Bloodlines

57

H E ENDED THE CALL JUST AFTER THAT, BUT I WAS UNEASY. A MINUTE OR two later I called his cell and told him that I just wanted to make sure he was all right. He said he’d be fine, thanked me for my concern, and promised to call me again later.

Adam Yeager’s death would be worth looking into. I hooked up my laptop and tried to find him in the Social Security Death Index, but he wasn’t in it. That index began in 1937. Since he wasn’t in it, it was possible he was dead before 1937. Or at least not earning wages. I supposed prisoners might not have had Social Security numbers at that point.

I decided to do more research when I got back to the paper.

Thinking about Max made me think about the days when we first met. Here we were, two decades later, and he still didn’t know if his parents were the people who had been found in the trunk of that car. That in turn made me think of all the other unanswered questions I had about the night Corrigan had been attacked and the Ducanes murdered. I decided I’d go through the notes O’Connor had made. Maybe after all this time, giving it a fresh look, I’d see something we had missed before.

Opening the box marked “Jack” brought a flood of memories. At first, it was difficult to concentrate on the task of studying the contents rather than to sit reminiscing about those early days of working with O’Connor.

I came across the photo of Betty Bradford, she of the pink underwear, owner of the buried Buick. Jack Corrigan had been set up by her, and nearly died as a result. “I wonder if you’re still around,” I said aloud. She looked to me now as she had the first time I had seen this photo-pretty woman, young but hard-edged-although now thought I perceived a little insecurity beneath the cool.

I kept searching. I came across a set of O’Connor’s notebooks I hadn’t seen before. They ranged over a number of years. I smiled to myself. If I had seen them in 1978, I probably wouldn’t have known enough of his shorthand and code to figure them out. I glanced through the first few and saw that they were devoted to one story: the events connected to that night in January 1958.

They began not with Corrigan’s beating, as I had thought they might, but with O’Connor meeting Dan Norton at the home of Katy and Todd Ducane. His notes brought to mind the day we had toured the house with Max, and I wondered if Lillian still kept it as a museum.

I glanced at my watch and decided I needed to get my ass back to the paper. I’d have to live with Ethan and his gloating over the Harmon story, with Lydia and her anger. I had work to do.

I fed the dogs and Cody and hurried out. Overhead, gray clouds thickened, and darkened the sky. I went back in and grabbed an umbrella.

As I drove, O’Connor’s voice echoed in my thoughts. I missed that old man as much as I missed my own father. Perhaps because of Ethan’s story, a memory came to me-of the night he told me about his missing sister.

I slowed the car a little, but kept driving.

By the time I reached the paper, rain was falling. I hurried inside.

My plans were twofold: to spend some time reading up on the Ducanes, and to look back at the articles O’Connor wrote about Harmon.

The presses were already running, sending their pulse through the building. As I climbed the stairs, I half-hoped Lydia would be gone for the day, then decided that was not only extremely unlikely, but showed a sad lack of courage on my part.

When I got up to the newsroom, she was arranging furniture, helping Ethan move his desk nearer to her own. She saw me right away. She ignored me after that.

I went down to the morgue, as much to get away from the newsroom again as to do some homework. Hailey was there, but she was focused so intently on whatever she was reading, I didn’t disturb her. The rumble of the presses was a little louder here. I found it soothing.

I asked the librarian to get microfilm for specific dates in 1936, 1958, and1978.

“The 1978 reels-I’ve got them right here. Haven’t had a chance to file them again.”

“Again?”

He sighed. “That asshole Ethan-you know him?”

“Yes.”

“He’s in here looking through back issues all the time. Pesters the hell out of me.”

“He was probably doing background work on the Harmon story.”

The librarian shrugged. “Maybe. Seems to be an old news epidemic. Hailey has the reels for 1936 over there,” he said.

Hailey looked up at that, apparently only then noticing my presence. “I’m working on the story about Helen Swan,” she said. “I’ve already called her to set up a time for an interview. I’m going over to her house on Monday night.”

“Good. She was married to Jack Corrigan, you know. She used to teach journalism at the university.”

She knew nothing of her, I realized, other than what she had just read- but at least she already had an admiration for Helen from the stories she found in the old issues of the News. I gave her a quick rundown of the News Express staff, at least what I knew of it. “I didn’t get to know many of the people who worked here before I came to the paper in 1978,” I said.

“What happened to Wildman?” she asked.

“Killed in a car accident,” I said. “He was drunk. Family in the other car didn’t make it, either.”

“That really sucks.”

“Yes.”

She let me have the reels for April 1936, near the date of O’Connor’s childhood story “What I Saw in the Court.” I looked back a few weeks before the beginning of his first diary and came forward. It didn’t take long to find it, big and bold across the front page. An A-1 headline, as befit a story written by Jack Corrigan, the star reporter of the Express. I imagined an eight-year-old Irish kid shouting the headline from a street corner:

YEAGER BROTHER TRIAL BEGINS TODAY