Before I left the Madison Building, I was compelled to stop and see the Main Reading Room once again. It was newly renovated, and I hadn’t been there since the work had been done.

I sat at a reader’s table and stared up at the amazing dome high over my head. Around the room were stained-glass representations of the seals of forty-eight states, along with bronze statues of famous figures, including Michelangelo, Plato, Shakespeare, Edward Gibbon, and Homer. I could imagine poor Frank Odenkirk doing his work here, and it bothered me. Why had he been killed? Had it been the Weasel?

The death was a terrible shock to everyone who had worked with him, and a couple of Odenkirk’s coworkers broke down while talking to me about his murder.

I wasn’t looking forward to interviewing Mrs. Odenkirk, but I drove out 295 and 210 to Forest Heights late on Friday afternoon. Chris Odenkirk was home with her mother, and also her husband’s parents, who had flown in from Briarcliff Manor in Westchester County, New York. They told me the same story as the people at the Library of Congress. No one in the family knew of anyone who might want to harm Frank. He was a loving father, a supportive husband, a thoughtful son and son-in-law.

At the Odenkirk home, I learned that the deceased had been wearing a green seersucker suit when he left home, that his business meeting in New York had run over, and that he had been nearly two hours late getting to La Guardia Airport. He generally took a cab home from the airport in Washington because so many flights arrived late.

Even before I went to the house in Forest Heights, I had two detectives sent out to the airport. They showed around pictures of Odenkirk, interviewed airline personnel, shopworkers, porters, taxi dispatchers, and cabdrivers.

Around six I went over to the medical examiner’s office to hear the results of the autopsy. All the photos and sketches from the crime scene were laid out. The autopsy had run about two and a half hours. Every cavity of Frank Odenkirk’s body had been swabbed and scraped, and his brain had been removed.

I talked to the medical examiner while she finished up with Odenkirk at about six-thirty. Her name was Angelina Torres, and I’d known her for years. The two of us had started in our jobs at about the same time. Angelina was a tick under five feet and probably weighed around ninety pounds soaking wet.

“Long day, Alex?” she asked. “You look used and abused.”

“Long one for you, too, Angelina. You look good, though. Short, but good.”

She nodded, grinned, then stretched her small slight arms up over her head. She let out a low groan that approximated the way I felt, too.

“Any surprises for me?” I asked, after allowing her to stretch in peace and moan her little heart out.