I rode the El downtown. Finding the trial record hadn’t been hard: they’re all on microfilm down at the county building. Getting it translated had been tougher. The reporter who’d transcribed Steve Sawyer’s trial was long gone. Her machine and her shorthand notes were also long gone. Finding someone who could make sense of the document hadn’t been cheap: I had to shell out almost two thousand dollars for the transcript. I handed in my credit card with a sour face. Miss Ella, allegedly, was paying me a thousand dollars for my initial inquiries. I was now close to that much in the hole. How much further could I really afford to go?

I rode back to my office, feeling so bitter about the money I was losing on Miss Ella’s business that I couldn’t bring myself to look at the transcript. The temp was typing letters and e-mails that I’d dictated during the last few days. She handed me a list of a half dozen phone calls to return.

While I was holding for Darraugh Graham, I finally flipped through Steve Sawyer’s trial record. For a murder trial, it wasn’t very long, only nine hundred pages, many of them filled with yes-or-no answers. Not much defense. As Darraugh’s PA came back on the line to apologize for keeping me waiting, my own name suddenly jumped out at me.

Testimony of arresting officer, Tony Warshawski. My father sent to pick up Steve Sawyer? This couldn’t be, my dad, back in my life, in this unbelievable coincidence. Johnny Merton’s bitter comment suddenly came to me, that it was damned funny that I, of all people, didn’t know where Sawyer was.

“Vic? Vic, are you still there?”

“Caroline,” I said weakly. “Tell Darraugh I’ll have to call him back. Or if it’s urgent, he can reach me on my cell tonight.”

I hung up without waiting for her response and took the file over to my couch. I couldn’t make sense of any of it. Merton, Sawyer, my dad: they began to whirl in my head like an old top until I felt so dizzy I couldn’t see anything at all. “Enough melodrama!” I said out loud, startling Marilyn Klimpton: “Shape up, Warshawski. Pull yourself together!”

I went to the little kitchen I share with Tessa and made myself a black coffee. Sitting cross-legged on my office couch, I went back to the beginning and read the whole transcript. The trial had lasted a day and a half.

Harmony Newsome had died in Marquette Park on August 6, 1966. The day of the civil rights march, accompanied by an eight-hour riot performed by the local community.