Bloodline (37 page)

“What'd you find out?”

“The lady downstairs has already talked to the police and likes to recite the entire interview, verbatim.”

“Soap opera come to life.”

“Yup. But she said nobody has been there. No family. No friends. ‘Just a couple of the teachers from up to the college,' she said.”

“Teachers? What would they want? Give her posthumous credit hours?”

“I don't know,” Roxanne said. “But she said they went inside.”

“Inside the apartment? Past the tape?”

“She said the tape wasn't there. The cops put it up the next day.”

“Did she say who these teachers were?”

“No. I tried to get her to tell me, but she just said it was a man and a woman. A man in a suit and a woman in a skirt.”

“That narrows it down.”

“Yup. She said since I was from the college, why didn't I just ask them.”

“Ah, what tangled webs we weave.”

“All for love,” Roxanne said.

“That's what they all say.”

We had coffee in a Dunkin' Donuts on Congress Street. The place was filled with old men with nothing to do but stare at Roxanne. Then again, I didn't have much to do but stare at Roxanne, so I couldn't complain.

I had tea. Roxanne had black coffee.

“So what do you think?” she said, taking her first tentative sip.

“I think there are a lot of men in suits and women in skirts.”

“What would they want?”

“The Flanagans might want any record of the adoption. Anything that could connect Missy to their daughter.”

“But that would be in the court records,” Roxanne said.

“I'm beginning to wonder if there are any.”

“There has to be a record of an adoption.”

“Can't you fake birth certificates?”

“I suppose. You can fake anything if you've got the money to have it done.”

“The Flanagans have money.”

“But why would they fake it?” she said. “Why not just adopt the child legally?”

“I don't know,” I said. “Maybe they think there's a stigma attached to not having your own kid.”

“That wouldn't bode well for the future, would it.”

“Nothing bodes well in this thing. For anybody.”

We left and went out to the truck and Roxanne's luggage was still there.

“In New York, it would have changed hands five times by now,” I said.

“That why you moved to Prosperity?”

“Yeah,” I said. “In Prosperity, they would have taken your suitcase for a short square deer and shot it.”

We got back on the highway and headed north. Roxanne asked if I wanted her to drive and I said no, because in Maine, the only reason a man lets a woman drive is because his license is suspended.

“And then only if he's a wimp,” I said.

“I love it when you talk macho.”

“Kind of makes you weak in the knees, doesn't it?”

“For a minute there I thought I was just getting carsick,” she said.

I drove out of the city, and as I approached the Falmouth exit, Roxanne turned to me.

“Well?” she said.

“I suppose,” I said, and turned off again.

Route 1 was clogged with Saturday shoppers and I drove slowly, which was fine with me. I wanted to be ready if Putnam was home, because I didn't think I'd get more than one shot. To ask him questions, that is.

I didn't think he'd recognize me unless, of course, his daughter or his secretary had mentioned that I looked like I'd been hit by a truck. But that had been yesterday. Maybe since then my eye had faded and my scrapes had started healing. Now maybe I looked like I'd only been hit by a small foreign car.

We turned off Route 1 and the house was in front of us. I pulled up in front, turned off the motor, and turned to Roxanne.

“Be careful,” she said.

“He's a lawyer? What's he gonna do? Sue me?”

“Nobody sued Missy Hewett.”

Nobody was raking leaves, either, probably because they still were on the trees. I crossed the lawn and saw that there was another car in the driveway, a silver Saab. I stood at the door for a moment and heard voices inside. I rang the bell. The door swung open and there was my little friend, Mariel.

“Hi. Your dad home?” I said, smiling.

She hesitated.

“Umm, I'm not … I don't …”

Just then, a man hurried by and looked up.

“Hi, Mr. Putnam,” I called out. “Glad to find you home. Your daughter here tells me you're always on the run.”

He was on the small side, good-looking, with salt-and-pepper hair swept straight back. Wearing jeans and a T-shirt, he was obviously fit and even sinewy, one of those little guys who is all muscle and no fat. And he didn't smile as he approached the door.

I held out my hand.

“Jack McMorrow,” I said. “Nice to meet you.”

My hand hung out there like it was the arm of a scarecrow. Putnam grabbed the edge of the door and started to swing it shut, but Mariel was in the way.

“I don't do business at home,” he said.

“Hey, but I don't want a will drawn up. I want to talk about Missy Hewett.”

“We have nothing to say to each other.”

Mariel, bless her precocious little heart, didn't budge.

“Yeah, we do,” I boomed. “We have to talk about Missy Hewett. You know, Missy with the baby. The one who was trying to reach you so often that she got to be pals with Mariel here. She was the same age as your daughter, and she's dead.”

“I'm going to have to call the police,” Putnam said.

“No need for that. I just thought we could compare notes. You see, I'm a writer. I'm doing a piece on girls who have babies, and it's turned into a piece on girls who have babies and then get killed.”

“Mariel, get out of the way,” Putnam said.

I kept going. Mariel was wide-eyed and open-mouthed.

“So I thought I could tell you what I know and you could do the same for me. I know you called the Flanagans after I came here last time. Mariel and I had a nice talk, didn't we, honey? And I know the Flanagans have Missy's baby girl. Cute little kid, or didn't you see it? Maybe you just handled the paperwork.”

Putnam started to turn away, then turned back. A woman with frosted hair came in, her arms full of folded towels.

“What's the matter?” she said.

“Hi, Mrs. Putnam,” I said. “Jack McMorrow. Nice to meet you. I was just talking to your husband about the adoption business.”

