We eventually reached the point of having everything but the actual story, for which we’d have to wait. It was a little like trying to fall asleep in a starting gate.
Wrigley led small tours of potential buyers through the newsroom every few days. Rumors abounded. Anyone unknown who ventured upstairs was the subject of speculation and, from certain staff members, a kind of fawning attention the rest of us found sickening. The previous week, a guy with a briefcase was offered a comfy seat and a fresh cup of coffee and took advantage of both as he was entertained by the brown-nosers and asked his opinion of the paper-this went on for about fifteen minutes before he asked if it was okay if he fixed the copier now, because he had other appointments.
One night, as I worked late, the phone on my desk rang. I picked up the receiver and said, “Kelly.” A long silence and a click were all I heard.
This began to happen frequently. I started letting my voice mail pick up all calls at night.
I kept going through O’Connor’s diaries. After reading O’Connor’s story about Harmon, I skipped ahead to the diaries for 1945.
Wedged in the pages for the first week in April was a photograph. It showed a young woman and a young man-I recognized him immediately, even though the photo had been taken before he had broken his nose in some barroom brawl: O’Connor. There was something else about him that seemed different. Perhaps it was the hat. They were both dressed up and stood arm in arm, looking comfortable with each other. On the back, a feminine hand had written “Conn and Maureen-Easter 1945.” His mother’s writing, I thought. Each of the diaries had been a Christmas present from Maureen, inscribed to him with some whimsical note, often asking him to please think fondly of his nobody of a sister when he became a famous newspaper reporter. I knew her hand by now.
Features that made her brother handsome did not quite do the same for her, but she was by no means plain. She had a face that was full of kindness, or perhaps I saw that there because I had read her brother’s accounts of her. Her dress was simple in style, as was the hat she wore. No jewelry other than a simple necklace-a silver shamrock. Her hair was dark, her eyes were large and blue and full of mischief. She was smiling, looking as if she were just about to go from a smile to a laugh.
I looked back at O’Connor’s image, and saw that he, too, was nearly laughing. That was it, then, the difference in him-I had seen him laugh, I had seen him smile, but I had never seen him as happy as he was in the photo.
There was only one entry after April 5, which had been devoted to plans for a date with Ethel Gibbs. On April 6, he wrote, “Maureen, please be safe. I am so sorry.” There were no other entries that year.
There were no diaries between 1945 and 1950.
The Wednesday night of the week the DNA results were due, Frank and I managed to be home at the same time, and fairly early. We live near the beach, where the nights are often chilly, so he lit a fire in the fireplace. We snuggled close and talked about our days.
When I told him about having the stories ready to run, he told me that the police were watching Mitch and his family closely these days.
“Max said Eric and Ian are back in town.”
“Yes. We’re keeping an especially close watch on them.”
“But they’ve served out their parole, so…”
“So, yes, all we can do is watch them.” He held me a little closer. “Scared?”
“A little. I keep telling myself that Mitch Yeager is an old man, then I remember that an old man can own a new gun. Anyway, let’s not talk about that. Tell me what you’re working on.”
“Looks as if we might have made a little bit of headway in the case of O’Connor’s sister.”
“Maureen? I just found a photo of her.”
“I’d like to see it. Ben Sheridan and the coroner and our new lab director studied photographs of the bodies and the old coroner’s reports-this was the coroner just before Woolsey. Turns out Harmon may be telling the truth, and we may be able to prove that he is without an exhumation.”
“How?”
“Back in 1950, they collected hair evidence, and scrapings from under her nails. She fought her attacker. Guess where the nail scrapings have been kept?”
“A freezer?”
“Yes. The hair might have been enough anyway, but the nail scrapings look better. Some skin and some blood.”
“So you could prove who killed her?”
“Well-let’s say we can prove whether or not Harmon is lying. His DNA is on file, but if there’s no match, then we’ll try running it through CODIS- you know about that?”
“The FBI’s Combined DNA Index System. The big computerized database of convicts’ DNA profiles.”
“Basically, yes. It has a long way to go-it’s going to take a while to get all the samples processed, for one thing. Don’t get your hopes up-if it isn’t Harmon, I don’t think we’re likely to see a match.”
“I understand. It’s just so weird. If it doesn’t match Harmon, someone had to know that Harmon was burying women in that orange grove, and then had to be a killer himself.”
“Harmon was a loner, but we’re not giving up on the possibility that he found a soul mate along the way.”
“I’ll see what I can find in O’Connor’s notes. Maybe he learned something the police didn’t-people Maureen came into contact with, or something like that.”
“Worth taking a look, but I think Dan Norton was pretty thorough.”
I intended to do that the next morning, but the doorbell rang just as Frank and I sat down to breakfast. Max Ducane stood on my doorstep. Before he gave me his news, I could tell by the look on his face what the DNA test results had revealed.
“Sorry to bother you so early, but I didn’t know where else to go. I can’t face Lillian or Helen right now.”
“Max-come in.”
He smiled ruefully. “Maybe you can help me come up with yet another name for myself,” he said. “Because if there’s one thing I know for sure, it’s that I’m not Max Ducane.”
61
P UBLICLY, HE HANDLED ALL THE RUDE COMMENTS, MEDDLESOME QUESTIONS, double takes, and stares that were to come his way over the next few weeks with a kind of fortitude and dignity that made all of us who loved him proud to know him. Privately, if you didn’t know him well, he might have fooled you into thinking he was getting on with his life.
The Express broke the story about the DNA tests, and what that brought to Max made me wish something I rarely wished-that I didn’t work for a newspaper.
Because we’re friends, I didn’t write any of the stories that directly involved Max, but Hailey did a good job on them. If it had all stopped there, he still would have faced a lot of public reaction. There wasn’t a chance on earth it was going to stop there.
The story got picked up by the wires. He was a natural for national media attention. He was rich, good- looking, and quotable. His origins were mysterious. He had advantages that came to him through sheer luck and those he had obviously earned through his own abilities, but some of the media chose to insinuate that he was a charlatan who had slyly conned two tragic, wealthy families into handing over a fortune to him.
After a week or so, the story probably would have dropped off the public radar had it not been for an announcement from the Ross family. As the whole country soon learned, Max was an eligible bachelor again. Gisella had called him to break off their engagement just minutes before her father gave a press conference.
For a brief time, I fantasized retribution on Gisella Ross and her parents. As it turned out, my fellow media
