Blood Ties

by Nicholas Guild

  “The mills of the gods grind slowly,” Sam announced as they walked up a difficult bit of hill on their way to a public park much beloved by his dachshunds. “Juvenile records from that long ago wouldn’t even have made it into the computer. Somebody must have searched them by eye. Don’t the cops in Indiana have anything better to do with their time?”

  “Maybe some eighty-year-old juvie officer remembered the case,” Ellen suggested. “It would be the sort of thing to stick in your mind.”

  “You mean a teenage rapist with Elmer Gantry for a father? In the Midwest they’re probably as common as mushrooms.”

  They were silent until they reached the park, and then Sam sat down on a bench to rest and let Ellen walk the pack around to water the shrubbery.

  When she came back, Sam took the dogs off their leads to let them wander about. Strictly speaking, this was illegal, but they were well behaved and never strayed very far from Daddy.

  “I’ll bet we’ll hear a lot more about Walter Brewer.” Sam was watching contemplatively as Daisy, the baby of the pack, dug in a flower bed. “Assault with intent doesn’t sound like a first offense. Probably he was a bad boy before he reached puberty. The case files should make interesting reading.”

  He leaned forward, his hands laced together over the handle of his cane, and frowned.

  “But I won’t be reading them. When my convalescent leave is over, I’m putting in my papers and retiring. Millie is adamant.”

  For a moment Ellen was sufficiently distressed to be at a loss for words.

  “What’ll I do for a partner?” she asked finally.

  “What are you doing for one now?”

  “Nothing. I’m still cleaning up the bits and pieces from Walter.”

  “Well, when Walter is put to bed they’ll give you a new partner, probably one as green as you were when I got you.”

  “Then who’s going to be my Father Confessor and Guide?”

  “You don’t need one anymore. That’s just another reason I’m retiring.”

  He glanced at Ellen, who seemed close to tears, then looked away.

  “I’m not moving to Oregon or anything like that,” he said. “You can still come and walk the dogs with me. You just don’t need a mentor anymore. Your handling of the Walter case was masterful.”

  “I had help.”

  “Some—we always get some help—but not very much from me. If I’d retired last year you still would have broken the case.”

  “Not without Steve.”

  “Maybe not, but you made all the right moves, all on your own. You don’t need me anymore, Ellie. You’ve earned your stripes. You’re a big girl now.”

  He shrugged, as if owning to an absurd weakness.

  “And I’m sick of it. I never want to see another dead body in a car trunk. I think I would have quit a long time ago if not for you. You’ve earned this. My retirement is your coming-of-age. You’re a veteran homicide inspector now. You’ll be the teacher.”

  It was time to change the subject.

  “By the way, how is Steve these days?”

  “I don’t really know.” Ellen shrugged. Today seemed a day for unpleasant revelations. “He’s still in the hospital.”

  “And he still doesn’t want to see you?”

  “He’s relented. Friday I got a call from his shrink. I’m going down there this afternoon.”

  “Well, give me a call afterwards and let me know how he is.” Sam laughed suddenly. “He’s a clever bugger. I’m glad he didn’t take after his old man because we’d never have caught him.”

  “And now he’s in the nut ward.”

  “Oh well, aren’t we all?” Sam stood up and whistled for the dogs. “Time we were heading back. We have to celebrate my retirement. I think the lunch menu is beer and lasagna.”

  “In the kitchen?”

  “Until Millie can pick out new wallpaper for the dining room.”

  * * *

  Ellen left Daly City at one-fifteen. She had to make a two o’clock shuttle flight to the John Wayne Airport in Santa Ana, and then it was an hour’s drive to Camp Pendleton. She had a four-thirty appointment with a Dr. Stockton at the Naval hospital there and she didn’t want to be late. That interview was the last hurdle before seeing Steve, who had disappeared from view the night Walter died.

  They had walked out of Sam’s house together, holding on to each other as if each was afraid the other would fall over. Then because of her head wound the Daly City police had insisted on putting Ellen into an ambulance and taking her to the hospital.

  She had not unreasonably assumed that the Navy would scoop up Steve and send him to the hospital, a medical examination being standard procedure after a hostage situation that ends in bloodshed. She had even thought they might meet again in the emergency room, but it didn’t happen.

  X-rays revealed that her skull was intact, so she was given some painkillers and told to go home. But she didn’t go home. She found out where Sam was being treated and kept her vigil in the general surgery waiting room. After about ten o’clock she and Millie kept each other company until, about two, Sam was wheeled into Recovery and declared out of immediate danger.

  Since she had been involved in a shooting, Ellen was put on paid leave and, pending the review, ordered to have no contact with anyone even remotely involved in the “incident,” which by extension included everyone on the San Francisco and Daly City police forces and the district attorney’s office.

  Nevertheless, the evening of her first day in quarantine someone knocked on her apartment door. It turned out to be Mindy Epstein.

  “I am not here,” she said, slipping through the door. “I am home, getting hammered by my boyfriend. You haven’t seen me anytime in the last ten days.”

  She sat down on the couch and asked for a glass of wine.

