Page 51

“I smell coffee. I thought you drank tea.”

“I do drink tea. And coffee. I drink as well water, orange juice, the occasional soft drink, and numerous other beverages.”

“But not martinis.”

“No. I merely buy martinis and leave them untouched to perplex the managers of nightclubs. Would you like the usual tea and honey?”

“I’m allowed coffee now and then.”

“How do you prefer it—cream, sugar, both?”

“Black like me.”

“I am impressed.”

We sat at the kitchen table with mugs of black coffee. The brew was strong but flavorful.

Mr. Yoshioka said, “Mr. Yabu Tamazaki, who calls himself Robert and even Bobby but never Bob, has worked for seventeen years at the Daily News. He is an acquaintance of mine and a reliable person. At my request, he spent some time in their morgue, looking into the Drackman murders.”

“Morgue? They keep dead people at the Daily News?”

“The morgue is the name they give to the file room in which they preserve back issues of the newspaper.”

“Cool.”

“Because Mr. and Mrs. Drackman were wealthy and prominent in the Chicago arts community, their murder became nationwide news. Even our rather self-involved city was fascinated by the story. They were murdered in a suburb of Chicago on the night of October seventh, 1958, a little more than eight years ago. The coroner estimated the time of death at between one and three o’clock in the morning. The crime was never solved.”

I shook my head. “Their son, Lucas Drackman, he killed them. Like I told you, I saw it in the dream.”

“When he was a sophomore in high school, this Lucas Drackman’s parents sent him to a private military academy located a few miles south of Mattoon, Illinois.”

“What kind of name is Mattoon?”

“I did not ask Bobby Tamazaki to research the origin of the name Mattoon.”

“Yeah. Okay. I guess it doesn’t matter.”

Mr. Yoshioka didn’t consult any notes, having committed the entire report to memory. “Young Lucas Drackman remained at the academy during summers and came home only on a few selected holidays. On the night that his parents were murdered, he was a senior at the academy, which is one hundred and ninety miles from the Drackman residence—a drive that police estimate would have taken three and a half hours, seven hours round-trip.”

“Maybe he didn’t obey the speed limits.”

“Lucas Drackman had no access to a vehicle.”

“Maybe he stole one.”

“At ten o’clock, when bed check was conducted, Lucas Drackman was in his room.”

“Maybe it was a dummy of him, like in one of those prison-break movies.”

Mr. Yoshioka gestured with his right hand, as if chasing away an annoying fly, though the fly was me with all my maybes. “He spoke to the dorm master at bed check, face-to-face. Thereafter, he would have had to pass through security to leave the dormitory, and he did not. What is more, Lucas Drackman reported to breakfast, in uniform, at seven-thirty in the morning.”

“Well, so, that’s still nine and a half hours,” I protested. “Time enough.”

“He lived with two roommates. Both of them told the police that the three remained up far past the turn-in hour. They played cards by flashlight until almost one o’clock in the morning. That would leave only a meager six and a half hours to complete a seven-hour drive and two murders.”

“Maybe the roommates lied. People lie, you know. They lie all the time, even to protect a murderer.”

After sipping his coffee and savoring it, Mr. Yoshioka said, “I wonder how a nine-year-old boy can have become such a suspicious soul so young.”