The bloodstains.
He heard paper rustling and saw Lefebvre opening his envelope. Photographs. Lefebvre set a small stack of them on the changing table. Almost against his will, O’Connor drew nearer to look, standing next to Irene.
In stark black-and-white, the top photo showed him what the room had looked like when Dan Norton had arrived, when Rose Hannon’s body still lay on the floor. He saw what Dan had seen that long-ago night-the bloodstains and the position of the body indicated that she had been crawling on the floor toward the bassinet. The poor woman had bled to death trying to reach the baby.
Max glanced over their shoulders, shuddered, and moved away.
“There was another member of the house staff. A maid, right?” Irene asked, picking up the photo and looking through the next three. They were far more gruesome shots of the body.
“Yes. She wasn’t implicated,” Lefebvre said.
She handed the photos back to Lefebvre. “I’m just thinking that Gus Ronden must have known a lot about this household. He knew that the Ducanes wouldn’t be at home, and that the baby wouldn’t be with his mother. He knew that Rose Hannon would be here alone with the child.”
“He might have come here ready to kill two women,” Lefebvre said.
“Maybe,” Irene said. “But that would be much more chancy, wouldn’t it?”
“Yes,” O’Connor said. “But Dan and I both checked up on the other maid. Doesn’t seem likely at all that she knew Gus Ronden.”
“Is she still living?” Irene asked.
“Yes,” Lefebvre said. “Why on earth does that make you smile?”
“Because you wouldn’t know she was alive unless you had already contacted her. What did you find out?”
“That I should watch what I say around you.”
“You’ve both lost me, I’m afraid,” said Max.
“You have to think of everything that was going on in Las Piernas that night,” Irene said. “Too much was going on at once for it to be explained as just a random, terribly unlucky night.” She frowned in concentration. “I think it was supposed to look as if the Ducanes happened to drown on the night of a kidnapping. In the end, that’s the way most of Las Piernas looked at it, right? A horrible coincidence, and the kidnapping of the child was sad, but the Ducanes’ tragedy at sea was a combination of foolishness and unpredictable weather.”
“Don’t forget Jack’s beating,” O’Connor said.
“I haven’t,” she answered. “I’m as sure as you are that the beating was planned, but I doubt he was supposed to see the burial of the car.”
“I agree,” Lefebvre said. “No one was ever supposed to find that buried car. They didn’t dump Jack Corrigan in a grove and hope he’d wake up in time to watch-I think that was a mistake. If they had wanted him to see it, they would have given him a front-row seat and a ride back to town. Instead, they tried to kill him.”
“They came damned close to succeeding,” O’Connor said.
“Okay,” Irene said, “but back up. We’ve found the car. So we know there wasn’t simple coincidence at work. Think about it-there had to be a ring-master of this circus. That person knew about the Ducanes’ yacht, and that they planned to take it out that night.”
“And planned to take Kathleen and Todd with them,” Max said.
“Right. And like I said, he or she knew that Rose Hannon would be here alone with the baby.”
“And the trio that went to work on Jack either followed him or knew he’d be at the party,” O’Connor said.
“Did they have invitations?” Irene asked.
“Yes,” O’Connor said. “But no one was ever able to verify where they got them from. Lillian gave a stack of invitations to the Ducanes, and she has always believed that the Thelma and Barrett Ducane must have given one of their invitations to someone who knew Bo Jergenson-but the Ducanes weren’t around to tell us who that might have been.”
“So think of it as a circus from hell. Three rings-Jack in one ring, Thelma and Barrett Ducane in another, and Katy, Todd, and their baby in the third.”
“So who’s the ringmaster?” Max asked.
O’Connor thought of mentioning Yeager, recalled this young man’s defense of him at Lillian’s dinner party, and decided to keep his theories to himself. It occurred to him that Irene might be doing the same.
“The ringmaster? Someone who had a connection to the people in all three rings,” Lefebvre said.
“Who benefited the most?” Irene asked.
“Warren Ducane, more than anyone,” Lefebvre said. “With every other Ducane out of the way, he inherited a bundle.”
“He disappeared just before that shopping center broke ground,” Irene added.
“Not in a million years,” O’Connor said.
All three stared at him in surprise.
“First of all, Jack and Warren knew each other. Warren was a party boy in those days. I can’t think of a reason in the world he’d do something like that to Jack. They always got along fine.”
“But the money…” Max said.
“I’ve never known a man who loved his brother more than Warren loved Todd. Looked up to him-not that Todd was any great role model, but Warren didn’t see that.”
“Maybe his hero failed him in some way,” Irene said. “It has been known to happen.”
O’Connor eyed her narrowly, then glanced at Lefebvre, who was suddenly busying himself with putting the photos back in the envelope. “That isn’t the only reason,” O’Connor said. “I was there when he got the news. Warren was shocked to hear that Todd was dead.”
“But not shocked that his parents were dead?” Lefebvre asked.
O’Connor shrugged. “Neither Dan nor I were ever sure about that. We both thought he was hiding something. But he had a solid alibi and if someone got a payoff from him, Dan never saw it-and he looked hard for something like that. Warren let him look at his bank accounts and all of that without throwing any obstacles in his way.”
Irene turned toward Lefebvre, who shook his head and said, “Oh no, I’m not talking to you about the man’s finances. But what O’Connor said is true.”
“Well, Warren didn’t mastermind it, anyway,” she said.
“What makes you so sure?” Max asked.
She turned to Lefebvre. “The department watched him closely after his parents disappeared?”
“I never said so.”
“Come on, Lefebvre. The heir and everyone else in the family missing, he cashes in big time, and your department didn’t think you guys ought to watch him?”
“I know I seem very old to you, but I wasn’t with the department then. But let’s assume Dan Norton checked into his alibi and kept an eye on him.”
“Good,” she said. “Because I think the police would have noticed if he had gone up into the mountains and shot someone and stuffed the body in the trunk of a car.”
“True,” Lefebvre said. “But maybe he killed the man earlier in the proceedings.”
“When? Gus Ronden was up in the mountains before O’Connor and Norton found Warren over at Auburn Sheffield’s place. Ronden must have left not long after he killed Bo and dumped Jack in the marsh.”
“I used to wonder why they would have bothered moving Jack,” O’Connor said, “and knew it had something to do with the Buick, but-I was missing too many pieces of the puzzle. Everyone who knew Jergenson said he wasn’t too bright, so I suspect he wasn’t supposed to take Jack to the farm.”
“They thought they had drowned Jack, right?” she asked.
“They probably thought they had finished him off,” he agreed.
He watched her brows draw together.
“We know Gus Ronden was connected to both the kidnapping and the attack on Corrigan,” Lefebvre said. “Our crime lab found bloodstains on clothing at his house, and it wasn’t his blood-he was type A. The blood on the clothing in the hamper matched Rose Hannon’s blood type-she was AB, which is found in only about four percent of the population. Jack Corrigan was type O-we found type O bloodstains in the trunk of Ronden’s car, but we also found fibers from Jack’s clothing and his keys inside the trunk. The gun in Ronden’s car fired the bullet that killed Jergenson, so we know he was at the marsh that night.”