Bloodlines

38

A S O’CONNOR STEPPED INTO THE FOYER, THE LAST OF THE FOUR TO ENTER the Ducane home, he felt himself surrounded by ghosts. The house was much as he remembered it. He thought of the four murder victims-of Katy, Todd, and the baby, but most especially of the nursemaid, whose blood he had seen on that rainy evening more than twenty years ago. He thought of all that had happened that evening in so short a space of time, and much of it centering around this household.

He recalled the urgency with which Jack had insisted he look for Katy that night-how Jack hadn’t cared about his own injuries (or sending O’Connor out into the rain) half as much as he cared about Katy. He remembered now that Jack said something had been troubling her. He remembered the note to Jack, asking if Mitch was her father, and wondered if that was what had disturbed her that evening. He felt sad for her, thinking of her now from nearly the same age Jack had been, while she had been about the age Max Ducane was now.

When Max turned on the lights, the cleanliness of the house only emphasized its emptiness, made it into a well-kept museum, and added to O’Connor’s feelings of disquiet.

He watched Irene and Lefebvre. As Lefebvre looked around, nothing in his facial expression gave away his thoughts or feelings. He had a large brown envelope in his hands-crime scene photographs, he had told them. Irene, he thought, should never let anyone talk her into getting into a poker game. She was bothered, he could see-by the thought of what had gone on here twenty years ago, or perhaps because the house seemed frozen in another decade. She had a small camera with her, the one she had brought to the groundbreaking ceremony, hanging by a strap around her neck. She wasn’t using it.

“I thought you said this place has been empty for twenty years,” she said to Max. “There’s no dust.”

“Lillian has paid someone to keep it clean,” Max said. “Weird, huh?”

“Seriously weird.” She glanced uneasily at O’Connor. “I mean… Lillian seems to have moved on with her life, but then there’s this house, sitting here.”

He thought of his protectiveness of Maureen’s room, how hard it had been when his eldest sister had moved into that room. “The families of the missing can’t live in the same way other people do. If you know what happened to someone-that the person moved away, or died, or chose to be with someone else-your mind can let go, even if your heart takes a little longer to do the same. When a person you love is missing, inexplicably gone, perhaps you want to cling to anything associated with them, anything solid and normal, any reminder that they were here. If you keep a place for them, they might return. You worry that if you stop remembering them-and memories do fade-then the missing person will disappear in a more final way. That seems as if it would be a horrible betrayal, and so you fight it. And besides, the physical gives you something to focus on, other than the endless questions.”

He became suddenly self-conscious, and especially aware of a change in Lefebvre’s scrutiny.

Irene said, “Max, you’ve lived away from Las Piernas, so you probably don’t realize that O’Connor is kind of famous around here for all he does to help families of missing persons, and to help find the identities of John and Jane Does.”

“You were going to show us the house, Max?” O’Connor said quickly.

“I suppose we should start upstairs,” Max said, and led them up the large, curving staircase.

“Check out the phone,”he said to Irene, pointing to one that sat on a small marble-topped hall table.

The phone would have been an old one when Katy lived here; it was made of black Bakelite, and had no dial on it.

“An extension only,” O’Connor said.

“So is this place exactly the way it was the last time you were here?” Irene asked.

“No,” Max answered, before O’Connor could reply. “Lillian hired someone to repair the door off the kitchen, and she’s had the place painted. I think…well, a new floor was put in the nursery. Let’s go there first.”

As he led them into it, he said, “At least I can stop wondering if this used to be my room.”

“Did you wonder?” Irene asked.

“Not really,” he said. At the doubting looks of the others, he moved over to the empty bassinet and ran his fingers lightly along its rim. “I mean, everyone who is adopted has that fantasy at some point in his childhood-you were always the kidnapped prince, of course, and never the abandoned pauper. Warren seemed so certain that I had once been this little prince, I asked myself if it could be possible. But if you mean, did I ever have some mystical experience in here, some faint memory from infancy? No.”

O’Connor thought of the way the room looked that night-really looked. Not this sanitized shrine.

The bloodstains.

