Getting up, he went to the fireplace and nudged the curtain open far enough to flick the cigarette inside.

“Shit, Doc, ” he said quietly. “I don’t want you indicted.”

“I shouldn’t drink coffee and I know you shouldn’t, but I feel like having something. Do you like hot chocolate?”

“I’ll drink some coffee.”

I got up to fix it. My thoughts buzzed sluggishly like a housefly in the fall. My rage had nowhere to go. I made a pot of decaf and hoped Marino would not know the difference.

“How is your blood pressure?” I asked him.

“You want to know the truth? Some days if I was a kettle I’d be whistling.”

“I don’t know what I’m going to do with you.”

He perched on the edge of the hearth. The fire sounded like the wind, and reflected flames danced in brass.

“For one thing,” I went on, “you probably shouldn’t even be here. I don’t want you having any problems.”

“Hey, fuck the CA, the city, the governor, and all of them, ” he said with sudden anger.

“Marino; we can’t give in. Someone knows who this killer is. Have you talked to the officer who showed us around the penitentiary? Officer Roberts?”

“Yo. The conversation went exactly nowhere.”

“Well, I didn’t fare a whole lot better with your friend Helen Grimes.”

“That must’ve been a treat.”

“Are you aware that she no longer works for the pen?”

“She never did any work there that I know of. Helen the Hun was lazy as hell unless she was patting down one of the lady guests. Then she got industrious. Donahue liked her, don’t ask me why. After he got whacked, she got reassigned to guard tower duty in Greensville and suddenly developed a knee problem or something.

“I have a feeling she knows a lot more than she let m” I said “Especially if she and Donahue were friendly with each other.”

Marino sipped his coffee and looked out the sliding glass doors. The ground was frosted white, and snowflakes seemed to be falling faster. I thought of the snowy night I was summoned to Jennifer Deighton’s house, and images flashed in my mind of an overweight woman in curlers sitting in a chair in tie middle of her living room. If the killer had interrogated her, he had done so for a reason. What was it he had been sent to find?

“Do you think the killer was after letters when’ he appeared at Jennifer Deighton’s house?” I asked Marino.

“I think he was after something that had to do with Waddell. Letters, poems. Things he may have mailed to her over the years.”

“Do you think this person found what he was looking for?”

“Let’s just put it this way, he may have looked around, but he was so tidy we couldn’t tell.”