by Jan Burke
“Jack Corrigan,” Ethan said.
“Yes,” I said, surprised.
“I — I saw one of the columns…”
I thought his courage was going to desert him, but he seemed to take hold of it again. He lifted his chin a bit and said, “I saw the tribute to Corrigan he wrote just after Corrigan died, so I know Corrigan was his mentor. You say O’Connor was Corrigan’s source for the jury-tampering story — did Yeager know that?”
“Yes. As a kid, O’Connor wrote little news stories that he gave to Jack. I’ve got those papers now. One tells of a ‘copper’ keeping an eye on him and protecting him from Yeager’s men. And of Yeager coming by one day and scowling at him. So somehow, Yeager must have heard of O’Connor. Maybe the man who was intimidating the juror figured out O’Connor was both in the gallery that day and connected with the Express. Or Thelma Ducane might have let word slip.”
“Okay… Mitch Yeager might blame O’Connor for the jury-tampering charge,” Hailey said. “Would he be involved in the death of O’Connor’s sister over that?”
“No, not just that. From the articles I’ve been looking into down here, and what I’ve read from O’Connor’s papers, here’s what I know — Mitch’s brother, Adam, was in prison while he was on trial. Granville, who had taken Mitch and Adam in when they were orphaned as kids, had died just a few months before — some said that Adam’s arrest had been too much for the old man to take. Adam and Mitch were, by all accounts, very close. So Mitch probably lays the arrest of his brother and the death of his grandfather at the door of Jack Corrigan — whose articles probably did have a lot to do with the investigations that led to the Yeagers’ arrests.”
“It’s not like Corrigan committed the crimes,” Hailey said.
“Yeager wouldn’t be the first to blame other people for what were really the consequences of his own actions. So while he’s on trial, Jack is in the courtroom every day, gloating, no doubt. You would have to know Jack Corrigan to know how well he could do that. The woman Mitch had been seeing, perhaps hoped to marry — to bring himself up in social standing if nothing else — was sitting at Jack Corrigan’s side and flirting with Jack during the trial.”
“Who?” Hailey asked.
“Lillian Vanderveer. Now Lillian Linworth.”
“Shut up!” she said in disbelief. “He wanted her?”
“She was a society beauty. You’ll be lucky to age as well as she has.”
“I’m beginning to see what you mean,” Ethan said. “It wasn’t just time and money lost to a legal hassle.”
“I think the worst of it for Mitch was that Adam became seriously ill with tuberculosis while he was in prison. Mitch wasn’t allowed to visit him, because the tampering charges caused his bail to be revoked.”
“So his brother is dying, his bail’s revoked, and though he owns a lot of assets, he doesn’t have much cash,” Ethan said.
“Right. And all the legal work for the family grows expensive. He’s had to sell assets already, and now he has to raise more money. He eventually goes free, but in the meantime his brother has died, his reputation is shot, and the best of his assets have gone to people who snub him. He’s left with the care of his brother’s widow and children, estate taxes, and an inheritance he’s been unable to properly manage while he’s dealt with his legal problems.”
“And it takes him a few years to get back on his feet,” Hailey said.
“Yes, and to reestablish himself in Las Piernas society. Did you find out the date of his marriage to Estelle?”
“He married her in June 1945. He eventually took over her father’s businesses, which increased his wealth enormously. His own businesses were doing much better then, so he didn’t come to her poor. He didn’t make the kind of money Linworth and Ducane made in the late 1930s — but he was better at manipulating. From what I could learn, he maneuvered them into positions where they had to come to him for supplies. Eventually, they were all doing a lot of business with one another.”
“When was the engagement announced?” I asked.
She looked through her notes. “March. There was a notice in the Society pages on March 23, 1945.”
“Two weeks before O’Connor’s sister was murdered,” I said. “I wonder if getting engaged to Estelle made him think about losing his chance with Lillian. And around that time the Express carried a story about how effective the new treatments for TB were.”
