Free Disturbance by Jan Burke

Now what? Sleep?
    I folded my arms on that worn surface, laid my head down, and closed my eyes. I wanted to dream away a world that no longer cared about those words. I fought against a sense of loss so deep, it would have taken a hundred funerals to bury it.
    I’m of Irish descent, and I was at a desk that had belonged to two men who were sons of immigrants, each a bit closer to the ould sod than I. So perhaps I can be forgiven for saying that a feeling came over me—others may prefer to say that, between my never-distant fears and an abundance of sentiment brought on by all that reminiscence, I was overwrought. They can explain it that way if it makes them happy. For me, a feeling came over me.
    I didn’t hear voices or see a vision or anything like that. But I thought of Corrigan, one of the most determined individuals I’ve met in my life, and remembered how he’d helped O’Connor when O’Connor’s sister had gone missing in 1945. Her grave was found five years later, and O’Connor had taken his grief and forged it into a relentless campaign to ensure that missing persons cases and the unidentified dead weren’t forgotten in Las Piernas. O’Connor had died solving one of those cases.
    And the notion came to me that this legacy, of which I was one small part, wasn’t dead. It wasn’t about a building or a piece of newsprint on a driveway. It was about the story, whatever that story might be. Every story was a gift.
    I had a story. I needed to go after it. It was as simple as that.
    I needed to find out who that woman was, that young woman who had been left in that shabby tomb at the end of my street. Who had been hurt and frightened, who had been demeaned even in death.
    I might not solve her murder, but I was going to do my damnedest to name her.
    But how?
    And almost as soon as I asked myself that, I knew that my search for her name had to begin with another name, one the city had already nearly forgotten: Marilyn Foster. I got up from the desk and made a phone call.

TWELVE
    D wayne Foster had a story of his own, of course. One advantage of not having a deadline was that I had the leisure to let him tell it. By turns he was angry with the police, then cognizant of the fact that they couldn’t work miracles, full of half-formed plans for everything from pulling up stakes and moving to another part of the country to staying and delivering his own form of justice to the killer.
    After he wound down a little, we started going over some questions I had. On the night Marilyn disappeared, he had come home at about half past midnight. Dinner had been waiting for him as usual. Marilyn’s habit was to go to bed between ten-thirty and eleven. Police said computer records showed she had been online at about nine-thirty.
    “I just want to make sure I’m not making any assumptions about Marilyn’s routines and habits. Did she ever go for long walks at night?”
    “No. Even though this is a safe neighborhood—” He broke off, then started again. “Even though we used to think this was a safe neighborhood, she was afraid to do that. Being diabetic, she didn’t like to exercise alone, because, well … she was good about her meds and all that, but she wasn’t always goodat gauging what she needed to eat to avoid going too low on her blood sugar. So just to be on the safe side …” The word seemed to catch on him like a small, sharp hook, and he looked away. He took a breath, then went on. “She had routines at the gym, and her trainer there was someone who knew about diabetes and what to do and all that. Sometimes we went walking together before I left for work, but if you’re asking if she could’ve been walking around alone in the neighborhood at midnight or whenever it was, no ma’am.”
    “I’m just trying to figure out the logistics. Her car was gone, but her purse and phone were here. Any woman I know would have taken her purse and phone if she was driving somewhere at night, even—perhaps