He didn’t think anything could pull him out of the haze the pills created, but that almost did. Suddenly he was nearly awake. “How could that be?”

She hunched down over her shoulders. “They were all someplace else, I guess.” Then he heard her say… “I guess Eddie didn’t love us that much. As much as we thought.”

“What do you mean, Mom?”

“I mean, if he killed himself-”

“He didn’t kill himself. I know he didn’t.”

She had that blank look again, that empty stare. She tousled his hair and kissed him on the forehead. “You try to get some sleep.” She got up and turned to the door.

“Mom.”

She stopped and faced him.

“He didn’t.”

“Okay,” she said, nodding her head. “Okay.”

It came to him. That’s what he’d do. He’d find out who had killed Eddie. Never mind Hardy or the cops. They were obviously dildoes who didn’t know Eddie the way he had known him. He’d find out the truth, all on his own, and then his mom at least would know Eddie hadn’t deserted him. That might get her started back to being alive.

Hardy hung up and shook his head.

He hadn’t called Erin to talk about Frannie’s pregnancy, and he was mad at himself for having let that out to Steven. How had he been so careless and at the same time so obtuse? No wonder he’d blocked it out for so long.

Cavanaugh had referred to Frannie as pregnant, and even after mimicking his damned voice to Steven, Hardy hadn’t put it together. The point was, how could Cavanaugh have known about the pregnancy if he hadn’t seen Eddie after Frannie had told him, which was the night he’d been killed? Which meant he’d lied about seeing him Sunday. It had been Monday.

He closed his eyes, really pumping now. He’d only slept five hours, but it didn’t matter. Things were falling into place.

The gun had bothered him a lot, and he’d stood in front of his desk from dawn until about an hour ago, drinking two full pots of espresso and throwing darts until it had come to him. The gun drive. Sixties liberal mania. Cavanaugh had collected some hundreds of unregistered guns. And what he’d done, of course, was to hold out on one or two of them. And the cops who were monitoring the thing-even the good ones like Abe-would never think that a priest would use a clean-the-streets gun drive to build his own arsenal. I mean, why would it occur to anyone to check that? But, Hardy was now certain, it was what Cavanaugh had done.

What he’d called Erin for was to ask her the exact date she and Ed had gotten married. That was a little bit of a wild hair, he knew, but it might tie in with something else that had occurred to him, something he needed to go back and check out before he went to see Glitsky.

If they’d already burned up three suspects, he’d better have the next one, the real one, trussed up and ready to carve. Glitsky might have been hot to get whoever’d done Eddie, but he would be a fool to risk his career on another hunch of a civilian. Now Hardy felt he owed him the collar for all the help he’d given him, but he knew he’d have to do it all, then call for the troops.

He had the two tapes in a heavy yellow envelope. He didn’t know if he could get anybody to do voice-print comparisons on them, or what it would cost to do them himself, but he did know that if there was going to be a trial, they would be good evidence. In fact, they were the first pieces of hard evidence he had come upon.

But you never knew. He might get lucky with some technician, so he had decided to take them downtown. He’d stop by the Hall of Justice after his visit to the Chronicle. Glitsky himself might still be interested enough to do it on the sly.

He folded the piece of paper-the one with Ed’s and Erin’s wedding date-and put it in his wallet. He was tempted to call Cavanaugh, put the fear-if not of God-of man into him and see what he’d do.

But no. Build a case and blindside him. That was the way. Cavanaugh would have no idea that the noose was tightening. Especially after spending last night drinking with him (God, he was one confident man), he must think he was clear. He must also think his friend Hardy was a bit of a fool.

Well; he had always said he might be dumb but wasn’t a fool. Cavanaugh playing him for one made him unhappy. He was out of his chair and heading for the door when he stopped. He had three guns in his safe. But what, after all, was he planning to do with a gun? He was off to do a little research. He wasn’t planning to confront Cavanaugh. On the other hand…

He walked back toward the safe.

For a two-dollar fee anybody could go into the archives room of the San Francisco Chronicle and look up microfiche of newspapers from any date since the newspaper was founded in 1865.

Hardy was interested in the week of July 2, 1961. Driving downtown, his.38 Police Special now loaded and stowed in the glove box of his Seppuku, he spent a few minutes worrying about the what-ifs.

What if there was nothing in the newspaper? What if Glitsky wasn’t in? What if nobody at the Hall was willing to let him look up the past Incident Reports?

He turned on the radio. It was still broken, which wasn’t surprising since he’d done nothing to fix it. He wanted to listen to anything to get the other song out of his head. It was an old Conway Twitty tune called “This Time I Hurt Her More Than She Loves Me,” and it had been number one on the Hardy brain parade for two days now. Well, he thought, the hell with the radio. He went back to the what-ifs.

What if I get in a car wreck? What if a meteor plunges from deep in outer space and punches me half a mile into the ground? He had to laugh at himself.

In the Chronicle archives room he put the what-ifs out of his mind and now was glad he’d wasted no more time on them. He wouldn’t have to go see Glitsky about this, or wade through the hard copies of some faded and musty IRs. There it was, on page 8 of the first section for Monday, July 3, 1961.

It wasn’t a big article. Most other big-city newspapers might not even carry it, but it was one of the advantages of the Chronicle’s parochial view of what news was-they covered the city pretty well.

The article read:

CALL GIRL FOUND SLAIN IN NOB HILL APARTMENT

The body of a call girl who had been strangled was discovered late yesterday evening in her posh Taylor Street apartment after the woman failed to report back to the escort service for which she worked.

The victim, 22-year-old Traci Wagner, had been employed by the BabyDolls dating service for approximately six months.

Police are seeking for questioning a white male in his early to mid-twenties who picked up Miss Wagner in a dark, late-model car in the midafternoon. The suspect gave his name as John Crane, but this appears to have been fictitious. The investigation is continuing.

Hardy went to the desk with the spool of film and asked the clerk to copy the page for him. That cost him another five dollars, but it would be worth that to have for Glitsky.

John Crane, huh. Jim Cavanaugh. Funny about those initials, he thought. Same as Jesus Christ.

“You got squat.” Glitsky wasn’t feeling patient. “And I simply cannot take the risk.”

“You can’t listen to two tapes? Take you fifteen seconds.”

Abe leaned his chair back and put his head against the wall of the little cubicle. Hardy might be his friend, but he was getting on his nerves.

“Nope. I got four-no, now five-live ones out there and”-he consulted his watch-“I got about ten minutes before I mosey out to the Mo’ and talk some jive.”

Hardy sat down.

“Don’t get comfortable. I mean it.”

Hardy clucked at him. “Look, ten minutes you can hear this thing thirty times. I take off a little for rewinding.”