Michael Prescott - Blind Pursuit

“Lydia’s husband?”

“Right. They lived in the area. Look, I’d better start at the beginning.”

Before he could, the waitress returned with a bottle of Corona and a glass. Gary paid with a bill. “Keep the change.”

Pouring the beer, then sipping it, he told the story. Across the room, the pianist played “How High the Moon” and soothed his sore throat with a cigarette.

“Lincoln and Lydia had a son, Oliver Ryan. In 1968, at age eighteen, Oliver ran away from home. It made the paper because he stole a neighbor’s car to do it. His parents confirmed there’d been a family fight. That was in July.

“Few days later, stolen car turns up in the mountains near Prescott. Still no word on Oliver. But three weeks after that, a Tucson dentist, friend of the Connor clan, is in the Prescott area on vacation, and he spots Oliver. Kid’s joined up with a tribe of hippies camping near Granite Mountain.

“The dentist goes up to Oliver, tells him his mom’s worried sick and he ought to come home. Oliver gives what the Standard described as an unprintable reply.”

“Wasn’t the kid wanted for auto theft?” Walker interrupted.

“Yeah, but the dentist is hardly in a position to make a citizen’s arrest while surrounded by hostile anti-Establishment types in the woods. Once he makes his report, some local deputies go looking for Oliver, but by then the counterculture crowd has cleared out.

“Now here’s the interesting part. Four days later, Lincoln disappears.”

“The father?”

“Right. Turns out the dentist wasn’t exaggerating when he said Lydia was worried sick; she had a nervous breakdown right after Oliver ran off, has been recuperating at Tucson Medical Center for nearly a month. Friends say Lincoln’s irrationally angry at Oliver. He blames his wife’s condition on the boy, says Oliver’s brought disgrace on the Connor family. So the supposition is that Lincoln’s gone off to find his son and drag him home to face the music.

“Finally, the climax of our little drama. I printed out this article. Read for yourself.”

He unfolded one sheet of paper and pushed it across the table. Walker picked it up.

MURDER-SUICIDE IN PRESCOTT NATIONAL FOREST

Prescott-The bodies of two individuals tentatively identified as Lincoln Connor, 46, of 100 E. Ravine Road in the Tucson area, and his son, Oliver Ryan Connor, 18, were found yesterday in an isolated part of Prescott National Forest near Iron Springs, local authorities said.

Edward Winslow, chief deputy coroner of Yavapai County, said that both victims apparently died of shotgun blasts to the head. A Remington Model 870 12-gauge shotgun with a sawed-off barrel, a weapon known to belong to the elder Connor, was found in Lincoln Connor’s hand, he added.

“ It appears that Lincoln Connor first killed his son, then turned the gun on himself,” Mr. Winslow said. “No suicide note has been recovered.”

Friends of the family report that Lincoln Connor had expressed hostility and rage toward his son since Oliver ran away from home on July 10, allegedly stealing a neighbor’s 1962 Buick Roadmaster.

The exact reason for Oliver’s disappearance is unknown, though Mr. and Mrs. Connor acknowledged having an argument with their son on the night he left.

Oliver’s departure reportedly contributed to a rapid deterioration of his mother’s health. Lydia Connor remains under medical care at Tucson Medical Center.

A hospital spokesman declined to state whether or not Mrs. Connor had been informed of the loss of her husband and son.

Walker looked at the article for several minutes, long after he had absorbed its contents. He thought of Annie and Erin, orphaned in a fire at the age of seven, adopted by their Aunt Lydia.

How long had it been before they learned of the ugly tragedy in their foster mother’s past? Did Lydia hang photos of Lincoln and Oliver around the house? Did she display keepsakes of them on the shelves? Were the girls forced to hear stories of the foster brother who’d died when they were two years old, and had they justifiably concluded that the whole world was insane?

No wonder Annie clung so tenaciously to her sister… and jumped instantly to the worst conceivable explanation for her disappearance.

He had told her that Erin had just run off, he reflected grimly, draining his glass. Had she remembered Oliver when he’d said that? Oliver, who ran away on impulse-and never returned?

Sure, Annie was being paranoid. But it looked as if she had every right to be.

“Thanks, Gary,” he said finally. “This is… helpful.”

Gary shrugged. “As you can see, it was a big local story at the time. I was too young to know about it, but if you’d been living here, you would have heard.”

“That’s why she thought the name Connor would mean something to me,” Walker mused. “Probably took me for a native. Everybody else does.”

“Just like everybody takes me for an Angeleno. And I’m a Tucsonan born and bred. Go figure.” Gary’s smile faded. “There’s one loose end I didn’t mention.”

“In the Connor case? What?”

“Well, the police tracked down those hippies and asked them when was the last time they’d seen Oliver. They said he went for a walk in the woods one evening with a friend from the camp, and neither of them ever came back.”

“The friend vanished?”

“That’s right. Never turned up. The other kids couldn’t help much. Gave a pretty vague description-you know how it was, they were stoned most of the time. They didn’t even know his full name. First name only.”

“Which was?”

“Harold.”

“You think Oliver and Harold were together when Lincoln showed up?”

“Could have been,” Gary said. “Maybe Harold got away and was so scared he just kept running.”

“Or maybe he was shot, too, and for some reason his body wasn’t found.” Walker shrugged, dismissing the issue. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter now.”

“I suppose not.”

Walker noticed the other slip of paper still folded in Gary’s hands. “Got something else?”

“One last item. Not directly relevant. Doesn’t involve Lincoln Connor or Oliver, just Lydia.”

“What about her?”

“In 1973 she took in two young nieces, named, let’s see… Erin and Anne Reilly. Her sister’s kids, seven-year-old twins, originally from Sierra Springs, California.”

Walker nodded. He tipped the glass and let a piece of ice slide into his mouth, then pushed it around his cheek with his tongue.

“I knew that part,” he said. “They’d been orphaned in a fire.”

Gary frowned. “A fire, yeah. But not just a fire.”

Walker chewed the ice and swallowed it. “What does that mean?”

“You don’t know the story.”

“I guess not. Can’t be as bad as the first one, though.”

Gary shook his head slowly. “You’re right. It’s not as bad. It’s worse.”

Walker set down the glass with a soft clunk.

“Tell me,” he said softly.

Gary told him.

Even after Gary was done speaking, Walker remained silent. The waitress stopped to ask if he wanted a refill of his scotch, and Gary had to answer for him, because he didn’t hear.

Erin surfaced from unconsciousness to the sound of hammering.

Blinking, she focused her vision. Above her hung a brilliant scatter of stars, bracketed by steep embankments tufted with ocotillo and mesquite.

She was stretched on her back at the bottom of an arroyo, arms over her head, wrists pinned together.

Her abductor knelt at her feet, swinging a mallet, driving a metal post into the ground. She tried to move her legs, couldn’t; rope lashed her ankles to the post.

He was staking her out like Marilyn Vaccaro, like Sharon Lane, like Deborah Collins.