by Jan Burke
I could see her posture change.
“I recognize that style — in places, anyway,” I said. “It’s not just one person, is it? But the strongest parts — I’ve read that writer before.”
She folded her arms and leaned back in her chair, staring at the monitor.
Oh hell, I thought, here we go again.
Then she put her hands back on the keyboard and called up her connection to the wire services. She searched for stories on Bennie Lee Harmon.
Nothing matched the best parts of Ethan’s story. Then she searched for a few exact matches of phrases in the story. Again, no matches. “At least that’s a relief,” she said. “For a moment, I envisioned telling Wrigley we’d need to make a public apology and who knows what kind of compensation to another paper for ripping off a story.”
“I don’t think there has been much access to Harmon,” I said. “He’s been ill.”
“So where did this come from?”
I looked around the room, trying to picture who sat at each desk, and how they wrote. When I came to my own desk, I said, “Oh God.”
“What?”
“O’Connor. He’s ripped off O’Connor. And Lord knows who else.”
A conversation came back to me. I checked my watch. “Lydia, call down to the morgue, ask the librarian to pull these dates.” From Ethan’s story, I read out dates that were key to events in Harmon’s life.
Instead, when she called, she told the librarian, “I’ll be down there in five minutes. I’ll need everything Ethan Shire checked out on the day before he left for Sacramento. You’ll have his signature on the sheet? Great.” She gave the librarian the date.
She got an assistant to cover the desk, printed out two copies of Ethan’s interview, and we went down to the morgue together. It didn’t take us long to find what we were looking for.
“O’Connor interviewed Harmon,” I said. “I had forgotten that.”
“I’m going to kill him.”
O’Connor was already dead, and I knew she didn’t mean Harmon.
She told me later that it took some effort to convince Wrigley, but that she and John eventually persuaded him that yes, it was a serious matter when a person lifted a fellow reporter’s words wholesale and made them appear to be his own, or quoted twenty-year-old interviews and tried to lead the public to believe they had just taken place. She thought Wrigley would have shrugged it off as youthful high jinks if John hadn’t pointed out that Wrigley had probably reimbursed Ethan’s expenses for a party trip to visit a college friend.
Lydia had the zeal of a convert, and began ferreting out other stories that seemed to her to be, as she said, “Assembled, not written.” She found several. O’Connor was a favorite to quote, apparently because he was dead rather than retired, and therefore unlikely to call the paper to complain.
“A lot of research. You’d think it would have been easier for Ethan to just write the stories himself,” I said.
“Don’t ask me to explain the psychology of plagiarism,” she said.
The Express ran an apology to its readers that ended up making the paper itself a news story for a day or so. No one doubted the need for it, but the shame the staff felt did nothing for morale, already low due to rumors of the paper being put up on the block.
We thought Ethan would be fired. He was put into an alcohol rehab program and told he could return on probation.
Hailey thought this was another scam on his part. I thought about friends of mine who had been alcoholics, and what it had taken them to try to turn their lives around. “He may be totally insincere about it, but this isn’t the easy way out,” I said. “Let’s hope this has been a wake-up call.”
“Yeah, right,” Hailey said. “For some reason my heart refuses to break.”
Ethan would be gone for at least thirty days. My teamwork with Hailey was intensifying.
We eventually took over a small conference room near the morgue, so that we would cause less interference with the functioning of the library. We camped at microfilm readers for hours at a time. The results of the DNA tests would be back within the week, and we had drafted background material on the Ducanes, the Vanderveers, and the Linworths, and recaps of stories about the crimes and victims of that night in 1958, and the discoveries of 1978.
We had stories written about Max, and thanks to Stephen Gerard, we had photos of Max, Lillian, and the two of them together to choose from. Helen had been at the house during the shoot, and Stephen — who apparently became a fan of Helen’s when he was one of her students, years ago — had even talked her into sitting for a few group photos.
I loved those the best, although there was no reason to run a photo of Helen with this article. They looked happy to be together, though, and looking at the photo made me feel some hope that biology wouldn’t call all the shots — Max would remain connected to these two women no matter what. I made Stephen promise to give me prints of the trio.
We had other artwork ready, including some about how DNA testing worked. Hailey wrote an article to go with that.
We eventually reached the point of having everything but the actual story, for which we’d have to wait. It was a little like trying to fall asleep in a starting gate.
Wrigley led small tours of potential buyers through the newsroom every few days. Rumors abounded. Anyone unknown who ventured upstairs was the subject of speculation and, from certain staff members, a kind of fawning attention the rest of us found sickening. The previous week, a guy with a briefcase was offered a comfy seat and a fresh cup of coffee and took advantage of both as he was entertained by the brown-nosers and asked his opinion of the paper — this went on for about fifteen minutes before he asked if it was okay if he fixed the copier now, because he had other appointments.
One night, as I worked late, the phone on my desk rang. I picked up the receiver and said, “Kelly.” A long silence and a click were all I heard.
This began to happen frequently. I started letting my voice mail pick up all calls at night.
