Bloodline (12 page)

It looked like they used the side door, so that's where I headed. As I approached the steps, I noticed a loop of dog chain that snaked its way toward the backyard. I stopped. Took another couple of steps. Heard the chain rattle and then a low
woof
and the chain whipped around the corner of the house and disappeared. I took another step and the dog end of the chain came around the corner, pulled up short, and then, to my relief, started barking in place, loud and belligerent and harmless.

The dog was an old barrel-chested beagle with a white snout and rheumy eyes. As he bounced up and down on his arthritic legs there were footsteps from in the house and then a gray-haired woman pushed the aluminum storm door open and screamed even louder than the dog, “Shaddup!”

He did. Instantly. In the silent vacuum that followed, the woman and I eyed each other for a moment.

“Hi,” I said. “I'm Jack McMorrow. Is Tracy home?”

The woman, short and solid and maybe fifty-five, looked at me warily. From inside the house, I could hear the applause from a television game show.

“Yup,” the woman said, and slowly turned away. As I waited, the dog and I stared at each other. He probably was wondering how long that “shaddup” was in effect, and so was I. The dog risked a low growl, but then Tracy came to the door and he gave up and went back around the corner.

We both said hello but I smiled and she didn't. She was chunky and somewhat plain, with a wide face and big eyes and a placid expression. As I gave my pitch, she stood on the landing by the door with her hands in the front pocket of her sweatshirt and I stood two steps down.

I told her about the magazine and tried to give the best public-service slant to the story. As I talked, I tried to read her expression, but it was blank. I wasn't sure I'd reached her when she interrupted.

“So what do you need from me?”

“I just wondered if you could tell me what you went through.”

Tracy shrugged. Inside the house, the game-show audience still was laughing. I took it we were not going in for coffee and Danish.

“What did I go through?” Tracy repeated. “What does anybody go through? You have a baby, you know? It's not a day at the beach. What can I tell you?”

“And you gave the baby up?”

She stared away for a moment and her expression hardened.

“Yup.”

“Was that hard?”‘

“It wasn't a friggin' picnic.”

“I'm sure,” I said. “A tough decision to arrive at?”

“Yup.”

“What were the biggest reasons for going that route? If you don't mind my asking.”

Tracy thought for a minute. Her lips were pressed and thin. Something clattered inside the house.

“The baby's future. My future. It was best for both of us.”

“How was that?”

“I could keep her and stay here and she could grow up and get pregnant and have a baby and that baby could stay here and have a baby and on and on. It's like a cycle, you know? A dead end.”

“So this way you both get a chance to break it?”

“She's out. The baby. She broke it right off. Clean.”

“What about you?”

“I want to go to school to be a physical therapist. Miss Genest says I could make fifteen bucks an hour. Get a job anywhere in the country. My aunt lives in Florida. Right near Orlando. She said I could come live with her. There's jobs all over the place down there.”

“You don't want to stay here?”

“There's nothing here,” Tracy said. “Nothing. I mean, what am I gonna do? Hang out with these kids for the rest of my life?”

“So your baby didn't stay here?”

She looked away again.

“Oh, she's fine. She's got a great situation. She'll get to go to college. Be a lawyer or something.”

“You know where she is?”

She looked uncomfortable for a second.

“Pretty much. But I don't need to know, really. She's got a mom and dad, a big house.”

“Did you meet the parents?”

“Didn't want to. Better that way. You'd have to go through it to understand.”

“No, I think I understand,” I said.

“I doubt it,” Tracy said.

I paused as a feed truck rumbled by.

“So how did you arrange the adoption? Did you go through an agency or something?”

“It was all taken care of.”

“Well, what do you have to do? I mean if somebody else wanted to do the same thing?”

Tracy looked away from me, her hands still stuffed in her pockets.

“It's just taken care of,” she said woodenly. “You just have the baby and that's it. Hey, I gotta go.”

She turned to the door.

“Can I call you if I have more questions?” I asked.

“Nothing more to tell,” Tracy said, and disappeared inside, the door clattering shut behind her.

“I guess not,” I said.

The dog came around the corner again as I turned and walked toward the truck. I'd gone a few steps when I heard the front door of the house open and a man came out. He was in his fifties, dressed in green work clothes. We walked parallel for a few yards and met at the truck.

“Jack McMorrow,” I said.

I held out my hand. He shook it with a big hard hand with skin like bark. He didn't tell me his name.

“I'm the girl's father,” he said. “This was awful hard on her, this whole thing with the baby. I can tell you we wanted her to keep it. Her mother could have looked after it when she was in school. We told her that. Our grandchild, you understand.”

“I understand.”

“The boy, he would've kept it, too. Just a kid, but what the heck. That's something, right? Well, she was bound and determined, come hell or high water, she was gonna give this baby up. I don't know where she was getting this idea, but she was getting it someplace.”

“What'd she say to the father?”

“First she tells him it's none of his business. Then she says she doesn't think he's the father. There's this older man. The mystery man, I called him. Hell, there wasn't nobody else. There was just him. Ought never to have happened, but it did.”

“Who was the kid?”

“Well, you didn't hear it from me, but his name is James Cowett. Jimmy Cowett. He even said, well, he wasn't gonna let this baby go, and he was gonna find it and take it back. Nice enough kid. I felt bad for him. He was over here one day and they had one rip-roaring fight over the whole thing, and we ain't seen him since. The girl says he left town.”

