Bloodlines (54 page)

O'Connor learned it and added his own layer of code to it, and once he decided I was worth the trouble, taught it to me. Even though there was only one paper by then, the code helped. If you're in a room full of professionally nosy, often competitive people, sooner or later a slow news day will lead them to be curious about one another. It's frowned upon. It happens anyway.

So the code remained useful. Maybe one day I'd pass it along to a younger reporter--but Ethan was not going to be a candidate to inherit.

I had just thought this when Ethan came over to his desk, smiling. He logged off his computer and gathered his notebook and jacket. He looked over at me and his smile widened to a grin. "See you in a few days," he said.

"A few days?"

"I'm flying out this afternoon. Mr. Wrigley wants me to go up to Folsom and interview Bennie Lee Harmon."

**CHAPTER 55

"I DIDN'T KNOW THAT ABOUT O'CONNOR'S SISTER," MAX SAID.

We were sitting together in the living room after dinner, during which we had heard about Max's fiancee, courtship, and future plans. They hadn't known each other long, about three months now, but he had apparently fallen for her almost on sight. Her family was wealthy, so she didn't seem to be after his money. He had shown us a photo of a lovely, almost ethereal-looking blonde. If she had given him the smile she wore in the photo--no mystery in why he had pursued her.

Frank had made it back in plenty of time. Harmon was ill, he said, and not able to talk for long. Frank told Max about Harmon's two-out-of-three confessions on the old cases.

"O'Connor rarely let anyone know about Maureen," I said.

"It explains so much, though," Max said. "I remember how he used to speak about the missing." He turned to Frank. "Will you be able to use DNA to tell if Harmon killed O'Connor's sister, too?"

"Possibly," Frank said. "I have to take a closer look at the evidence we gathered at the time, and how it has been stored. We had a good lab man back then. I'm told our coroner--this was before Woolsey--was a big believer in freezing tissue samples and the like, so if no one has dumped them out of the freezer at some point along the way, we may be in luck. But I'm not getting my hopes up just yet."

"Can Ben Sheridan help in a case like this?" I asked.

"He might. He's been called in on the investigation into Municipal Cemetery--they're digging up a lot of graves over there trying to straighten out who belongs where, so he's been really busy with that. But we're going to have him take a look at the photos, see if he thinks it's worth exhuming the girls' remains." He turned to Max. "Have you met Ben?"

"Not yet. He's your forensic anthropologist friend, right? The one who stayed here with his dog for a while?"

"Yes. A good friend, and good at his work, too. He's agreed to come by tomorrow and take a look at the photos."

"Any idea why Harmon is so adamant that he didn't kill her?"

Frank hesitated. "I can't back this up with proof yet, but I think he's so adamant because he didn't do it. I'm beginning to think he's telling the truth."

"What?"

"I'm not the first to see that there are differences in the way the bodies were left, or what had been done to them. Dan Norton, the detective who worked on the case in the 1950s, left a lot of notes on this one, and he had the same feeling I do--he thought it was possible that someone else had killed Maureen."

"But the timing--in April, every two years," I said. "And what you're saying would mean that the person who killed Maureen knew those other girls were buried there and never told anyone."

"Believe me, I see the problems."

"I don't know," Max said. "The best place to hide a body must be a grave. Think of that story in this morning's paper."

Frank laughed. "Don't mention that story to Irene."

I told Max about Ethan.

Max shrugged. "He still had to do a lot of work in order to write the story, though, didn't he?"

"Yes. But it isn't cool to do what he did to Hailey."

"I can see that," he said. He looked at Frank. "Actually, I have an interest in the contents of a grave, too. I hope you might be able to help me."

"One of these ones in Municipal Cemetery?"

"No, in All Souls. The Ducanes are buried there."

"What exactly do you have in mind?"

He shifted a little, then said, "Gisella's family has ...expressed concern about my parentage."

"What? In this day and age?" I said, outraged. "Are they 'Granny came over on the Mayflower' types?"

"No, no, I'm sure that's not it," he said, not sounding all that sure to me. "What they said to me was, well, if we want to have children ...it's a legitimate concern."

"A legitimacy concern, maybe?"

"Maybe," he admitted with a sigh. "They say they are worried that without knowing my parentage, there may be hereditary diseases I could pass on to our children."

"And?" I asked, sensing that wasn't all there was to it.

He spoke softly when he answered. "They also say that if our children are indeed the great-grandchildren of the Vanderveers and Linworths, they should know their heritage."

After a moment, I said, "And take Grandmother Lillian Linworth's inheritance?"

"I've told them there can be no need, given my own situation. I can already provide more than enough financial security for any children we may have."

"And they said, 'You can never be too rich or too thin.'"

He smiled. "Something like that. I pointed out that Lillian would not be obliged to leave a dime to me, even if we are related. She may decide to leave her money to her pet cat for all I know."

"But Gisella's parents don't think the cat would be a contender if you could be proved to be the missing heir."

"Look, it's just what her parents hold dear. They can trace both sides of each family back to--I don't know, Stonehenge, probably--and I don't know what my own birth name is, let alone my parents' names. Gisella tells me not to worry about it. But I don't really have a family, and I guess I don't want to start out by causing division within hers."

I finally caught on. "This isn't about the Ross family, is it? You can finally answer a question that you've had on your mind for the last twenty years."

For a moment he looked stricken. Then he let out a long sigh.

"Yes," he said. "That's it." He laughed. "I just needed to talk to a friend who would be brutally honest, who could make me own up to it."

"Was I brutal? I'm sorry."

"No. Not at all."

"How do you think I can help you?" Frank asked.

"As I understand it, there are DNA tests now that could be done on remains as old as Katy and Todd Ducane's."

