Unspeakable Read Free

behind you, please, Frank. I don't want to disturb you."
    "Won't bother me any. It's been a quiet night."
    All the same, Frank pulled the door closed. Ezzy wasn't worried about disturbing the dispatcher. Fact was, he didn't want any chitchat while he went about this chore. The official files were, of course, a matter of public record, shared with the city police, the Texas Department of Public Safety, the Texas Rangers, and any other law enforcement agency with which his office cooperated and coordinated investigations.
    But the file cabinets in his office contained Ezzy's personal notes—lists of questions to pose to a suspect, times and dates and names of individuals connected to a case, information imparted by reliable informants or witnesses who wished to remain anonymous. For the most part, these notes had been handwritten by him in a shorthand he had developed and that only he could decipher, usually jotted down with a number-two pencil on any scrap of paper available to him at the time. Ezzy considered them as private as a diary. More than those damn flowery speeches he'd had to endure at the Community Center last night, these personal files documented his career. He took a sip of coffee, rolled his chair over to the metal filing cabinet, and pulled open the bottom drawer. The files were more or less categorized by year. He removed a few of the earliest ones, leafed through them, found them not worth saving, and tossed them into the ugly, dented, brown metal wastebasket that had been there as long as he had.
    He went about the clean-out methodically and efficiently, but he was inexorably working his way toward 1976. By the time he got to that year's files, the coffee had gone sour in his stomach and he was belching it.
    One file was different from the rest chiefly because it was larger and had seen the most use. It was comprised of several manila folders held together by a wide rubber band. The edges of each folder were soiled, frayed, and curled, testifying to the many times they'd been reopened, fingered as Ezzy reviewed the contents, spilled on, wedged into the cabinet between less significant folders, only to be removed again and put through the same cycle. He rolled the rubber band off the folders and onto his thick wrist. He wore a copper bracelet because Cora said copper was good for arthritis, but you couldn't tell it by him. Stacking the folders on his desk, he sipped the fresh coffee that the deputy had refilled without any acknowledgment from Ezzy, then opened the top one. First item in it was a page from the Blewer Bucks yearbook. Ezzy remembered the day he'd torn out this page of the high school annual to use for reference. Senior section, third row down, second picture from the left. Patricia Joyce McCorkle.
    She was looking directly into the camera's lens, wearing an expression that said she knew a secret the photographer would love to know. Activities listed at the end of the row beneath her name were Chorus, Spanish Club, and Future Homemakers. Her advice to lowerclassmen:
    "Party, party, party, and party hearty."
    Cap-and-gown photos were rarely flattering, but Patsy's was downright unattractive, mainly because she wasn't pretty to begin with. Her eyes were small, her nose wide and flat, her lips thin, and she had hardly any chin at all.
    Her lack of beauty hadn't kept Patsy from being popular, however. It hadn't taken long for Ezzy to learn that Patsy McCorkle had had more dates than just about any other senior girl that year, including the homecoming princess and the class beauty.
    Because, as one of her classmates—who now owned and operated the Texaco station on Crockett Street—had told him, stammering with embarrassment, "Patsy put out for everybody, Sheriff Hardge. Know what I mean?"
    Ezzy knew. Even when he was in high school there had been girls who put out for everybody, and every boy knew who they were.
    Nevertheless, Patsy's soiled reputation hadn't made it any easier for him to go to