Bloodlines

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’Co

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’Co

“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 ru

“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’Co

“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

P UBLICLY, 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 co

After a week or so, the story probably would have dropped off the public radar had it not been for an a

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 di

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?”