What The Dead Know Part 11

It wouldn't be more than a day or two, Kay reasoned. And she wasn't Heather's caseworker, not officially. This would be nothing more than a favor to Gloria. Besides, she couldn't allow the police to lock Heather up. Jail would be devastating for a woman who'd spent much of her youth imprisoned.

"Do you think she's rich?" Heather asked.

"What?"

"My mother. We never were, quite the opposite. But he said she's living in Mexico-that seems kind of rich. Maybe I'm an heiress. I always wondered what happened to my dad's business and the house, after he died. Sometimes I'd read those legal listings. You know, unclaimed bank accounts and safe-deposit boxes? But I never found one in my name. I guess he couldn't put me in his will, with everyone thinking I was dead and all. I don't know what happened to our college funds, not that there was that much in them."

Kay felt the dampness of the stone seeping into her skirt, yet her palms were strangely hot and sweaty.

"And now she's coming back, you say. I'm going to call Gloria, see what she thinks about all this. Maybe I should go in voluntarily tomorrow, give them the whole story after all. By then, they'll be ready to believe me, I bet."

CHAPTER 21.

Babies floated across the computer screen. No, not babies plural-just one baby, the baby, the only baby that mattered in the new millennium. Move over, Jesus, Kevin thought, Andrew Porter Jr. has come to town. And his now computer-savvy mother had fed endless images of him into the computer, so when it went into rest mode, the little Andy slide show began. Andy as a tiny infant, cradled by his impossibly huge father. Andy eating, Andy with a picture book, Andy squinting at a Christmas tree. His father's genes were stamped all over the boy's face and bulky body, but Kevin liked to think he saw Nancy Porter's sweet skepticism in that squint. You're saying there's this guy, and he brings me presents? What's in it for him? And what the h.e.l.l does the tree have to do with any of it?

"Pennsylvania records are f.u.c.ked," Nancy said, moving her cursor so Andy disappeared and her computer opened on an archived Web page. "Or else I don't get how they work. In Maryland all I need is the address and the county, and I can research a property going back years. I haven't been able to find an equivalent page in Pennsylvania, though. The only hit I got on the address you gave me showed it was owned by an LLC, which sold the property a few years back."

"An LLC?"

"Limited liability corporation, somebody's small business. Mercer Inc. Could have been anything, from a produce stand to a cleaning service. But there's no Mercer in our personnel records, so it must be the previous owner we want."

Fair and pleasantly plump before motherhood, Nancy liked to say she was frankly fat now, but the issue of her weight didn't seem to bother her as much. When she returned to work, she'd asked for the transfer to cold cases, a request that Infante had secretly disdained. It seemed dreary stuff to him, poring over old files and looking for lucky breaks-the witness who was finally ready to tell the truth after all these years, the spouse who was tired of keeping secrets. He could see why a new mom would want a job that guaranteed regular hours, but he wasn't sure he considered it real police work. Nancy, however, had a knack for computers and an unerring sense for finding information without ever leaving her desk. The G.o.ddess of Small Things, as Lenhardt had once dubbed her, she now tracked down the tiniest bits of data the way she'd once been able to spot a bullet casing at a hundred paces. She wasn't used to being stymied, but the old Keystone State's record-keeping had thrown her for a loop.

"Probably a wild-goose chase," Infante said as Nancy clicked to the map, showing him the location. "But I'll go up there, see what gives, canva.s.s neighbors."

"Thirty years ago. Twenty-four, if she left in 1981 the way she claimed. Does anyone live in the same place that long, anymore?"

"We just need one. Preferably one nosy old busybody with a razor-sharp memory and a photo alb.u.m."

KEVIN HEADED NORTH, marveling at the steady stream of southbound traffic at midday. Lenhardt lived out this way, and he complained constantly about the drain of commuting. He spoke of it as a kind of war, a battle waged daily. So why do it? Infante asked when he tired of the b.i.t.c.hing. He got the usual answers: kids, schools, problems that an unenc.u.mbered guy didn't know from.