“Maybe it wasn’t as complicated as that,” Ethan said. “Maybe he was just biding his time, making sure that no one would see it as retaliation. If he had killed O’Connor’s sister right after the jury-tampering conviction was overturned, he would have been caught.”
“Do you really think Yeager is the one who killed her?” Hailey asked me.
“You mean, killed her himself rather than arranging it? I don’t know. Eric and Ian wouldn’t have been very old — not even out of grade school — so they didn’t help him. There’s this whole question of Harmon, though — or so I thought until the DNA came back.”
“No DNA samples on file for Mitch Yeager?” Ethan asked.
“No.”
“Too bad.”
“Why bother anyway?” Hailey said. “He’s so old, people won’t want him to go to jail. There are people who don’t want old Nazis to be punished. We don’t stand a chance. He’s going to throw a big old pity party for himself and people will buy into it. ‘I’m an old, old man who has served the community and the paper has always hated me.’ People will feel sorry for him. They won’t care about the dead.”
“It’s our job to make them care,” Ethan said. “To show them why they should. It shouldn’t be hard to do that, especially if he arranged the murder of a child. People want to see wrongdoing punished.”
“Well,” she said, staring right at him, “some people are found guilty of wrongdoing, and the world just seems to let them off with a slap on the wrist.”
That arrow found its mark, not surprisingly. He gathered his papers. He said to me, his voice not quite steady, “Forgive me — I’m not giving up, but I think we’ll have to talk more another time.”
He left.
Hailey shrugged, to all appearances unconcerned. I wasn’t exactly fooled by those appearances, but I was too furious at her to trust myself to speak.
“Do you want to know what I found out about the Ducanes?” she asked. “The business stuff is pretty boring, but I interviewed some people who knew the parents and they didn’t have much good to say.”
“Funny how some people are like that. I don’t think we should continue.”
“When do you want to meet again, then?”
“When is the big frost expected in hell?”
“Look, I know you’re mad at me because Ethan has you under his spell or whatever, but—”
“Oh no — Ethan wasn’t the witch in this meeting.”
“Don’t you think you should have asked me if I wanted to work with him, instead of just insisting on it?”
“No. Run upstairs and ask John or Lydia to explain to you why you are not in a democracy here. I obviously cannot get a single thing through to you.”
“Okay, okay, I’m sorry about what I said about Ethan, all right? All right? So can we please just get back to business?”
“You’re apologizing to the wrong person. Apologize to the right one, and maybe by tomorrow I’ll change my mind about not continuing to work with you on this.”
I left her sitting there and went back to the newsroom. Ethan was nowhere to be seen.
I had no sooner reached my desk than the phone rang.
“Kelly,” I answered.
Nothing.
I hung up. It rang again almost immediately.
I picked it up and didn’t say a word.
A woman’s voice said, “Hello? Hello? Is anyone there?”
“Yes, this is Irene Kelly.”
“Irene Kelly? I don’t know if you’ll remember me… you talked to me twenty years ago, but I didn’t tell you m
y name.”
“Betty Bradford,” I said. “I’m so glad you called.”
“I’m in Zeke Brennan’s office. He’s agreed you can be present when I talk to the police.”
63
TWO HOURS LATER, I WAS PART OF THE GATHERING IN ZEKE BRENNAN’S office. I hoped Betty Bradford felt as comfortable as I did with him. Over the years, the attorney had saved me from more than one legal tangle. Only people who’ve never been in that kind of jam make lawyer jokes. Zeke is one of my heroes.
Zeke held the meeting in his mid-size conference room, which had just the right number of chairs for the small crowd that was there. Betty, Zeke, and I were joined by one of Zeke’s assistants, the local D.A. and one of his assistants, Frank, a lieutenant and a captain from homicide, and Hailey, who was the last to join us.
