But it was over, her decision. Everywhere he went, it was the same story with divorce: The women were the ones who really wanted it. True, there were assholes, guys who cared for no one’s feelings, who dumped their wives for new models. Yet in Infante’s experience, these out-and-out jerks were few and far between. Most of the divorced guys he knew were people like himself, guys who made mistakes but had every intention of staying married. Lenhardt, whose second marriage had made him a bit sanctimonious in the family-happiness department, liked to say that a request for counseling was the first sign that your wife was ready to leave you. “Relationships are chess for women,” he said. “They can see the whole board, plan way ahead. They’re the queens, after all. We’re the kings, limited to one square in any direction, on defense for the whole fucking game.”
Infante and his second wife, Patty, hadn’t even bothered with counseling. They had gone straight to the mattresses, hiring lawyers they couldn’t afford, going into debt over bragging rights to their paltry possessions. Again he had been grateful there were no kids. No student of the Bible—no student of anything—Patty would have carved a kid up even before Solomon offered. Only instead of making a top-to-toe cut, she would have done it at the waist and given Infante the lower half, the one that shit and pissed. And the thing was, he’d known. He had stood there in the church—because Patty, while married twice before, was big on celebrating herself—and realized it was a huge mistake. Watching her come down the aisle had been like seeing a truck bear down on him.
The sex had been great, though.
Interstate 83 went to shit the second he crossed into Pennsylvania and the speed limit dropped ten miles. Still, he could see why some Baltimore workers chose to live up here, a good forty miles out, and not just because the taxes were lower. It was pretty in that rolling-fields, amber-waves-of-grain kind of way. He took the first exit and, using the instructions that Nancy had printed out from the Internet, followed a winding road west, then turned northeast. A McDonald’s, a Kmart, a Wal-Mart—the area was pretty built up. His tires seemed to hum with worry. What were the odds that forty acres had gone undisturbed in the midst of all this development?
Exactly nil. Although he was clearly in the 13350 block, he drove a few miles past Glen Rock Estates before he doubled back, in hopes that he was wrong. No, the address was now a development, one promising an “exclusive community of executive-style homes on generous lots.” In this case “generous” appeared to be defined as between one and two acres, and these “exclusive” homes were two or three years old, judging by the spindly trees and slightly raw landscaping. As for executives—the cars in the driveways spoke more to middle-management types, Subarus and Camrys and Jeep Cherokees. In a truly rich development, there would be a Lexus or two, maybe a Mercedes. Rich people didn’t have to move this far out to have family rooms and two-car garages.
As for orchards? Long gone. Assuming they had ever been there.
“Isn’t that convenient?” he said aloud to himself, using the intonation from the old Saturday Night Live bit. She had been pretty persuasive in her panic about returning here, but now he wondered if she simply didn’t want to go to the trouble of acting out her dismay all over again. He wrote down the name of the company that had developed the property. He would check with local police to see if there’d been any bones discovered during the excavation, get Nancy to cross-check it on a Nexis search. Baltimore County and York County might lie next to each other, but it was all too plausible that bones found here wouldn’t be matched to any Maryland case, much less a thirty-year-old one involving two missing girls. Again, it wasn’t like there was a national database, Bones-R-Us, where you typed in some info and all the missing-persons cases popped up, yours for the asking.
He dialed Nancy’s cell.
“Anything?” she asked. “Because I’ve got—”
“The property’s been developed. But I had an idea. Could you check York County for—I don’t know how you would phrase it—something like ‘York County’ and ‘bones,’ plug in the street name. If there was a grave, it should have been disturbed when they prepared the lots, right?”
“Oh, you mean a Boolean search.”
“Boo-yah what?”
“Never mind. I know what you want. Now, here’s what I got, sitting comfy at my desk.”
Infante thought it would be ungallant to mention what else Nancy was getting, sitting comfy at her desk. Her ass was a lot wider these days. “Yeah?”
“I managed to find the property records. The deed was transferred to Mercer Inc. in 1978, but the previous resident was Stan Dunham. And Dunham was in fact a county police, a sergeant in robbery. Retired in 1974.”
A former cop at the time of the girls’ disappearance, then, but that distinction wouldn’t have been meaningful to a child. Still, it would be slightly easier for the department to stomach. Slightly.
“Is he still alive?”
“In a manner of speaking. His pension checks go to an address out in Carroll County, around Sykesville. It’s an assisted-living community. Based on what the people out there told me, he’s more assisted than living.”
“What’s that mean?”
“He was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s three years ago. He barely knows who he is, day in and day out. No living relatives, according to the hospital, no one to contact when he goes, but he’s got a power of attorney on record.”
“Name?”
“Raymond Hertzbach. And he’s up in York, so you might as well try him out before you head back. Sorry.”
“Hey, I like getting out of the office. I didn’t become a police so I could sit at a desk all day.”
“Neither did I. But things change.”
She sounded just a little bit smug, which wasn’t Nancy’s way at all. Maybe she had picked up the unvoiced observation about what her work habits were doing to her butt. Fair enough, then.