He heard paper rustling and saw Lefebvre opening his envelope. Photographs. Lefebvre set a small stack of them on the changing table. Almost against his will, O’Connor drew nearer to look, standing next to Irene.

In stark black-and-white, the top photo showed him what the room had looked like when Dan Norton had arrived, when Rose Hannon’s body still lay on the floor. He saw what Dan had seen that long-ago night-the bloodstains and the position of the body indicated that she had been crawling on the floor toward the bassinet. The poor woman had bled to death trying to reach the baby.

Max glanced over their shoulders, shuddered, and moved away.

“There was another member of the house staff. A maid, right?” Irene asked, picking up the photo and looking through the next three. They were far more gruesome shots of the body.

“Yes. She wasn’t implicated,” Lefebvre said.

She handed the photos back to Lefebvre. “I’m just thinking that Gus Ronden must have known a lot about this household. He knew that the Ducanes wouldn’t be at home, and that the baby wouldn’t be with his mother. He knew that Rose Hannon would be here alone with the child.”

“He might have come here ready to kill two women,” Lefebvre said.

“Maybe,” Irene said. “But that would be much more chancy, wouldn’t it?”

“Yes,” O’Connor said. “But Dan and I both checked up on the other maid. Doesn’t seem likely at all that she knew Gus Ronden.”

“Is she still living?” Irene asked.

“Yes,” Lefebvre said. “Why on earth does that make you smile?”

“Because you wouldn’t know she was alive unless you had already contacted her. What did you find out?”

“That I should watch what I say around you.”

“You’ve both lost me, I’m afraid,” said Max.

“You have to think of everything that was going on in Las Piernas that night,” Irene said. “Too much was going on at once for it to be explained as just a random, terribly unlucky night.” She frowned in concentration. “I think it was supposed to look as if the Ducanes happened to drown on the night of a kidnapping. In the end, that’s the way most of Las Piernas looked at it, right? A horrible coincidence, and the kidnapping of the child was sad, but the Ducanes’ tragedy at sea was a combination of foolishness and unpredictable weather.”

“Don’t forget Jack’s beating,” O’Connor said.

“I haven’t,” she answered. “I’m as sure as you are that the beating was planned, but I doubt he was supposed to see the burial of the car.”

“I agree,” Lefebvre said. “No one was ever supposed to find that buried car. They didn’t dump Jack Corrigan in a grove and hope he’d wake up in time to watch-I think that was a mistake. If they had wanted him to see it, they would have given him a front-row seat and a ride back to town. Instead, they tried to kill him.”

“They came damned close to succeeding,” O’Connor said.

“Okay,” Irene said, “but back up. We’ve found the car. So we know there wasn’t simple coincidence at work. Think about it-there had to be a ring-master of this circus. That person knew about the Ducanes’ yacht, and that they planned to take it out that night.”

“And planned to take Kathleen and Todd with them,” Max said.

“Right. And like I said, he or she knew that Rose Hannon would be here alone with the baby.”

“And the trio that went to work on Jack either followed him or knew he’d be at the party,” O’Connor said.

“Did they have invitations?” Irene asked.

“Yes,” O’Connor said. “But no one was ever able to verify where they got them from. Lillian gave a stack of invitations to the Ducanes, and she has always believed that the Thelma and Barrett Ducane must have given one of their invitations to someone who knew Bo Jergenson-but the Ducanes weren’t around to tell us who that might have been.”

“So think of it as a circus from hell. Three rings-Jack in one ring, Thelma and Barrett Ducane in another, and Katy, Todd, and their baby in the third.”

“So who’s the ringmaster?” Max asked.

O’Connor thought of mentioning Yeager, recalled this young man’s defense of him at Lillian’s dinner party, and decided to keep his theories to himself. It occurred to him that Irene might be doing the same.

“The ringmaster? Someone who had a connection to the people in all three rings,” Lefebvre said.

“Who benefited the most?” Irene asked.

“Warren Ducane, more than anyone,” Lefebvre said. “With every other Ducane out of the way, he inherited a bundle.”

