Final Hours

"Tell me everything," Waverley insisted. I just looked at him. What was there to tell?

"I don't know, John, I honestly don't know." Tears pricked the back of my eyes.

"What was she working on?" he asked now.

"Nothing."

"Oh, come on, are you telling me that the great Korenza Poole wasn't sticking her nose into somebody's business?" Waverley looked at me like ... I don't know ... like I didn't know my own mother. Then, maybe I didn't, not really. She was always protecting us from the seedy goings on in her life.

"I mean she had no ongoing cases. This had to be about something in the past." The harsh light did nothing for the decor of the interview room. It was as cold as the body in the mortuary. Endretti, Ware, Briggs; names started running through the rolladex in my head.

"I'm gonna need her files."

"All of them?"

"All of them." I pictured the post-it notes, the scraps of paper littering the office. The heap of notebooks scribbled with haste as people were interviewed. But most of what she knew was in the head of Korenza Poole; irretrievable.