Hailey had been paged by Lydia because next to me, she had the most background on the 1958 events, and since Zeke was my lawyer, the paper wanted to keep everything on the level and have another reporter there. Hailey looked more nervous than I thought she’d be — I supposed she was rattled because she was late. Zeke had already started talking when she walked in. She shot me a distressed look, then seemed to settle into the business at hand.
Betty looked nervous, too, but who could blame her? Although knowing she was the woman in the photos allowed me to see the resemblance, she seemed to have little in common with the blond floozy of the 1950s. She was in her sixties now. Her hair was carefully dyed to a natural-looking brown, her makeup was subtle and spare. She dressed conservatively.
The D.A. and Zeke had already come to a very clear-cut agreement about her protection from prosecution in exchange for information and later testimony — a negotiating process had been under way all day.
She had done a bit of negotiating with me, too. I could come to this meeting and bring one other reporter, but under no circumstances was she to be photographed. In exchange for an exclusive, the paper agreed.
She had contacted Zeke Brennan after reading about Max Ducane’s reward in the paper. She didn’t want the reward, and part of the agreement with the D.A. was that she would not receive it, and that in any announcements he made about the reward, it would be noted that it was her idea to refuse it.
“I came forward because Mr. Ducane seems like a good person, and he shouldn’t have to spend money for someone he isn’t even related to after all. I don’t want to make money from what happened to that missing child and from my part in his being kidnapped — I am deeply ashamed of having any part in that.”
She had wanted to come forward in 1978, but was afraid. “I have a new family, and a new life. My husband was living then, and my kids were all at home. My husband passed away two years ago, and my children are all married and moved away from here. This has been on my mind a lot, but I’ve been scared. So I sold my house, and I’m moving away from here just as soon as this is all settled and you don’t need me to testify or anything else. I knew I needed a good lawyer, and Mr. Brennan’s name was in the article about Mr. Ducane, so I contacted him.”
She proceeded to tell us of her relationship with Gus Ronden, and her certainty that he had murdered Rose Hannon and probably the child as well, although she was less sure about the murder of the baby. “I read in the paper that blood tests have already proved that Gus did that, so that part you might think I got from the paper. But I know more than that.”
She talked about that night, about being told by Gus that their boss had a big plan for them, of the role she’d played in setting up Jack for a beating — she shot an anguished look at me as she told about that. She told of going back to the house, escaping to Mexico with Lew Hacker, and marrying him there. She said she came back to the U.S. after he died, got a fake ID, and married her second husband. “I’m not telling you my new name or my husband’s name or any of that, because Lex will go after my kids. I know he’s older than dirt, but if he’s drawing breath, he’ll do harm where he thinks he has a right to do it.”
She got a little flustered at that point, and Brennan said, “Ms. Bradford was for many years under a misapprehension regarding the name of the leader of this group. He used some intermediaries who deliberately misled those in the lower ranks about his name…”
“We never saw him,” she said. “Only person I ever saw giving Gus orders was Griffin Baer. For a long time I thought he was this Lex, and that was another reason I didn’t think it would do any good to come forward — Griff was dead. But then, back in 1978, these Yeager guys were caught by the police, and I realized Griff was connected to them. They were always meeting over at the farm Griff owned.”
“Why didn’t you come forward in 1978?” the D.A. asked.
“We agreed,” Brennan said, “that she would be allowed to tell her story first, and then you would be allowed to ask questions, correct?”
“Sorry,” he said.
“I didn’t come forward,” she said, “because the guy who had the D.A.’s job before you messed up and let those guys get away with murder. They’re out now, aren’t they? Have been for years.”
Frank and all the other representatives of the police were suddenly putting their hands over their mouths, hiding smiles.
“Plus,” she said, “I thought the boss’s name might really be Lex Talionis.”
“Lex talionis!” the D.A. said.
“For those of you who may not know,” Brennan said, “that means ‘the law of retaliation.’”
Betty said, “You should tell them that part, Mr. Brennan.”
