Bloodlines

61

P UBLICLY, HE HANDLED ALL THE RUDE COMMENTS, MEDDLESOME QUESTIONS, double takes, and stares that were to come his way over the next few weeks with a kind of fortitude and dignity that made all of us who loved him proud to know him. Privately, if you didn’t know him well, he might have fooled you into thinking he was getting on with his life.

The Express broke the story about the DNA tests, and what that brought to Max made me wish something I rarely wished-that I didn’t work for a newspaper.

Because we’re friends, I didn’t write any of the stories that directly involved Max, but Hailey did a good job on them. If it had all stopped there, he still would have faced a lot of public reaction. There wasn’t a chance on earth it was going to stop there.

The story got picked up by the wires. He was a natural for national media attention. He was rich, good-looking, and quotable. His origins were mysterious. He had advantages that came to him through sheer luck and those he had obviously earned through his own abilities, but some of the media chose to insinuate that he was a charlatan who had slyly conned two tragic, wealthy families into handing over a fortune to him.

After a week or so, the story probably would have dropped off the public radar had it not been for an announcement from the Ross family. As the whole country soon learned, Max was an eligible bachelor again. Gisella had called him to break off their engagement just minutes before her father gave a press conference.

For a brief time, I fantasized retribution on Gisella Ross and her parents. As it turned out, my fellow media members did the work for me unbidden- after painting her as incredibly shallow, they found some dirt on her family that made Max’s heritage seem noble by comparison.

“I’m so sorry this has happened to her,” he told me, more upset by those reports than by anything that had been said about him.

He told us this over dinner at our house. Tuna casserole-lifestyles of the rich and famous.

He was spending a lot of time with us these days. Frank didn’t seem to mind. They had formed their own friendship, and even though Max was now without a fiancée, I guess Frank had figured out what Max and I had figured out a long time ago.

“I wish I could be sorry for her,” I said, “because it would fool everyone into thinking I am a much better person than I am. She didn’t deserve you.”

He shook his head. “She wasn’t ready for what happened-all the publicity. She’s a private person.”

I decided not to respond to that.

He must have seen something of my thoughts, though, because he smiled and said to Frank, “God help anyone who harms someone Irene cares about.”

“True,” Frank said. He’s smarter than I am, though, because he immediately changed the subject by asking questions that led to an animated discussion about the ways GPS could help with law enforcement. Max forgot his troubles for a while. He talked about how cargo containers could now carry signaling devices that could help locate stolen goods.

“Lots happening in the area of tracking the movements of parolees,” Max said. “They could be tagged with lightweight devices and you would always know where they were. And even have the devices programmed to send a call to local law enforcement if, say, a sex offender goes into an area near a school or playground.” Which was fine as far as it went, I thought, but I stayed quiet and didn’t spoil their mood by asking if anyone had read any George Orwell lately.

At the end of the evening, just as he was leaving, Max said, “I have to try to find out what became of that child. The two of you understand that, don’t you?”

“Yes,” I said. “I’ve been trying to figure out what we could do.”

“So have I,”he said. “Frank, I know it didn’t help much last time, but I want to offer the reward again. Maybe after all these years, someone will finally come forward. I’ll up it to two hundred and fifty thousand. I’ll add a grant to the department to help staff phones, if that’s what it takes. I don’t know what’s allowed and what isn’t, but-can you help me with this?”

“Sure,” Frank said. “Let me run it by my lieutenant. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

The reward made our phones ring again. Sometimes the callers hadn’t even been born at the time of the kidnapping. We got one “repressed memory” case of a woman who believed her father had buried the child in the family backyard, but real estate records showed the family hadn’t moved to Las Piernas until 1961 or purchased the home in question until 1964.

I kept hoping Betty Bradford would call.

In the meantime, DNA tests on the scrapings from beneath Maureen O’Connor’s nails excluded Bennie Lee Harmon-at least as the person who had been scratched when she fought off her attacker. Harmon was doing better now, but had become less talkative.

“The business of the graves bothers me,” Frank said. “Harmon was mostly a drifter, didn’t stay any one place for long. When he was here, though, he must have confided in someone. Or he was followed. I started to wonder if he had married or had a girlfriend, or had a crush on someone from work.” Frank had looked up Harmon’s Social Security records. “He was 4-F, so he wasn’t in the military. No army buddy. I thought he might have worked for the aircraft plant, and maybe found someone nearly as odd as he was there. Or maybe he had been followed from there out to the grove.”

“By someone who also knew Maureen. It makes sense,” I said.

“Except he didn’t work at the aircraft plant. He worked as a driver for a company that sold agricultural supplies,” he said. “Probably how he chose the orange grove in the first place. He basically doesn’t play well with others, so his job choices were usually ones where he could be alone much of the day.”

“And he might have used the company truck to haul young women off to an orange grove?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“Did he ever tell you why he chose April as his big month?”

“No, but that was something he told one of the other investigators this past week-I guess it has to do with Easter, not April. His mother died on Easter in 1939. His killings all took place within seven days after Easter.”

“Then the person who knew about the graves in the orange grove didn’t just follow him out there. The person who killed her knew about the Easter thing, too. Maureen was killed within a week of Easter.”

