"What else?"

'Taxes are current. Paid in cash every year. I had a hassle with the IRS, but they did break down and admit she's up to date with them. Pays quarterly estimates, by money order, on stock dividends that come to around twelve grand a quarter."

Cash whistled softly.

"Yeah. Sweet. That's about it, except they said she doesn't collect Social Security. I'll try to get a handle on her finances next. Banks and brokers. Utilities. Stuff like that."

He flipped his notebook shut, stared into space for a moment. "One other thing. O'Brien wasn't the first disappearing Irishman."

"Eh?"

"O'Driscol. He and Fiala had a thing going on for years, then he disappeared. I'm not sure this's the same Fiala, by the way. Maybe her mother. I hope. Mrs. Caldwell didn't say.

"And what about this Fian, you ask? Just dropped out of sight, apparently sometime in the eighteen eighties. And a guy named Fial apparently never made it out from New York."

Cash had the feeling he had ridden the carousel too many times around. "Railsback put a hold on the corpse."

"Yeah? So?"

"So I thought we'd take her down. Spring it on her. While she's off balance, we hit her with questions about the prints."

He hadn't heard. Someone had slipped up. Or maybe not. It was Railsback's style to play games. "The doll. They got a matching print."

"Oh, shit." The vinegar went out of Harald. He dropped into the chair Railsback had used the previous afternoon, gripping its arms like an old person flying for the first time. Like me, Cash thought, screaming inside all the way, It's going to crash, it's going to crash. His face grew pale. His lips trembled. "That old. And now prints."

He changed. "Norm, somebody's set this up. Somebody's gone to one hell of a lot of trouble to cover a trail." He had reached the limit of his credulity. His features became set. He wanted an alternate theory. Cash suspected that from now on he would edit all the facts to fit one he liked.

That had to be aborted. The attitude could leak over into more mundane cases.

"You were the guy who brought up the science-fiction angle to begin with."

"Yeah. Yeah. But I never thought we'd get backed into a corner where it was the only explanation left."

"It isn't. Not yet. That print just proves she knew the guy. Hell, it doesn't even prove that, really. It just proves that something he touched ended up in her wardrobe. He could've been a burglar. But it is circumstantial evidence that she hasn't told us everything. Hey! Here's an angle. Suppose he really is a descendant of the original Jack O'Brien? Say he came back to check on Grampa's old flame?" The possibility had occurred to him on the way to work. "Or, if you want it bizarre, he could be her son and she's kept him locked up since he was born."

"Come on, Norm. She's fruity, but that'd take a genuine National Enquirer basket case. Anyway, his age isn't right."

"Just a hypothesis. He could be her son but O'Brien's grandson. How's that for off the wall?"

"There would've been rumors. You can't keep babies a secret. They yell all night." He said that bitterly. Cash now knew why he looked so haggard. His youngest had had a bad night.

"Just trying to make the point that there's still lots of possibilities. Probably a lot we haven't even thought of yet. When we find one that fits all the physical evidence, we'll have it whipped. Meanwhile, we just keep plugging."

That summed up Cash's philosophy of detective work. No grandstanding, no Sherlock Holmes ingenuity. Like the ram, just keep butting your head against that dam. Sooner or later, something would give.

"You dig some more this morning. I'll arrange a viewing for this afternoon. Say around two."

"Okay." Harald left in a hurry, as if glad to escape the speculations. Cash would have liked to have escaped himself. Miss Groloch and Jack O'Brien had driven his thoughts into some truly bizarre channels.

He did not understand why, for sure, that everyone, even he, assumed the old woman was guilty… of something. If she were really as old as she seemed, might there be an alienness which could be sensed only subconsciously? A natural resentment on the part of the ego?

"Heard you guys talking," said Railsback, replacing Harald in the chair. "I think you ought to follow up on your theory."

A glance told Cash the chance that incest and/or genuine murder were involved seemed, to Railsback, a piece of spider's silk thrown to a drowning man. He wanted logically neat, if morally outrageous, answers.

Even if the evidence at the scene hadn't suggested any direct connection with Fiala Groloch. Cash cautioned himself against grabbing for scapegoats, for easy outs.

He dithered a while, pushing papers, then checked out and went to the convent.

Sister Mary Joseph kept him waiting fifteen minutes, then appeared with a curt, "What is it this time?"

Cash was startled. But even nuns had to have their bad days, he supposed.

"A favor."

"And only I can help."

"We're going out on a limb. If you'll help, we're going to try jarring some information loose from Miss Groloch. Seems like it's the only way to get the whole story."

She crossed herself. "What would I have to do?"

"We figured we'd bring her in to view the body. And have you there to see what happens."

"You should take her into the room with the rubber hoses."

Cash shook his head. The sister seemed to have an overpowering, irrational hatred of the old lady.

"All right. But these interruptions are getting to be a habit."

"I'm sorry. I really am. If there were some other way… Well, my partner, the young officer, will pick you up about one-thirty. I'll try to have him call ahead so you'll know exactly when."

"Do that."

Cash beat a hasty retreat, involved himself in some unrelated legwork, a call home, and his daily Big Mac.

During the drive to Miss Groloch's he caught himself listening to the dispatcher with a grim intensity, as if subconsciously hoping something would interfere with his complicated, makeshift scheme.

Among other maneuvers, just this once, he had decided to bring Annie into the game.

Miss Groloch no longer appeared pleased to have company, though she remained a polite and fussy hostess. She even asked if he would like to see anything special on the television she had been watching.