Read Online Cold Morning by Ed Ifkovic - Free Book Online Page B

delivery and smart-mouth tone.
    I turned to his column in the Mirror.
    Again, not a word about the murder of Annabel Biggs or the arrest of Cody Lee Thomas.
    I lay in bed that night with an indelible image of that waitress—that brash woman filled with mystery, up to some mischief. A woman whose secrets leaked out of her, uncontrolled, dangerous. Perhaps she said something of her scheme, her…pot of gold. Not a woman I could ever like or care to know. Dead now, supposedly at the hands of Cody Lee Thomas, the big, hulking bull of a man who’d towered over her in the parking lot the other morning. I realized I’d have to talk to the police—to tell them what I heard. Not that it mattered—Cody Lee was already under arrest.
    But…Annabel Biggs. What about her?
    What about her?
    Her murder? A life snapped to an end, brutal and raw.
    Her life? Her moment?
    She needed her justice. I felt it to my marrow.

Chapter Six
    The police station was a squat white clapboard building tucked behind the courthouse, an unremarkable building in need of a coat of paint. A band of light-hearted, jostling reporters loitered on the sidewalk, positioned beneath the windows of the jail. A contingent of Jersey state troopers stood at attention by the front doors, their ornate uniforms making them seem colorful birds of prey. A modest station, I knew, but also the jail where Bruno Richard Hauptmann was housed in back, secure, waiting, pacing his cell, listening daily to the taunts from the passersby outside. “Kill Bruno. Kill the German.” That awful chant that erupted every so often, a flash fire of hate that sailed through the crisp January air and through the drafty sills of the station windows.
    Inside, disarmed by the sudden quiet, I approached a desk where a dour-looking young man in a wrinkled uniform sat with his legs up, a newspaper draped over his chest. Thick eyeglasses with oversized horned rims had slipped down his nose. A blast of noise from outside broke the eerie silence—a reporter whooping it up—but the man, sitting up, paid it no mind. Nevertheless, I jumped, grabbed at the pearls around my neck—yes, they were still there, my touchstone to sanity—rattled by the awful juxtaposition of street chaos and the tomblike calm within this building.
    â€œHelp you, ma’am?”
    I identified myself as Edna Ferber. He yawned, and I decided I could not possibly like him, though he showed a fresh-scrubbed innocence in that pale face. “I want to speak to the chief of police.”
    â€œThe sheriff?” he asked, stroking a thick moustache and running his fingers through his curly hair. “Busy at the courthouse. Can I help you?”
    â€œAnd you are?”
    He sat up, pushed out his chest where a badge identified him as Deputy Hovey Low. “In charge,” he added, a smile on his face.
    â€œI’m here about the murder of Annabel Biggs.”
    For a second he looked baffled, as though I’d broached an unfamiliar subject—and an unworthy one. But then his eyes widened and he nodded behind him. “Got the killer in back.”
    He started to say something else, but then thought better of it. He flicked his head to a line of hard-backed chairs set against a wall. An old woman sat there, staring at us. Deputy Low frowned at her, and she dropped her eyes into her lap. A skeletal woman wrapped in a thin winter coat, her hands clutching a cloth hat that bore a cluster of paper roses scrunched along the brim. A hat best saved for a summer tea party, albeit one two decades back. Her fleshless face held huge, deep eyes, shadowed.
    â€œYes, well,” I went on, “my visit may not matter, but I feel it is my duty to…” I stumbled. I sensed the eyes of the old woman riveted on me, waiting, waiting. “It’s just that I happened to hear a disturbing quarrel of Annabel Biggs in the parking lot behind the Union Hotel the morning of the…the