Sympathy Between Humans

32

At eight-thirty Monday morning, I was waiting outside Christian Kilander’s office. It was my day off, and I’d dressed for it, in old Levi’s and a loose cream-colored shirt that belonged to Shiloh. Seeing me at his door so early, Kilander arched an eyebrow. “To what do I owe this honor?” he said.

“I already owe you a favor,” I told him, “but I need another one. You did law school and your first clerk’s job in Illinois, right?”

“I knew putting my résumé on file was a bad idea,” he said, balancing coffee and his briefcase in the same hand while he unlocked his door.

I followed him inside. “You’ve still got contacts down there, right?” Kilander was a master networker; I doubted he’d let any useful association grow too much moss.

He set his briefcase down on the credenza and his coffee on the desk. “I see where this is going,” he said. “What do you need, and from whom?”

“Vital records, from Rockford,” I said.

“You know those are public,” Kilander said. “You don’t need to pull strings. Just call and ask.”

“Or I could just call Dial-a-Prayer,” I said.

Government records- birth and death certificates, marriage licenses and decrees of divorce, property records, school enrollments- are documents of public record. They also frequently get misfiled. Or names are misspelled. Or the computer is down. It’s best if you can hunt for what you need in person, taking your time and employing all your patience.

If you can’t be there, you need someone who can go the extra mile to help you, someone who recognizes your voice on the phone. If not, you’re condemned to a day of sincere disembodied voices. I’m sorry, sir, I’m sorry, ma’am, we don’t have that information. There’s nothing I can do.

The bottom line: if you want to be able to say you tried, you can call an anonymous clerk. If you really want the information, you find a personal connection.

“All right, kid,” Kilander said. “What are you looking for?”

“Birth, death, school, change-of-name… I’m not sure exactly what I need.”

“So you’re trawling, not spearfishing,” he said. “Okay, I’ll dig up a couple of phone numbers. In fact, I’ll make a few calls, to get you started.” He sat behind his desk, flipped through a Rolodex, spoke without looking up. “Is it casual day over at the detective division?”

“No,” I said. “It’s my day off.”

I staked out an empty conference room and spent the day making follow-up and return phone calls to Rockford. When my cell rang at 4:25 in the afternoon, I was expecting another call from Illinois. That was why I couldn’t place the masculine voice on the other end. “Detective Pribek?”

“Speaking,” I said.

“This is Gray Diaz. I know it’s your day off, but I was wondering if I could have a few moments of your time today. I’d need you to come downtown.”

The BCA. The tests were back.

“That’s fine,” I said slowly. “Where are you? I’m downtown right now.”

Diaz had made himself fairly comfortable in the office of a vacationing prosecutor, Jane O’Malley. He’d spread out his materials on her desk, so that pictures of her two children and her nephews and nieces looked out over the Royce Stewart paperwork.

“Thank you for coming,” he said. “Please, have a seat.”

O’Malley had good wide armchairs she’d bought herself, low and soft, that guests sank deeply into. I was familiar enough with them to know that they’d be too comfortable to be comfortable, particularly if Diaz continued to stand, thus towering over me. I settled onto the arm of the chair, a half-standing position, instead.

There was a beat while Diaz accepted this. Then he walked over to the window and looked out, although I doubted he was really looking at anything.

“Sarah,” he said, “I haven’t told you anything about myself.” Pause. “I came to work in Blue Earth because my father-in-law is ill. My wife doesn’t want him to have to move, at his age. He’s lived in that town nearly all his life. He’d probably stroke out from the stress of packing everything up and moving out of his farmhouse. You know?”

“I know,” I said.

“I’d much rather be up here, working with you guys, in Hennepin County.” He paused. “If I were, you and I would be colleagues, Sarah. We could have been working cases together.” He turned from the window. “I wish that were the situation here. I wish I didn’t have to meet you under these circumstances.”

“So do I,” I said.

“Because of that,” Diaz said, “because we’re virtually colleagues, I want to give you an opportunity. I’m getting close to the end of my work here.”

I said nothing. Diaz walked over to stand between me and O’Malley’s desk.

“When I first interviewed you, Sarah, I asked you if there was any reason someone might have seen you outside Stewart’s house the night he died. You said no.”

“I remember,” I said.

Diaz sat on the edge of the desk, like a teacher having an informal moment with a student after class. “I’m asking you now,” he said, “would you like to reconsider your answer?”