  “So what’s up?” Ellen asked. It seemed a reasonable question.

  “I just wanted you to know that the DA’s office is not prepared to involve itself in any way in this shooting. Nobody is even remotely interested in filing criminal charges. You’re in the clear, kid. All you did was save the taxpayers a lot of money.

  “Now, tell me what happened. Spare me nothing.”

  So Ellen gave her the whole story—about Tregear, about the antitheft signal on the stolen car, about everything that happened at Sam’s house that night.

  “He went in there to get you out?” Mindy was frankly incredulous. “I don’t believe you. They don’t make men like that anymore.”

  “Nevertheless, that’s what he did.”

  “Then what are you doing sitting alone in your apartment? Where the hell is he?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t seen him since that night.”

  By then they had exhausted the first bottle of wine and Ellen had to go into the kitchen for reinforcements. She couldn’t find another bottle right away, so she sat down on one of the breakfast table chairs. She didn’t want to get up again. She felt numb—or, perhaps more accurately, detached. She wondered if it was the wine, but she didn’t really think so.

  After a while, Mindy came looking for her. Mindy found the other bottle of wine.

  “Post-traumatic stress?” she asked.

  Ellen looked up at her and smiled wanly. “No.” She shook her head. “I’m just thinking about Steve. The Navy must have him stowed away somewhere, and I’m not sure, after all this, they’re ever going to let him go. I don’t know if I’ll ever see him again. And if I don’t, I’m just wondering what I’m going to do with the rest of my life.”

  “Do you love the guy?”

  “Oh yeah.”

  “Then find him.” Mindy sat down on the chair opposite and took Ellen’s hand in hers, squeezing it hard. “You’re a detective, so find him. And when you’ve got him back, don’t ever let him loose again.”

  * * *

  The next morning she drove down to Atherton to spend a few days with her parents. This might have been a mistake because when her mother saw the bloody
gouge just above her left eyebrow she came close to hysterics.

  “This is what comes of joining the police,” she almost shrieked. “You’ll carry that scar for the rest of your life.”

  “Probably,” her daughter answered, smiling inwardly. Actually, she discovered, she was rather proud of her wound.

  During that visit she had told her father the truth about Tregear. There was no point anymore in keeping it a secret—it wouldn’t be possible to keep it a secret—and she wanted her father to know everything.

  “You realize of course that there are certain risks involved in this relationship,” he said. They were in his private sanctum and he was sitting behind his desk, which allowed him, she supposed, to maintain a certain professional detachment. “He’s the son of a serial murderer, and sociopathic tendencies are to some degree hereditary.”

  “He’s not a sociopath, Daddy.”

  “You know that?” He smiled, which was his way of announcing skepticism. “Some of these guys are very skillful at mimicking normal emotions.”

  “Daddy, he walked into Sam’s house, knowing his father would probably kill him. He risked his life to get me out of there. Would a sociopath do that?”

  “No. No, he wouldn’t.”

  He got up from behind his desk and leaned over to kiss his daughter on the forehead.

  “I’m glad you told me,” he said. “Maybe he even deserves you.”

  But it would have been nice to know that Steve agreed.

  * * *

  The Navy reported that Mr. Tregear, the only witness to Walter’s death, was “unavailable” for a statement, but Walter had conveniently tried to murder two police officers, so the hearing was something of a formality. After five days she was cleared of any wrongdoing, and there was even talk of a commendation.

  She didn’t want the commendation. What she wanted was to hear from Steve.

  But where was he? Before she left work on her first day back, she phoned Lieutenant Commander Hal Roland, who might reasonably be expected to know.

  “He’s perfectly safe, Ms. Ridley. The Navy has him.”

  “I figured that, Mr. Roland. But where? I need to get in touch with him.”

  “I’m afraid that won’t be possible.”

  “Hal, as the case officer on Walter I’m going to have to write a report, which will doubtless find its way into the hands of your superiors—in fact, I’ll make very sure that it does. Personally, I think you’re a bumbling careerist. Is that how you would like my report to read, or would you rather be an able and conscientious defender of our nation’s security?”

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  By the time she had gotten home to feed Gwendolyn, she had an e-mail giving the address and telephone number of a Naval hospital at Camp Pendleton.

  But this turned out, at least at first, to be just another stone wall.

  “I’m sorry,” someone in administration told her. “I don’t have a complete list of our patients and, in any case, I’m not authorized to give out information on any of our patients or personnel. However, if you’ll leave me your name and number I’ll see that a message that you called reaches the appropriate department.”

  She kept phoning, and after almost two weeks someone from the psychiatric department called back.

  “Mr. Tregear does not wish to receive any visitors.”

  * * *

  On the flight down, Ellen sat nursing a glass of club soda, finally acknowledging to herself how scared she was. Steve was in a mental hospital, and she had spent her youth listening to her father’s sad stories about people who went to such places. She had no idea what to expect. She had no idea if the man she was to encounter there would be the same man she had loved—and still loved, even to this anxious moment.

  She had known Steve for less than two weeks before he disappeared down the rabbit hole. In that time it had crossed her mind once or twice that the strain was telling on him, that he was too self-contained, even too strong, that he held himself too straight. Perhaps he was brittle. Perhaps that was what happened—he had broken into pieces.

