Jan Burke - Bloodlines

Norton didn’t say anything for a long while, then shrugged. “A possibility. Until I know what happened to the bodies, couldn’t say one way or another. I know the chief isn’t going to stand for anything other than the simplest explanation. He won’t want to hear about boats that didn’t really have anybody on them. But if the bodies are on land, we’ll find them easier than if they’re in the ocean.”

“I’ve been thinking about the car, the one Jack saw the farmer bury.”

“Maybe saw. Maybe didn’t. He’d had a skinful-as usual-and so many blows to his head, it’s a wonder it’s still attached to his neck.”

“I believe him.” O’Connor told him about the leaf.

“So the part about the eucalyptus grove could be real,” Norton acknowledged. “If you said to me, ‘Jack claims he was in a eucalyptus grove,’ that would be one thing. So many of those trees around, it wouldn’t be hard to believe. But seeing a farmer bury a car in the middle of the night? Makes no sense.”

O’Connor brooded in silence.

“Look, Conn, he’s my friend, too-but I have a job to do here, so I can’t let that count with me when I take a look at his story. What I can count is the number of times I’ve been around him lately when he was absolutely sober. I can do that without having to call Einstein to help me do the math.”

“He remembers things, even when he’s been drinking. Like the key.”

“This is bigger than a key, and in less familiar territory.”

“I think he saw it,” O’Connor said, “if for no other reason than this: it’s too strange a thing for him to talk about, unless he did see it. You ever hear him talk about hallucinations before now?”

“No,” Norton admitted. “But I’ve heard him talk when I knew he was confused by the booze. Add the whacks he took on his skull… he could easily be mixing up separate memories, combining them into one.” He held his hands up in a gesture of helplessness. “It would be hard for me to call this a lead.”

O’Connor decided he might as well let it drop.

Norton must have seen this in his face. He said, “All right, all right. Tell you what-if the bodies don’t wash ashore within the next week or so, I’ll get someone to canvass the farms near the marsh, ask if anyone has seen anything odd going on around there.”

“Anything else going on in the investigation?”

“We’re checking again for fingerprints at the Ducane house and in the boat and in the car that was left behind at the marina. We’ve got that new ninhydrin method now-we can sometimes find prints on paper.”

O’Connor tried to appear as if he was encouraged by this news, but he knew that until a suspect was in custody, the likelihood of matching the prints to a criminal was not good. He had seen the rows and rows of metal cabinets that housed the department’s thousands of fingerprint cards. Although a fingerprint expert would be able to narrow the search somewhat, it was still a long and tedious task that would only bear fruit if the Las Piernas Police Department had at some point taken the criminal into custody.

For the next two days, O’Connor was kept so busy between his work at the paper and keeping Jack’s spirits up, he had little time to look for answers to the many questions he had about the night Jack was injured. Jack’s fever subsided, but his memories of the attack did not grow clearer. Since he had learned about Katy and the others, and about the kidnapping, Jack hadn’t seemed to care about much of anything. O’Connor thought the news about Katy had damaged Jack more than the man who had used his fists on him.

One of the worst moments came when Jack asked him to look in his coat pockets, to see if his keys were there. “I might have left them in my coat at Lillian’s.”

“You probably had them taken from you. Remember? We found the saint’s medal on the giant. Besides, you told me the keys were still in your pocket when you woke up in the grove.”

“I might have been mistaken.”

“You have a cut and key-shaped bruise on your thigh.”

“Maybe the giant cut me with his own.”

O’Connor decided to humor him and searched his pockets. “Nothing, just this note.”

“What note? Read it.”

O’Connor opened it. “It says…”

“What? What’s wrong?”

“It’s nonsense, that’s all.”

“Give it to me, Conn.”

Reluctantly, O’Connor did as he was bid, but the injuries to Jack’s hands left his fingers too clumsy to open it. “It’s Katy’s handwriting. Must have slipped it to me at the party. Open it and tell me what it says,” he demanded impatiently.

O’Connor took a deep breath, let it out slowly. “It says, ‘Is it true that Mitch Yeager is my father? You’re the only one who will tell me the truth. Call me.’”

“Damn it!” Jack said, covering his eyes with his hand. “Damn it!”

O’Connor waited, and when Jack said nothing more, he put the note back into the coat and carefully hung it up again.

Jack kept his eyes covered, his bruised and swollen fingers over the bandaged one, the palm of his hand covering the less injured one.

“Oh God. She died thinking that son of a bitch might be her father,” he said. “Who the hell would put a sick idea like that into her head?”

“The husband who was about to be divorced?”

Jack let his hand fall and looked at O’Connor. “Probably.” He considered this grimly for a moment, then said, “That bastard wouldn’t let her talk alone with me for five minutes, and that’s probably why. God damn it! What a cruel damned thing to tell her.”

Worried that getting this upset would harm him, O’Connor said, “Jack, it doesn’t matter now.”

“I think of her being out there… lost in the sea, in darkness. Of her being cold. And alone. And afraid.”

“No, Jack. Katy wasn’t ever afraid of anything.”

Jack smiled a little. “No, she wasn’t.”

They sat in silence for a time. Jack said, “Don’t tell anyone about that note, Conn.”

“If you’re going to insult me, Jack Corrigan, I’ll leave.”

Jack laughed softly and said, “I was wondering what it would take to get you to leave me the hell alone.”

“Just for that, I’ll stay.” And then he thought to tell Jack the story of Harv and the caps, and Jack laughed and immediately guessed who had done the trick, and the two of them considered various ways in which Harvey could be avenged.

On Wednesday evening, as he made his way across the hospital parking lot, O’Connor felt the sensation of being watched. He turned and looked behind him, but saw no one. He scanned the lot, but saw only one familiar car- Norton’s T-Bird. Norton wasn’t in it. Shrugging, he went into the building.

As he stepped out of the elevator, he saw Norton leaving Jack’s room.

“Hiya, Conn,” Dan said wearily.

“Hello, Dan. You look beat. Have you slept since Sunday?”

“Not much. Thought I’d stop by to see how Jack was doing, though.” He shook his head. “I’ve seen worse, but that doesn’t make it any easier to see a friend in that kind of shape.”

“I keep thinking that if a guy delivering some eggs hadn’t come along and helped him, you and I might be at Jack’s funeral right now. If he doesn’t cheer up, we may be yet.”

Dan looked uneasy. “Listen-I didn’t realize how down he was feeling. If I had known, I wouldn’t have said anything to him about it at all.”

“About what?”

“They found the Ducanes.”

Although he had known it might come to this, O’Connor now realized that in some corner of his mind he had harbored hope that they would be found alive. He felt the grief well up in him, and close on its heels, a fear for Jack’s recovery.