Don’t hesitate here. “No,” I said. “I wouldn’t.”

Diaz looked away, toward the window, then back at me. “We found blood in the carpeting of your car,” he said. “There’s also a diagonal groove in your right rear tire, damage caused by something it ran over. It’s as distinctive as a fingerprint.”

I didn’t say anything, but felt the muscles in my throat work, swallowing involuntarily.

“Sarah, I know what Royce Stewart did to your partner’s daughter. I know that the night Stewart died, you believed your husband was dead and that Shorty had an opportunity to help him and didn’t. There are highly, highly extenuating circumstances here.” He leaned forward until his half-folded hands almost touched mine. “I’m familiar with your record. I know you’re a good cop, Sarah, and I want to help you. But we’ve come to the point where you need to tell me what happened that night. If you don’t come out and meet me halfway, I can’t help you.”

In that moment, I wanted to tell Diaz the truth, and for the worst of all reasons. Not because I feared what would happen to me if I continued to obstruct justice, as I had been doing since that night in Blue Earth. Not because he had forensic evidence that might convict me whether or not Genevieve returned to confess. I wanted to tell him solely because I wanted so badly to believe what Gray Diaz was telling me with his words and tone and posture: that he wanted to help me.

I cleared my throat. “I’m sorry, Gray,” I said. “I have nothing further to add to what I’ve already told you.”

Diaz sighed. “I’m sorry, too, Detective Pribek,” he said, standing. “I’ll be in touch.”

Back in the conference room, I couldn’t remember what I’d been doing before. I looked at my notes, and they made no sense to me.

“Are you all right?”

I hadn’t heard Christian Kilander come in. “I’m fine,” I said, turning from the window.

I wasn’t lying. Calm had settled on me unexpectedly, and I understood why. Gray Diaz had made it pretty clear that this was my last chance to level with him. Maybe I should have taken it, but now it was too late. First-time skydivers must feel this way, just after they jump. There are a dozen chances to back out of a dive, but once they’ve stepped out into the air, they’re committed. Whatever happened, safe landing or bloody impact, the weight of decision was off their shoulders. Like them, I’d made my choice. Whatever happened from here on was out of my hands.

Kilander held out a fax. “This came for you, from Rockford,” he said.

I took it from his hand. Certificate of Live Birth, it read at the top.

“Sorry there wasn’t anything else,” Kilander said.

“No, that’s okay,” I said, still scanning the text. “Sometimes one thing is all you need.”

In retrospect, it might have been better if I’d taken some time to think, to sleep on what I’d learned. But I didn’t. At five-thirty that evening, I drove out to the lake.

The weather really was beautiful, a sunny day without a hint of the humid gray scrim that takes the bloom off many of Minnesota ’s summer days. I wasn’t surprised that the Hennessy kids were outdoors on this bright evening.

All four boys had divided up for a football game by the lake. It was an oddly matched game, but probably the best they could do: Aidan and Liam against Colm and Donal. Above them, Marlinchen presided over a grill on the porch, painting sauce onto chicken breasts and wings. She was wearing a white T-back tank shirt, cutoffs, and sunglasses with a copper-wire frame and greenish-silver mirrored lenses, a Discman on her hip. When she saw me, Marlinchen pulled the earphones off her head, to rest around her neck. “Sarah!” she said, looking pleased. “We’re having a little barbecue to celebrate school being out. We’ll probably have plenty to spare, if you can wait.”

She seemed in excellent spirits. That was going to change.

“I’m afraid I’m here on business,” I said.

“What kind of business?” she said.

“Your father has limited ability to answer yes-and-no questions, right?” I said. “That’s how you did the conservatorship hearing, as I understand it.”

Marlinchen glanced immediately up at the high window. “Dad’s resting right now,” she said. “What’s this about?”

“I need to ask some questions only he can answer,” I said. “About your cousin, Jacob Candeleur.”

“I don’t have a cousin named Jacob,” she said. “We don’t have any cousins, period.”

I took the birth certificate from my shoulder and gave it to Marlinchen. I saw Marlinchen absorb the names: Jacob, Paul, Brigitte.

“See the birth date?” I said. “He and you and Aidan were born only months apart.”

“How bizarre,” she said. Puzzlement had washed away the polite anxiety in her voice. “I never met him.”

