Bloodlines ik-9

by Jan Burke

  “Forgiven him? Conn … I caused the accident.”

  He frowned.

  “Not the way Jack tells the story?” she asked.

  “No. He said he had been drinking.”

  “A safe claim to make, I suppose. No, it was my fault. I threw a temper tantrum, grabbed the wheel, and we crashed into a tree. Jack couldn’t walk, was bleeding and in pain, but did I stay to help him? No.”

  “He said you were hurt, too.”

  “Treated at home. Discreetly.” She stared into the fire for a long moment, then said, “No injuries I couldn’t survive, obviously. I was young and stupid and so afraid that the report would leak out that the relatively new Mrs. Harold Linworth — whose husband had just gone to Europe, preparing to make more money out of the war — was involved in an automobile accident. The driver a single man, former lover — I think you see what I mean. I got out of the car and left him there. Went to a pay phone and called Hastings. He, at least, had the good sense to report the accident, so that Jack got help before he bled to death.”

  “Jack has never held anything about that night against you, you know.”

  “Of course I do. That’s part of what makes it so unbearable. His damned forgiveness.”

  She went back to staring at the fire.

  After a moment, O’Connor said, “ ‘If you forgive people enough, you belong to them, and they to you, whether each person likes it or not…’”

  She looked back at him and smiled softly. “Another of your quotations? Whose is it?”

  “James Hilton.”

  “Good-bye, Mr. Chips?”

  He shook his head. “Time and Time Again.”

  “Ah. I’ve not read that one yet. Let me guess — Jack told you to memorize passages of books that struck your fancy, to have these quotations handy for stories.”

  “Maureen. To have them handy for life, I suppose.”

  “Maureen. Your sister. I wish I had met her.”

  He didn’t say anything. Maureen had been gone from his life for over ten years now, and still he missed her. Missing, he thought, meant exactly that — gone like a piece of you, carved right out of you, missing from you.

  “I hope they find both of them,” he said suddenly. “All of them, I mean, but for your sake, I hope they find Katy and Max.”

  “I so want to believe they will…” she said in a hoarse voice, then waited until she had control of herself again. “I so want to believe it, I can’t let myself think that they won’t find them.”

  “Norton, the detective who’s in charge of the kidnapping case?”

  She nodded. He could see the strain showing again, her struggle to keep back tears.

  “The best there is. Trust him.”

  She nodded again, then suddenly stood up and moved toward one of the windows.

  O’Connor stood, too, watching her roughly pull back the heavy draperies, clutching the velvet material in one hand.

  “Damn this rain,” she said.

  14

  DAWN WAS A LITTLE MORE THAN AN HOUR AWAY WHEN LORENZO Albettini, the captain of the fishing vessel Nomadic Maiden, told his crew of four to haul in the nets. His younger brother Giovanni was one of those four, and Lorenzo watched him with pride. Gio already had his captain’s papers, and soon they would buy a second boat and catch more fish for the booming population that now lived along this coast.

  The rain had let up over the last few hours, giving way to mist an hour or so ago, and the swells were not nearly as heavy as they had been. Lorenzo was still using fog signals to let any other vessels that might be passing this way know of the Maiden’s presence.

  Gio and the others had just pulled the last of the haul aboard when Lorenzo saw the other boat come out of the mist, drifting straight toward the Maiden’s bow. A large pleasure boat, dead in the water: no lights, no motor, not making way. Crabbing a bit with the current. Lorenzo cursed, sure this was a matter of the storm setting some rich man’s expensive new toy adrift. He called to Gio to rig the fenders and picked up his megaphone. He hailed the pleasure craft, which he could now see was a beauty — teak decks and a sleek white hull. A Chris-Craft — fifty-footer, he would guess.

  He was not entirely surprised that he received no reply from it.

  Lorenzo was a good pilot, and he easily maneuvered the Maiden alongside the drifting yacht. The Sea Dreamer, he could now see.

