Blood Ties

by Nicholas Guild

  Ellen had gone to private schools, and her grades and SAT scores would easily have qualified her for Stanford, but she chose instead to attend the University of California at Berkeley. Over the summers she worked at a Dairy Queen in Redwood City. To her mother, all of this was incomprehensible.

  The truth was that, somewhere in her middle teens, Ellen had discovered she found her parents’ world claustrophobic. The ideal was to go to the right college so you could graduate into the right sort of job and live in a seven-bedroom house in the right sort of neighborhood. Life was supposed to be an orderly progression from success to success, without risk or uncertainty. It was a prison without the bars.

  Escape had become her dream, her one consolation for all the proms and tea parties and weekends at Big Sur she had been forced to endure. She hated the boys she met in Atherton because all they could think about was getting into her pants and where they would go to college. It was an atmosphere as pointlessly competitive as a dog race.

  And then, four weeks after graduation from college, she told her parents she had applied to the police academy in San Francisco. For the better part of a month her mother couldn’t look at her daughter without dabbing at her eyes with an embroidered handkerchief. Even to this day, their relationship was only a kind of armistice.

  Her father was more tolerant.

  “Daddy, I just want a success that hasn’t been handed to me. Is that so difficult to understand?”

  Then he said something for which she would always love him.

  “I’m proud of the ambition, if nothing else,” he told her. “If this is what you want, then fine.” And then he glanced away for a few seconds before going on. “I’ve never regretted the way my own life has worked out, but once or twice it has occurred to me that perhaps it was all just a little too inevitable. All of us wonder where some other path might have taken us.”

  “Except Mommy.”

  This made him smile. “Yes, except perhaps Mommy.”

  Mommy, they both understood, had no doubts, and her disappointment was not very well concealed. She probably wondered if perhaps her daughter wasn’t a lesbian.

  It sometimes occurred to Ellen that her mother might have made an easier adjustment if she had had other children, but Ellen’s had been a difficult birth and afterward Mrs. Ridley had been advised not to risk any further pregnancies, with the result that all of her aspirations and fears had settled upon her daughter.

  Thus Ellen always dreaded coming home. And this morning, at seven-fifteen, while she parked her four-year-old Toyota in the driveway, she couldn’t quite stifle an irrational terror that she might never escape again.

  They were still at breakfast. Preston Ridley, MD, was dressed in a pair of tobacco-colored corduroys and a blue broadcloth shirt. His wife, Tracy, was wearing a housecoat. Underneath there was a bra, panties and a slip, and her makeup was perfect and her blond hair exquisitely highlighted. The housecoat would be replaced by a dress around noon, when she would meet one of her friends for lunch and then go shopping.

  Her mother, even in her early fifties, was a stunningly attractive woman, but Ellen had always been grateful that she took more after her father—in appearance and in other things.

  Preston and Tracy. One could imagine their parents searching the Social Register for those names. It had been an act of mercy for them to name their daughter and only child Ellen.

  “Ellen—this is a surprise.”

  Her father, from the fact that he always sat facing the kitchen door, was the first to see her. He actually got out of his chair and came over to give her a kiss. Her mother merely turned her head and her eyes took on that wide, moist look that was the hallmark of her dread.

  That’s what it was, Ellen had finally decided. Her mother was profoundly afraid of the world outside her cocoon of wealth, and this was precisely the world her daughter had embraced. God alone knew what horrors she imagined threatening her child.

  “Daddy, I need to talk to you.”

  Without a word, he put his arm across her shoulders and guided her out through the dining room, then through the living room, then up the stairs of his study.

  What does he expect? she found herself wondering. That I’m in debt? That I’m pregnant?

  The study walls were lined with books—most of which, to his credit, Dr. Ridley had actually read. He sat down behind his desk, which meant that the interview was being regarded as an official act. Suddenly she felt like one of his patients.

  There was only one other chair in the room, reserved for penitents. Ellen had no choice but to occupy it.

  “What’s the problem?” he asked, looking grave. Yes, this was exactly how he talked to the twelve-year-old boys who had been caught peeking at their sisters.

  On a certain level, Ellen was looking forward to his disappointment.

  “I need a DNA test run, Daddy. I need it off the books, like it never happened, and I need it fast. It’s about a case, but I can’t take it to the police lab.”

  “Is it illegal?”

  “No.”

  And that was the truth. Perhaps—probably—it had been illegal for her to scoop out the hair in Stephen Tregear’s drain, but there was nothing illegal about some lab technician running a test on samples about which he was blissfully ignorant.

  “You have friends at Stanford Medical, Daddy. I need this.”

  “I’ll make a call.” He took a long look at his watch, not to determine the time but to call attention to it. “But it’s a little early.” And then, “Is everything okay with you? You seem a trifle harried.”

  Ellen sighed, without meaning to. “It’s this job. Did you read about the woman found along the coast road? I’m the case officer.”

  “And?” Her father raised his eyebrows in expectation.

  “And we’ve got a serial killer operating in San Francisco. And, so far, he’s smarter than we are. This guy is a virtuoso.”

