Vic investigates Nancy’s death and confronts Caroline

V. I. Warshawski’s confrontation with Caroline Djiak at SCRAP’s office turns an accusation about Nancy Cleghorn’s murder into a test of what Caroline actually knows—and what she told the police. Caroline had connected Nancy’s death to the proposed recycling plant and implicated Warshawski in Nancy’s decisions, but the details she reluctantly supplies point to a less certain history: Nancy had feared threats and surveillance, while Caroline had inferred their cause. The encounter matters because it exposes that gap and recovers an earlier record of threats against both women.

Arrival at SCRAP

Warshawski reaches SCRAP’s offices after driving south through a February rainstorm. The small organization occupies the second floor of a block of shops; its worn, sparsely furnished rooms convey the constrained circumstances in which its work is done. A scarred metal desk, papers and phone books stacked on the floor, and outdated electric typewriters make the office a markedly different setting from a formal police interview room. Warshawski has a personal memory of the building: her dentist once worked there, and the business entrance on Commercial Street has remained familiar to her.

The setting leads directly into a private confrontation. Caroline takes Warshawski from the shared space to a cramped cubicle, clearing a chair for her before sitting behind her own desk. She grips her hands together and stares defiantly. The room’s clutter is not a separate mystery or clue; it establishes the crowded, makeshift setting in which a strained personal relationship and a murder investigation meet.

The dispute over Caroline’s statement

Warshawski confronts Caroline with three connected grievances. Caroline had first persuaded her to look for Caroline’s biological father, then called off that search without explaining why. More urgently, Warshawski accuses Caroline of lying to the police about Warshawski’s connection to Nancy. The argument is personal, but its immediate stakes are investigative: a misleading account may direct suspicion toward Warshawski and away from evidence that could help identify Nancy’s killer.

Caroline tries to turn the discussion toward advice Warshawski had given Nancy. Warshawski rejects that diversion and insists that Caroline distinguish what Nancy actually said from what Caroline believes happened. When asked about Nancy’s last report, Caroline says that Nancy called on Tuesday morning to tell her she had received threatening phone calls and thought someone was following her. Caroline initially attributes the threats to the plant, which was the subject of the women’s most recent discussions. Under Warshawski’s direct questioning, however, she admits that Nancy never specifically identified the plant as the reason for the calls.

That admission changes the force of Caroline’s account. She had told the police that Nancy was killed because of the recycling plant and that Warshawski had told Nancy whom to approach. The evidence Warshawski elicits does not establish why Nancy was threatened or murdered; it establishes that Caroline presented an assumption as if Nancy had named a cause. Warshawski challenges her for converting an inference into a factual explanation while the police are trying to investigate a killing.

An earlier record of threats

When Warshawski asks whether Nancy reported the threats to police, Caroline clarifies that Nancy spoke to the State’s Attorney’s Office, where staff said they would open a file. Caroline does not know whom Nancy met there. She suggests that it could have been Hugh McInerney, whom SCRAP dealt with on other matters, but presents this as a possibility rather than a confirmed identification.

Further questioning brings out an older episode Caroline had not included in her account to the police. Eighteen months earlier, McInerney had taken statements from Caroline and Nancy about their problems with Steve Dresberg, a local figure involved in garbage disposal. Warshawski remembers the case involving Dresberg’s PCB incinerator and an alleged favorable arrangement with the Sanitary District, but had not known that Caroline and Nancy were involved. Caroline then acknowledges that both women testified to receiving death threats because they opposed the incinerator. She recalls that they felt their testimony made little difference and that SCRAP was too small an organization to make Dresberg act on his threats.

The prior testimony does not prove that the earlier threats caused Nancy’s death or that the incinerator dispute explains the recent calls. Its significance is narrower and more concrete: it gives the police a past set of threats, witnesses, and a possible documentary trail that Caroline’s initial statement omitted. The conversation expands the inquiry without resolving it.

Consequences of the confrontation

Warshawski tells Caroline to amend her statement and directs her to give police the history of threats against Nancy. She also says she will contact Sergeant McGonnigal herself after returning home and report what Caroline has told her. Her warning rests on professional credibility: although the sergeant may dislike Warshawski, she believes he knows her reports can be trusted. Caroline responds angrily that she is no longer a child who must obey Warshawski. The scene therefore ends not in reconciliation but in a limited exchange of information, with Caroline’s cooperation still uncertain.

The confrontation’s central distinction is between a documented statement and a plausible guess. Caroline’s assumption about the plant may have seemed persuasive because of SCRAP’s environmental dispute, but Nancy had not identified that dispute as the subject of the calls. By recovering the women’s earlier testimony and urging Caroline to correct the record, Warshawski turns a heated personal quarrel back toward verifiable leads. The case remains open; what changes is the information available for pursuing it.