Free Cold Morning by Ed Ifkovic

killing…and it was nasty and…the man…” I faltered, unsure of myself. I didn’t like to be so rattled—not an image I cultivated in myself, fearsome reporter that I always insisted I was. But—those eyes on me. I shot her a look—she wasn’t blinking. “This Annabel was a battler, I think, sort of loud and…” Again, I stopped, unsure.
    Deputy Hovey Low reached behind him and removed a sheet from a folder resting on a filing cabinet. He handed it to me, though his fingertips held onto it too long. “This the man you seen?”
    Dutifully I nodded. I was looking at a recent mug shot—full-face and profile—of Cody Lee Thomas. That severe face, almost insolent, angry. But also bewildered—at least as he was being booked. I flashed immediately to the much-publicized mug shots of Bruno Richard Hauptmann, that same hard-boiled penetrating stare, almost mesmerizing—but without the bafflement Cody Lee couldn’t mask. Hauptmann’s innate intelligence demanded you look at him. Poor Cody Lee wondered why anyone would want to. “Yes, that’s the man.”
    â€œYeah, we got lots of reports of them two battling it out in public like silly fools. Water and gasoline, them two. Sparks fly. I guess she was a firecracker and he was…” He stopped as he focused on the old woman who was sitting up straight now, her face drawn and still.
    â€œI thought it my duty…”
    But Hovey Low was through with me, settling back into a chair and holding out his hand for the mug shots. “Case closed.”
    â€œAre you sure?” I asked.
    That bothered him. “Yep.”
    â€œA confession from Cody Lee?”
    â€œDumb as an ox, that one.” He smirked as he reached for a wad of chewing tobacco. “But no, the man says he ain’t done it.”
    Ain’t done it : the words echoed in my mind, a curious ungrammatical rhythm that was immediately so dismissive and—wrong.
    I wasn’t through. “In my brief exchange with Annabel Biggs in the café, she struck me as a woman with”—I paused—“a larger purpose. Cocky, sure of herself, a woman who planned something.” I stressed the word. “A woman who set her sights on…” Now I stopped, held by the bleak look on Low’s face.
    He wagged a finger at me. “The girl is dead, ma’am.”
    â€œI know that, sir.”
    â€œAnd her killer sits in back.” A sickly smile as he worked an unpleasant piece of tobacco into the corner of his mouth. But again he glanced at the old woman who watched me closely. He looked away and frowned. “I’ll tell the sheriff you stopped in.”
    I was dismissed. Irritated, I swiveled, turned back to say something, but Deputy Low had buried his face in the newspaper. He was reading the funny papers, I noticed. The Katzenjammer Kids. I read over his shoulder. “Gas Buggins.” “Dickie Dare” with Cranky Joe. Delightful, I thought. Slapdash buffoons with exclamation points in the balloons over their heads. A childish smile on his face as he moved his lips.
    I walked out in the cold morning sunshine and stood on the sidewalk, stared at by attentive state troopers. The spent light bulbs from the photographers’ cameras littering the sidewalk popped as folks stepped on them. As I walked into the street, I heard movement behind me.
    â€œMiss Ferber.”
    The old woman had followed me out of the jail.
    In the biting cold air she stood too close to me, her trembling face inches from mine. You saw a pinched woman, a starved barnyard pullet, tiny with so little flesh on her old bones, a caved-in face the color of parchment. Maybe late sixties, with that look of someone who had struggled through a raw, niggling life, the years dropping away, unnoticed, unwanted. I suppose it was her eyes: a washed-out cornflower pale blue, but haunting—the ferocity in them belying the