"As old as Egyptian mummies--and older. Remains from the 1950s won't be a problem. But if you're thinking that we need to exhume Katy Ducane to find out if she was your mother, we don't. Lillian could give a private lab a small blood sample, and you could know the answer in a matter of weeks."

He shoved his hands in his pockets and sighed. "The problem is, Lillian won't do it."

"Won't do it! Why not?" I asked.

"She says that she loves me as I am, doesn't care who I once was or where I came from, and that all this talk of biological ties is insulting nonsense. She's furious with the Ross family for bringing the matter up. I won't repeat what she has to say about them. She became very upset. I have to admit that I was surprised at the vehemence of her reaction."

Frank and I exchanged a look.

"What?" Max asked.

"I don't know," I said. "Just a feeling, I suppose. Her reaction makes me wonder what she's afraid of. All these years, not knowing what became of her grandson..."

"If the DNA tests show that they aren't related," Frank said, "she may fear that Max will no longer care about her."

I looked at Max. He shrugged. "It's the only explanation I've been able to come up with myself. To be honest, if that's the case, it's kind of insulting. It's as if she's saying she stood by me and took me under her wing when she had no real proof that we were related--if anything, proof that we weren't. But I'm supposedly so shallow, I'll stop caring for her if she's not my biological grandmother."

"No other Linworth or Ducane relatives?" Frank asked.

"Warren Ducane," I said. "If you can find him."

"Warren may show up someday," Max said, "but he chose to make himself scarce more than twenty years ago."

"You haven't heard from him since then?" I asked.

He shifted uneasily in his chair, then said, "I haven't seen Warren since the day he disappeared from Las Piernas." He anticipated my next question and said, "Please don't put me in the awkward position of lying to you, Irene--I'd hate that. I'll just say that I don't know where he is right now, and even if I could locate him, odds aren't good that he'll come out of hiding while Mitch Yeager is alive."

So Warren was alive, and he had contacted Max at some point. A letter or an e-mail, or a call, perhaps. I was curious, but respected Max's request.

"Does Lillian have any siblings?" Frank asked him.

"Lillian was the only child of two only children. I suppose I could look for distant cousins, but why do that, when the people whose DNA would tell the true story once and for all are buried not far from here?"

"Katy and Todd Ducane." Frank thought for a moment, then said, "I'm not saying it's a sure thing, but in the interest of investigating a kidnapping and murder case, I suppose we could exhume one or both of their bodies. I hope we can talk Lillian Linworth into cooperating before we reach that point. I'd also want to be sure there are no samples that might already tell the story--that way, there's less trauma for the families involved. And lower cost for the department, too."

"What do you mean?"

"If we can find enough DNA in a sample frozen in 1978, and it won't compromise the other cases involved to process them--in other words, we won't use up some tiny fragment that's all we have--then we may not need to go to the trouble of an exhumation."

"That's great!"

"I don't think there will be a problem, but I also don't want you to look at this as a sure thing yet. I'm going to have to talk this over with my lieutenant, and I'm sure it will go to the captain as well. If I get approval from the department, I'll have to look for the simplest way to get the tests done. That would mean talking to Lillian and trying to get her to change her mind."

"Maybe you'll have better luck than I did," Max said.

After Max left, I asked Frank if he had met Ethan up at Folsom.

"You think he's in the slammer?"

"Deserves to be, but no. He left today, telling me that he was on his way to Folsom to interview Harmon."

Frank shook his head. "I know there are reporters up there, hoping to talk to him, but not many are going to get a chance. Harmon had knee surgery last week, and he ended up with some sort of complication--an infection. The doctors tell me that in a few days, he'll be up to longer conversations, but right now, he tires quickly. I can vouch for that--I was able to talk to him for about two hours, but he drifted off and dozed every few minutes."

"I wonder why the Express is going to the expense of sending Ethan up there now?"

"I don't know. You ought to be glad he'll be gone."

"True."

"I mean, a trip to Folsom--is that really such a big prize?"

I laughed, but in truth it was something of a prize. I saw it the way the others in the newsroom would see it--that Ethan was being trusted with the kind of assignment few young reporters would be given. A fledging out of the nest. Why Lydia--or whoever else had been involved in the decision--thought he was ready for something like that was more than I could say.

Maybe, I thought, Lydia's little Icarus would be tempted to fly too near the sun.

Though I scolded myself for actually wishing that one of my colleagues would fail, it didn't change the wish.

**CHAPTER 56

BY MONDAY, I WAS READY TO CONCEDE THAT MY WISH HAD NOT COME true. Ethan somehow managed to get in to talk to Harmon, and when I saw his story, which would run in Tuesday's paper, I had to admit he had done a fine job with it. Word was, Wrigley went bananas over it, and decided to give it big play. Lydia assigned supporting pieces to several other staff members. She didn't make eye contact with me during that process.

I thought I ought to mend fences with her, so I invited her to go to lunch with me. She gave me a look that made me uneasy, but accepted. We didn't talk much on the way out of the building, or even as we made our way to a cafe that was currently known as Lucky Dragon Burger, but which changed names a lot. The food was consistently good, though. "Think dragons have been the secret ingredient all along?" I asked her.

It was a weak joke and it won a weak smile.

We ordered, and I said, "Congratulations on being able to see that Ethan could handle that story. I guess that's why you're such a great city editor. You know the staff and what they are capable of."

She studied me for a moment. While she did this, she crossed her arms-- a signal of fury that few others would recognize for what it was, but which startled me. Lydia's maiden name is Pastorini. A good Italian Catholic girl. She needs her hands to talk. If she confined her hands, I knew she felt the need to exercise control over what she had to say. I was trying to figure out what I could have done to make her so angry, when she said, "You believe that I am the one who sent Ethan up to Folsom?"