He almost had, though. There'd been a scare, with his first wife. Or so they'd framed the incident in hindsight, when it became apparent that she wasn't pregnant. A scare, a danger averted. He hadn't really felt that way at the time, although he had cause to think of it that way later, when the marriage broke up. He'd been a little hopeful, actually, trying on the role of daddy in his head and feeling it fit pretty well. It was Tabitha who had been worried, fretting over her new job at the mortgage broker's office, wondering what this would do to her plans to do real-estate closings. So they called it a scare, and she became more vigilant about protection. Then she just stopped having s.e.x with him, and he started cheating on her. Which came first had been the chicken-or-the-egg debate at the center of their divorce. The thing that galled Infante was that even when Tabby conceded he was telling the truth, that he hadn't f.u.c.ked around until she stopped f.u.c.king, she refused to grant him cause and effect.

"You have to fight for a marriage!" she screamed at him. "You should have talked to me directly, or asked for counseling, or thought about what might make me feel...like a woman again." He'd never been sure about the last part, but he thought it had something to do with foot rubbing, maybe bubble baths and impromptu gifts. "I'm fighting for it now," he had screamed back. "I'm talking to you. I'm sitting here in counseling, which isn't covered under health insurance, by the way."

But it was over, her decision. Everywhere he went, it was the same story with divorce: The women were the ones who really wanted it. True, there were a.s.sholes, guys who cared for no one's feelings, who dumped their wives for new models. Yet in Infante's experience, these out-and-out jerks were few and far between. Most of the divorced guys he knew were people like himself, guys who made mistakes but had every intention of staying married. Lenhardt, whose second marriage had made him a bit sanctimonious in the family-happiness department, liked to say that a request for counseling was the first sign that your wife was ready to leave you. "Relationships are chess for women," he said. "They can see the whole board, plan way ahead. They're the queens, after all. We're the kings, limited to one square in any direction, on defense for the whole f.u.c.king game."

Infante and his second wife, Patty, hadn't even bothered with counseling. They had gone straight to the mattresses, hiring lawyers they couldn't afford, going into debt over bragging rights to their paltry possessions. Again he had been grateful there were no kids. No student of the Bible-no student of anything-Patty would have carved a kid up even before Solomon offered. Only instead of making a top-to-toe cut, she would have done it at the waist and given Infante the lower half, the one that s.h.i.t and p.i.s.sed. And the thing was, he'd known. He had stood there in the church-because Patty, while married twice before, was big on celebrating herself-and realized it was a huge mistake. Watching her come down the aisle had been like seeing a truck bear down on him.

The s.e.x had been great, though.

Interstate 83 went to s.h.i.t the second he crossed into Pennsylvania and the speed limit dropped ten miles. Still, he could see why some Baltimore workers chose to live up here, a good forty miles out, and not just because the taxes were lower. It was pretty in that rolling-fields, amber-waves-of-grain kind of way. He took the first exit and, using the instructions that Nancy had printed out from the Internet, followed a winding road west, then turned northeast. A McDonald's, a Kmart, a Wal-Mart-the area was pretty built up. His tires seemed to hum with worry. What were the odds that forty acres had gone undisturbed in the midst of all this development?

Exactly nil. Although he was clearly in the 13350 block, he drove a few miles past Glen Rock Estates before he doubled back, in hopes that he was wrong. No, the address was now a development, one promising an "exclusive community of executive-style homes on generous lots." In this case "generous" appeared to be defined as between one and two acres, and these "exclusive" homes were two or three years old, judging by the spindly trees and slightly raw landscaping. As for executives-the cars in the driveways spoke more to middle-management types, Subarus and Camrys and Jeep Cherokees. In a truly rich development, there would be a Lexus or two, maybe a Mercedes. Rich people didn't have to move this far out to have family rooms and two-car garages.

As for orchards? Long gone. a.s.suming they had ever been there.

"Isn't that convenient?" he said aloud to himself, using the intonation from the old Sat.u.r.day Night Live bit. She had been pretty persuasive in her panic about returning here, but now he wondered if she simply didn't want to go to the trouble of acting out her dismay all over again. He wrote down the name of the company that had developed the property. He would check with local police to see if there'd been any bones discovered during the excavation, get Nancy to cross-check it on a Nexis search. Baltimore County and York County might lie next to each other, but it was all too plausible that bones found here wouldn't be matched to any Maryland case, much less a thirty-year-old one involving two missing girls. Again, it wasn't like there was a national database, Bones-R-Us, where you typed in some info and all the missing-persons cases popped up, yours for the asking.

