“No, he was a deputy back then, when it was only a part-time job. He also sold insurance for the Reingold Agency. It was another deputy, a guy who knew my mom when they were in high school. Probably he had a crush on her. He went down to the basement where they store the old files and found the report on my mom. They had photos of the skid marks and a picture of her car, nose-down, with water all the way over the top of the steering wheel. The Wakarusa looks small on the map, but it’s big enough to drown in. You go look at it, you’ll see.”

“Did you get a copy of the report?” I asked. “I’d like to see the photos.”

Cady hunched a shoulder. “Sure, yeah, I guess, but you know it was almost thirty-five years ago, so there isn’t going to be any trace. That deputy, he copied the whole file for me. Then, when I got my own computer, one I wasn’t sharing with Gram, I scanned it all into my machine. I don’t know why. Every year on my birthday, I look at my mom’s hair, floating over the steering wheel. If she’d taken me with her, maybe the picture would show me floating next to her.”

“Send it to me, okay? The report and the photos and everything.”

Cady collected her handbag and jacket, found her car keys on the floor under the desk. “Vic, I really appreciate your taking the time tonight. I feel better about my mom, my birth—everything—than I ever did before. You’re so . . . so sensible. You don’t jump on the first wild pony of an idea that gallops past you. Thank you.”

“Sensible” wasn’t a romantic word. Solid, sensible V.I.? I’ve been called worse, though.

“The cans that Doris mentioned, the ones Lucinda claimed she saw—did she ever say anything about them? Had she gone back to look for them?”

Cady shook her head. “I don’t even know why I remember it, except it’s a weird thing to say when you’re dying. Why?”

“Just wondering.”

I walked out with her so that Peppy could relieve herself one last time. The canister holding spent rods that Baggetto said he was looking for. The container that Doris had found when she was digging in the field. The cans that Lucinda saw lying around. Hard to believe they weren’t all the same. Maybe there really was radiation poisoning out by the silo. Maybe that’s what had killed Lucinda as well as Jenny Perec.

“Cady, I found photos that August Veriden took of Doris McKinnon digging in a field.” I was startled to hear myself blurt this out.

Cady stopped in midstride and turned to face me. “August who? Oh, that black guy you’re looking for along with Emerald Ferring. Right. What field? When was this?”