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“But we looked at the driver,” Chet said. “It was one of the first people we checked out, and he had a solid alibi for the day the girls went missing. Stan wasn’t the driver. You never told me about Stan.”
Miriam understood his frustration, for she felt it, too. No one had been sacred in their search for the girls, no one had been presumed i
And, sure enough, Dave had been right. Du
CHAPTER 38
Lenhardt was still trying to figure out the tip for brunch by the time Infante called the duty judge to alert him that they would need a search warrant for Stan Dunham’s room in Sykesville. They met the judge outside the Cross Keys I
“You know how we found the Penelope Jackson co
“Some sort of computer search, I gather.”
“Yeah, by Nancy. The first day I did the typical stuff-NCIC, all those databases. But I didn’t think to check the fucking newspapers, on the off chance that Penelope Jackson had made news in a way that didn’t generate a warrant. If Nancy hadn’t done that, we wouldn’t have made the co
“Thank you, Kevin,” Willoughby said in a brittle voice, as if Infante had offered him an Altoid or something else utterly trivial. “But you’re talking about an oversight you made in the first twenty-four hours of investigating a hit-and-run and a suspicious woman. I had fourteen years to work the Bethany case, and if the information about Dunham is correct, it means I never made a single significant discovery in the disappearance of the Bethany girls. Think about that. All that work, all that time, and I didn’t actually learn anything. Pathetic.”
“When Nancy started working cold cases, she told me the irony is that the name is always in the file, one way or another. But Stan Dunham’s not in the file. You called the bus company, they gave you the name of the route’s driver, you established it couldn’t be him. Besides, we still don’t know anything, other than the fact that there is some sort of co
“A co
“But that won’t prove she is Ruth Leibig, just that Ruth Leibig existed and went to that school. You know, they say you can’t prove a negative, but it’s turning out to be pretty damn hard to prove who this woman is. What if she just claims another identity, then another? Ruth Leibig is dead, after all. This woman is the goddamn Queen of the Dead.”
They left the highway and headed north. The suburbs had crept farther and farther out in the decade since Infante first moved to Baltimore, but there were still some traces of country life here in Sykesville. Yet the facility itself was quite fancy, stark and modern, even more impressive than the one in which Willoughby lived. How did an old cop, one without a trust fund, afford a place like this? Then Infante remembered the sale of the property up in Pe
WILLOUGHBY SHUDDERED A LITTLE when they were directed to the hospice wing where Stan Dunham was kept. That surprised Infante at first, but then he remembered: Willoughby ’s wife had died in such a place, had made the short, one-way trip from apartment to care ward when she was still in her fifties.
“Mr. Dunham has virtually no speech at this point,” said the pretty young nursing aide who escorted them, Terrie. Nurses-he should date more nurses. They were a good fit for a police. He wished they still wore those white dresses, the ones that were tight at the waist, and those little caps with wings. This one had on mint-green pants, a flowery top, and some butt-ugly green clogs, but she was still striking. “He makes occasional sounds, some of which indicate what he’s feeling, but he can’t communicate more than his basic needs. He’s late-stage.”
“Is that why he’s been moved to the hospice?” Willoughby asked, stumbling a little over the last word.
“We don’t move people into hospice unless their life-span is expected to be less than six months. Mr. Dunham was diagnosed with stage-four lung cancer three months ago. Poor guy. He’s really had nothing but bad breaks.”
Yeah , Kevin thought. Poor guy. He asked, “He had a son, Tony. Did he ever visit?”
“I didn’t know his son was alive. His lawyer is our only contact. Maybe they were estranged. That happens.”
Maybe the son didn’t want anything to do with the father. Maybe the son knew what went down, all these years ago, and he told his girlfriend, Penelope, and she told someone, someone who happened to be driving her car.
KEVIN KNEW THAT someone with advanced Alzheimer’s couldn’t provide any meaningful information, but he was still disappointed when he saw Stan Dunham. This was a husk of a man in plaid pajamas and bathrobe. The only signs of life in him were the comb marks in his hair, the fresh shave. Did the nurse do those things? Dunham’s eyes certainly brightened at the sight of her, passed over Kevin and Willoughby with mild interest, then returned to the nurse.