“Damn. Once I knew it wasn’t him, I didn’t check the date against the Easter calendar. You’re sure?”

“Yes. The last photo O’Connor had of his sister was taken on Easter Sunday, just a few days before she died.”

Ethan came back to work. He looked as if he had lost about fifteen pounds. He didn’t have fifteen pounds to spare. He also looked as if he hadn’t been getting much sleep. His desk had been moved back near mine, placed just on the opposite side of it.

I said, “Welcome back, Ethan.”

He nodded without looking up or saying anything. It occurred to me that he probably thought I was being sarcastic.

Lydia gave him every shit assignment that came into the city desk. She handed the plums to Hailey and other reporters. Ethan did his work without complaint. And without making eye contact with anyone in the newsroom.

He was careful to keep his eyes averted from the surfaces of other people’s desks, too, and looked at no computer monitor other than his own, staring down at his shoes whenever he got up to get a phone book or moved for any other reason. Sometimes I wondered how he made it across the newsroom without bumping into anything. Every now and then, I saw another reporter go out of his way to jostle him. Ethan would apologize and move on.

More than once, he had to call the computer folks to supply a new password. It seems any new one he came up with was soon discovered and then used to change it to another password without his knowledge. I thought he might have complained to management about it, because after about a week of that, at a staff meeting, John said, “The next person who fucks around with another reporter’s computer will be fired on the spot. I will set up security cameras in the newsroom if I have to. The fun’s over, boys and girls.” Ethan turned beet red and shook his head slightly.

I said, “John, who reported the problem to you?”

“Those propeller heads in the computer department,” he said without hesitation. “I can’t make sense out of half of what they say to me, so none of you are to make them talk to me again, understand?”

The next morning, I watched as Ethan navigated his way to his desk. He sat down and pulled a drawer open. All its contents fell out onto the floor with a tremendous clatter. Across the newsroom, there was laughter.

He said nothing, staring at the mess for a moment, then knelt on the floor and began picking up the scattered contents.

I stood up, went around to his desk, knelt next to him, and started helping.

“Please don’t,” he whispered.

“It’s an old trick,” I said, pretending I didn’t hear him. “Don’t open any of the others, they’ll be upside down, too. Someone takes a thin piece of cardboard, uses it to hold the contents in while the drawer is flipped over and reinserted. Very hard to detect first thing in the morning.”

At some point during this explanation, he stopped moving. Mark Baker and Stuart Angert came over and fixed the other drawers while I continued to hunt down paper clips, pens, loose change, and Post-it notes. The newsroom had fallen silent.

John’s hearing is never so attuned to anything as a lack of noise in the newsroom. He came to his door, glanced over at us, then turned to the rest of the room and shouted, “What the hell are you being paid to do?”

It broke whatever spell had frozen the others, and work resumed.

Ethan said, “Thanks,” as Stuart and Mark went back to their desks. Otherwise, he still hadn’t moved or spoken.

“Let’s get out of here for a few minutes,” I said.

“I can’t.”

“Sure you can. Meet you downstairs in five. Don’t forget your umbrella.”

“I don’t have one.”

“We’ll share mine, then.”

I stood up, grabbed my purse, jacket, and umbrella, and left.

He met me in the lobby just when I thought I might have to go back up into the newsroom and haul him out by his ear.

I started walking, and to stay dry, he had to keep up. “Where are we going?”

“Lucky Dragon Burgers. Serves a great breakfast.”

“I’m not hungry, really.”

“I am,” I said.

He didn’t say anything more until we were seated in a booth. I asked him if he was a vegetarian. “No.”

I ordered two Lucky Dragon omelets and a pot of coffee.

He was staring down at the table.

“I was trying to remember an acronym a friend taught me,” I said. “Maybe you can help. It was the word H.A.L.T.-the H stood for hungry, the A for angry. The T was for tired. The L?”

“Lonely,” he said. He looked up. “Your friend was in AA?”

“Yes.”

“How’s he doing?”

“She. That one is doing fine. Not always the story. But she remembers to do little things like taking care not to let herself get too hungry, angry, lonely, or tired. Like a lot of things in AA, that’s not a bad idea for anyone, really.”

“Are you-?”

“In AA? No. But try not to hold that against me.”

“Actually, I’m glad to have a chance to talk to you. I need to apologize to you.”

“Working your steps?”

“No-I mean, I am, but it isn’t that. I’m not at that step yet. I’m-this is on my own. I just need to do this.”

The long apology that followed wasn’t something I needed, but I was fairly certain he had to get it off his chest. He spoke slowly and haltingly, in a manner far removed from that of the glib young manipulator who had put himself forward so often in recent months. The omelets arrived just as he was getting to the part about how he knew he had caused embarrassment to everyone on the whole newspaper.

“We’ll get over it. Don’t let that food get cold. Oh-thanks, and you’re forgiven, and don’t let any of this keep you from moving on from here.”

“That’s it?”

“No. Can I have your sour cream?”

He laughed a little nervously and dished it onto my plate. “It’s not good for you.”