“How old a kid is he?”

“Nineteen, I think. A year out of school. Was working at this mobile home place on Route 1. Setting them up for people. Nice kid. They coulda worked things out. But she got this idea someplace. The baby's future and all. She was talkin' like somebody got to her.”

“You don't know who?”

“Not a clue,” he said, standing there at the end of the driveway. “We don't know nothin' about nothin' is what it comes to. And I don't think that's right. That's our grandchild, and we didn't give it up. We should have some rights.”

I nodded.

“So you can look into this stuff, can't you? The old lady said you were some kind of writer. Well, I'd like to know what our rights are, if you could find that out.”

“I can try.”

“Good enough,” he said.

He turned to the house then turned back to me.

“Listen, we weren't included in any of this adoption crap. Ask the girl about it, she just walks away. Something ain't right.”

“You don't think so?”

“The girl never went to court, that I know of. She just went to the hospital with her belly out to here and came home empty-handed. I saw on television this show, and most of it's made up, I know, but it was about adoption and the new parents and how they wait for friggin' five years and pay umpteen thousand dollars to get a white baby with nothin' wrong with it. They got these books with pictures of the parents and these girls go through and pick them out, meet with them and stuff. The girl never did any of that. She just left one day and came home a couple days later.”

“Does seem a little funny,” I said.

“Well, you find out what you can. And do it quiet like. I'll make it worth your while.”

“That's okay. You don't have to—”

“No, I'll take care of it. This has been real hard on the girl, I'll tell you. It's been six months and she won't talk about it. I mean, she'll talk about the baby, that it's gonna be all right and all that, but she won't say how it came about. I mean, nothing. Not a word.”

He turned to the house, then back to me. Looked me in the eyes with the equivalent of a gentleman's handshake. I looked back and he nodded and walked back across the scrubby grass to the door. He was already inside as I got in the truck.

I drove a mile down the road, pulled over, and took the notebook from my pocket and wrote down everything I could remember of the conversations with Tracy and her father.

“You have a baby, you know?” I started. “It's not a day at the beach.”

13

W
hen I got back home, the phone was ringing as I came through the door. It stopped just as I grabbed the receiver, which was about what I expected. I put water on for tea and went out on the deck and waited for it to heat. As soon as I sat down, a huge billowy cloud eased in front of the sun and a chill went through me. I got up and went back inside.

One of those days.

I went over my notes at the kitchen table, then just sat and thought. It was Tracy Crown that bothered me, even more than Kenny or any of those people. There was something about her that was unnatural. Repressed. Maybe she just wasn't going to expose her feelings to me, but there was something about her that was brainwashed. Be a physical therapist. Work near Disneyworld or wherever the hell it was she wanted to go. I supposed she had more options than if she was sitting home with a baby, but it wasn't a small price to pay. Shouldn't she be feeling something? If she was, maybe she needed some kind of counseling to help her get it out in the open.

Thank you, Dr. McMorrow.

The kettle whistled and I got up from the table. As I reached for the kettle the phone rang again. I grabbed it.

“Jack, you old dog, you,” the voice said.

“Dave,” I said. “I was thinking of calling you.”

“Why, you need bail money?”

“What?” I said.

“Jack, I don't know what you're up to, but I thought I'd let you know that we got this call from some deputy sheriff up there.”

Oh, great, I thought.

“Was the guy's name Poole?”

“Yeah, that was it. He called this morning. It was kinda funny. I'm sitting at my desk, trying to decide whether to go out for a bagel or go out for a muffin, and the phone rings on Tina's desk. Tina works here, too.”

“Uh-huh.”

“So I hear Tina, she does design for us, she's saying, ‘No, we don't have anyone by that name. No, I've never heard of him. No, I think I would have remembered. Jack McMorrow. No, I don't think so.'”

“Helpful,” I said.

“Always,” Dave Slocum said. “So I tap her on the shoulder and she covers the phone and I say, ‘I know Jack McMorrow. He's from Maine and he's doing a piece for us. Who's asking?' So she puts the phone in my hand, just like that, just hands it over and says, ‘Some cop. You talk to him.'”

“So you did, and gave me a glowing recommendation?”

“Well, I said you were abiding by the terms of your parole and we all had high hopes that you'd turned your life around.”

“Thanks.”

“Don't mention it.”

“So what'd Poole want?”

“You know him?” Slocum asked.

“Met him last night. I thought I was the crime victim, but I could have been mistaken.”

“What happened? Somebody poach your pet moose?”

“Sort of. No, it wasn't that big a deal. Just that the people you've got me talking to don't take kindly to the press.”

“Even about babies?”

“Doesn't much matter. Some of these guys, you ask them the time and they come out swinging.”

“You got beat up?”

“No, nothing like that. I got shot at.”

“Jesus,” Slocum gasped.

“Had a window blown out of my house. The first drive-by shooting in the history of Waldo County. I was wondering how to write that on my expenses.”

“The hell with that. I'd be asking for life insurance.”

“Do me a lot of good.”

“But think of the security of the people you'll be leaving behind.”

“Would be leaving, you mean,” I said. “Please, let us not write my obituary too far in advance. So what did Poole ask?”

Slocum paused. I thought I heard him slurp his coffee.

“Well, let's see. He asked if you worked here. I explained about freelancing. He asked how long I'd known you. I said too long. I told him about the
Times
, how you threw your future away to go to some podunk town in upper Saskatchewan. How am I doing so far?”