Bloodlines

One afternoon he learned that Jack-who seemed to have a “pal” in every government office and on every street corner of Las Piernas-was getting calls from a worker in the county coroner’s office whenever a Jane Doe was brought in. O’Co

“You sure you want to do that?” Jack asked. “It’s seldom-well, it’s not the sleeping beauty parlor, if you take my meaning.”

“Then why do you go?”

“Why do you think I go, kid?”

O’Co

“None whatsoever.”

O’Co

They made these trips for five years.

Each miserable April, O’Co

In April 1949, in San Marino-about thirty miles north of Las Piernas-a three-year-old girl went out to play in a field overgrown with weeds. She fell into an abandoned well-ninety feet down, through a fourteen-inch-wide opening. Her parents heard her crying and called police and firemen. Word of the rescue effort spread, and in Las Piernas the city editor of the Express looked up from the wire reports to see who was available to cover it. There was only one unassigned reporter in the newsroom. Young O’Co

The scene was already crowded when O’Co

“Not a sound out of her since the first hour,” a patrolman said to O’Co

Next to them, a man from the Herald suddenly said, “What the hell is that?” They turned to see trucks laden with odd-shaped equipment approaching the scene.

“Television,” a reporter from the Times said. “KTLA. Saw them out at the electroplating plant fire over on Pico a couple of years ago. Looks as if they’re getting more sophisticated.”

The cop and the man from the Herald looked amused.

O’Co

The man from the Times was saying, “It’s no joke, my friends. Two years ago there were a little over three hundred televisions in Los Angeles. You know how many there are now?”

“About twenty thousand,” O’Co

“Bingo. Trust the cub to know. What paper are you with?”

“The Express.”

“The Express? You know Jack Corrigan?”

For the rest of the long hours there, the man from the Times took him under his wing, introducing him to others, getting him as close as possible to the rescue itself.

After fifty hours of frantic effort, the rescue crew reached the little girl- to the heartbreak of everyone who had worked or watched or waited, they reached her too late. The coroner would later determine that she had died not long after rescue efforts began.

When O’Co

After O’Co

“It was amazing, Co

“It never is,” O’Co

Jack studied him. “What’s on your mind, Co

“I’m just thinking that I’ll find out about wells in Las Piernas.”

“A follow-up story? Sure. Good idea.”

Honesty made O’Co

“Should have known. Anything that might end up being some kind of reform, Hart’s on it.”

“I’m only thinking…you know, maybe…Maureen,” O’Co

Ames Hart told O’Co

O’Co

April 1950 was a strange April-colder than most. A fraction of an inch of snow fell in Los Angeles, and in Las Piernas as well. That might have been the biggest local story that April, if work done in an orange grove damaged by frost had not uncovered three bodies.

Maureen O’Co

9

T HE NIGHT AFTER MAUREEN’S FUNERAL, O’CONNOR DRANK HIMSELF into a stupor. He awoke the next morning to find himself lying next to a woman who (he decided) was better-looking than he had any right to expect her to be. He looked around, saw that he was in his own apartment, and stared at the ceiling as memories of the previous evening came back to him-of leaving his parents’ home with Corrigan, going to a bar, and drinking steadily. Two women joined them. Jack left with one, he stumbled out with the other.

This one. He remembered the fumbling, desperate way he had taken her, and-worst of all-weeping as he had not wept at the funeral. She had held him and not said a word. He had eventually fallen asleep.

He got out of bed and dressed quietly, his movements slowed more by his shame than by his hangover. He was not one to pick up women in bars and bring them home on any occasion, and he believed that to have done so after his sister’s funeral revealed him to be the worst sort of man.

He wondered if the woman was a prostitute, and what he might owe her if she was, or if he had already paid her. He looked in his wallet-hard to tell what he had left at the bar, but he didn’t seem to be down much from where he had been the day before.

She came into the kitchen while he was making coffee. She was dressed and was smoking a cigarette. “Good morning,” she said, although she appeared to be just as hung over as he was.

“Good morning.” He hesitated, then added, “Care for some coffee?”

“Thanks, Co

“Vera. Of course.”

The smile widened a little. “Listen, maybe I’ll skip that coffee. I should get going.”

“It’s no trouble,” he said.

“That’s okay. Do you see my coat? Wait-there it is, by the door.” She moved to get it, but he reached it first and held it for her as she put it on. She turned toward him and briefly embraced him. “Nothing to worry about, Co

“I’d like to see you again,” he found himself saying.

She shook her head. “I’m leaving town today, remember? Or maybe you don’t-anyway, if I come back through here, I’ll look you up, all right?”

“Wait-” He hurried back to his wallet, pulled out a business card. “If you should need anything, give me a call.”

She took it, gave him a quick kiss, and left.

He hadn’t even asked her last name, he realized.

Except to reprimand himself for dishonoring his sister’s memory, he forgot about Vera. He concentrated on trying to find some lead in Maureen’s murder. The owner of the orange grove was an old woman, nearly blind, who was so upset over the discovery of the remains on her property, her grown children feared for her health. No one had worked in the grove through every year of the disappearances, and police were convinced that none of the workers had any idea of the grave’s existence. The other two bodies might not have been identified if O’Co