I kept going through O’Connor’s diaries. After reading O’Connor’s story about Harmon, I skipped ahead to the diaries for 1945.
Wedged in the pages for the first week in April was a photograph. It showed a young woman and a young man — I recognized him immediately, even though the photo had been taken before he had broken his nose in some barroom brawl: O’Connor. There was something else about him that seemed different. Perhaps it was the hat. They were both dressed up and stood arm in arm, looking comfortable with each other. On the back, a feminine hand had written “Conn and Maureen — Easter 1945.” His mother’s writing, I thought. Each of the diaries had been a Christmas present from Maureen, inscribed to him with some whimsical note, often asking him to please think fondly of his nobody of a sister when he became a famous newspaper reporter. I knew her hand by now.
Features that made her brother handsome did not quite do the same for her, but she was by no means plain. She had a face that was full of kindness, or perhaps I saw that there because I had read her brother’s accounts of her. Her dress was simple in style, as was the hat she wore. No jewelry other than a simple necklace — a silver shamrock. Her hair was dark, her eyes were large and blue and full of mischief. She was smiling, looking as if she were just about to go from a smile to a laugh.
I looked back at O’Connor’s image, and saw that he, too, was nearly laughing. That was it, then, the difference in him — I had seen him laugh, I had seen him smile, but I had never seen him as happy as he was in the photo.
There was only one entry after April 5, which had been devoted to plans for a date with Ethel Gibbs. On April 6, he wrote, “Maureen, please be safe. I am so sorry.” There were no other entries that year.
There were no diaries between 1945 and 1950.
The Wednesday night of the week the DNA results were due, Frank and I managed to be home at the same time, and fairly early. We live near the beach, where the nights are often chilly, so he lit a fire in the fireplace
. We snuggled close and talked about our days.
When I told him about having the stories ready to run, he told me that the police were watching Mitch and his family closely these days.
“Max said Eric and Ian are back in town.”
“Yes. We’re keeping an especially close watch on them.”
“But they’ve served out their parole, so…”
“So, yes, all we can do is watch them.” He held me a little closer. “Scared?”
“A little. I keep telling myself that Mitch Yeager is an old man, then I remember that an old man can own a new gun. Anyway, let’s not talk about that. Tell me what you’re working on.”
“Looks as if we might have made a little bit of headway in the case of O’Connor’s sister.”
“Maureen? I just found a photo of her.”
“I’d like to see it. Ben Sheridan and the coroner and our new lab director studied photographs of the bodies and the old coroner’s reports — this was the coroner just before Woolsey. Turns out Harmon may be telling the truth, and we may be able to prove that he is without an exhumation.”
“How?”
“Back in 1950, they collected hair evidence, and scrapings from under her nails. She fought her attacker. Guess where the nail scrapings have been kept?”
“A freezer?”
“Yes. The hair might have been enough anyway, but the nail scrapings look better. Some skin and some blood.”
“So you could prove who killed her?”
“Well — let’s say we can prove whether or not Harmon is lying. His DNA is on file, but if there’s no match, then we’ll try running it through CODIS — you know about that?”
“The FBI’s Combined DNA Index System. The big computerized database of convicts’ DNA profiles.”
“Basically, yes. It has a long way to go — it’s going to take a while to get all the samples processed, for one thing. Don’t get your hopes up — if it isn’t Harmon, I don’t think we’re likely to see a match.”
“I understand. It’s just so weird. If it doesn’t match Harmon, someone had to know that Harmon was burying women in that orange grove, and then had to be a killer himself.”
“Harmon was a loner, but we’re not giving up on the possibility that he found a soul mate along the way.”
“I’ll see what I can find in O’Connor’s notes. Maybe he learned something the police didn’t — people Maureen came into contact with, or something like that.”
“Worth taking a look, but I think Dan Norton was pretty thorough.”
I intended to do that the next morning, but the doorbell rang just as Frank and I sat down to breakfast. Max Ducane stood on my doorstep. Before he gave me his news, I could tell by the look on his face what the DNA test results had revealed.
“Sorry to bother you so early, but I didn’t know where else to go. I can’t face Lillian or Helen right now.”
“Max — come in.”
He smiled ruefully. “Maybe you can help me come up with yet another name for myself,” he said. “Because if there’s one thing I know for sure, it’s that I’m not Max Ducane.”
61
PUBLICLY, HE HANDLED ALL THE RUDE COMMENTS, MEDDLESOME QUESTIONS, double takes, and stares that were to come his way over the next few weeks with a kind of fortitude and dignity that made all of us who loved him proud to know him. Privately, if you didn’t know him well, he might have fooled you into thinking he was getting on with his life.
The Express broke the story about the DNA tests, and what that brought to Max made me wish something I rarely wished — that I didn’t work for a newspaper.
Because we’re friends, I didn’t write any of the stories that directly involved Max, but Hailey did a good job on them. If it had all stopped there, he still would have faced a lot of public reaction. There wasn’t a chance on earth it was going to stop there.