“Oh yes it is. Hair shirts, on the other hand, are really bad for you.”

“Hair shirts?” he asked, puzzled.

I sighed. “I should make you look it up, but-people used to wear them as penance.”

“Oh. Okay.”

We ate in silence for a few minutes. He was, I noticed, starting to tuck into his breakfast with earnest.

My cell phone rang. I apologized to him-I usually turn it off in restaurants.

His mouth was full, but he motioned me to go ahead and answer it.

The call was from Frank. “Lydia didn’t know where to find you, so I worried a little,” he said.

“I’m having breakfast at the Lucky Dragon. What’s up?”

“I’ve been thinking about what you said about Maureen O’Connor. Harmon worked for Eden Supply of Las Piernas. Ring any bells?”

“Eden Supply? No, and there’s nothing about it in O’Connor’s notes that I can recall. Was it owned by some other company?”

“Haven’t had a chance to look it up. It’s not around now, though.”

“I’ll see if I can find anything about it in the newspapers from the 1940s. Maybe they advertised with the Express.”

“Okay, but don’t run anything in the paper yet-I’d rather Yeager didn’t know we were looking in this direction.”

When I hung up, Ethan said, “That was about O’Connor?”

I felt a little rise of anger.

“I didn’t mean to eavesdrop,” he said quickly.

“You could hardly help it. That’s not what’s bothering me. It’s that-”

“That you were close to O’Connor and I stole from him.”

“Yes.”

“That was wrong, I know. You probably won’t believe this, but-the reason was-I mean, I should never have done it, but-but I love the way he wrote.”

“I do believe that.”

“It makes it all worse, really.”

“Ethan, if we could go back in time and pull all of O’Connor’s writing out of your articles, believe me, I’d jump into the time machine right now. We can’t. You have to live with that. But I knew O’Connor really well, and I know what he’d tell you.”

“ ‘Why’d you steal from me, you stupid son of a bitch?’”

I laughed, which surprised him. “No. He’d tell you to keep your head up.”

He looked down at the table, caught himself, and met my gaze. “Why are you being nice to me? You hated me.”

“When I first came to work for the paper, I hid in the men’s room of the Express one day, and eavesdropped on O’Connor insulting the hell out of me.” I told him about some of my early troubles with O’Connor.

“What I’ve done,” he said, “is pretty different from that.”

“Yes, it is. But you aren’t the first reporter to get off to a rough start at the Express, Ethan. You have talent. You’ve just got to show people what you’ve got, that’s all. Never mind trying to impress them any other way-just use your own skill. Let it speak for itself.”

“What if that’s not enough?”

“If that isn’t enough, nothing else ever will be. You’ll need to find another line of work.”

“No-this is all I want.”

I smiled. “You’ll be all right.”

“I don’t know. They’ll never forget about this.”

“You think you’re so important that they’ll remember your mistakes more than anyone else’s?”

He smiled back a little. “When you put it like that, no.” He drank some coffee, then said, “Thanks.” After another few sips, he said, “It’s going to be hard, because…I really fucked up. I’m not too proud of myself. And it’s also going to be hard because…well, because until lately, it’s been so easy. I know that doesn’t seem to make sense, but what I mean is, no one ever stopped me before. I know how to get away with things, but now…I can’t do it that way. Even if I know I won’t get caught.”

“You have to catch yourself.”

“Right. So…I kind of have to reinvent myself. You know what I mean?”

“Yes, I think so.” I stared out the window of the Lucky Dragon, watching a steady stream of downtown workers, panhandlers, shoppers, and others walk by. Each one a little bundle of troubles on legs, determined to make it through the day. I looked back at Ethan. “I’ve got a project for you. Something to do with O’Connor, so maybe it will be a way of paying him back.”

“What?”

“A little background work for a story-nothing we can run with yet, but maybe it will go somewhere if you find a connection. Go down to the morgue…” I stopped, seeing his face go pale. “You can’t avoid going in there forever, Ethan.”

“No.”

“All right, use the public library, then, but be careful not to mention to anyone else exactly what it is you’re looking for. Find out if a company named Eden Supply, which was operating around here in the 1940s, was owned by anyone else-a larger company, for example. The city might have a record of it, although only with luck would that still be available. Try the ads for it first.”

“Okay. If you don’t mind my asking, what does this have to do with O’Connor?”

“It’s the company Harmon worked for.” I told him about the possible connections to Maureen’s murder. “While you’re at it, read up on her disappearance.” I gave him some dates.

We talked about O’Connor for a while. I told him about the papers in the storage locker, and that O’Connor’s brother Dermot would be visiting the States soon. It became clear to me, as he mentioned O’Connor’s work, that he had read a great deal of it, and his enthusiasm for it made conversation easy between us.

I paid for our breakfasts, over his protests. The rain had let up, and it looked as if the skies were clearing. We walked back to the paper in a companionable silence. He seemed lost in thought, but at least he was lost with better posture. He was keeping his head up.

I thought he’d follow me into the newsroom, but he went downstairs to the morgue instead.

Until that moment, I wasn’t really sure-for all my speeches over breakfast-that much could be made of Ethan Shire.