“Your father didn’t like your aunt Brigitte, and kept her away from his children,” I said. “But it isn’t true that you never met your cousin Jacob. You grew up with him. He became your closest friend.”

“What are you saying?” But Marlinchen was beginning to understand. Her eyes went to the tall blond boy beneath us, who was letting Donal outrun him for a touchdown.

“That’s not your brother Aidan down there,” I said. “It’s your cousin, Jacob. Your father didn’t give him away to Brigitte when he was 12,” I said. “He gave him back. Aidan, I mean Jacob, said that Brigitte was affectionate and clingy, as if she’d always wanted to be a mother. And she did. To her own son.”

Marlinchen took off her sunglasses to make eye contact. “Is this some kind of a sick joke?” she asked. She enunciated as if speaking to a child. “There’s a rather gaping hole in your theory, you know. If that’s Jacob, where is the real Aidan?”

This was the hard part. “If I had to guess,” I said, “I’d say he’s buried under the magnolia tree.” I pointed. “I think he shot himself with your father’s gun, fourteen years ago, and your father buried him under your mother’s favorite tree. The choice of burial site was probably a misguided way of comforting her.”

“No,” Marlinchen said.

“You have memories of it: a loud noise, your mother being upset and sleeping in the same bed with you that night. For comfort.”

“It was a storm that upset her,” Marlinchen said.

“No,” I said. “You all say your father didn’t have any interest in cars or home improvement. Yet he laid the new carpet in the study himself, and he’s held on to a car for fourteen years saying he might fix it up someday. Fourteen years, Marlinchen.”

“What’s your point?”

“When Aidan shot himself, your father rushed him to the hospital in that car. The carpet in the study he simply replaced, because it was soaked in blood. The smaller splashes, in the hall carpet, he scrubbed out with bleach. But the car, where Aidan lost most of his blood? He couldn’t ever fully clean that up. That’s why he was afraid to ever get rid of the car. Afraid that a buyer might find remnants of blood, under the seats, in the carpet and floorboards. Ditching the BMW and claiming it was stolen would only have made it worse; it would have made the car of interest to the police if it was ever found. No, the safest thing was to clean it up as best he could and lock it away on his own property.”

Marlinchen glanced at the garage, but only quickly.

“None of those cover-up methods was particularly adept,” I said, “but they didn’t have to be. As long as Hugh didn’t sell the house or the car, no one would ever get a close look at what evidence remained.” Until now, I thought. “Hugh replaced Aidan with his sister-in-law’s son,” I went on. “I don’t know how he persuaded her. Maybe he played on her concern for her grieving sister. Maybe he paid her off; Brigitte was poor, and a single mother. It could be that she thought Jacob would have a better life with her older sister and Hugh. But if she hadn’t gone along with it, imagine the consequences. Hugh’s career would have been terribly compromised. Your mother might have been labeled unfit along with him. You and Liam might have been taken away by Family Services, for who knew how long?”

“Okay, okay,” Marlinchen said, holding up her hands for me to stop. “I see where you got your theory, but it’s all impossible. He couldn’t have just been switched. I was four years old. I would have known.”

“You weren’t quite four. Kids are susceptible at that age, and their parents’ word is like God’s word,” I told her. “Hugh brainwashed you. He told you that Aidan was away. He stalled for weeks. Then he brought home Jacob and said ‘This is Aidan,’ until you and Jacob both accepted it.”

“But Mother…” Her voice was very soft.

“Your mother was in on it,” I said. “I suspect it wasn’t her idea, but she went along with it.”

That had been the difficult part for me, too, acknowledging the complicity of the woman who slept under the marble angel in the cemetery. Elisabeth had also borne a share of guilt in Jacob’s fate. But where guilt had poisoned Hugh, it had softened Elisabeth. She had adored her sister’s son, sharing with him a bond between two wronged souls.

“It wouldn’t have worked at all, except that the two of you weren’t in school yet,” I said. “Aidan had no teachers, no playmates that came to the house, and no older siblings. There was no one else to trick. J. D. Campion was the only other person who’d seen both Aidan Hennessy and Jacob Candeleur. Later that year, your father inexplicably and flatly refused him entry to your home.”

Marlinchen’s lips parted very slightly, and I thought perhaps that last detail, which her own knowledge of her parents’ lives confirmed, had convinced her. Then she straightened, as if relieved. “Aidan’s missing finger,” she said, the three words like a syllogism. “If there was no attack by a dog, how do you explain that?”

