Next of Kin (43 page)

Finn nodded at her. ‘Yes, I do.’ He reached into his briefcase and pulled out two files. They were government blue, worn and faded. At the sight of them, tears appeared in Catherine
Buchanan’s eyes.

‘What are those?’ she asked.

‘You know what these are,’ Finn said. ‘You’ve seen them before. A long, long time ago. Two files. Two sets of records for two boys born on the same day at the same
hospital to young mothers. One died in childbirth; the other survived.’ He put one down on the table in front of her. ‘This file contains my birth records. See here,’ he pointed.
‘It lists my name as the one I was given when I was first placed with a family that was supposed to take care of me.’ She followed along with him. ‘And here,’ he pointed
again, ‘it lists Elizabeth Connor as my mother.’

She frowned. ‘So if this lists Elizabeth Connor, what makes you think that I am really your mother?’

‘Because it’s a lie. The records were switched. Look at the blood types. Elizabeth Conner had a blood type of AB positive. I have a blood type of O negative. That’s a
biological impossibility. She couldn’t have been my mother.’ He held up the second file. ‘This is a file that contains the birth records of the second child, the one who died in
childbirth. His blood type is listed as AB negative. The mother’s blood type is listed as O negative. Again, it’s not possible.’ He lay the folder down on the table. ‘Do you
see the name listed as the mother? It says Catherine Howard St. James.’

She turned her head. ‘That doesn’t prove anything. Not conclusively.’

‘Maybe not on its own. It could have just been a record-keeping error. But the police DNA test proves that Brooke and I are siblings, and the tests I had run prove that James Buchanan was
not my father. That leaves only one possibility.’

Catherine Buchanan closed her eyes.

‘We could run a DNA test between you and me to confirm it,’ Finn said. ‘But we don’t need to, do we?’

She shook her head. ‘No, we don’t.’ She opened her eyes, looking down.

‘I want to hear it from you,’ Finn said.

She could not look him in the face anymore. It took her several moments to speak. ‘You have to understand, I was very young,’ she said at last. ‘Too young. My family was one of
the most prominent families in Boston. My father was the chairman of the largest financial institution in the city, and my mother was on the boards of most of the major charitable institutions.
They couldn’t accept that their fifteen-year-old daughter could have done this to them; that I could have gotten pregnant. If anyone had discovered it at the time, it would have been a
scandal that could have destroyed the family.’

‘So you gave me up,’ Finn said. ‘You left me.’

‘I didn’t want to,’ Catherine Buchanan sobbed. ‘I was fifteen, what choice did I have? They sent me away. I didn’t see anyone in my family for months, and when it
was over they took you away. They never even let me see you. I screamed and screamed for days, but they ignored me.’

‘You never tried to find me,’ Finn said. ‘Even after you grew up. With all your money; with all your resources, you never tried to find out what happened to me.’

‘I couldn’t,’ Catherine Buchanan said. She stood up and went to Finn, reached out to him. He pulled away. ‘By then I was married to James. They married me off to the most
eligible man in the city, one of the first families of Massachusetts. They told me to put it behind me. They told me I had to forget.’

‘So you forgot all about me. It was like I had never been born.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘I never forgot. I just buried it. It was always there, I just couldn’t deal with it, so I pretended it never happened. It was the only way I could
survive.’

‘Until Elizabeth Connor surfaced,’ Finn pointed out.

She turned away from him. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Elizabeth Connor brought it all back in the most degrading way.’

‘Blackmail?’

Catherine Buchanan nodded. ‘She and I shared that room for nearly two months. We never knew each others’ names; that was the way it worked. I was called Lizzie, she was called Jane.
She was an awful person, even back then. Rooming with her was one of the worst parts of the whole experience. Her child died, and later my parents paid someone to switch the records – to
erase my name so that you would never find me, even if you tried.’

‘That’s why my letter was sent to her,’ Finn said. ‘The records listed her as my mother. She must have realized that there was a mistake at the time. She must have
suspected that I was your child, not hers. Why would she wait to blackmail you? I sent that letter almost twenty years ago.’

