Free Homicide Related by Norah McClintock

person saying that with a straight face.
    â€œI’m Gloria Thomas,” she said. “I was Lorraine’s sponsor.”
    â€œSponsor?” Did she mean what he thought she meant? “What group?”
    â€œNarcotics Anonymous.”
    He almost laughed.
    â€œWell, she died of a drug overdose, so …”
    â€œI know,” Gloria Thomas said. “I’m sorry.” She had blue-green eyes that never let go of his. “She called me the night she died.”
    â€œYeah?” Dooley could just picture it: Lorraine crying on her sponsor’s shoulder: I’m so tempted; help me, stop me. Or maybe she’d called after she was already fucked up: I’m so bad. I said I would stop, and now look what I’ve done. Looking for absolution. “What did she say?”
    â€œI was out.” That seemed to bother her. “It must have been important, though, because she tried both my home number and my cell, but it was turned off. I was at a movie.” Yeah, it bothered her, all right. The look on her face told Dooley that she felt she had failed Lorraine. Dooley hoped she would get over that idea. She seemed like an okay person; she just didn’t understand Lorraine.
    â€œShe left a message. She said she’d try me again later.”
    â€œAnd?”
    â€œShe never called back. I wish I’d been home or that I’d had my cell phone on. Maybe if I’d talked to her …”
    If that was the way she felt: “You could have called her back,” Dooley said.
    â€œI tried. She wasn’t at home, and she doesn’t have a cell phone. I star sixty-nined her, just in case, and tried that number. But all I got was a recorded message that said that the phone I was calling wasn’t equipped for incoming calls. The police told me it was a pay phone.”
    â€œYou talked to the police about her?”
    â€œI called them when I heard how she died. I couldn’t believe it. She’d been really trying, you know?”
    Dooley could honestly say that he didn’t.
    Gloria Thomas drew in a deep breath. “I have something that I know she would have wanted you to have. I would have brought it with me, but, to be honest, I wasn’t sure you would be here.”
    She was right to wonder about that, but Dooley couldn’t help being offended. The only way she could have known about his ambivalence—okay, maybe hostility was a better word, or resentment—was if Lorraine had said something to her, as if she had a right to talk about him at all. But what had she said? Had she confessed to her failings as a mother? Maybe. But it was just as easy—no, it was easier—to imagine that she had painted him as a difficult and ungrateful son: He didn’t understand what I was going through. He was never home. He was always getting into trouble. He was unmanageable. He almost killed a woman… Dooley got that feeling again, the one that made him want to grab hold of whatever would promise the quickest and longest-lasting oblivion. And whose fault was that ?
    â€œI could drop it off for you,” Gloria Thomas said.
    Dooley shook his head. Whatever she had, he wasn’t interested.
    Gloria Thomas looked deep into his eyes, as if she thought she could read him the way she probably imagined that she could read Lorraine. Be my guest, Dooley thought.
    â€œHere’s my contact information,” she said at last. She handed him a business card. Dooley glanced at it. It turned out Gloria Thomas was an executive secretary for the vice-president of marketing for a major chain of grocery stores, which told Dooley that anyone could fall and, based on the card, anyone could get up again, maybe even Lorraine, although—and there it was, that bitterness again—he doubted it. “In case you change your mind,” she said. “Or if you ever want to talk.”
    Talk? About what?

    The cops were waiting for Dooley when he came out of