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him wheeze, and the acidic taste of vomit scratched at his throat. He entered the apartment and forced a smile as he took off his hat and dropped it on a hook of the coat rack. A bare yellow bulb hung from a cord in the entranceway, and under its fifty-watt glare he imagined his face must appear misshapen, hideously comic.
    Claudia sat in the rocking chair with a book on her lap. She didn’t look up when she spoke. “Did you see Cal? He was looking for you this morning.”
    She was three years younger than him, just turned thirty, and already had OLD MAID stamped on her forehead. She’d had a boyfriend once, but he’d never popped the question. Eventually he left her for another woman he’d met in Worcester, and since then she’d been a mess. She couldn’t even listen to or carry on a conversation without nervously coughing or wringing her hands. She took calming pills like they were mints, and sat, smoking cigarettes and half listening to the radio, in her rocking chair most of the day. When she did leave the apartment, she wandered the streets, a perpetual clockwork journey through familiar neighborhoods, staring blankly in storefronts or watching other people as they passed.
    “How was your day?”
    She kept her eyes on the book. “They shut off the phone again.”
    Dante unbuttoned his coat as he entered the living room.
    The light from the reading lamp exposed the swollen, bruise-colored flesh under her eyes. And not only that, but the lines above her lip, and thin streaks of a premature gray staining the black hair pulled and tied in the back. Such a pretty face still, Dante thought. She might yet turn it around.
    Claudia finally looked up at him and saw his face, closed the book, and placed it on the folding aluminum table beside her.
    “It’s no big deal. Got into it with a drunk at Kelly’s.”
    “For heaven’s sake, you look like death. You owe somebody money again.”
    “Please. Not now. I just need to rest.”
    “Can you eat? There’s some leftovers in the fridge.”
    He bent over and gently kissed her forehead. “I just need some rest. You should do the same. Those bags under your eyes could carry a week’s worth of groceries.”
    She gave him a weak smile and her voice softened some. “Really, Dante, what happened to you?”
    “Nothing. I’m okay.”
    Dante saw the midday Herald folded up on the couch.
    “You just get this?” he asked. He reached down and picked it up, glanced at the headlines. BOSTON BUTCHER STRIKES AGAIN. UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN FOUND ON TENEAN BEACH. How quick the news got out; even before he could make sense of it all.
    “Isn’t it awful?” Claudia asked. “Been thinking about it all day, you know? Could be anybody killing these girls.”
    “You read too many of those damn crime novels, Claudia.”
    “Who do you think it was?” she asked.
    “Who?”
    “The woman they found on Tenean.”
    “No idea.” He moved to the coffee table, grabbed the day’s mail—what looked to be a telephone bill from Bell, another from Bigelow Oil, and a letter from the landlord. What good would it do if he told Claudia that it was Sheila found on Tenean? He’d have to console her, and feed her bullshit about Sheila now being in a better place. He decided to wait until she read the papers tomorrow, once Sheila’s name was released to the public.
    Dante dropped the bills back on the table and went to his bedroom. “Good night,” he said, before closing the door.
    He took off his shirt and placed it on the wooden chair next to his record player. Several record covers were on the floor. He picked them up and put them back on the shelf with the rest of his collection. He powered up the player and dropped the needle.
    Sitting on the edge of his bed, Dante lit a cigarette and watched the tendrils of smoke pass up over his eyes in the dim light. The image of Sheila on the autopsy table returned in a close-up: the blue-and-purple-hued face, her black-stitched throat. Who would kill her