Blood Ties

by Nicholas Guild

  Tregear picked it up and looked at it, then set it back down again.

  “Go away, sir.”

  Lieutenant Seward, USN, didn’t like that answer. His face visibly hardened.

  “The car is waiting, Seaman. You’re coming. That’s an order.”

  “I only follow orders when I’m on duty,” Tregear answered. “I’m not on duty. By the way, would you like a beer?”

  “I can arrest you, if that’s what you want.” The lieutenant smiled tightly, just to show he wasn’t a bad guy. “I can take you back to New London in chains.”

  “If you do, I’ll probably get so depressed I won’t be able to remember my own name, let alone how the Navy’s code sequences work. We’ll see how the brass likes that, sir.”

  The lieutenant let out a little gasp, as if exasperated and amused at the same time.

  “I’ll have that beer now, if you wouldn’t mind,” he said.

  Tregear flagged down a waiter.

  “You sure you wouldn’t like a little something with it?” Tregear asked. He had halfway decided to forgive the man. After all, Seward was an officer and a gentleman, which meant he probably couldn’t help himself.

  The beer came in a glass that was already sweating in the warm August evening.

  “They warned me you might be tough to handle,” Lieutenant Seward announced. Then he took a sip and seemed elaborately pleased. “But I have to get you out of here. There isn’t a choice. Your watchers have discovered that someone else is watching too.”

  “Who?”

  The lieutenant shrugged. “We assume the competition.”

  “How many?”

  “Just one that we know of. But there could be others.”

  “Just one? Describe him.”

  For a few seconds the lieutenant merely stared into space, giving the impression he couldn’t understand why what some nameless thug looked like could make any difference. Then, apparently, he decided to relent.

  “Forties, maybe six one, maybe a hundred and seventy pounds, light brown hair, wearing jeans and a work shirt—down here, he probably thinks that looking like a redneck is a great disguise.”

  He laughed, until he saw that Tregear wasn’t.

  “Anything else?”

  “Else?” The lieutenant shook his head, then suddenly seemed to remember. “They think he’s left-handed, but they’re not sure.”

  “Anybody get a really close look at him?”

  “We’ve got some long-distance photos—if you insist.”

  “Where are they?”

  “In the car.” The lieutenant smiled, a warning that he was about to spring his cleverly concealed trap. “Which is where you should be, right now.”

  There wasn’t any point in arguing. Tregear didn’t even want to argue. He was too scared. He paid his tab and they were out of there.

  “I need to stop by the hotel to get my stuff.”

  “It’s being attended to.”

  The lieutenant raised his arm and, about thirty feet up the street, the two back doors of a peanut butter–brown station wagon sprang open. The man who got out on the sidewalk side was tall, with very hairy arms. Tonight he had left his straw hat behind.

  They put Tregear in the backseat, in the middle, as if afraid that he might try to bolt.

  “Show me the pictures.”

  The lieutenant, who was in front, on the passenger side, handed back a manila envelope. There were perhaps a dozen photographs, but Tregear only needed one.

  “He’s not the competition,” he said. “He’s much scarier than that.”

  * * *

  Nobody was interested.

  Tregear discovered that his mouth had gone completely dry. He didn’t begin to relax until they were in New Jersey, when he discovered he was very, very tired. He missed New York altogether and didn’t wake up until they reached New Haven.

  Around noon of the next day a chambermaid at the Mt City Lodge in Frederick opened the door to Room 256 and almost stumbled over a corpse in civilian clothes but subsequently identified as Petty Officer Third Class Frank Piersal, age twenty-three. He had died of a single knife thrust to the throat, probably from behind, probably by someone who was left-handed.

  The listed occupant of the room, a Mr. Stephen Rayne, who was described by the bell clerk as having used his left hand to sign his registration card, had disappeared and was wanted for questioning by the Frederick Police Department.