He dialed Nancy's cell.

"Anything?" she asked. "Because I've got-"

"The property's been developed. But I had an idea. Could you check York County for-I don't know how you would phrase it-something like 'York County' and 'bones,' plug in the street name. If there was a grave, it should have been disturbed when they prepared the lots, right?"

"Oh, you mean a Boolean search."

"Boo-yah what?"

"Never mind. I know what you want. Now, here's what I got, sitting comfy at my desk."

Infante thought it would be ungallant to mention what else Nancy was getting, sitting comfy at her desk. Her a.s.s was a lot wider these days. "Yeah?"

"I managed to find the property records. The deed was transferred to Mercer Inc. in 1978, but the previous resident was Stan Dunham. And Dunham was in fact a county police, a sergeant in robbery. Retired in 1974."

A former cop at the time of the girls' disappearance, then, but that distinction wouldn't have been meaningful to a child. Still, it would be slightly easier for the department to stomach. Slightly.

"Is he still alive?"

"In a manner of speaking. His pension checks go to an address out in Carroll County, around Sykesville. It's an a.s.sisted-living community. Based on what the people out there told me, he's more a.s.sisted than living."

"What's that mean?"

"He was diagnosed with Alzheimer's three years ago. He barely knows who he is, day in and day out. No living relatives, according to the hospital, no one to contact when he goes, but he's got a power of attorney on record."

"Name?"

"Raymond Hertzbach. And he's up in York, so you might as well try him out before you head back. Sorry."

"Hey, I like getting out of the office. I didn't become a police so I could sit at a desk all day."

"Neither did I. But things change."

She sounded just a little bit smug, which wasn't Nancy's way at all. Maybe she had picked up the unvoiced observation about what her work habits were doing to her b.u.t.t. Fair enough, then.

THE HIGHWAY ACTUALLY got worse around York, and Kevin was glad that he wasn't subjecting his personal vehicle to the ruts and potholes of Pennsylvania. The lawyer, Hertzbach, appeared very much the big fish in a small pond, the kind of attorney who had a billboard on the interstate and a converted Victorian for his office. Puffy and shiny, he wore a pink shirt and a flowery pink tie, which went nicely with his pink face.

"Stan Dunham came to me about the time he sold the property."

"When was that?"

"Five years ago, I think."

The new owner must have flipped the property fast, probably gotten even more money for it.

"It was a windfall for him, but he had the foresight to realize that he needed to be prepared for the long term. His wife had died-I was under the impression that he wouldn't have sold the land while she was alive-and he told me that he had no children, no heirs. He purchased several insurance products that I recommended-long-term care, a couple of annuities. Those were handled through someone else here in town, Donald Leonard, friend of mine through Rotary."

And you got a nice kickback, Infante thought.

"Did Dunham ask for any advice on criminal matters?"

Hertzbach found this amusing. "If he did, you know I couldn't comment on it. Confidentiality."

"But it's my understanding that he's now not competent-"

"Yes, he's deteriorated badly."

"And if he dies, there's no one to notify? No next of kin, no friends?"

"Not to my knowledge. But a woman did call me recently, curious about his finances."

Infante's brain almost sang like a teakettle at that detail-a woman, interested in money. "Did she give you a name?"

"I'm sure she did, but I'd have to get my secretary to go over the log, pinpoint the date and the name. She was...rather coa.r.s.e. She wanted to know who was named in his will, if anyone, and how much money he had. Of course, I couldn't have told her that. I asked her what her relationship was to Mr. Dunham, and she hung up on me. I wondered if it was someone from the nursing home itself, who might have tried to inveigle her way into his good graces, back when he was still alert. Given the timing."

"The timing?"

"Mr. Dunham was moved to hospice care in February, which means the facility doesn't expect him to live more than six months."

"He's dying from the dementia? Is that possible?"

