Regarding Anna by Florence Osmund Read Free Book Online Page B

all the documents for my case separated into nice neat piles. But one of the photographs—the one of the woman sitting in a rocking chair holding a baby—was out of place. And it wasn’t as though I might have brushed up against the table or something and it had moved a few inches. Someone had tampered with it.
    I examined all the other evidence, and nothing else seemed out of place.
    On the way back to my office, I heard the door tinkle and found a young boy, maybe twelve or thirteen, standing in front of the reception desk.
    “May I help you?”
    “I’m here to see Mr. Berghorn.”
    “Here’s not here at the moment. Was he expecting you?”
    “No. We just took a chance he’d be here.”
    “May I take a message for him?”
    “No. Well, yes. We live next door to him, and my parents sent me in here to tell him there was a...a thing that happened in his backyard today.”
    “What sort of thing?”
    “Uh, this mean old dog was loose, and he bit three kids, and Animal Control came out and shot it. In Mr. Berghorn’s backyard. Close to his back porch. And my parents didn’t want him to go ape or anything when he came home and saw a mess of blood.”
    “How awful.” I had been curious about where Elmer lived but had never had an opportunity to ask him. “Where do you live?”
    “In the Austin neighborhood. Across from Levin Park.”
    That’s where I grew up. “Really? What street are you on?”
    “Ferdinand. On the corner. I gotta go. My parents are waitin’ in the car. Thanks, lady.”
    I pictured my old house, the second one from the corner of Ferdinand and Long Avenue, directly across the street from Levin Park. I wished I could have talked to that boy longer.
    I went back to working on Shady Lane. An hour later, Elmer returned and poked his head in my office. I told him about the conversation I’d had with his neighbor. Then I mentioned that I used to live in his neighborhood. His demeanor puzzled me—the longer I talked, the paler he got.
    “Are you all right?” I asked him. “That wasn’t your dog, was it?”
    “No,” he said. He turned and headed for his office. I got up and followed him.
    “The boy said you live across from Levin Park.”
    “It’s not really across from the park. It’s down a ways.”
    “Really? What’s your address? I grew up on that street.”
    He was sitting in his chair now, reaching for the pack of Marlboros on his desk. “I’m in the...5600 block.”
    “No kidding. I lived at 5405.”
    “Small world. Anything else?” he asked.
    “No, that was—”
    “Good. Could you close my door on your way out?”
    “Elmer?”
    “What is it?” The edge to his tone rubbed me the wrong way. Don’t take it out on me, fella. I’m not the one who got blood on your house.
    “May I ask you a question?”
    “Later.”
    I closed his door, maybe a little too hard, and went back to my desk.
    When Elmer came out two hours later, he stopped by my office.
    “Sorry about before. I have a lot on my mind.” His apology sounded indifferent. “What did you want to ask me?”
    “I keep the door to my back room locked. Do the cleaning people have keys to it?”
    “Uh...I’m not sure. No one has ever locked it before. Why do you ask?”
    “Nothing much. I just found something out of place this morning, and—”
    “I’ll talk to them. You don’t want them to clean in there or anything?”
    “No. I’ll do it myself.”
    “I’ll take care of it.”
    A few minutes after Elmer left, Flora called to tell me she had looked everywhere there was to look and couldn’t find a death certificate for Anna Vargas. We agreed that was odd, because I knew she was dead—it had been in the paper—and she had died in Cook County. Why wouldn’t there have been a death certificate?
    I spent the next couple of hours tagging the evidence in my back room like I should have done from the beginning.
    * * *
    With nothing better to do, I worked on Christmas Eve, but even so my spirits were high.