  Back in New London, when Tregear’s commanding officer showed him Piersal’s photograph, he recognized him as Mr. Sunglasses.

  “Of course nobody thinks you did it. We’ll have a word with the Frederick police,” Commander Renfield explained. “Piersal was sent to pick up your stuff while you were still having dinner. Whoever killed him was probably waiting for you.”

  “He’s just as dead, whether I killed him or not.”

  And then he tried to explain.

  “Piersal was killed by my father. The last I heard his name was Walter Rayne, but he’s probably changed it sixteen times since then. He’s already killed two women in Frederick, plus God alone knows how many besides. Send one of these photos to the Frederick police and tell them this is their killer. Or I’ll go tell them—maybe now they’ll believe me.”

  “This is really true?” Renfield asked him.

  “You bet. If you want corroborating evidence, I’ve got gobs of it.”

  “I’ll let Security know. It’s their decision.”

  But Security did nothing. They didn’t want Tregear anywhere near a criminal case, even if they could prove beyond a doubt he was as innocent as a lamb. They didn’t want the publicity. They didn’t want Tregear’s name and/or photo in any reports—let alone the newspapers. They didn’t want any part of any of it. Tregear, to the world outside the Navy, wasn’t admitted to exist.

  The photos, they claimed, were useless for purposes of identification.

  “You tried,” Renfield told him.

  “Not hard enough.”

  * * *

  “So eventually I put in for separation, and here I am,” Tregear said, and smiled wearily. “But I learned a few valuable lessons out of the experience.”

  “Like what?”

  Ellen had long since finished her wine and was a little surprised to discover she was still holding the glass. She set it down on the table in front of the sofa.

  “What did you learn?” she asked, as if she thought a clarification was in order.

  Tregear made a despairing little gesture with his right hand, suggesting that the cost of such knowledge must always be paid in guilt.

  “I learned that I couldn’t approach the police directly,” he said, “both because they wouldn’t believe me and because Walter might be listening at the keyhole. And I’ve learned that I have to keep my distance. I accomplished nothing in Frederick and Piersal died in my place. If I’d stayed away, he’d still be alive.

  “So from time to time I’ve made the police anonymous presents of information, which have usually been ignored, and I’ve been waiting for a situation like this, where the police would come to me.”

  15

  As she walked back to where her car was parked, Ellen discovered that she was what her father, the shrink, would have described as “conflicted.” The cop was feeling triumphant. She was on the cutting edge of the sort of homicide investigation they wrote books about, and the adrenaline was pounding through her veins. But Ellen Ridley, the woman who was not always a cop, discovered she was a shade disappointed.

  Well, what had she expected? Stephen Tregear had just unburdened himself of the most horrific story she had ever heard.

  “I think I have to talk to my partner,” was all she had said.

  “That strikes me as a very good idea. Tell him he’s welcome any time.”

  But was she welcome? Welcome in a way Sam wouldn’t have appreciated? That was perhaps a little unclear.

  When she was behind the wheel of her car, with the door firmly closed, she phoned
Dispatch. She found herself wondering if Tregear had some way of listening in.

  “Where is Sam?” she asked.

  “Oh hi, Ellie! I love you too,” a woman’s voice answered. “He’s in the office, breaking in a new chair. You want to talk to him?”

  “It can wait.”

  Frankly, she wasn’t sure what she was going to say to him.

  * * *

  Sam was at his desk, drinking coffee out of a paper cup. He didn’t look happy.

  “The lieutenant wants us off Tregear by tomorrow,” he said, after he had glanced up at Ellen and then briefly scowled. “If Captain Marvel lodges another complaint, we’re going to have a problem.

  “And, by the way, what in blazes are you doing here? It’s your day off.”

  “Tregear won’t complain anymore,” Ellen said. She reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out the evidence bag with Tregear’s blood-soaked handkerchief inside. She dropped it on the desk.

  Sam stared at it as if it were a dead cat.

  “What is this?”