  She kept remembering something Steve had said to her father, about free will and how we couldn’t choose what we wanted. We just want it, he had said, and then we build a belief structure to justify wanting it. Walter had created a kind of inverted religion for himself that explained his inner turmoil and excused his savagery.

  But what of Steve? His whole life he had been driven in one single direction, without real choice. And now perhaps he was free—provided he still had the capacity to choose.

  She kept remembering the expression on his face the instant after Walter died. He had looked so stunned and appalled. After all, she had just killed his father. Would that moment haunt their relationship forever?

  The one idea that brought her any comfort was that he had sent for her. Although it was just as possible that he wanted her to understand that, for him, there was no coming back.

  She supposed she would find out.

  * * *

  The hospital was like a resort hotel and Dr. Stockton was a very nice gray-haired man with green eyes and tangled black eyebrows, his one revolt against military correctness. He was dressed in Navy whites and the insignia on his collar put his rank at captain.

  He met Ellen in his office and they sat across from each other in two chairs fronting his desk. It was all decidedly informal.

  “Steve is a very easy patient to treat,” he began. “Men of such extraordinary intelligence usually are. He talks, I listen and make notes. He’s very analytical and figures most things out for himself. As soon as he came out of his catatonia, I knew he was going to mend.”

  “Catatonia?”

  “Yes. You didn’t know about that?”

  “No.”

  “It started when he was being taken to the hospital. He got into the ambulance on his own and seemed perfectly fine, but by the time they arrived he had become silent and unresponsive. He didn’t talk and he didn’t listen. If someone led him he would submit to the pressure and follow, but if they stopped leading he stopped too. He had retreated into some back closet of his mind. It’s not an uncommon reaction to severe emotional trauma.

  “So they shipped him down here. I started seeing him on a daily basis. I’d ask him questions, which he wouldn’t answer. He seemed not even to know I was there.

  “Then, after two weeks, I came into his room and said, ‘Good morning, Mr. Tregear,’ and he answered, ‘Good morning, Doctor.’ He had decided to come back to life. It was that simple.”

  “Well, is he all right now?”

  “He will be, but he isn’t there yet. He has a lot to sort out. He’s carrying an immense burden of irrational guilt over all those murdered women. Beyond that, this problem with his father has occupied most of his attention most of his life, and now it’s gone. It’s left behind something of an emotional vacuum.”

  Dr. Stockton smiled, just enough to suggest he recognized the irony of the situation.

  “I know. His father was a monster. Why would anybody, particularly his abused and hunted son, miss him? But usually it’s the fact of a relationship rather than its quality that makes it important. You can hate someone and, if you invest enough emotional energy into hating him, you will feel an emptiness, a kind of grief, when that person drops out of your life. The death of Steve’s father means that he has to restructure his whole existence. He has to learn to live without fear, and right now he even misses the fear. He needs someone to fill the void. That’s why I called you.”

  “He didn’t ask you to?”

  “No.” The doctor shook his head. “He doesn’t have any idea you’re coming—if he did it would only give him something else to worry about. But, trust me, he’ll be glad to see you. He talks about you a lot.”

  Ellen shrugged hopelessly.

  “I’ll bet he does. I killed his father right in front of his eyes.”

  “I know that from the police reports, but not from him.”
r />   “He’s a gentleman.”

  “I doubt if that’s the reason.”

  But Ellen was unconvinced.

  “A month ago, when I finally tracked him down, they told me he’d given instructions: no visitors.”

  “He didn’t want you to see him, not the way he was then. Now I think he needs you.”

  There followed a silence lasting perhaps fifteen seconds, during which Dr. Stockton seemed to be measuring something.

  “He told me you lived together briefly.”

  “Just a few days.” Ellen found she was embarrassed, although she couldn’t have said why. “He made me move out because he was afraid for my safety.”

  “How do you feel about him now?”

  “I’m in love with him.” She shook her head. It didn’t seem enough. Maybe no words were enough. “I’m absolutely mad about him, on top of which he saved my life. I can’t tell you how much I love him.”

  “‘Love’—it’s a word that means so many different things.” The doctor smiled again. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to trivialize. The question is, do you love him enough to look after him, to give him what he needs right now?”

  “And what’s that?”

  “Love, time and patience.”

  “I have a full-time job, but I’ll do my best.”

  “I’m sure you’ll do fine. And the fact that you have a job shouldn’t be a problem, because he needs time alone. But he also needs someone to lead him back to life. Move back in with him. Sleep with him, but don’t expect miracles. Male sexuality is a very fragile business, and it may take him a while. But most of all protect him from the Boogie Man.”

  “The Boogie Man is dead.”

  “For Steve, the Boogie Man will never be dead.”

  “Won’t he ever get over that?”

  The doctor raised his impressive eyebrows, as if at the naïveté of the question.

  “Ms. Ridley, you don’t ever ‘get over’ the sort of thing he’s been through. If you’re lucky, you adjust to it.”

  “I’ll bear that in mind.”