THE HIGHWAY ACTUALLY got worse around York, and Kevin was glad that he wasn’t subjecting his personal vehicle to the ruts and potholes of Pennsylvania. The lawyer, Hertzbach, appeared very much the big fish in a small pond, the kind of attorney who had a billboard on the interstate and a converted Victorian for his office. Puffy and shiny, he wore a pink shirt and a flowery pink tie, which went nicely with his pink face.
“Stan Dunham came to me about the time he sold the property.”
“When was that?”
“Five years ago, I think.”
The new owner must have flipped the property fast, probably gotten even more money for it.
“It was a windfall for him, but he had the foresight to realize that he needed to be prepared for the long term. His wife had died—I was under the impression that he wouldn’t have sold the land while she was alive—and he told me that he had no children, no heirs. He purchased several insurance products that I recommended—long-term care, a couple of annuities. Those were handled through someone else here in town, Donald Leonard, friend of mine through Rotary.”
And you got a nice kickback, Infante thought.
“Did Dunham ask for any advice on criminal matters?”
Hertzbach found this amusing. “If he did, you know I couldn’t comment on it. Confidentiality.”
“But it’s my understanding that he’s now not competent—”
“Yes, he’s deteriorated badly.”
“And if he dies, there’s no one to notify? No next of kin, no friends?”
“Not to my knowledge. But a woman did call me recently, curious about his finances.”
Infante’s brain almost sang like a teakettle at that detail—a woman, interested in money. “Did she give you a name?”
“I’m sure she did, but I’d have to get my secretary to go over the log, pinpoint the date and the name. She was…rather coarse. She wanted to know who was named in his will, if anyone, and how much money he had. Of course, I couldn’t have told her that. I asked her what her relationship was to Mr. Dunham, and she hung up on me. I wondered if it was someone fr
om the nursing home itself, who might have tried to inveigle her way into his good graces, back when he was still alert. Given the timing.”
“The timing?”
“Mr. Dunham was moved to hospice care in February, which means the facility doesn’t expect him to live more than six months.”
“He’s dying from the dementia? Is that possible?”
“Lung cancer, and he quit smoking when he was forty. I have to say, he’s one of the more spectacularly unlucky men I’ve ever met. Sells his land for a tidy sum, then his health fails him. There’s a lesson in that.”
“What would that be, exactly?”
Kevin wasn’t trying to be a smart-ass, but Hertzbach appeared to be struck dumb by the question. “Why, to…I don’t know, take advantage of every day,” he said at last. “Live life to the fullest.”
Thanks for the insight, pal.
He left the office, bumping and bouncing back to the Maryland line, wondering at the coincidence of that telephone call from a woman who, according to the secretary’s logs, had identified herself as the ohso-creative Jane Jones. That call had come in on March 1, not even three weeks earlier. A strange woman, asking questions about an old cop’s money. Did she know he was dying? How? Had she been thinking of bringing a civil action against the man? She had to know there was no statute of limitations for her sister’s murder.
But also no money in a criminal case.
Again he was struck by how convenient it all was—the old farm, gone, and who knows what had happened to the alleged gravesite? The old man, as good as gone.
As he crossed into Maryland, he fumbled for his cell phone and dialed Willoughby, to ask him if he had ever heard of Dunham, although Lenhardt had been out in the country less than a decade. No answer. He decided to hit Nancy again, see what she had learned.
“Infante,” she said. He was still getting used to the fact that phone calls no longer involved any mystery, that his name popped up on Nancy’s screen, identifying him instantly.
“The lawyer had some interesting nuggets, but Dunham’s pretty much a dead end at this point. Are you now the leading expert on all things Bethany?”
“Getting there. Managed to find the mom—her old real-estate firm, in Austin, knew how to get in touch with her. No answer and no machine, but Lenhardt’s going to keep trying her. Here’s the big find, though—”
“We should keep her away, until we know for sure.”
“Yeah, but, Infante—”
“I mean, she’s going to want to believe, so we have to control for that. And we don’t want to waste her time if we can discredit her.”
“Infante—”
“At the very least, she has to understand that this is not guaranteed, that—”
“Infante, shut up and listen for a second. I took a flier, plugged Penelope Jackson’s name into the Nexis newspaper database on a hunch. You didn’t do that, right?”
Shit. He hated it when Nancy one-upped him this way. “I did the criminal searches, things like that. And Google, but there were hundreds of hits. The name’s too common. Besides, why would I care if she made news some other way?”
“She popped up in an article in some Georgia newspaper”—a pause as Nancy clicked away, looking for what she had stored—“the Brunswick Times. Christmas of last year. A man was killed in a fire Christmas Eve, ruled an accident by investigators. His girlfriend, home at the time, was named Penelope Jackson.”
“Could be a coincidence.”
“Could be,” Nancy agreed, her smugness apparent even over the unstable cell phone line. “But the man who was killed? His name was Tony Dunham.”
“Guy’s lawyer said he had no heirs, even five years ago.”
“And cops down there were told—by the girlfriend—that there was no next of kin to notify, that Tony’s parents were dead. Yet the age works—he was fifty-three when he died, and his Social Security number begins with twenty-one, which indicates it was issued in Maryland. The Dunhams probably lived in Maryland before they moved to Pennsylvania.”