  “‘On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts’?” When Ellen looked perplexed, Dr. Ridley smiled. “It’s an essay by De Quincey. Early nineteenth century.”

  “Yes, well, something like that. He’s laughing at us.”

  “He won’t be laughing when you catch him.” He shook his head. “Still, I’d love to interview him, although, unless he turns out to be twelve years old, I probably won’t get the chance.”

  “You’ll be retired,” his daughter said archly. “You’ll be too busy playing golf.”

  It was one of their little private jokes. Golf was a game Dr. Ridley had dutifully learned but did not much care for. In fact, it bored him. He said he couldn’t quite see the point.

  “There’d be other things to do besides golf,” he answered, with perhaps less than perfect conviction. “I could catch up on my reading. I’ve been in private practice for nearly thirty years now. Your mother thinks I’m getting too old for it. She thinks the stress is beginning to tell.”

  Ellen made a disdainful little grunt.

  “The translation of which is, after a full day of patients, you don’t necessarily want to go to the club for dinner and bridge. You’d rather stay home and relax with De Quincey.

  “You’re only fifty-seven, Daddy. You’re too young to die of boredom.”

  Dr. Ridley laughed. “You’ve always had such a charming way of putting things, Ellie. Now let’s go down and have a cup of coffee with your mother.”

  He raised his eyes to his daughter and tilted his head slightly, as if to say, Would it kill you?

  No, it wouldn’t kill her. Daddy was a sweetie and her mother’s only sin was the uncritical assumption that “decent” and “rich” were synonyms. So they went back to the kitchen and Ellen fetched a mug down from the cupboard and poured herself some coffee.

  As soon as she took her seat at the breakfast table, she knew from the way her mother looked at her, her lips slightly pursed, that she had committed a breach of decorum. It was the mug. Nice people drank coffee out of cups, but you picked up bad habits in a polic
e squad room.

  Nice people. Her mother’s world was not sufficiently narrow that she didn’t feel the need to constrict it further with a set of rules that were positively Victorian—or perhaps these only applied to her daughter.

  Ellen found it possible to pity her, and to wonder what had rendered her so frightened of life. Of course, she would never know.

  The next hour was excruciating. Within five minutes her mother had expressed the wish that Ellen would let her father buy her a new car. Something “good,” which probably meant that she would be prepared to compromise on a BMW.

  “So it can be stolen, like your Mercedes? I’m better off with a car no self-respecting thief would touch.”

  But Mommy was one of those women for whom it was a fixed conviction that all her little girl really needed was some guidance so, as she not so subtly tried to goad her daughter back to safety, the conversation followed an inevitable trajectory. First her car, then the horrors of her apartment, then her love life—or lack thereof.

  “Mommy, I’m a homicide detective. I don’t meet very many nice men.”

  After which Ellen avenged herself by hinting at what she had found in Sally Wilkes’ bathtub.

  “I think I’ll make that phone call now,” her father announced suddenly.

  He came back from his study holding a slip of paper on which was written, Chun Hei Kim, Building A, Rm 322.

  “She’s a leading authority, Ellen. So be nice. She’ll see you at nine o’clock, and for a rush job she’ll want five hundred dollars. In cash. Would you like me to write you a check?”

  Ellen managed a tight smile. “I can swing it, Daddy.”

  * * *

  It was eight-thirty, but Palo Alto was only about ten minutes away, so even with a stop at the Bank of America, Ellen arrived at the Stanford Medical School in plenty of time.

  Dr. Kim turned out to be a smiling, agreeable middle-aged woman with a heavy Korean accent. She showed Ellen into her office, which was clean and sparse. There was nothing on the desk except a blotter pad and a single pencil. One suspected that Dr. Kim didn’t spend much time there.

  Ellen gave her the evidence bag and the DNA report from the police lab. Then she placed on the table an envelope containing ten fifty-dollar bills. She didn’t offer it. She merely set it down.

  “Your father tells me you are a policewoman,” Dr. Kim said, as if this might represent a problem. “Does this relate to your work, or is it a private matter?”

  “It relates to my work, but nothing you do for me today will be introduced into evidence. I won’t ask you for a written report, merely a conclusion. I need to know if the hair and the semen are a match.”

  “And for this you are prepared to pay five hundred dollars of your own money. I won’t inquire why. Come back around noon and I’ll tell you what I have found.”

  “Thank you.”

  * * *

  Ellen had three hours to kill, so she went to the Stanford Mall, conveniently just across a little bridge from the university, and found a Starbucks. She ordered a caramel frappuccino, which she imagined would be disgusting and therefore would not tempt her to drink it quickly. That was the whole idea, to waste time.

  She used a spoon to eat the whipped cream with the caramel drizzles. She picked it apart as carefully as she would have a pile of garbage she suspected might contain body parts.

  She was glad Sam wasn’t there to watch her with her caramel frappuccino. She would never hear the end of it.

  Actually, it wasn’t bad. This discovery worried her, since she had the impression that every time she came home she started reverting to type—the mall rat with frosted hair and a standing appointment to have her nails done. The little rich girl.