  He called the Coast Guard. The radio operator interrupted him to ask his position. This was a little embarrassing for him. He was able to take the Nomadic Maiden in and out of a crowded harbor with ease, but he was not a navigator. He knew the coast — its lights, forms, and buildings — and stayed within sight of these markers. “South of Catalina Island, north of San Clemente Island.”

  “We’ll find you. Over,” the operator said. When Lorenzo named the vessel he had found, he heard a sudden change in the radio operator’s voice.

  “The Sea Dreamer? Any survivors? Over.”

  Survivors? Lorenzo was taken aback. He had been sure that this was just another of the many pleasure boats that had probably slipped free of their moorings and ended up adrift at sea last night — a common occurrence after a storm. “I don’t see anyone on deck or at the helm.”

  “Nomadic Maiden,” the Coast Guard operator said, “the Sea Dreamer had four adults aboard. Over.”

  “Four?”

  “Two males, two females — and a small dog. Please ascertain as soon as possible if there are survivors belowdecks, and if so, if they are in need of medical attention. Over.”

  So he called Gio to take the helm of the Maiden, and taking a lantern flashlight with him, Lorenzo lowered himself onto the Sea Dreamer. He secured her to the Maiden with a tow line. Gio, he saw, was watching around them, keeping his eyes moving, as he should.

  Lorenzo called out again, a hopeful picture in his mind’s eye of four adults, exhausted and sleeping below, but safe.

  There was no reply.

  His gut feeling, having heard the stories so many times over the years, produced another picture: someone going overboard, someone else jumping into the water to save him, both lost, the others not knowing how to operate the boat or the radio, perhaps washed overboard as well.

  Not so easy to go overboard on a yacht this size, the hopeful Lorenzo thought. He called out again.

  Silence.

  Lorenzo took another moment to get the feel of the vessel, to listen.

  Nothing but the creaking of the pull on the line, the lapping of the sea at the hull.

  To all appearances the Sea Dreamer was seaworthy, but there might have been engine trouble. He would check that later. He used the flashlight to glance around the upper deck and helm station, casting its beam over the surfaces of the bridge.

  He hurried down the companionway. He flashed his light in the salon area. Empty. In fact, except for taking on a little water — not enough to do more than wet the bottoms of a rich man’s deck shoes — the Sea Dreamer seemed pristine, with everything secured just as it should be. He frowned, wondering at it. Galley the same. Dinette folded away and secured. No one in the head. He checked the two stacked berths in the midship cabin. Empty. The two in the forepeak were empty as well.

  He began to feel uneasy and told himself not to get spooked over nothing. But the hair on the back of his neck stood on end as he made his way carefully to the aft stateroom’s double berth.

  Empty.

  Not a sign of life.

  Nowhere on the yacht did he find any sign of occupants. He climbed back to the upper deck and called to Gio.

  “Tell the Coast Guard, no one aboard.”

  Word quickly came back that they should stay where they were, that a Coast Guard helicopter and cutter were on the way.

  Lorenzo moved back to the helm of the Sea Dreamer. The sky was lighter. Usually, he loved this time of day, watching the dawn. Usually, he spent a moment or two thinking of what the new day would bring, and of his plans for the future of the Albettini Brothers Fishing Company.
Now he looked out at the sea and thought of two men, two women, and a small dog.

  He was going to try the engines, but there was no key. He could have started it without one if he had to, but he didn’t have to. Just as well. Probably get in trouble with the Coast Guard. He turned the radio on to see if it worked. It did.

  He heard the sound of a helicopter in the distance and turned the radio off.

  The Sea Dreamer and its emptiness were the Coast Guard’s problem now.

  When O’Connor returned to the hospital, he was carrying Jack’s hat and coat, entrusted to him by Hastings. Jack was showing the first signs of fever, and it was clear to O’Connor that the nurses were keeping a closer watch on their patient. O’Connor napped in a chair, waking to hear Jack muttering in delirium about the burial of the car. He began to grow more certain that Jack had actually seen such a thing — no fleeting hallucination could become such a persistent idea.