"Lung cancer, and he quit smoking when he was forty. I have to say, he's one of the more spectacularly unlucky men I've ever met. Sells his land for a tidy sum, then his health fails him. There's a lesson in that."

"What would that be, exactly?"

Kevin wasn't trying to be a smart-a.s.s, but Hertzbach appeared to be struck dumb by the question. "Why, to...I don't know, take advantage of every day," he said at last. "Live life to the fullest."

Thanks for the insight, pal.

He left the office, b.u.mping and bouncing back to the Maryland line, wondering at the coincidence of that telephone call from a woman who, according to the secretary's logs, had identified herself as the ohso-creative Jane Jones. That call had come in on March 1, not even three weeks earlier. A strange woman, asking questions about an old cop's money. Did she know he was dying? How? Had she been thinking of bringing a civil action against the man? She had to know there was no statute of limitations for her sister's murder.

But also no money in a criminal case.

Again he was struck by how convenient it all was-the old farm, gone, and who knows what had happened to the alleged gravesite? The old man, as good as gone.

As he crossed into Maryland, he fumbled for his cell phone and dialed Willoughby, to ask him if he had ever heard of Dunham, although Lenhardt had been out in the country less than a decade. No answer. He decided to hit Nancy again, see what she had learned.

"Infante," she said. He was still getting used to the fact that phone calls no longer involved any mystery, that his name popped up on Nancy's screen, identifying him instantly.

"The lawyer had some interesting nuggets, but Dunham's pretty much a dead end at this point. Are you now the leading expert on all things Bethany?"

"Getting there. Managed to find the mom-her old real-estate firm, in Austin, knew how to get in touch with her. No answer and no machine, but Lenhardt's going to keep trying her. Here's the big find, though-"

"We should keep her away, until we know for sure."

"Yeah, but, Infante-"

"I mean, she's going to want to believe, so we have to control for that. And we don't want to waste her time if we can discredit her."

"Infante-"

"At the very least, she has to understand that this is not guaranteed, that-"

"Infante, shut up and listen for a second. I took a flier, plugged Penelope Jackson's name into the Nexis newspaper database on a hunch. You didn't do that, right?"

s.h.i.t. He hated it when Nancy one-upped him this way. "I did the criminal searches, things like that. And Google, but there were hundreds of hits. The name's too common. Besides, why would I care if she made news some other way?"

"She popped up in an article in some Georgia newspaper"-a pause as Nancy clicked away, looking for what she had stored-"the Brunswick Times. Christmas of last year. A man was killed in a fire Christmas Eve, ruled an accident by investigators. His girlfriend, home at the time, was named Penelope Jackson."

"Could be a coincidence."

"Could be," Nancy agreed, her smugness apparent even over the unstable cell phone line. "But the man who was killed? His name was Tony Dunham."

"Guy's lawyer said he had no heirs, even five years ago."

"And cops down there were told-by the girlfriend-that there was no next of kin to notify, that Tony's parents were dead. Yet the age works-he was fifty-three when he died, and his Social Security number begins with twenty-one, which indicates it was issued in Maryland. The Dunhams probably lived in Maryland before they moved to Pennsylvania."

"But thirty years ago, he was twenty-three. He might not even have been living at home then." And now dead, dead in an accident. Why did everything dead-end with this case, this woman? That family she sideswiped was lucky to be in as good shape as they were, given her track record. "h.e.l.l, he could have been drafted for all we know. You check military records?"

"Not yet," she admitted, and that gave him a small buzz of satisfaction, petty as it was. I thought of a record you didn't.

"Where's Brunswick anyway? How do you get there?"

"Sergeant has you booked on a Southwest flight into Jacksonville, leaving at seven. Brunswick is about an hour north. Penelope Jackson worked at a restaurant, Mullet Bay, in some nearby resort called St. Simons Island, but she quit about a month ago. She might still be in the area, though, but no longer at the same address."

Or she might be in Baltimore, playing some creepy con on them all.

CHAPTER 22.

"You sure you'll be fine?"

"Sure," she said, thinking, Go, go, please go. "I could even take care of Seth, if he doesn't want to go."