  And for this you are prepared to pay five hundred dollars of your own money. Wasn’t that reverting to type? Sam would say so.

  “It’s a job. It’s not a personal crusade,” he had told her once. “Don’t get emotionally involved. And when you go home, forget about it.”

  But she was home, and she couldn’t forget about it.

  She was shelling out almost three days’ pay to find out if Stephen Tregear was a murderer, and she had no clue what she wanted the answer to be. If it was a match she would focus on him until she put him on death row. But, God, what a waste.

  Yesterday she had been convincing herself that Stephen Tregear was nothing more than Ted Bundy on steroids, a particularly brilliant example of the charming, personable sociopath that was almost a cliché of abnormal psychology. She had interpreted his attitude toward Sam as subtle mockery. Now she was no longer so sure.

  When will you know?

  When you file the autopsy protocol.

  Had it been merely an act, or was he really waiting for information? And what would their murderer learn from the autopsy of Sally Wilkes that he didn’t already know?

  If we ever do catch him, it won’t be because he fell into our laps. Sam’s very words.

  And Stephen Tregear had fallen into their laps.

  Ellen had listened with rapt attention to his astonishing disquisition on their files and, if he had made a mistake and had any information beyond them, she hadn’t caught it. His knowledge of those three homicides was precisely congruent with the police records. Would a man who was capable of such exquisite intellectual discipline be reckless enough—assuming he was guilty—to expose himself like that to the detectives working the case? Why would he? Vanity?

  It didn’t seem likely. Stephen Tregear gave the impression of being in perfect control of himself.

  What a waste, if he was guilty.

  Even so, if he was she promised herself she would burn him.

  She finished her frappuccino in about twenty minutes and decided, what the hell, she would go shopping for something to spruce up her wardrobe.

  * * *

  At two minutes before twelve, she was back tapping on the door to Dr. Kim’s office.

  “Please, come in.”

  This time the desk was covered with papers. The state of Ellen’s nerves reminded her of exam day at Berkeley.

  She sat down in front of the desk, forcing herself to appear calm.

  “Is it a match?” she asked. “Yes or no?”

  Dr. Kim smiled. “It is more complicated than yes or no. But it is not a match.”

  Ellen didn’t move. She might as well have been made of stone. But as she analyzed her reactions she found that she was relieved. Stephen Tregear wasn’t a murderer. She felt as if a weight had been lifted from her shoulders.

  “Okay,” she said. “Then it was a blind alley.”

  “No.”

  Dr. Kim shook her head. It was obvious that she was enjoying this, but in the way someone enjoys giving a birthday present.

  “As I said, it is more complicated than yes or no. There is a relationship between the samples, but it is not identity. It is a criminal case we are dealing with here?”

  “Yes. Murder.”

  “Then I think you are very close to a solution. The semen sample is from the murderer?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then all you need to do is ask the donor of the hair samples, and he will be able to tell you who committed the crime.”

  “I don’t follow you.”

  “The relationship between the two samples is familial. They are both male and, based on experience, I would hazard a guess that they are not more than one generation apart. Beyond that, it’s conjectural.”

  9

  On the drive back to San Francisco, Ellen was perplexed and angry—what kind of game was this guy playing with them?

  She worked the evidence every way she could. Had Tregear planted the semen sample to implicate someone else? How do you get a semen sample, particularly from a close relative? Were the hair samples planted? How could he have known that Ellen would raid his shower drain? This wasn’t an Agatha Christie novel; this was real life.

  The conclusion was inescapable. Tregear was not the murderer, but he knew the identity
of the murderer.

  How could she tell all this to Sam? She couldn’t.

  She was half-tempted to say to hell with it and drive to the airport to catch a plane for Aruba. She needed two weeks of lying on the sand, listening to her suntan oil sizzle. She needed to get plastered on piña coladas. She needed to find some big, strong beach bum she could climb all over. She needed to be just about anywhere but where she was, doing what she was doing, the problem being that life just didn’t work that way.

  In the end, the decision made itself. At one forty-five in the afternoon, she found herself parked across the street from Tregear’s apartment. Whatever the cost to her personally, she had to hear the answer from his own lips.

  Still, it took her ten minutes to summon the will to get out of her car.

  The instant she was on the street, Tregear’s front door opened. He stood in the entrance, waiting for her.

  Somehow, that made it easier. She would seem such a fool, to him and to herself, if she got back in the car and drove away; it took far less courage just to walk across the street to where he was standing.

  “I’m glad to see you,” he said. “Please, come in.”

  Ellen found she wasn’t in a mood for the social amenities. She merely brushed by him as if he were the wallpaper. Inside, with the door closed, she discovered that she was angry, primarily at herself. But she wasn’t scared, and that was something.

  “Can I offer you anything?”

  She ignored his question. She never took her eyes from his face. When he smiled she discovered she was furious.

  “What is going on?” she shouted. “Why are you jerking us around?”

  “Pardon me?”

  “Did you know about the semen samples from Sally Wilkes?”

  “Not until this morning. Your lab is a little behind in its postings.”