for the war effort. She was clever and a good typist, so she spent most of the war as a secretary to the company's president. After the war she found work at Security First National Bank and worked in their Hollywood office.

I'd finished eating so it was time to drive home. There would be just enough of the afternoon left to go into the office and help Karen pull together everything we needed for the Anne Michaels deposition. We'd make copies of her testimony from the original trial, my notes from the interviews I'd done with her, my suggested questions along with Lydia's, and finally a statement we'd taken from Larry himself covering the important details of their relationship in 1976.

As I was driving home, I got out the cellular phone Ronnie insisted I carry—mainly, I think, because that gave him a better deal on his—and called him.

"Hey," I said when he picked up.

"Where are you?"

"On the 710. Your gaydar was right. Patrick Gill is gay."

"I won the bet. Yay! What did I win?"

"I never actually took that bet. You didn't win anything."

"Bummer. How did you find out he's gay?"

"He's been making passes at the male nurses."

"Ick. Isn't he like, eighty?"

"Careful. You're in love with an old man. Remember?"

"It's different. When you're disgusting and eighty, I'll be disgusting and sixty-four. It evens out."

I wasn"t sure it would work out that way, but I figured I"d let him think what he wanted.

"Anyway, I'm wondering if you can take Thursday off?"

"How come?"

"All this guy's stuff is in a couple of storage facilities, and I could use some help looking through it all."

"A treasure hunt? That's fabulous. I'm in!"