Two reporters were sitting at the machines, twisting the controls, staring into the viewers, jotting on notepads beside them.
Chase said, “Do you get many outsiders here?”
“A newspaper morgue is chiefly for the use of the staff. But we keep it open to the public without charge. We get maybe a dozen people a week.”
“What are outsiders looking for here?”
“What are you looking for?” she asked.
He hesitated, then gave her the same story that he had first given Mrs. Onufer at the Metropolitan Bureau of Vital Statistics. “I’m gathering facts for a family history.”
“That’s what most outsiders come here for. Personally, I haven’t the least bit of curiosity about dead relatives. I don’t even like the living relatives very much.”
He laughed, surprised to discover acidic humor in someone so gentle-looking and so soft-spoken. She was a study in contrasts. “No sense of pride in your lineage?”
“None,” she said. “It’s more mutt than thoroughbred.”
“Nothing wrong with that.”
“Go back far enough in my family tree,” she said, “and I bet you’ll find some ancestors hanging from the limbs by their necks.”
“Descended from horse thieves, huh?”
“At best.”
Chase was more at ease with her than he had been in the presence of any woman since Jules Verne, the underground operation in Nam. But when it came to small talk, he was long out of practice, and as much as he would have liked to make a stronger connection with her, he was unable to think of anything to say except: “Well … do I have to sign anything to use the files?”
“No. But I have to get everything for you, and you have to return it to me before you leave. What do you need?”
Chase had come there not to conduct research but only to ask about any outsiders who had used the morgue this past Tuesday, but no convenient cover story came to mind. He could not spin the same tale that he’d used with Mrs. Onufer, the lie about the nosy reporter – not here of all places.
Furthermore, though he had been prepared to make up any story that circumstances seemed to require, he discovered that he didn’t want to lie to this woman. Her blue-gray eyes were direct, and in them he saw a forthrightness and honesty that he was compelled to respect.
On the other hand, if he told her the truth about Judge and the attempt on his life, and if she didn’t believe him, he would feel like a prize ass. Oddly enough, although he had only just met her, he didn’t want to embarrass himself in front of her.
Besides, one of the reporters working in the morgue might overhear too much. Then Chase’s picture would be on the front page again. They might treat the story either straight or tongue-in-cheek (probably the latter, if they talked to the police), but either way the publicity would be an intolerable development.
“Sir?” Glenda said. “How can I help you? What editions would you like to see first?”
Before Chase could respond, a reporter at one of the microfilm machines looked up from his work. “Glenda, dear, could I have all the dailies between May fifteenth, 1952, and September that same year?”
“In a moment. This gentleman was first.”
“That’s okay,” Chase said, grasping the opportunity. “I’ve got plenty of time.”
“You sure?” she asked.
“Yeah. Get him what he needs.”
“I’ll be back in five minutes,” she said.
As she walked the length of the small room and through the wide arch into the filing room, both Chase and the reporter watched her. She was tall but not awkward, moving with a feline grace that actually made her seem fragile.
When she had gone, the reporter said, “Thanks for waiting.”
“Sure.”
“I’ve got an eleven o’clock deadline on this piece, and I haven’t even begun to get my sources together.” He turned back to his viewer, so engrossed in his work that he apparently had not recognized Chase.
Chase returned to his Mustang, opened his notebook, and studied his list, but he had absolutely nothing to add to it, and he could not see any pertinent connections between the familiar eight items. He closed the book, started the car, and drove out into the traffic on John F. Kennedy Throughway.