“He disappeared just before that shopping center broke ground,” Irene added.

“Not in a million years,” O’Connor said.

All three stared at him in surprise.

“First of all, Jack and Warren knew each other. Warren was a party boy in those days. I can’t think of a reason in the world he’d do something like that to Jack. They always got along fine.”

“But the money…” Max said.

“I’ve never known a man who loved his brother more than Warren loved Todd. Looked up to him-not that Todd was any great role model, but Warren didn’t see that.”

“Maybe his hero failed him in some way,” Irene said. “It has been known to happen.”

O’Connor eyed her narrowly, then glanced at Lefebvre, who was suddenly busying himself with putting the photos back in the envelope. “That isn’t the only reason,” O’Connor said. “I was there when he got the news. Warren was shocked to hear that Todd was dead.”

“But not shocked that his parents were dead?” Lefebvre asked.

O’Connor shrugged. “Neither Dan nor I were ever sure about that. We both thought he was hiding something. But he had a solid alibi and if someone got a payoff from him, Dan never saw it-and he looked hard for something like that. Warren let him look at his bank accounts and all of that without throwing any obstacles in his way.”

Irene turned toward Lefebvre, who shook his head and said, “Oh no, I’m not talking to you about the man’s finances. But what O’Connor said is true.”

“Well, Warren didn’t mastermind it, anyway,” she said.

“What makes you so sure?” Max asked.

She turned to Lefebvre. “The department watched him closely after his parents disappeared?”

“I never said so.”

“Come on, Lefebvre. The heir and everyone else in the family missing, he cashes in big time, and your department didn’t think you guys ought to watch him?”

“I know I seem very old to you, but I wasn’t with the department then. But let’s assume Dan Norton checked into his alibi and kept an eye on him.”

“Good,” she said. “Because I think the police would have noticed if he had gone up into the mountains and shot someone and stuffed the body in the trunk of a car.”

“True,” Lefebvre said. “But maybe he killed the man earlier in the proceedings.”

“When? Gus Ronden was up in the mountains before O’Connor and Norton found Warren over at Auburn Sheffield’s place. Ronden must have left not long after he killed Bo and dumped Jack in the marsh.”

“I used to wonder why they would have bothered moving Jack,” O’Connor said, “and knew it had something to do with the Buick, but-I was missing too many pieces of the puzzle. Everyone who knew Jergenson said he wasn’t too bright, so I suspect he wasn’t supposed to take Jack to the farm.”

“They thought they had drowned Jack, right?” she asked.

“They probably thought they had finished him off,” he agreed.

He watched her brows draw together.

“We know Gus Ronden was connected to both the kidnapping and the attack on Corrigan,” Lefebvre said. “Our crime lab found bloodstains on clothing at his house, and it wasn’t his blood-he was type A. The blood on the clothing in the hamper matched Rose Hannon’s blood type-she was AB, which is found in only about four percent of the population. Jack Corrigan was type O-we found type O bloodstains in the trunk of Ronden’s car, but we also found fibers from Jack’s clothing and his keys inside the trunk. The gun in Ronden’s car fired the bullet that killed Jergenson, so we know he was at the marsh that night.”

“And you found the weapon that killed Rose Hannon,” Irene said.

“Yes. It was a knife among Gus Ronden’s possessions.” He sighed. “He had previously assaulted a woman. Today, we could have run many more tests for proteins on the bloodstains than we could in 1958, and narrowed down the possible contributors of that type O blood. And Gus Ronden would have shown up in the NCIC.”

“The FBI computer project?” O’Connor asked.

“Yes. National Crime Information Center. Back in ’fifty-eight, it wasn’t all that hard for criminals to relocate. No easy way to track them between jurisdictions. This system changes all that. Soon we’re supposed to be getting hooked up to an automated fingerprint system from the FBI. So-”

“Back up,” Irene said. “The bloodstains-what was the baby’s blood type?”

“Type O. Katy and Todd were both type O.”

She looked toward Max. “I’ve given blood, so I know I’m type A. Do you know your blood type?”