“There was a dog,” I said. “His neighbors in Illinois raised pit bulls, and there was a shoddy fence in between the two properties. Jacob really did lose the finger to one of the pit bulls, which is why he’s scared of dogs to this day.”

Below us, Colm took Liam down with a hard tackle. Marlinchen appeared to watch, but I doubted she was really seeing it.

“There’s more.” I said. “This birth certificate is all the paper there is on Jacob. He never registered for school. There’s no death certificate. No adoption papers. He just drops off the grid. Because he was in Minnesota.”

“So you’ve got a piece of paper. It doesn’t prove anything,” Marlinchen said. Then her eyes lit with a new idea. “Did it occur to you that maybe Jacob was the one who died young? Maybe our aunt Brigitte let him drown or something. She was always drunk, or stoned-”

“Don’t do that,” I said, shaking my head. “Don’t let your father think for you all your life. You never met your aunt Brigitte, but you never questioned your father’s account of her. You’re more willing to think ill of her, a stranger, than of your father, whom you saw firsthand hurting Aidan physically and psychologically.”

Despite all her denial, the truth of these words hit home, and she was silent.

“I’m not saying your father is a monster,” I said. “He made a mistake, probably in haste, in the hospital parking lot, and it snowballed and ruined his life. By the time he realized that guilt and grief were destroying your mother from the inside out, it was too late to fix it. Imagine how it would have looked to the world, months or years later: burying his own son in an unmarked grave on his own land? Taking someone else’s child and erasing his identity? Hugh’s esteem and career might have survived his son’s accidental death, but his behavior after that crossed all moral and legal lines.”

I wondered if I’d spoken too frankly; but honesty was overdue here. The Hennessys’ world had been short on it for too long.

The boys were still playing below us. If they’d noticed my presence, they hadn’t read the body language. They probably thought Marlinchen and I were having a civil conversation.

“Your father’s guilt, first over Aidan and then your mother, ate him up inside. Literally, in a way.” I didn’t need to remind Marlinchen of her father’s ulcer. “Did you ever wonder why the photo of your mother and Aidan bothered your father so much?” I asked her. “It was the real Aidan, at age two. Jacob didn’t know it, but your father did. It incensed him to have to see it every time he looked in that bedroom. It reminded him of how his plan worked out. Your mother never recovered from her guilt over it. She died of it, either by accident-” I cut myself off.

Too late. Outrage was heating Marlinchen’s delicate skin. “Or what, on purpose? Are you suggesting she killed herself?”

I was, but of course it was too much for Marlinchen to handle at this point. “No,” I said quickly, appeasing her. “No, I’m not saying that.”

Still too late. “I think you should leave now,” she said.

“Think what you asked me to do, when we first met,” I said, getting desperate. “You asked me to find your brother. That’s what I’m trying to do. You’re the legal head of the household now. If you won’t let me talk to your father, give me permission to dig under the tree and look for your brother. Like you wanted.”

“My brothers,” she said, pointing, “are all home. My father is home and getting better. We’re coming together and healing our wounds. That’s hard for someone like you to watch.”

“Someone like me?” I repeated.

“You were kicked out of your home by your father and raised by a virtual stranger. You wouldn’t understand what it’s like to be part of a real family.”

“I’m sorry?” I said, though I’d heard her clearly.

But if Marlinchen saw that she’d stung me, she didn’t ease up. “That’s why you can’t accept that we’re happy now,” she went on. “You’d rather my brother be dead, my mother a suicide, and my father in prison.”

“That’s not true,” I said.

“Go away,” she snapped. “I’m tired of your morbid mind and your sick theories.”

There was nothing left for me to do here. She wasn’t going to cool off. I headed down the steps.

“Don’t come back.” Marlinchen threw the words after me. “I’ll call the cops if you come around here again.”

I wanted to say, I can come back with a warrant, but the truth was, I probably couldn’t. I didn’t have enough hard evidence. Besides, sometimes you have to relinquish the last word. I understood the root of Marlinchen’s anger. It was fear. If she hadn’t heard a glimmer of truth in my words, they wouldn’t have poured acid onto a vulnerable spot in her mind. Stiff-limbed, I climbed into my car and headed down the drive.