  “A very large sample of Stephen Tregear’s DNA. I also have his signed release.”

  “And with your very own eyes you saw this stuff coming out of his veins?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  And how did you manage that?”

  “Didn’t you know, Sam? Men are like putty in my hands.”

  Sam looked back down at the evidence bag and actually sighed, a sound filled with the most terrible resignation.

  “I think you better tell me about this.”

  * * *

  “He phoned me, Sam.”

  They were driving back toward Fisherman’s Wharf. Sam had had some very unkind things to say about his partner’s police techniques, and Ellen hoped this would be the last lie she would have to tell him.

  “He’s willing to cooperate. He’s innocent. The killer is his father and he’s been tracking the bastard for years. He’s prepared to give us everything he knows.”

  “He’s not innocent until the DNA report says he’s innocent.”

  “Oh, come on! Then why would he have given us all that nice blood, except to prove he’s not Our Boy. Do you think he’s going to just hand us something that can put him on death row?”

  Sam didn’t answer. In truth, there was no answer.

  “Okay, so he’s innocent.” Sam glowered at the traffic. “But he still sounds like a crazy. That story of his is like something out of the funny papers.”

  Ellen experienced a quick flash of anger. Stephen Tregear wasn’t crazy—it was cruel and bitterly unfair to dismiss him like that.

  But the anger passed as quickly as it had come. What did she expect? What would have been her reaction if someone had told her the same story? It’s like something out of the funny papers. Sam hadn’t seen the look in the man’s eyes.

  “You’ve got to talk to the guy, Sam.”

  “That’s just exactly what I’m gonna do.”

  After he had finished listening to Ellen’s story, he had picked up the phone and called Stephen Tregear. He realized it was late in the day, he said, but would Mr. Tregear consent to see them? The extremity of his politeness was itself a bad sign.

  “And after we finish with this nut job,” he said to Ellen, setting the receiver carefully back in its cradle, “I’m going home to Daly City and my wife’s pot roast.”

  Tregear met them at his front door. They all took their previous positions in his living room. It was like a class reunion.

  “My partner has told me quite a story,” Sam began. He smiled pleasantly, which meant that he was really seething. “I’m just not sure how much of it I can believe.”

  Tregear reached into his trousers pocket and pulled out a small black object, which he set on the coffee table in front of Sam.

  “That’s a thumb drive,” he said. “It holds thirty-two gigabytes and it’s just about full. Almost everything I know about the man who at one time called himself Walter Rayne is on there.”

  “Almost everything?”

  Tregear smiled, perhaps a little wistfully. “He’s my father. Not everything is reducible to words and pictures.”

  “How do you feel about him?”

  To Ellen, who knew him, it seemed that Sam took a certain cruel pleasure in the question, but Tregear appeared not to notice.

  “How do I feel? Is that important?”

  “Maybe.”

  “He murdered my mother and my grandparents. He’ll murder me if he gets the chance. How would you imagine I feel about him?”

  But how could anyone imagine? Even Sam, who had seen everything, could not have imagined. And Tregear knew that. Ellen could see it in his eyes.

  “Do you hate him?” Sam asked—implying that so complicated a relationship could be boiled down to a single emotion.

  “No. But I’m afraid of him, so it comes to much the same thing.”

  Tregear stared off into empty space for a moment and then glanced at Ellen and smiled, as if at some missed opportunity.

  “But I’m forgetting my manners,” he continued. “Can I offer either of you anything?”

  The answer was a curt “No, thanks.”

  They talked for perhaps half an hour, during which Sam never asked why Tregear was so sure Sally Wilkes’ murderer was the man who, for the sake of convenience, they referred to as Walter Rayne. He seemed little interested in the evidence. What seemed to engross his attention were the psychology and motives of Stephen Tregear.

  At one point he picked up the thumb drive and held it in his open hand, staring at it as if by itself it might be the answer to some riddle.