“Yes,” he said, “I’m type O, but it doesn’t matter now-the real Max Ducane has been found. Besides, it’s the most common blood type.”

“Was all of the blood inside the Buick type O?”

“We aren’t sure we’ll be able to work with any of those bloodstains. They are quite old and most have been contaminated by dirt or degraded by bacteria.”

“Most? Does that mean you may have some you can work with?”

“I’m not going to discuss that now.”

She muttered, “Spirit of openness.” Lefebvre ignored her.

“The police checked out Warren’s alibi, right?” Max asked.

“Yes,” Lefebvre said. “Warren Ducane could have paid others to do his work for him, of course.”

“I don’t think it’s Warren,” Irene said. “If his motive was the inheritance, and he already knew the baby was dead, it wouldn’t make a lot of sense for him to set up a trust fund for his lost nephew and then actually give that trust-worth much more now than it was then-to Max. Even if setting up the fund was just some way of throwing you off his trail, it made no sense for him to keep it going so long-if he had arranged to have the baby killed, why not take the money back after ten years? He could have told everyone, ‘I tried my best to find him, but I’ve given up hope now.’ No one would have blamed him. Instead, he went out of his way to find Max and talked him into taking the money.”

“That’s true,” Max said, and O’Connor heard the relief in his voice.

“Let’s look through the rest of the house,” Lefebvre suggested.

As they made the long trek toward the master bedroom, Irene said, “Katy slept so far away from her baby,” voicing the same thought that had crossed O’Connor’s mind twenty years before.

“No,” Max said. “There’s a bassinet in her room, too.”

“Oh, good,” she said, then added in a quieter voice, “I don’t know why I mentioned it. I guess it doesn’t matter now.”

“But it mattered while he lived,” O’Connor said.

“While he lived…” she repeated softly. “Wait! Why wasn’t the baby killed here?”

All three men stopped walking and turned toward her.

“I mean,” she said, looking self-conscious, “if you were going to kill an infant and bury him in a car trunk, why not just kill him here? It would have been easier to kill him than the maid, right? And if he was dead, you wouldn’t need to worry that he’d cry or scream or… cause you any trouble.”

Lefebvre got a thoughtful look on his face.

“The police must have considered that question before now,” Max said. “What’s the answer?”

“Until yesterday,” Lefebvre reminded him, “we thought the Ducanes had probably been the victims of a boating accident-although there were questions, there was no proof that it had been anything else. We thought the child had been kidnapped, to be held for ransom. And perhaps killed when the possibility of ransom disappeared. And we really weren’t sure how Jack Corrigan’s beating figured into anything, other than some kind of connection between the man who assaulted him and the one who murdered Rose Hannon. So, sorry, but no. No ready answers to that question.”

They went into Katy’s room first. O’Connor watched Irene, curious about her reaction to the other woman’s room. “It was her sanctuary, wasn’t it?” she said. “Everything a young 1950s society girl could want…” She strolled around, touching objects as she named them. “Music in high fidelity, color television, books, a comfy bed with baby close by, and…a dog bed? Oh, how sad. What happened to the dog?”

Max and Lefebvre looked to O’Connor.

“The pug? No one knew. I thought it might have run away after the nurse-maid was murdered.”

“No…” Lefebvre said slowly. “No, wait…” He started looking through his envelope of photos again. He pulled out an eight-by-ten black-and-white glossy-a photograph taken at a party. A half-dozen elegantly dressed people stood near a big birthday cake. Happy Birthday, Kathleen! was inscribed in flowing script on the cake. O’Connor immediately recognized the six people-Lillian and Harold Linworth, Thelma and Barrett Ducane, Katy and Todd Ducane. Katy was holding a dog. Her pug.

“The dog was with her!” Irene said. “The Ducanes never came back here that night, right?”

“Right,” Lefebvre said. “Her roadster was at Thelma and Barrett’s home. There were no signs of violence there. We don’t think anyone entered the house. The trouble must have started at the marina or on the boat.”

“So when she got to her in-laws’ home, she either left the dog in the yard there-no, you would have found it. She must have taken it with her.”