The top of the little rise at the end of the Hennessy driveway afforded me a good view of the field where the boys were playing, and I paused there before pulling out onto the road. I looked back.

Aidan, as I couldn’t stop thinking of him, stood conferring with Liam, holding the football in his hands. Exertion had raised a fine sweat on his bare chest and his face. The boys got into position, and Liam threw the ball to Aidan. Aidan caught it easily and started to run. His blond ponytail swung crazily in the afternoon sunlight as he ran. Colm, determined, raced to intercept him, but Aidan dodged easily and poured on the speed, outpacing his brother, heading for the unmarked end zone.

The high window was empty; Hugh was not watching, and for a moment I wished he were. Maybe for the first time he’d recognize something he’d failed to see for so long.

Hugh believed strongly in family. In his writing and his life, he’d pursued the ideals of the close-knit, loyal, and loving clan. He’d never been able to see it, but Jacob Candeleur, without a drop of Hennessy blood in him, represented the best of those ideals. From a young age, he’d had a strong instinct to protect those he loved. He’d pulled Marlinchen from the freezing waters of the lake, when she’d fallen through the ice. He’d fought with the bullies who’d picked on Liam. He’d come home from his new life in California to be with his sister and brothers.

With Colm on his heels, Jacob gained the ground of the predetermined, invisible end zone and spiked the ball. Colm, giving up gracefully, extended his hand and gave Jacob a low five, scooped up the ball, and went to regroup with Donal.

Jacob didn’t follow. He stood a moment, breathing hard. Then he dropped to his knees, and from there he lay down on the grass.

There was something evocative about that action, something that stirred a recent memory.

“Oh, God,” I said.

I put the Nova into reverse and backed down the driveway at 40 miles per hour, skidding to a stop ten feet from the deck. Marlinchen stared at me from her place at the grill.

“Call 911,” I yelled to her as I jumped out of the car.

I expected some kind of resistance from her, but she looked down at the grass, where Jacob was still not moving, and her brothers were standing around him, and believed me.

“What should I say?” Marlinchen called.

“Cardiac arrest,” I yelled back, plunging down the slope.

Maybe it had never occurred to Brigitte that the heart defect that killed her lover Paul, the father of her child, was hereditary. Or maybe she’d never found a way to warn the son who wasn’t supposed to know he was her son. Maybe she’d meant to, someday, but her own death had caught her unawares.

Liam, kneeling at his cousin’s side, said, “I don’t think he’s breathing.” He sounded puzzled, like he wanted to be contradicted, wanted someone to tell him that healthy 18-year-olds didn’t just stop breathing.

“Move,” I ordered, dropped to my knees, and rolled Jacob onto his back. I shifted the tigereye leather necklace off the hollow of his throat and laid my fingertips there. The great arteries did not pulse under my touch. I tipped Jacob’s head back, checked the airway. Clear. I closed off his nostrils, breathed for him. Pumped his chest hard enough to contuse the flesh. Breathed again.

When the paramedics came, they asked who was going to go with Aidan, as the kids identified him, to the hospital. I opened my mouth to volunteer Marlinchen, but she shook her head. “You go, Sarah,” she said frantically. “Please, please, you go with him.”

The furious defender of the Hennessy family, who’d chased me off her property, was gone. Marlinchen was a scared teenage girl again, and to her, I was Authority. She still believed I could help her brother when she couldn’t. Numbly, I climbed into the ambulance.

I stayed with Jacob Candeleur all the way to the ER. Among the hectically laboring doctors and nurses, nobody noticed as I trailed along behind them, stood against a wall, watching their futile efforts. I was there as they called the code at 7:11 P.M. and as they dispiritedly filed out.

The last one out, a male nurse, turned to look at me from the doorway. “You gonna notify the family?” he said.

I nodded assent. “In a minute.”

For some time, Hugh Hennessy had been hiding behind the wall of his illness and his privacy, hiding from the people he’d hurt. That ring of people just kept getting bigger. Aidan, whose death his carelessness had long ago caused. Elisabeth, whose suicide he helped bring about. Brigitte, whose child he had taken. Jacob, whose loss of identity had ultimately been fatal. In a way, even Paul Candeleur. Paul the loyal, ready fighter, who’d somehow given his son his values through blood alone, who’d never lived to see how his son’s life would go so wrong. I couldn’t believe this death didn’t hurt Paul, too, somewhere.