“But thirty years ago, he was twenty-three. He might not even have been living at home then.” And now dead, dead in an accident. Why did everything dead-end with this case, this woman? That family she sideswiped was lucky to be in as good shape as they were, given her track record. “Hell, he could have been drafted for all we know. You check military records?”
“Not yet,” she admitted, and that gave him a small buzz of satisfaction, petty as it was. I thought of a record you didn’t.
“Where’s Brunswick anyway? How do you get there?”
“Sergeant has you booked on a Southwest flight into Jacksonville, leaving at seven. Brunswick is about an hour north. Penelope Jackson worked at a restaurant, Mullet Bay, in some nearby resort called St. Simons Island, but she quit about a month ago. She might still be in the area, though, but no longer at the same address.”
Or she might be in Baltimore, playing some creepy con on them all.
CHAPTER 22
“You sure you’ll be fine?”
“Sure,” she said, thinking, Go, go, please go. “I could even take care of Seth, if he doesn’t want to go.”
“Great,” the boy began, even as Kay said, “No, no, I wouldn’t dream of imposing on you like that.”
Wouldn’t risk it, you mean. But that’s okay, Kay. I wouldn’t leave a child with me, either. I only offered so you wouldn’t find me suspect.
“It is okay if I stay in your house, though, watch television?”
She could tell that Kay didn’t want to offer her that much hospitality. Kay didn’t trust her, and she was right not to trust her, although she couldn’t know that. There was a brief inward struggle, but Kay’s sense of fairness ultimately won out. Oh, she loved Kay, who could always be trusted to do the kind thing, the right thing. It would be nice, to be like Kay, but kindness and fairness were luxuries she couldn’t afford.
“Of course. And help yourself to anything—”
“After that wonderful dinner?” She patted her stomach. “I couldn’t possibly eat another bite.”
“Only someone who had been in the hospital for two days could consider Wung Fu’s wonderful.”
“My family went there for Chinese food. Oh, I know it’s not the same place or family. But I remembered it when we drove over there.”
A skeptical look from Kay. Was she laying it on too thick, trying too hard? But it was true, this part was true. Perhaps she had gotten to the point where her lies were more believable than her truths. Was that the consequence of living a lie for so long?
“Duck sauce,” she said, conscious not to speak too brightly, too rapidly. “I thought it came from a duck the way that milk comes from a cow. I used to think that if we got to the park over in Woodlawn, the one near the Gwynns Falls, early enough in the morning, I would see Chinese people milking the ducks. I imagined them in those straw hats—oh, Lord, we called them coolie hats, I’m afraid. God, we were racists then.”
“Why?” asked Seth. She liked him, him and Grace, too, almost in spite of herself. She despised most children, resented them in fact. But there was a sweetness about Kay’s kids, a kindness inherited or learned from their mother. They were solicitous of Kay, too, perhaps a byproduct of the divorce.
“We didn’t know better. And thirty years from now you’ll probably be saying the same thing to someone else young, who can’t believe the things you said and did and wore and thought.”
She could tell from Seth’s expression that he wasn’t persuaded, but he was too polite to contradict her. His generation was going to get it right, be perfect in every way, unlock every mystery. After all, they had iPods. It seemed to make them think that anything was possible, that they would be able to control life the way they controlled and managed their music, flipping around on a little track wheel. Right, sweetie. It was just one big playlist waiting to be designed, the brave new world of Tivo. What you wanted, when you wanted, all the time.
“We shouldn’t be
more than an hour,” Kay said.
“Don’t worry about me.” Or, as Uncle used to say, “Don’t go away mad, just go.”
Left alone in the house, she turned on the television in the den and forced herself to sit through some amazingly stupid program for ten minutes. Kids always forgot something, she figured, but after you’d been in the car for ten minutes, the item would have to be critical for a parent to turn back. When the program went into its second commercial break, she turned on the family computer. No passwords, no passwords, no passwords, she prayed, and of course there weren’t. The poky little Dell was wide open. She would leave tracks, that was unavoidable, but who would think to hunt for them here? Working quickly, she scanned her e-mail via the Web, looking for anything urgent. She then e-mailed her supervisor, explaining that there’d been an accident and a family emergency—true enough, she was her own family—and she’d left town suddenly. She sent it, then immediately quit her e-mail program in case her supervisor was online and fired back a fast reply. Then, although she knew it was risky, she began to type “Heather Bethany” into the Google search engine.
H-e—Two letters in, Google offered her own search back to her. Why, that nosy little Kay. She had been doing quite a bit of extracurricular homework over the past few days. It made her feel better somehow, knowing that Kay wasn’t quite so noble and helpful, that she was capable of base curiosity. She scanned the history, curious to see where Kay’s searches had taken her, but it was all the obvious places, the basic ones. Kay had gone into the Beacon-Light archives but balked at paying the fees. No matter; she had those stories practically memorized. There was the missing-children site, with those eerie aged photographs, the basic facts. And a really creepy blog maintained by some man in Ohio, purporting to have solved the Bethany case. O-kay.
What the Dead Know Page 17