He nodded. “I believe by adopting the name Lex Talionis, the person who chose it was announcing that he thought of himself as the embodiment of retribution — the old ‘an eye for an eye’ rule of reciprocal revenge. He abused it, really, because lex talionis — first codified in ancient Mesopotamia — ensured that only the state, and not the individual or feuding family, would be allowed to seek that revenge.”
“Whatever he thought he was,” Betty said, “his name was Mitch Yeager.”
But when more questions were asked, it was clear that she had only guessed this relatively recently. She had seen Griffin Baer and Yeager together, but did not know that Yeager was more than a friend of Baer’s at the time, and had no solid proof that Lex Talionis was Yeager. “Although I might have,” she said, a little defiantly.
“If you please,” Brennan said, “allow Ms. Bradford to continue. I think what she has to say will be useful to you.” He turned to her. “Tell them about Mr. Harmon.”
“Bennie Lee used to work for Griff, too. Or — that’s what I thought. He ran errands for Griff in that Eden truck. Not all of them had to do with farms. Someone got out of line, Bennie Lee paid ’em a visit. I once asked Gus what was in that truck of Bennie’s and Gus said, ‘Cold meat. Don’t ask so many questions or Bennie will give you a ride in back,’ and he laughed. I knew he wasn’t talking about steaks.”
The questions began, but once more, Brennan called for quiet. “Go on, Betty.”
“Well, there’s one other thing. Griff had an office. I never saw him use it, so maybe it wasn’t his after all — maybe it was Mitch Yeager’s. I was kind of snooping around in there on the night before all this stuff happened. I had gone out to the farm with Gus, and Griff wanted to show him something outside. He said he was going to borrow my car and drive him out somewhere in the field to show him something. I was supposed to just sit there, waiting for him, while this was going on.”
She paused, and took a drink of water.
“Now, looking back on it, I suppose they were trying to figure out how big of a hole he’d need for my car. I didn’t know that then. I just knew he was going to get my car dirty, and I was mad. So I went into the office and decided to have a look through the desk. I’m not proud of this, or much of anything from those days, but I thought there might be some money stashed away there, and so I took a look. There was this drawer with a false back to it. You know the kind I mean?”
Everyone nodded.
“I saw thi
s pink envelope.” She smiled wistfully. “In those days, I was crazy about pink. I knew Griff was married, so I figured, ‘Well, here’s a little insurance, in case I need it one day,’ because a girl in my… in the situation I was in back then… never feels too certain of the future. Anyway, I heard the car — Gus and Griff coming back to the house — so I stuffed the envelope into my purse, and put the drawer back like it was, and got myself out of there before they could see what I was up to.” She looked to Brennan.
“Ms. Bradford kept the envelope over the years,” he said. “Although she opened it, and looked at the contents, they are intact.”He handed a large manila envelope to the D.A., who opened and tilted it. A small pink envelope slid out onto the table, making a sound that seemed to indicate there was something metal in it. It sat untouched for a moment. The D.A. looked to Frank. Ever-prepared homicide detective that he is, my husband had a pair of latex gloves with him. He handed them to the D.A., who put them on, then gently lifted the flap of the envelope. He tipped it over the desk and out spilled a silver locket. It was shaped like a shamrock. The chain was broken and had dark stains on it that might be rust. Or blood. I stared at it in shocked recognition.
“Have you and Mr. Brennan handled this without gloves?” the D.A. asked her.
“Just me,” she said. “He only looked at it.”
“It’s Maureen’s,” I said, finding my voice.
I had everyone’s attention.
“It’s Maureen O’Connor’s.” I felt a rush of emotion as I said it. All those years. All those years…
“O’Connor?” the D.A. asked.
“The reporter’s sister,” Frank said. “She was murdered in 1945. Irene, are you sure…?”
“I’ve got a photo of her wearing it. I didn’t realize it was a locket, but it looks just like this one.”
The D.A. asked for a copy of the photo. I nodded, not trusting myself to speak, still trying to get the combination of rage and relief and sadness I felt under control. In spite of the company and the situation, Frank reached over and squeezed my hand.
