“We didn’t have rules about makeup per se. I told her it looked silly on young girls, but it was her choice. Bonne Belle sounds right, however. Plausible, at any rate.”
Nancy sighed. “Everything she says sounds plausible. At least when she describes the day, what happened. It’s when she describes the abduction and…” Her voice faltered.
“Sunny’s murder,” Miriam prompted. “You have avoided speaking of that part to me.”
“It’s just so lurid,” the young woman said. “Like something out of a movie. The details of the day—what they had for breakfast, how they took the Number Fifteen bus to the mall—again, something that’s in the news accounts, as is the usher who remembered them getting kicked out of Chinatown—those things ring true. But being kidnapped by a cop who takes them to a deserted farmhouse and decides to keep Heather instead of killing her after she witnesses the murder of her sister? When she gets to that part, all the details fall away, and the story no longer rings true.”
“Is it the cop part?” Miriam asked. “Is that what’s so unbelievable?”
To their credit, the four detectives, current and former, did not protest too quickly or readily, did not swear to the heavens that they had found it easy to consider one of their own as a killer and sexual predator. Infante, the handsome one who had picked her up at the airport, spoke first.
“The cop part makes a lot of sense in some ways. That’s how you would lure two girls away—show each one a badge, say you have her sister, that she’s in trouble. Any kid would follow a cop.”
“Maybe not Dave Bethany’s children in 1975—Dave was given to calling police officers pigs, before we found ourselves in their debt, before Chet became a trusted friend.” That was a conscious gift to Chet on her part, a way to make up for the sharpness in her voice earlier. “But okay, I see your point.”
“It’s just this particular cop, it doesn’t really track,” Infante continued. “He was in the theft division, a good guy, well liked. None of us knew him, but the guys who did are stunned by the idea that he could be involved in this. Plus, he’s not even sentient, so he’s an awfully convenient target.”
“Dunham,” Miriam said. “Dunham. Stan, you said?”
“Yes, and the son’s name was Tony. Does the name mean anything to you?”
“Dunham rings a bell. We knew someone named Dunham.”
“Not anyone you ever told me about,” Chet began, his voice defensive. She put her hand on his forearm, wanting to comfort him, but also keen that he stop talking, so she could follow this train of thought.
“Dunham. Dunham. Dunned by Dunham.” Miriam had a vision of herself at the old kitchen table in the house on Algonquin Lane. It was a rickety thing, a not-quite antique, passed down from Bop-Bop’s apartment when she left Baltimore. Foisted on them, Miriam would have said, more stuff for the house with too much stuff. There had been days when she felt she couldn’t walk across a room without bumping into a table or a footstool or some other object that Dave had dragged in. Dave had painted the table with taxicab-yellow lacquer and let the girls affix flower decals to it, which had looked good for all of two weeks, and then the decals had started to peel, leaving behind a sticky residue and pulling up bits of the paint. The green of the checkbook clashed horribly. Or maybe it just seemed that way because she was anxious when she paid their bills each month, watching them go a little further into the hole, playing the game of which creditor to appease this month, which one to let go a little longer. They had argued about expenses, but they could never agree on what was truly expendable. “Ghee costs nothing,” Dave would say if Miriam suggested that the Fivefold Path was a practice the household could no longer afford. “Why can’t you run her to and from school?” She would counter, “I have a job now, a job this family needs. I can’t drop everything to chauffeur Sunny back and forth.”
You could do the mornings…. But who would do the afternoons?…The guy is screwing us anyway, reversing the route in the afternoon…. We have to find some way to cut our budget.
It was an argument they had almost every month that year, and Miriam had prevailed every month, once again making out the check to Mercer Transportation, up in Glen Rock, Pennsylvania. She hadn’t even known where Glen Rock was. But when the checks came back, they were endorsed by—
“Stan Dunham owned the private bus company, Mercer, that we used to get Sunny to and from junior high every day.”
“Mercer owned the property,” the girl all but yelped. “It was an LLC, the previous owner before the development went in. I thought Dunham sold it to Mercer, but he must have simply transferred the deed to his own LLC. Shit, I can’t believe I missed that.”
