“I saw the T-Bird,” O’Connor said. “You don’t usually drive it out to a job.”
“The department sedan’s in the shop. Should have it back tomorrow. Listen…about Jack, I’m damned sorry, O’Connor. Might as well tell you, they haven’t been able to learn a thing about it. Jack have anything to say?”
“Not really. He seems-a little mixed up.”
“Strange how that works. Some son of a bitch tries to crack your head open, you feel confused for a time. Don’t let it worry you, Conn. Memories may come back to him after he’s had a little time to recover.” Dan closed the umbrella, shook it, and leaned it up against a wall. He turned to an officer who stood at the door and said, “Anyone tries to take that, shoot him.”
The officer smiled. “Sure thing, Detective Norton-if you’ll do the paperwork on it.”
Dan turned to O’Connor. “These days, they give ’em a wise-ass test before they let them on the force.”
O’Connor followed Dan inside. Two other detectives stood in the marble entryway. They nodded at Norton, then frowned at O’Connor, but said nothing as he passed them. O’Connor glanced around but could see no signs of violence.
“You’ve been here before?” Dan asked, looking back at him.
“Yes,” O’Connor said. “I’ve only been inside once. A party, not long after Katy and Todd were married-a little more than a year ago.”
“Katy. I like that better than Kathleen. She owned the house before she married Todd?”
“Far as I know, her mother-Lillian Linworth-still owns it.” O’Connor looked around as he spoke. “Katy has lived here for about three years, so yes, she was living here before she married Todd.”
“Would have thought they could have afforded a place of their own.”
“Together they’re in line to inherit something like three fortunes,” O’Connor said, “but I don’t know that they have any money they could truly call their own-either one of them. Jack has always said that no good could come of that.”
“Parents foot all the bills?”
“The Linworths pay most of them.”
Dan said, “Why the Linworths and not the Ducanes-the older Ducanes, I mean-Todd’s parents?”
“Rumor has it the Ducanes haven’t given a penny to either of their children.”
“Well, why should they, right? Last I looked, nobody gave you or me a nickel we didn’t earn.”
Someone gave me a silver dollar once, O’Connor thought.
He recalled comments he had heard others make here and there about the coldness of the Ducanes toward their sons. More than just a matter of withholding money. Even the other swells thought the Ducanes were lousy parents. “You talked to Warren Ducane-Todd’s brother?”
“Hasn’t returned home yet this evening.” He gave O’Connor a speculative look. “But you might know where to find him?”
“Sure, I’ve a few ideas. I’d like to know what happened to the child first, though.”
“Wouldn’t we all. But okay, fair is fair. Come upstairs with me,” Norton said. “Most of the place appears to be untouched. A back door leading to the kitchen was damaged, that’s all. Point of entry, it seems. Fingerprint men are working on all of that area, just in case these assholes got careless. I wouldn’t lay any bets on that, though.”
“More than one murderer, then?”
“Maybe not. Come and have a look. Don’t touch the handrail.”
O’Connor followed him up the long, curving marble staircase to the right. As they climbed the stairs, Dan said, “Let’s start in the nursery.”
The coroner had taken the body of the nursemaid from the house, but O’Connor still found it disturbing to view the room. He could easily imagine the room as it must have been moments before the woman was killed: a white bassinet-stripped of its bedding-with a mobile of stars and a moon hanging near it, colorful Mother Goose figures on the walls. A changing table, diapers folded below. A wooden playpen, soft blue blankets folded over one rail. Everything neat and tidy.
Just as it was now. Except for the blood. Sprayed everywhere, it seemed, in long streaks across the one wall and most of the floor. He could see long, heavy smears where the woman had obviously slipped and fallen in her own blood, bloody handprints on the floor near the bassinet, as if she had tried to crawl to it as she died. There was blood on the bassinet itself, but not much. A dark, wide pool of blood had spread and dried on the floorboards beneath it.
“What was her name?” O’Connor asked quietly.
“Rose Hannon. Thirty-four, widowed, lived in. Pleasant and easygoing, by all accounts. Loved the baby as if it were her own. No family anybody seems to know about.” Dan paused, then added, “I think whoever killed her enjoyed watching her die.”
O’Connor looked at him.
“Cut her throat, then watched her crawl.”
“The baby was in the bassinet?”
“Mrs. Hannon was crawling toward it… so yes, I think so.”
“The blood-”
“We don’t know yet. The lab took the bedding to test it.”
“So little Max might not be alive.”
“That’s a possibility. Especially when infants are taken.”
They stood silently for a moment, then O’Connor said, “A living baby would be worth more in ransom than a dead one.”
“I only hope they’re as smart as you are.”
“This happened last night?”
“We think it happened Saturday night, maybe early Sunday.”
“Saturday night? While Katy was at her birthday party?”
“Coroner said he’ll get back to me on a time of death, but as you know, those time-of-death guesses are never all that accurate. Except on Perry Mason. You watch that show?”
O’Connor shook his head. He was still trying to absorb the idea that an infant could have been missing for so long without anyone knowing of it.
“Well, I guess if you’ve got Corrigan to entertain you, who needs television, right?”
“Last night, and no ransom note yet? No calls?” He felt his hopes sinking.
“We don’t know about the calls-no one here to answer them. Got the phone company checking on that. But no notes, no.” He put a hand on O’Connor’s shoulder. “Don’t let that weigh too much with you yet-sometimes these guys want everyone to sweat, so that by the time you get their demands, you’re desperate.”
“Katy and Todd haven’t been seen since the night of the party?”
“That’s what we’re beginning to believe. The maid-Katy’s housemaid this is, not the victim-had the weekend off. She helped Katy get all set to go before the party, but she had to catch a bus, so when she left on Saturday, everyone was still here.”
“Where was she all this time?”
“She took off to visit her mother in San Diego. We have that verified. Took the bus back home today, got to the house at about five, and noticed the back door had been jimmied. Came into the house, nothing seemed to be wrong at first. Eventually, she came up the stairs and saw the mess in here.”
“She called you?”
“Naw. Went hysterical, the neighbors heard her, and they called us. She was out on the front lawn, with one of the neighbors trying to calm her down, when we got here. Took a while to get her to make any sense and even longer to get her to come back into the house with us.” He paused and said, “Let’s go down the hall.”
“Wait-can you tell me, did they take the things they’d need to care for the baby? Blankets and such?”
“I asked the same thing. No-the maid didn’t think so, except for one blanket. Probably the one they carried him out in.”
O’Connor followed him down the long hallway, moving in the opposite direction of the baby’s room, almost to the other end of the house. He couldn’t help but think about the distance of the parents’ room from the baby’s room.
He had a different sort of shock when Norton showed him into the large master bedroom. In contrast to the