She sat back down again, all the energy drained from her. ‘She had no idea who I was,’ she said. ‘I never told anyone at the home anything about myself. That was drilled into
me.
No one must find out who you are.
I don’t know how many times my parents told me that before they sent me away. So she wouldn’t have known that I was someone who could be
blackmailed – who had the money to be blackmailed. Even if she had known, she wouldn’t have been able to find me.’

‘So why now?’ Finn asked. The answer came to him before she needed to answer. ‘The election,’ he said. ‘She saw you because you were at campaign events.’

Catherine nodded once more. ‘She recognized me from my picture in the papers, standing next to James, smiling like every good campaign wife should. The first time Jim stood for office,
Brooke and I stayed far more in the background. This time, though, the race was much closer, and he said he needed us to help present the look of the perfect family. She knew who I was instantly,
and she called me. She started out slowly, saying she remembered me from our time in New Hampshire when we were young. I thought that was clever, at least. Anyone else overhearing us would have had
no idea that there was anything ominous or threatening. She said she wanted to get together for coffee. She hadn’t finished her first cup before she demanded money.’

‘What did you do?’

‘I paid her, of course. It wasn’t cheap, but she said that was it. One payment and she would walk away. It was a lie, obviously. I suppose I knew it was a lie, even then, but I
wanted to believe that there was some way out. I wanted to think she would go away. She didn’t go away, though. She contacted me again. And again and again. She became brazen, started calling
the house. I think she hated me for my life.’ She laughed bitterly. ‘Ironic, isn’t it? If she only knew how unhappy my life has really been. But all she saw was the money. She
thought it was unfair that we had been in the same place all those years ago, and I had lived my life in big houses with fancy cars, and she was scraping by. I realized that last night that she was
never going to go away. No amount of money was ever going to be enough.’

‘You killed her,’ Finn said.

‘Yes, I killed her.’ She looked relieved to have said the words. ‘I don’t even remember it, but it happened. I went to her apartment to make one final payment; to try to
convince her it was over. She was having none of it. She said that it was never going to be over. She started to paint a picture of what it would be like if she went public. How my husband would
react. How all my fancy friends would react. I told her I didn’t care anymore. I told her she could go public, and then I would have her prosecuted for extortion. I thought I had a trump card
there, but I didn’t. She had the trump card.’

‘What did she threaten you with?’

‘You,’ she said. ‘She told me that she knew who you were; she knew how to find you. She said, “I wonder how he will feel about the fact that you abandoned him? I wonder
if your daughter will ever be able to look you in the face again once she realizes what you did to your son?”’ She closed her eyes. ‘I don’t remember much after that. I flew
into a rage. I grabbed the first thing I could find and started hitting her. I hit her and hit her. And yet somehow, it didn’t even feel like I was hitting her. It felt like I was hitting
myself. All this rage and self-loathing that had built over forty-five years came out all at once. And I kept hitting and hitting until it was out. Then I was alone. Standing in this dreadful,
dreary little apartment in a terrible neighborhood over the body of a woman I once knew, who had tormented me. I didn’t know what to do, so I ran.’

‘How did McDougal get involved in covering it up?’ Finn asked.

‘That was just chance,’ she replied. ‘Or mischance, I suppose. It depends on the way you look at it. Elizabeth Connor worked for him, as you already know, and she owed him
money. He went by her apartment later that night to collect from her and found her the way she was. She had told him a little about what she was up to, but he thought she was blackmailing my
husband – he thought James was your father and that was what she had on him. When he saw her body, he assumed James had killed her. Because he and James were doing business together and she
worked for him, he was worried that her murder could cause him a significant amount of trouble, so he called in an expert to make it look like a break-in.’

‘Makes sense,’ Finn said. He sat there for a while, digesting everything she had told him. He’d suspected it all already, but there is a significant difference between
wrestling with suspicions and dealing with reality. She didn’t say anything; he supposed she understood at some level what he was going through, and guessed she had a fair amount to adjust to
as well. Finally he said, ‘I have one more question.’ He was almost afraid to ask it.

She looked at him. ‘Go ahead.’

He took a deep breath. ‘The man with the scar – he could have killed me. He should have killed me, but he didn’t. Why not? Who was he?’