“By God,” O’Connor said angrily, as understanding dawned on him. “Woolsey! That dumb bastard can’t tell a dog’s bones from a child’s?”

“You’re saying those could be a dog’s bones in the trunk of the car?” Max asked. “A dead dog, not a baby?” He sat down on the bed, looking pale.

“Hold on, hold on,” Lefebvre said. “We don’t know what happened. And just because we don’t know what happened to a dog doesn’t mean those bones weren’t those of the baby. The dog could have been lost off the Sea Dreamer or thrown overboard. The dog could have run away that night and ended up living on a neighboring farm.”

“Or Mitch Yeager could have pressured or paid off the coroner,” O’Connor said.

“It could also be an honest mistake,” Lefebvre said. “Have you ever seen the bones of an infant that age? I have.” He paused and looked away for a moment. “The bones of a two-month-old baby are so small, so fragile. Found in fragments, as most of these were…a dog breed with a rounded skull… you can’t assume that a preliminary finding couldn’t be honestly mistaken.”

“That’s kind of you, that is!” O’Connor said. “And I understand that you need to keep working with the man.”

“O’Connor…” Irene said, looking between him and Lefebvre.

But it was Max who spoke next. “Perhaps you should tell the coroner that he might want to take another look at those bones and make sure he’s right, because Mitch Yeager is not the only person in Las Piernas who is…concerned. I am concerned. I’m sure my friend Lillian Linworth will also want to know the true facts. As will Auburn Sheffield. If the coroner’s not willing to take a closer, honest look, then tomorrow morning I’m calling…” He looked to Irene.

“The State Attorney General’s office,” she said.

“Yes, the State Attorney General’s office, and asking for an independent investigation.”

“Sounds like a newspaper story to me,” Irene said.

“Oh, it is,” O’Connor said. “And if anyone on the County Board of Supervisors reads the Sunday morning edition of the Express, then they just might finally decide it’s time to replace Old Sheep Dip.”

“Have you thought about the possibility,” Lefebvre said, “that he could be right, that those bones are the baby’s?”

“I consider that slim, knowing who was visiting him,” O’Connor said.

“And what reason would Mitch Yeager have to influence him?”

“I can tell you that,” Irene said. “He hoped to ruin Max’s chances of living independently of him. Mr. Yeager didn’t know the terms of the trust and figured Max would have to give up all his money and become dependent on him again. He’s had big plans for Max.”

“Does that possibility seem likely to you, Max?” Lefebvre asked.

“Absolutely. He wanted me to manage his businesses. Now I don’t have to. He’s furious with me.”

“This will take tact,” Lefebvre said.

“You’re screwed then, aren’t you?” Irene said, and he laughed.

“I don’t mean to get you in trouble,” Max said, “but-”

“Mr. Ducane,” Lefebvre said, putting the photos back into the envelope, “a homicide detective who is at war with the coroner might as well stay home. Give me a day to try to find a way past Dr. Woolsey’s defenses. If I can’t manage it, then I’ll let you know.”

“The crime scene photos,” Irene said.

“What about them?”

“I saw your photographer at work. He took photos of everything-every step of the way. If we’re on to something here, then he probably has a photo of some bone that will give it away. A pug must have… oh, a jawbone, for example, or a nose cavity or some other bones or teeth that are very different in shape from a baby’s, right?”

“Yes, but…”

She held up her camera. “Tell him that before the police had a chance to secure the scene, that nosy broad from the Express took a bunch of photos of the contents of the trunk of that car, and that today I started asking you questions about dog bones.”

“Irene…” O’Connor warned.

“I’m not making news here, O’Connor. That’s the truth. I took a lot of photos. I asked questions about dog bones. I wondered about a killer who would keep a baby alive, just to kill him later in a car trunk. That’s all.”

“Do you know what, O’Connor?” Lefebvre said, touching his chest. “I think I feel a little something here. What is it?” He feigned a look of concentration.

“In a human, it would be a heart. In a jackass, indigestion. But what do you feel?”

“Oh yes, now I know. Sympathy for you.”