“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 innocent. They had turned their life upside down and inside out, looking for names and connections. Relatives, neighbors, teachers had been considered, whether they knew it or not. Employees at Security Square had been checked for minor sex charges, then brought in to talk to police, as if trafficking with a prostitute necessarily led to kidnapping two adolescent girls. Her coworkers, Dave’s associates. They had even tracked down the man who drove the Number 15 bus route that day, the man Miriam always thought of as the one who had driven her daughters to their deaths, as sure as Charon ferried the dead across the river Styx. Suspicion was infinite, but energy and time proved finite. Dave’s great, frantic fear, the anxiety that made life with him unbearable, was that they had not done everything they could, that there was always something else they should be doing, checking, examining.
And, sure enough, Dave had been right. Dunned by Dunham, he had sung. Are we being dunned by Dunham again? He had been polite, but stern, and they had quickly learned not to put him in their monthly roulette of bills that may or may not be paid. They could not afford to offend him, lest he drop Sunny from the route. But Dunham was nothing more than a signature, very black and emphatic, on the back of a check that returned each month from a bank in Pennsylvania.
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 Inn, where he was having Sunday brunch, and in less than an hour Infante and Willoughby were on their way to the nursing home. Kevin had not wanted the old cop to come along, yet he couldn’t help but indulge him. Something had been missed, a detail overlooked, all those years ago. No one’s fault—once the driver was eliminated, why would anyone think of some faceless guy up in Pennsylvania, cashing checks? Still, he could tell that Willoughby was beating himself up.
“You know how we found the Penelope Jackson connection?” Infante asked. Willoughby was looking out the window, studying a golf course on the north side of the freeway.
“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 connection between Tony and Stan Dunham. Even knowing what we did, we missed the timeline. Dunham’s lawyer told me he sold the property a few years ago, but I didn’t pin him down on the date. I assumed he was talking about the sale to Mercer, but he was talking about Mercer’s sale to the developer.”
“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 th
e 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 connection between Stan Dunham and the Bethany family.”
“A connection that a child wouldn’t know about, because no eleven-year-old knows who endorses a check.” Willoughby’s gaze returned to the passing scenery, although there wasn’t much of note. “I can’t decide if this makes me more inclined to trust our mystery woman or less. You know, she could be someone that Stan Dunham confided in, for whatever reason. Or Tony Dunham, more likely. A relative, a friend. Nancy told me that she was very insistent that you check the school records, that we’ll find Ruth Leibig in the records at that Catholic school in York.”
“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 Pennsylvania, Dunham’s interest in annuities when he was still relatively robust, according to the lawyer. The guy was a planner, no doubt about it. The only question was whether he had planned his crimes as carefully as he had mapped out the financial specs of his final years.
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.
“Hi, Mr. Dunham.” Terrie’s voice was bright and enthusiastic, but it wasn’t overly loud or babyish. “You have two visitors. Someone who used to work with you.”
Dunham continued to look at her.
“I didn’t work with you,” Infante said, trying for Terrie’s tone, only to come across like some hale and hearty car salesman. “But Chet here did. He was in homicide. You remember him? Probably best known for catching the Bethany case. The Bethany case.”
He repeated the last three words slowly and carefully, but nothing registered. Of course. He knew it wouldn’t, but he couldn’t help himself. Dunham kept staring at pretty Terrie. His gaze was like a dog’s, affectionate and utterly dependent. If this man was the Bethany girls’ abductor, he was a monster. But even monsters aged, became frail. Even monsters died.
Infante and Willoughby began systematically opening drawers and closets, looking for anything. Looking for everything.
“He doesn’t have a lot of possessions,” Terrie said. “There’s not much point…” Her voice trailed off, as if the man sitting in the chair, the man who followed her face and voice with such determined attention, might be surprised at the news that he was dying. “But there is a photo album, which we look at together sometimes. Don’t we, Mr. Dunham?”
