Jan Burke - Bloodlines

Lefebvre took a portable police radio and a large flashlight from his car. O’Connor already had his own flashlight in hand. It was windy here, and he pulled his jacket closer about him.

They tried the front door and found it locked. Shining their lights in through the big windows, they saw no sign of Irene or of Max.

“Maybe they’ve been and gone,” Lefebvre said.

“Let’s look around back.”

The side gate was unlocked. They went through it into the backyard.

“Windows are open,” Lefebvre said, and called out, “Irene! Max! Anyone there?”

No answer.

While Lefebvre tried knocking at the back door, O’Connor walked toward the alley.

“Lefebvre!” he called a moment later.

The detective turned toward him.

“Her car’s still here.”

Lefebvre joined him, shining his flashlight into the car while O’Connor squeezed his large frame between the little import and the garage door. There was no lock on the door and so he unlatched it, trying to peer inside. The wind caught the door, banging it against the Ghia.

“She’s gonna have your hide for that one,” Lefebvre said.

“Another item on a long list, I’m afraid.” He pointed his flashlight into the garage and drew a sharp breath. “A black BMW.” He bent to shine the light on the license plate, and sighed. “Not the one we were looking for.”

Lefebvre’s radio crackled and O’Connor saw him turn away to speak into it. O’Connor didn’t try to listen in-he hurried back toward the house. If she wasn’t still in the house, it was the last place she had been. He had no doubt that she was in trouble. If he knew anything about her at all, it was that she was devoted to her father, and would not have left him.

He thought of his own sister’s disappearance and momentarily lost himself in remembered helplessness-how like that night this seemed to him. The thought filled him with dread, and he took himself to task-think of Irene, he told himself. Concentrate on the here and now.

He ran to the back door. He rang the bell, knocked, tried the knob. The door was locked.

He stepped back, then slammed against it. He felt it start to give. He slammed against it again just as Lefebvre came into the yard and asked him what the hell he was doing. The door gave way. He pushed what remained of it aside and went into the house.

He quickly went from room to room on the ground floor, calling to her. Moonlight came in through the windows, enough to see by in most of the rooms. Where it wasn’t enough, he used his flashlight. Lefebvre had followed him in and was doing the same. They met up at the stairway. “Let’s take a look around up there,” Lefebvre said, shining his light on the stairs, “then maybe I’ll arrest you for-”

Lefebvre grabbed his sleeve just as O’Connor was about to step on the first tread, and pulled him back. “Hold it,” he said, bending closer to the stair.

O’Connor saw what he was focusing on. Blood. A large splotch of it on the left side of the tread, another on the banister just above it.

“Oh God…” O’Connor said. “Oh God.”

Lefebvre seemed unperturbed. He used the radio again and called for backup and a crime scene unit and said to stand by, they might need an ambulance. He mentioned that the power was off, adding that they might want to bring a portable generator.

O’Connor, impatient, tried to break away from him, to rush up the stairs, but Lefebvre held tight.

“Listen to me!” the detective said, commanding, yet calm. “We’re going up there, but don’t touch the rails, and step to the right edge of the treads. I’m going first-try to step where I step. Watch that you don’t put your big feet in any evidence.” In a lower voice, he added, “Hold your flashlight away from your body, just in case we’re not the only uninvited visitors, all right?”

Lefebvre’s calm steadied him, forced O’Connor to struggle to regain his own.

Lefebvre watched him, then added, “Nothing is for the newspaper unless I say it is, or I handcuff you now and we wait here for a squad car.”

“Do you think for a moment that the damned front page is more important to me than she is?” O’Connor asked, outraged.

“Maybe you bleed ink, O’Connor, like some of your friends at the paper.”

“No more than you bleed blue.”

Lefebvre smiled and said, “All right. Just so long as we understand each other.” He took his gun out and started to climb. O’Connor concentrated on stepping where Lefebvre stepped, seeing the reddish brown spots they avoided, all the while telling himself that it wasn’t really so much blood, perhaps no more than a small cut would produce.

Then Lefebvre’s flashlight caught a smear of blood on the wall of the hallway. Much more blood than they had seen before. It was up high, at about the height of a man’s waist. “Someone was carried, I think,” Lefebvre said softly. “Not very carefully.”

They turned a corner; this hallway was much darker than the rest of the house. Moonlight came through an open doorway at the end of the hall. Lefebvre stood for a long moment, listening. Gradually, cautiously, opening doors one by one, they worked their way down the hallway. Below, they heard patrol cars pulling up, doors opening.

Lefebvre called to them once, telling them that O’Connor was with him, and to be careful not to step on bloodstains on the stairs, but otherwise continued his methodical clearing of each room.

Two of the officers caught up with them. They carried powerful portable lights and brightened the hallway with these. With the additional light and more men to check the rooms, they made progress more quickly. Lefebvre noticed some faint bloody shoeprints and again warned the others to avoid stepping near them or the drops of blood along the floor.

The rooms were empty and only briefly held their interest, save the last one-the open one.

It, too, was unoccupied, but the bright lights illuminated several large bloodstains and bloody shoeprints on the hardwood floor. A closet door stood open. There were several objects scattered on the floor. O’Connor immediately recognized one of these and felt woozy, as if he had taken a hard, unexpected punch.

“Her jacket,” O’Connor said brokenly, starting forward, then heeding the pressure of Lefebvre’s hand on his shoulder, did not move into the room.

“Yes. I recognize it, too. The one she had on today,” Lefebvre said. “And that’s her purse, isn’t it?”

“Yes, I think so.”

They could also see a wallet, some bloodied tissues, a rag, and a small bottle.

Lefebvre moved cautiously into the room, avoiding the bloodstains and spatter. O’Connor saw him briefly glance at the shoeprints-which seemed to have started when someone stepped in blood in this room, and became fainter as he had walked down the hall, toward the stairs. Lefebvre spent a little more time studying a handprint on the floor, and then looking at the bottle, although without picking it up.

“Chloroform,” he said.

O’Connor leaned against the door frame. “Jesus…”

Lefebvre looked up at him. “She probably left here alive. They wouldn’t have bothered moving the body if all they wanted to do was kill her.”

O’Connor said nothing, but Lefebvre perhaps read his next thought, because he added, “No use thinking the worst just yet.”

He put on a pair of gloves and carefully opened Irene’s handbag. He held up a reporter’s notebook, then a wristwatch.

“Hers. If he’s done something to her…” O’Connor said angrily.

Lefebvre ignored him and reached back into the bag. He found another wristwatch, a man’s watch-and a wallet.

O’Connor felt briefly puzzled. Two wallets? Two watches? Were they both attacked?