“Old newspapers,” he said. “I’m sure the library has the Wharton daily paper on microfilm, all the way back to 1905. Even earlier. You’d have to physically look through them, but you wouldn’t need a name. It’s the headline you’re after. If your lady and her husband were acquainted with your great-grandparents, and better yet, if they lived in Wharton, her murder would’ve been news.”
Kate closed her eyes. “Of course,” she said. “I’ve been so used to looking things up in an online database for so many years that I didn’t even think of archives at the library.”
“Forest for the trees,” he said. “Sometimes the closest person to a case can’t see the obvious. I’ll tell you, when I got this idea, I thought it might be a way to crack this case, and then . . .”
“It’s my case, not yours,” Kate said.
“That’s right. I can’t send someone from my team to do research on a dead woman from a hundred years ago.”
“So you called me,” she said.
“Exactly.”
Kate was silent for a moment, buzzing with excitement. Would this finally lead her to the truth?
“Thank you, Nick,” she said. “Thank you so much. I’ll head down to the library right after breakfast.”
“Let me know what you turn up.”
“I will,” Kate said, clicking her phone off.
After telling Simon all about it while they finished their meal, Kate gathered up her purse and jacket.
“I have a strong feeling that I’m going to find something,” she said to Simon. “I really do.”
“You know what? I do, too.” Simon smiled, squeezing her hand.
Simon walked her to the door and kissed her on the cheek. “Here’s to fruitful hunting.”
When she reached the library, Kate pushed open the big double doors carrying a purse heavy with quarters. She had stopped at the bank on her way down the hill and exchanged some bills for several rolls of coins, knowing that the temperamental microfiche machine at the library might require a good deal of coaxing before it agreed to print out any pages.
Even in this digital age, old copies of the town’s daily newspaper, the Wharton Tribune, were still stored on rolls of film that looked something like old-fashioned home movie reels. As a reporter, Kate was familiar with the medium and the machine needed to read it, a cumbersome cube with a screen about the size of a standard-size television and a hand crank that was used to advance the film. She had researched many stories in this way over the years, threading the film through the machine and using a handle to spin through the issues, which appeared on the large monitor, until she reached the one she needed. The film represented actual photographs of the newspaper that had been reduced—Kate was able to see an entire page of the paper, sometimes two, at once on the screen.
To Kate, reading old newspapers on microfiche was a bit like time travel. Issue after issue appeared on the screen and then vanished. Then another, then another. The faster she spun the handle, the faster time would go by.
“Where do you store old copies of the Trib?” Kate asked the librarian, a twenty-something man with messy brown hair pulled into a man bun on the top of his head.
“How old?” he asked her.
“I’d like to start with the year 1905 and go forward from there,” she said.
“Last couple of drawers on the right,” he said, pointing to a shelf in the back of the library.
“Do all of these machines make copies?” Kate asked. She did not want to find herself staring at vital information with no way to print it out.
“Only the three nearest to the window,” he replied, again, pointing. “You’ll need quarters.”
Kate thanked him and found the rolls she needed, chose a machine, one that could indeed print the page viewed on the screen, and settled in for what she knew would be a long day’s work. Unlike the internet, there was no way to search a microfiche by subject. The newspapers appeared in their entirety and were arranged by date only. Did the woman die in 1905? 1910? Kate had no way of knowing exactly when it had happened. Grasping in the dark wasn’t her favorite way of collecting information, but at the moment, it was all she had. Kate carefully threaded the first roll into the machine, January 1905, and flipped the power switch on.
Hours later, she had searched through nearly four years’ worth of newspapers. An event like the death of a prominent woman would be front-page news, Kate reasoned, so she took the time to scan only the front pages of each issue. She found herself sidetracked, however, by other stories in the news—it was a glimpse into American life in a more innocent age. World War I hadn’t yet occurred—a thing as horrible as a world war wasn’t even imagined on the day that her great-grandparents had had a picnic with the beautiful, long-haired woman in Kate’s dreams. Prohibition was not in full swing, though there were rumblings about it, immigrants were flooding into Ellis Island. Closer to Kate’s home, the logging and shipping industries were dominating the news and refabricating the countryside.
Kate was startled to read that, in 1905, several severe storms hit the Great Lakes, including one so fierce and sudden that it froze men solid on the deck of their ship, which was stranded just far enough offshore to prevent their rescue, as horrified townspeople looked on. That storm created the call for more lighthouses to be built—ones that Kate herself had explored, and considered ancient, as a child. It was a time of incredible expansion and growth in the area, and the sense of optimism, not just in Wharton but in the country as a whole, was tangible, even to Kate, reading about it secondhand almost a century later. What an exciting time to be alive, Kate thought, when the country was relatively new. She saw her great-grandfather’s name and grainy photograph in the news several times, always in reference to his business.
She looked at her watch and thought of taking a break to rest her eyes from the monitor’s glare, but instead she decided to just keep plugging along. She was here now, and fatigued or not, she wasn’t going to stop searching until she had some answers.
Kate threaded roll after roll, scanned page after page, worrying with every headline that passed before her eyes in a flash that perhaps she was mistaken, perhaps she would find no information about this woman’s death, perhaps the woman on her beach was not the same woman in the photograph after all.
Then she came upon something that made her stop short. Kate held her breath and read:
LOCAL WOMAN MISSING
Mrs. Jess Stewart （née Adelaide Cassatt） has gone missing from her Front Street home. Mr. Stewart, vice president of Canby Lines, owned by local businessman Mr. Harrison Connor, returned home late Sunday, April 24, from a business meeting in Chicago to find his wife had vanished without a trace. She was last seen by a maid on Sunday afternoon.
Upon arriving home that evening and finding his wife missing, Mr. Stewart sent word to his wife’s parents, Mr. and Mrs. Marcus Cassatt of Great Bay, who had not heard from their daughter. St. Joseph’s Hospital has no patients who match her description. Mrs. Stewart’s clothes, shoes, and suitcases remain in the home. Police reports indicate no evidence of foul play.
Mrs. Stewart is a young woman with long auburn hair. She is heavy with child, due to deliver at any moment. The frantic Mr. Stewart asks anyone with any information regarding his wife’s whereabouts to contact the authorities.