  Helen Swan walked in at six o’clock.

  “I’ll stay with him this morning,” she said. “I’ve cleared it with Wrigley. Go home and shower and shave and sleep a little if you can. He doesn’t expect you before ten.”

  “What would Jack do without you, Swanie?” he asked, giving her cheek a kiss as he put on his coat.

  “He tries to find out on a regular basis, Conn, so please don’t ask that question when he’s back on his feet.”

  He fell asleep but woke at eight-thirty when the neighbor in the apartment next to his began singing “O Sole Mio” at a volume that could have been heard down at the opera house. He lay in bed, remembering his interrupted dream: of Katy when she was a toddler. In the dream Maureen laughed and played with her, which had never happened in real life — his sister had never met Katy. Everyone in the dream was happy, but now, as he awakened from it, it made him feel sad. He got out of bed, but the feeling of the dream stayed with him even after he left the house.

  In the newsroom, as O’Connor made his way to his desk, the other newsmen asked about Jack and said how sorry they were to hear that he had been hurt so badly. O’Connor figured three out of five meant it. In this business, those odds indicated great regard. Jack was the object of more than a little envy, but he knew how to live with that and still form friendships with most of his coworkers.

  O’Connor was drinking his first cup of strong black coffee of the day, quietly listening to other newsmen make wild conjectures about the kidnapping of the Ducane baby — now apparently no longer a secret — when Winston Wrigley II called him into his office.

  “Have a seat,” Wrigley said.

  O’Connor obeyed.

  Wrigley wasted no time on small talk. “They’ve found the Sea Dreamer. No one aboard. The Coast Guard is searching the waters between here and where the boat was found, but they don’t hold out much hope for finding survivors.”

  Over the last few hours, he had more than once thought that Katy might be dead, but now, perhaps because of the dream, he said, “Did anyone actually see Katy and Todd get on that boat?”

  “O’Connor,” Wrigley said in a gently chiding tone.

  O’Connor looked away. There was no use talking to anyone about an idea like that, he thought. You went out and found out if there was any possible truth to it, or you gave it up on your own, but pitching it to an editor was a stupid idea. “Sorry.”

  “An insincere apology if I’ve ever heard one.”

  “Then here’s a sincere one — I meant no disrespect to you, Mr. Wrigley.”

  “All right, fine. I want to send you to talk to the captain of the fishing boat that found the Sea Dreamer. I want you to get whatever you can from him, write it, and then go home. I’ve got other people covering other aspects of this — stories on those who are missing and so on.”

  “But there’s so much more…”

  “Undoubtedly. Once you have the fisherman’s story written, go home. Not to the hospital, but home. You look like hell. I can tell that you aren’t thinking straight. And I know why. But unless you’re going to leave newspaper work and become a male nurse, you’ve got to leave Jack’s care to the medical profession and help me prove to someone that I’m not crazy.”

  “I don’t understand…”

  “Jack’s laid up in the hospital. I’ve got to have someone take over covering the crime beat.”

  “Sir, I…”

  “You don’t know what to say, and you don’t want to cut Jack out of his job. Right. My father tells me this should go to one of the older men. That’s because he’s such an old man, people in their — how old are you now?”

  “I’ll be thirty next—”

  “—people in their late twenties seem like children to him. He forgets that you have more years on the job than many of those men. He also forgets that he’s retired.”

  “But, sir, Jack will be back.”

  “Yes, he will. And I can think of only one man who will sincerely welcome his return if that means handing the crime beat back to him — that’s you.”

  “You couldn’t get me to keep it.”

  “I know. So do as I say. I wouldn’t have you working at all today, but with all hell breaking loose and Jack gone, we’re stretched thin.”

  O’Connor could see that Lorenzo Albettini was tired of answering questions. But one of O’Connor’s brothers was a commercial fisherman, so he was able to converse just enough on the topic dearest to Lorenzo’s heart to win him over.