She smiled sadly. ‘He was someone I knew a long time ago. His name was Billy Gannon. His father was my family’s chauffeur when I was growing up. Such a wonderful, hardworking man. He
used to tell the children stories out in the garage. The most marvelous, imaginative stories. And Billy was the sweetest, most beautiful boy you could ever imagine.’

‘He was a killer,’ Finn said.

She shook her head vehemently. ‘Not when I knew him. When I knew him he was perfect. Others made him into what he became. He had a tragic story – his father was fired and killed
himself. Billy was thrown out with nothing. He disappeared, and we never heard from him again.’

‘Why was his father let go?’

She looked him in the eyes. ‘Because of me. Because I fell in love with his son.’ And then the tears began to flow.

Finn sucked in a breath.

‘He was your father.’ She put her head down. ‘I loved him so much when we were young. I would have done anything for him. After his father killed himself, Billy was thrown out
on the street. I was packed off to New Hampshire, and by the time I returned he had disappeared. My family took everything from him. His home, his father, me. He felt so angry and abandoned, he no
longer cared how he lived. It was only recently that he realized what a mistake he’d made with his life.’

‘Why?’

‘I told him he had a son. He didn’t know before; I never had a chance to tell him back then.’

‘How you find him?’

‘I didn’t – he found me. That is the great irony of it all. When I fled from Elizabeth Connor’s apartment, I was in such a state I left behind the checkbook I had brought
with me to buy her silence. Billy found my checkbook, and he came to find me. We hadn’t seen each other since he’d been thrown out of my family’s house. He’d known all along
where I was – who I’d married – but he’d given up on me a long time ago. He thought I was happy. Can you imagine?’ She shook her head. ‘I told him about you. He
was devastated. He felt responsible, and he vowed to protect me and to protect you. And that’s what he did. He watched over you to make sure nothing happened. And then, when I told him that
James was beating me . . .’ She cut herself off. ‘I suppose I should have known what that would do to him. Perhaps, deep down, I did.’

Finn stood up. ‘I have to leave.’

She rose, reaching out to him once more. ‘You can’t go,’ she said. ‘Not yet. Please, we have so much to talk about.’

‘No, we don’t,’ he said.

‘You can’t mean that. It’s been forty-five years.’

‘For you it’s been forty-five years,’ he said. ‘For me, it’s been fifteen minutes.’

She let her hands drop. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Of course you’re right.’

‘I’ll let myself out.’

She nodded. ‘What do you plan to do?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Will you go to the police?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘You killed a woman. Maybe a bad woman, but you killed her nonetheless.’

‘I did.’

‘I need to think about that. So do you.’

‘I will. Whatever you decide, I’ll understand. I’m sorry. I’m sorry for so many things. I know that probably doesn’t matter.’

‘Probably not,’ he said.

‘I want you to know it anyway.’

‘Okay.’ He started to walk out of the room. At the threshold, though, he stopped and turned around to look at her once more. ‘Did you ever think about me?’ he asked.
‘Did you ever wonder where I was, whether I was alive, whether I was happy?’

For the first time the tears started flowing down her face. ‘Every day,’ she said. ‘Every single day.’

Long was leaning against his car on the street outside of the Buchanan mansion, looking up at the door, when Finn walked out onto the stoop. Finn was tempted to pretend he
hadn’t seen him, just walk on by without a word. He knew Long wouldn’t let it happen, though. Instead he walked toward the cop.

‘A social call?’ Long asked him when he drew close. His eyes were clear and penetrating.

‘I was going to ask you the same thing,’ Finn replied.

They stood there for a few seconds, both taking the measure of the other. Finally Long looked back up at the mansion. ‘Quite a place,’ he said. ‘It could have been
yours.’

Finn shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I would never have survived in that world.’

Long tilted his head at the lawyer. ‘You seem pretty resourceful,’ he said. ‘You made it off the streets, I think you could have made it with the silver spoon set.’

‘The streets are different,’ Finn said. ‘There are rules, and everyone knows them. Up there the rules don’t apply. I couldn’t live that way.’