Page 15 of The Happy Month
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 willprobably 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 andCanyon Girlpropped 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? Theywanted 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 couldprovehe 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.