She reached under the ottoman and unearthed a large, cloth-covered book, a satiny white that had faded to yellow. On the cover a blue-diapered baby crowed, “It’s a boy!” When Infante opened the book, the handwriting was clearly a woman’s, a fine up-and-down cursive hand that recorded the life of one Anthony Julius Dunham from his birth (six pounds, twelve ounces) to his christening to his high school graduation. His mother, unlike some, had never lost patience with the task of jotting down her son’s every accomplishment. A certificate for completing a summer reading program, a Red Cross card noting that he had achieved “intermediate” status as a swimmer at Camp Apache. Report cards—not very impressive ones—were affixed to the pages with black triangles.
The photos made Infante wistful for his own dad. Not because there was a resemblance between Infante’s dad and the younger, more robust Stan Dunham, but because the photos captured the generic moments of family life that everyone experienced. Goofiness around the house, landmarks on vacation, squinting into the sun at ceremonies. Each was carefully labeled in that same feminine handwriting. “Stan, Tony, and me, Ocean City, 1962.” “Tony at school picnic, 1965.” “Tony’s high school graduation, 1970.” In nine short years, the son had gone from a crew-cut towhead in striped T-shirt to a long-haired, would-be hippie. Hard on a cop, Infante thought, especially one of that era, but whatever Tony wore, the parents who bracketed him beamed with pride.
The last photo—Tony in what appeared to be a gas-station uniform—was labeled “Tony’s new job, 1973.” The book ended there, although there were still several pages left. Two years before the girls disappeared. Why had this woman stopped documenting every phase of her son’s life? Did he move out in 1973? Was he there when his father brought home a girl in 1975? What had Stan Dunham told them, how had he explained the sudden appearance of a preadolescent girl?
“Kevin, check this out.”
Willoughby had pushed aside pillows that may or may not have been arranged to hide a large cardboard carton on the upper shelf in a closet. Terrie interceded, staggering a little under the weight of the box, and Infante helped her, placing a steadying hand on her shoulder. She gave him an amused look as if she were used to such ploys, making him feel old and geezerish, another guy in her care trying to cop a feel.
The box was full of the kind of detritus that students collect. Report cards, programs, school newspapers. All from the Sisters of the Little Flower, Infante noted—and featuring the name of Ruth Leibig. No album for Ruth, whoever she was, although her grades were certainly better than Tony’s
. No photographs either, and nothing dated before the fall of 1975. There was a diploma, though, from 1979. Strangest of all, there was an old-fashioned tape recorder, a bright red box shaped like a purse. He pushed a button, but nothing happened, of course. The tape inside was Jethro Tull’s Aqualung. On the bottom of the player was an equally old-fashioned label, the kind made with one of those guns. “Ruth Leibig,” it said.
Infante dug deeper in the box and found something stranger still: a marriage certificate, also dated 1979. Between Ruth Leibig and Tony Dunham, as witnessed by his parents, Irene and Stan Dunham.
Tony’s dead? That, according to Nancy and Lenhardt, was the piece of information that had surprised the woman during their interview. Not saddened, however. Shocked and upset, even angered. But she hadn’t been the least bit sad. At the same time, she had never mentioned Tony, not by name.
“What happened?” Infante asked Stan Dunham, who seemed startled by the tone of his voice, the loudness of it. “Who was Ruth Leibig? Did you kidnap a young girl, kill her sister, then screw the little one until she hit her teenage years, when you made a present of her to your son? What happened on that farm, you sick old fuck?”
The nurse was appalled. She wouldn’t be kindly inclined toward him if he called her in a week or so. Remember me? I’m the detective who cursed at the old man you think is such a sweetheart. Wanna go out sometime?
“Sir, you must not speak that way—” Dunham didn’t seem to notice that anything was happening.
Infante opened the photo album, pointed to the last picture of Tony. “He’s dead, you know. Burned up in a fire. Maybe murdered. Did he know what you did? Did his girlfriend know?”
The old man shook his head, sighed, and looked out the window, as if Infante were the demented one, a raving lunatic to be ignored. Did he understand anything? Did he know anything? Were the facts locked in his brain or gone forever? Wherever they were, they were inaccessible to Infante. Stan Dunham returned to looking at his nurse, as if seeking her assurance that this disruption to his routine would end soon. When’s it going to be just you and me again? he seemed to be asking her. She spoke to him in a soft, reassuring voice, stroking his hand.
What the Dead Know Page 29