  “You’ve given this a good share of your life,” he said, not even looking at Tregear. He made it sound like an accusation.

  “For the last ten or so years, it almost has been my life.”

  “Why?”

  “That seems an odd question from a homicide detective.” Tregear smiled and moved his shoulders in a vague shrug, perhaps implying an apology or perhaps not. “For years women have been dying lonely, unspeakable deaths—my mother was almost certainly one of them. By now my father’s victims must number in the hundreds. It’s difficult to ignore.”

  Sam appeared to consider the answer, giving no hint about his conclusions. The thumb drive disappeared into his jacket pocket.

  After a while Sam climbed to his feet. The interview seemed to be over.

  When they got to their car, Sam dropped the thumb drive in Ellen’s lap.

  “I’ll leave you at the department,” he said. He was inflicting a punishment. “You can start printing out whatever’s on this thing. Like I said, I’m going home.”

  “Okay, boss.”

  * * *

  When Tregear closed the door on his two guests it felt almost as if the apartment had been hermetically sealed. He could not remember a time when he had felt so cut off from the human race, not since boyhood.

  Would they come back? Or, more important, would she come back? Or would they simply write him off as another nut case? By now, perhaps, the very weight of the evidence he had collected might tell against him.

  This time she had said hardly a word—she had let her partner do all the talking, and it was clear that her partner didn’t much like him. But all he had to do was close his eyes and remember what she had been like only a few hours ago.

  Could you come back and change the dressings for me tomorrow?

  I might.

  It was wonderful to see the way she smiled when she said it. It was wonderful to have a woman flirt with you like that.

  Tregear had been so long alone that it was difficult to imagine being with someone. Aside from the briefest encounters, he had stayed away from women. He had no right to put them in the line of fire.

  But Ellen Ridley was already there. She was a cop working a homicide case, and Tregear’s father was Suspect Number One. She was in it, with both feet, and it had nothing to do with him.

  It was almost a relief.

  Of course, th
eir little moment of connection had occurred before he told her about Life with Walter. Maybe now she shared her partner’s distaste. Maybe that was why she had stayed so quiet. Maybe now she saw him as some sort of freak, almost an accomplice in his father’s crimes.

  Maybe he even was.

  The sins of the fathers shall be visited upon the sons.

  In a sense, perhaps my grandparents’ blood—and all the blood since—is on my head because all I could think to do was run away and save my own life.

  You were twelve years old.

  Was that exoneration enough?

  Tregear had read enough about the tendency of abused children to assume the guilt for their parents’ failures, but it had never seemed to him to apply to his own case. That night, when he had found the dead woman in his father’s van, he had run away. It had never even occurred to him to do anything else. He had been twelve years old and afraid for his own life. And his father was his father. All of his excuses seemed a little beside the point.

  The sins of the fathers shall be visited upon the sons. There seemed a certain justice in that.

  And maybe, upon reflection, Ellen Ridley had come to agree.

  Or maybe not.

  Tregear regarded himself as having few enough claims on the world’s forgiveness, but perhaps, just this once …

  He knew he would never be able to forgive himself if he didn’t at least ask.

  * * *

  When she was at her desk, Ellen stuck the thumb drive into a USB port, waited for the ancient computer to recognize it and then started calling files up on screen for a look.

  It quickly became apparent that Tregear’s data was vast. It would take days to print it out and boxes and boxes of paper. Budget would have a fit.

  Within five minutes she was reading Walter Rayne’s dossier. It was pretty thin.

  Tregear knew more about Walter Rayne than anyone on earth, and even he didn’t know much. The one exception was his list of known aliases, and that was impressive. Walter Bauer, Walter Brown, Walter Carter, Walter Ellis—there was even a Walter Scott.

  And under any and all of these names, the man had no IRS history, no social security account, no banking history, no credit history. He had lived his whole life under the radar. Officially, he didn’t exist. They didn’t exist.