The story got picked up by the wires. He was a natural for national media attention. He was rich, good-looking, and quotable. His origins were mysterious. He had advantages that came to him through sheer luck and those he had obviously earned through his own abilities, but some of the media chose to insinuate that he was a charlatan who had slyly conned two tragic, wealthy families into handing over a fortune to him.
After a week or so, the story probably would have dropped off the public radar had it not been for an announcement from the Ross family. As the whole country soon learned, Max was an eligible bachelor again. Gisella had called him to break off their engagement just minutes before her father gave a press conference.
For a brief time, I fantasized retribution on Gisella Ross and her parents. As it turned out, my fellow media members did the work for me unbidden — after painting her as incredibly shallow, they found some dirt on her family that made Max’s heritage seem noble by comparison.
“I’m so sorry this has happened to her,” he told me, more upset by those reports than by anything that had been said about him.
He told us this over dinner at our house. Tuna casserole — lifestyles of the rich and famous.
He was spending a lot of time with us these days. Frank didn’t seem to mind. They had formed their own friendship, and even though Max was now without a fiancée, I guess Frank had figured out what Max and I had figured out a long time ago.
“I wish I could be sorry for her,” I said, “because it would fool everyone into thinking I am a much better person than I am. She didn’t deserve you.”
He shook his head. “She wasn’t ready for what happened — all the publicity. She’s a private person.”
I decided not to respond to that.
He must have seen something of my thoughts, though, because he smiled and said to Frank, “God help anyone who harms someone Irene cares about.”
“True,” Frank said. He’s smarter than I am, though, because he immediately changed the subject by asking questions that led to an animated discussion about the ways GPS could help with law enforcement. Max forgot his troubles for a while. He talked about how cargo containers could now carry signaling devices that could help locate stolen goods.
“Lots happening in the area of tracking the movements of parolees,” Max said. “They could be tagged with lightweight devices and you would always know where they were. And even have the devices programmed to send a call to local law enforcement if, say, a sex offender goes into an area near a school or playground.” Which was fine as far as it went, I thought, but I stayed quiet and didn’t spoil their mood by asking if anyone had read any George Orwell lately.
At the end of the evening, just as he was leaving, Max said, “I have to try to find out what became of that child. The two of you understand that, don’t you?”
“Yes,” I said. “I’ve been trying to figure out what we could do.”
“So have I,”he said. “Frank, I know it didn’t help much last time, but I want to offer the reward again. Maybe after all these years, someone will finally come forward. I’ll up it to two hundred and fifty thousand. I’ll add a grant to the department to help staff phones, if that’s what it takes. I don’t know what’s allowed and what isn’t, but — can you help me with this?”
“Sure,” Frank said. “Let me run it by my lieutenant. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
The reward made our phones ring again. Sometimes the callers hadn’t even been born at the time of the kidnapping. We got one “repressed memory” case of a woman who believed her father had buried the child in the family backyard, but real estate records showed the family hadn’t moved to Las Piernas until 1961 or purchased the home in question until 1964.
I kept hoping Betty Bradford would call.
In the meantime, DNA tests on the scrapings from beneath Maureen O’Connor’s nails excluded Bennie Lee Harmon — at least as the person who had been scratched when she fought off her attacker. Harmon was doing better now, but had become less talkative.
“The business of the graves bothers me,” Frank said. “Harmon was mostly a drifter, didn’t stay any
one place for long. When he was here, though, he must have confided in someone. Or he was followed. I started to wonder if he had married or had a girlfriend, or had a crush on someone from work.” Frank had looked up Harmon’s Social Security records. “He was 4-F, so he wasn’t in the military. No army buddy. I thought he might have worked for the aircraft plant, and maybe found someone nearly as odd as he was there. Or maybe he had been followed from there out to the grove.”
“By someone who also knew Maureen. It makes sense,” I said.
“Except he didn’t work at the aircraft plant. He worked as a driver for a company that sold agricultural supplies,” he said. “Probably how he chose the orange grove in the first place. He basically doesn’t play well with others, so his job choices were usually ones where he could be alone much of the day.”
“And he might have used the company truck to haul young women off to an orange grove?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“Did he ever tell you why he chose April as his big month?”
“No, but that was something he told one of the other investigators this past week — I guess it has to do with Easter, not April. His mother died on Easter in 1939. His killings all took place within seven days after Easter.”
“Then the person who knew about the graves in the orange grove didn’t just follow him out there. The person who killed her knew about the Easter thing, too. Maureen was killed within a week of Easter.”
“Damn. Once I knew it wasn’t him, I didn’t check the date against the Easter calendar. You’re sure?”
“Yes. The last photo O’Connor had of his sister was taken on Easter Sunday, just a few days before she died.”
Ethan came back to work. He looked as if he had lost about fifteen pounds. He didn’t have fifteen pounds to spare. He also looked as if he hadn’t been getting much sleep. His desk had been moved back near mine, placed just on the opposite side of it.
