Linwood Barclay - No Time For Goodbye

Wedmore smiled. “Well, there’s a shocker.”

“I think we’ve had enough for now,” I said.

“I’m sure we’ll be talking again,” Wedmore said.

Very soon, as it turned out. Right after they found the body of Denton Abagnall.

I guess I’d thought, if there were any developments in the hunt for the man we’d hired to find Cynthia’s family, we would have heard about them first from the police. But I was listening to the radio in our sewing room/study, not paying that much attention, really, but when the words “private detective” came out of the speaker, I reached over and turned up the volume.

“Police found the man’s car in a parking garage near the Stamford Town Center,” the news reader said. “Management noticed the car had been there for several days, and when they notified police they said its registration matched that of a man police had been searching for, for about as long as the car had been there. When the trunk was forced open, the body of Denton Abagnall, who was fifty-one years old, was found inside. He died of blunt trauma to the head. Police are reviewing security video as part of their investigation. Police refused to speculate as to motive, or whether the slaying might be in any way gang related.”

Gang related. If only.

I found Cynthia at the far end of the backyard, just standing there, hands tucked into the pockets of her windbreaker, looking back at the house.

“I just needed to get out,” she said as I approached. “Is everything okay?”

I told her what I’d heard on the radio.

I didn’t know what sort of reaction to expect, and wasn’t all that surprised when Cynthia didn’t have much of one. She said nothing for a moment, then, “I’m starting to feel numb, Terry. I don’t know what to feel anymore. Why’s all this happening to us? When’s all of this going to stop? When are we going to get our normal lives back?”

“I know,” I said, putting my arms around her. “I know.”

The thing was, Cynthia hadn’t really had a normal life since she was fourteen.

When Rona Wedmore showed up again, she was direct and to the point. “Where were you the night Denton Abagnall went missing? The night he left here, the last night anyone ever heard from him. Say around eight.”

“We had dinner,” I said. “And then we went to visit Cynthia’s aunt. She was dead. We called the police. We were with the police pretty much the entire evening. So I guess the police would be our alibi, Detective Wedmore.”

For the first time, Wedmore appeared embarrassed, and off her game. “Of course,” she said. “I should have realized that. Mr. Abagnall drove into that parking garage at 8:03, according to the ticket that was sitting on the dash.”

“So,” Cynthia said coldly, “I guess at least we’re off the hook for that one.”

Heading out the door, I asked Wedmore, “Did they find any papers with Mr. Abagnall? A note, some empty envelopes?”

“Far as I know,” Wedmore said, “there was nothing. Why?”

“Just wondering,” I said. “You know, one of the last things Mr. Abagnall told us was that he was going to be checking out Vince Fleming, who was with my wife the night her family disappeared. You know about Vince Fleming?”

“I know the name,” she said.

And Wedmore showed up again, the following day.

When I saw her walking up the drive, I said to Cynthia, “Maybe she’s tied us in to the Lindbergh kidnapping.”

I opened the door before she knocked.

“Yes?” I said. “What now?”

“I have news,” she said. “May I come in?” Her tone was less abrasive today. I didn’t know whether that was good news, or meant she was setting us up for something.

I showed Wedmore into the living room and invited her to take a seat. Cynthia and I both sat down.

“First of all,” she said, “you need to know I’m no scientist. But I understand the basic principles, and will do my best to explain them to you.”

I looked at Cynthia. She nodded for Wedmore to continue.

“The chances of being able to extract any DNA from the remains in your mother’s car-and there were just two bodies, not three-were always slim, but not nonexistent. Over the years, the natural process of decay had eaten away all of the-” She stopped herself. “Mrs. Archer, may I be straightforward here? It’s not pleasant to listen to, I understand.”

“Go ahead,” Cynthia said.

Wedmore nodded. “As you might guess, the decay over the years-enzymes being released from human cells as they die, human bacteria, environmental and in this case aquatic microorganisms-had pretty much destroyed all the flesh on the bodies. The bone decomposition would have been even worse had this been saltwater, but it wasn’t, so we caught a bit of a break there.” She cleared her throat. “Anyway, we had bones, and we had teeth, so we attempted to get dental records for your family, but struck out. Your father, from what we could tell, had no dentist, although the coroner determined pretty quickly, based on the bone structure of the two people in the car, neither was an adult male.”

Cynthia blinked. So Clayton Bigge’s body was not one of the two in that car.

“As for the dentist your brother and mother went to, he passed away many years ago, the practice closed down, and all the records were destroyed.”

I glanced at Cynthia. She seemed to be steeling herself for disappointment. Maybe we weren’t going to learn anything definitive.

“But the thing was, even if we didn’t have dental records, we still had teeth,” Wedmore said. “From each of the two bodies. The enamel on the outside, there’s no DNA there, nothing to test, but deep in the center of the tooth, in the root, it’s so protected in there, they can find nucleated cells.”

Cynthia and I must have both looked lost, so Wedmore said, “Well, the bottom line is, if our forensic people can get in there, and get to those cells, and extract sufficient DNA, the results will show a unique profile for each individual, including sex.”

“And?” Cynthia asked, holding her breath.

“It was a male, and a female,” Wedmore said. “The coroner’s analysis, even before DNA testing, suggests a male in his midteens, most likely, and a woman probably in her late thirties, maybe early forties.”

Cynthia glanced at me, then back to Wedmore.

Wedmore continued. “So, a very young man and a woman were in that car. Now the question becomes whether there’s a connection between them.”

Cynthia waited.

“The two DNA profiles suggest a close relatedness, possibly parent-child. The forensic results, coupled with the coroner’s findings, do suggest a mother-and-son relationship.”

“My mother,” Cynthia whispered. “Todd.”

“Well, here’s the thing,” Wedmore said. “While a relationship between the two deceased has been more or less determined, we don’t know beyond a shadow of a doubt that it is in fact Todd Bigge and Patricia Bigge. If you still had anything of your mother’s that might provide a sample, an old hairbrush for example, with some hairs still caught in the bristles…”

“No,” said Cynthia, “I don’t have anything like that.”

“Well, we do have your DNA sample, and additional reports are pending with regard to any possible relationship you may have to the remains we took from the car. Once your sample is typed-and they’re working on that now-they’ll be able to determine the probability of maternity, regarding the female deceased, and the probability of a sibling relationship to the male deceased.”

Wedmore paused. “But based on what we know now, that these two bodies are related, that it’s a mother and son, that the car is in fact your mother’s, the working assumption is that we’ve found your mother and your brother.”