“Call the police,” Putnam said.

“What's going on?” his wife asked.

“So what I need to know, Mr. Putnam, is how you came to handle Missy's baby. And why you called the Flanagans to warn them. And what happened when Missy told you she wanted to back out on the deal.”

“Gary, what's this all about?” Putnam's wife said. “You don't even do adoptions anymore.”

“I don't know, dear. This guy has me mixed up with somebody else. I don't know what he's—”

“But I talked to her, Daddy,” Mariel said. “Missy was a nice girl. She said she wanted to tell you she didn't want to give up her baby. She said—”

“Shut up, Mariel,” Putnam said, staring at me. “And you get off this property right now. Or I'll have you arrested.”

I grinned, hopefully maniacally.

“But Gary, that's the problem. Somebody already wants to have me arrested. For killing Missy Hewett. And I only met her once, a week before she was killed. So I need to know more about this adoption.”

“Get out of here,” Mrs. Putnam said, her voice rising. “You're some sort of madman. I'm calling the police.”

“Fine. Maybe they'll listen to me. I've got quite a story to tell, you know. I'll tell them all about Missy and her baby and—”

Putnam lunged forward, grabbed his daughter by the shoulders, and shoved her aside.

“Ow,” Mariel protested. “Dad!”

And the door slammed shut.

I stood there for a moment, gave the door a couple of loud bangs with my fist, then walked to the truck and got in. Roxanne looked at me in amazement.

“What the heck was that?” she said.

“That? That's called shaking the tree to see what'll fall out.”

“What fell out?”

“Nothing. Yet.”

We drove north in silence, the knobby truck tires whirring against the asphalt. Traffic was heavy until Freeport, home of L.L. Bean and the myriad stores that fed on its crumbs. At Brunswick, the cars thinned again and we drove more or less alone until we neared Augusta. Roxanne looked out the window. I rested my hand on her thigh. As we approached the Augusta exit, Roxanne turned to me.

“Why do you do this?” she said.

“Because I'm hoping you'll be overcome with lust and demand that we check into the next cheap motel we see. There's one coming right up, in case you've been holding back.”

She moved my hand from her leg.

“Not that,” Roxanne said. “All of this—I don't know—stuff. Getting involved with this girl. Harassing this lawyer. Getting in fights.”

“I don't start 'em. I end 'em.”

“Jack, I'm serious. Most people just go to work and come home. They have hobbies.”

“I have you.”

“You do, but that's not the point. The point is, I left because all of the ‘stuff' got so overwhelming. And here it is, what, almost a year later, and nothing's changed.”

“Sure it has. I'm unemployed now, and I have this great truck.”

“Jack, you know what I mean.”

“I know that you're gorgeous.”

“Jack, when you worked for the
Times
, did you get involved in these things? Were the other reporters getting in all these messes?”

“Just over alimony.”

“Goddamn it, Jack. Give me a straight answer.”

I thought for a minute. Roxanne waited. We came off the interstate and onto Augusta's fast-food gauntlet. She wasn't distracted.

“They weren't interested in people,” I began. “Not really. The other reporters, I mean. They used them like puzzle pieces. You know: I've got the grieving mother of the shooting victim. Now I need a couple of the dead kid's friends. It was like these people's lives were some sort of fill-in-the-blank test. A crossword puzzle or something. It was just, I don't know, cold or something. Calloused. They seemed to care. They could act like they cared. But they'd knock off that story about the six-year-old boy who got shot in the drive-by and it would be a great story and they'd file it and a minute later they'd be joking around.”

“Like nurses in an emergency room.”

“No, much worse than that. Nurses don't have time to get involved, because the next ambulance is pulling in. They have to be clinical or they can't get the job done. For reporters it's not quite the same.”

Roxanne stared out the window, thinking. We passed the State House and then crossed a bridge over the Kennebec River, which was low and streaked with sandbars and looked tired and discouraged.

“Social workers are like that, though,” Roxanne said. “You get involved emotionally and you burn out. You can only feel so much and then you just blow up, like an overloaded circuit or something.”

“And you can't feel anything at all.”

“Yes, but that doesn't answer my question about you.”

“I know that.”

“So are you going to answer me?”

It was my turn to think.

“The longer I was in the business, the harder it got for me to just walk away. I guess I felt like every time I did, it was a failure. A defeat or something. I wanted to put my arm around that mother. I
wanted to come back the next day and shore her up. I really wanted to make things right.”

“But that wasn't your job.”

“But it wasn't a job to me.”

“And this isn't either?”

“No way. I haven't gotten paid a cent. And the way things are going, I might not. I mean, what would I write now? A first-person from a prison cell, maybe?”

“Jack, please don't talk that way.”

“Okay, I won't.”

“So where does that leave us? What will we do?”

“Well, they have visiting hours from nine to eleven, and one to three. No cash may be brought into the correctional facility. All foods should be packaged and unopened. Guards will—”

“Jack!”

“Sorry. Should we turn around so I can bring you back?”

“No, but that's the point. I'm staying. I'm not leaving you. I decided that even before I came to Boston. But what will I do? Play Nancy Drew for the next twenty years? I mean, what will our life be?”

We were on the outskirts of Augusta now, passing sad fallen-down farms that were sprouting convenience stores and strip malls. Somber Holsteins stood in the fields, as if they knew it soon would be over. It was quiet, and Roxanne was waiting for an answer.

“When this is over, I'll just keep writing,” I said. “You know, I really liked that last one. It was easy to write about flowers.”

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