  “Why didn’t you go into business with your brother?” Lorenzo asked, using a can opener to punch two triangular openings in the top of a Coca-Cola.

  “He has six sons.”

  Lorenzo smiled and took a sip of Coke. “That explains it.”

  “My brother tells me that the day after I work so hard to write a story, someone wraps one of his fish in it. Not true, though — he lives in San Francisco. Someone wraps one of his fish in the Examiner.”

  “If he comes this way, you must introduce us.”

  “I’m sure he’d like that. You work with your brother, right?”

  And in this way O’Connor began to hear the story of the yacht that came out of the mist.

  “I don’t believe it, though,” Lorenzo said, tossing the empty Coke can into a wire trash container.

  “Don’t believe what?”

  “That anyone went overboard.”

  “Why?” O’Connor asked, surprised.

  “First,” Lorenzo said, counting off on a finger, “the yacht is too neat and clean, too tidy. Everything stowed away. Let me ask you this. If you invited friends over to celebrate a young woman’s birthday, you would probably raise a toast, or something of that nature. Am I right?”

  “Yes. So, you saw no glasses, no champagne…”

  “Nothing — nothing. People are enjoying themselves, and someone gets swept overboard — if you are one of the others, you don’t wash up the glasses and put them away. You leave things where they are and rush to that person’s aid.”

  “But if the storm comes up and you want to make the ship safer?”

  Lorenzo counted off finger number two. “You put on your life vests. Problem number two — the life vests are stowed, none are missing.”

  “Yes,” O’Connor said, seeing it. “If you didn’t put them on the moment you came aboard, you put them on when the seas turned rough. Especially if you haven’t been out on the water much. What else?”

  Lorenzo touched the third finger. “No key.”

  “In the ignition?”

  “Exactly. Why would you take the key out of the ignition? Who turned it off and took the key with them? Wouldn’t you want to have the ability to move under power?”

  “Number four?”

  Lorenzo smiled. “You need more?”

  “You obviously have a sharp eye, Mr. Albettini. Does the list stop at three?”

  “Call me Lorenzo, please. All right. Four — the dog. You know what a frightened dog does? But perhaps all of that washed overboard. Better than the dog is number five. The radio. I can turn it on
when I come aboard. It was not on before I arrived.”

  “Perhaps the people left aboard didn’t know how to use it.”

  “Think about that for a moment. Put yourself on that yacht.”

  O’Connor tried to picture the scene. “Four people on a yacht. One or two go overboard, or one goes over and another tries to save him. The people still onboard are terrified.”

  “Yes! You begin to see it.”

  “They’ve already lost half of the people aboard, they’re in the middle of a storm, they can’t see the shore.”

  “Yes. They are very, very alone. Nothing in this world can make a person feel as alone as the sea, even when she is calm. When she is raging? Ten, twenty times worse.”

  “You’d do whatever you could to get someone to help you. Was the radio on an emergency channel?”

  “No,” Lorenzo said, then waved a hand in dismissal. “It didn’t need to be. If someone has been to see any movie that has so much as a toy boat in a bathtub in it, they know what to do.”

  “They flip switches until the radio lights up, and yell, ‘Mayday,’ into the mike.”

  “Exactly. And if they don’t hear voices on the channel they are on, they search for a channel where they hear voices. They’re desperate. They try to get someone, anyone, to help them.” He was silent for a moment, then added, “Sometimes you hear these cries, and they cannot tell you where they are. Not in time.” He sighed.

  “But sometimes you do find them.”

  “Yes, yes. And the Coast Guard never gives up. Never.”

  “No one heard a call from the Sea Dreamer.”

  “No — and the Coast Guard was trying to call the Sea Dreamer, because of the child.”

  O’Connor sat back and thought over all that Lorenzo had said. Had anyone been on that boat at all? Or was it merely set adrift?

  “Strange, isn’t it?” he said aloud. “The parents and two grandparents of that child disappear on the same night the child is taken.”