There was a gold-colored medal in the envelope, bent near the top, where it had apparently been pulled by force off the key ring. O’Connor saw a small nick near the bottom.
“That’s Jack’s-not a doubt in my mind. He caught it in a metal desk drawer at work a few weeks ago and jammed the drawer. I can see the nick that was left on it when he finally worked it free. You found it on Jergenson?”
“In his trousers pocket.”
“No keys with it?”
“No, and if they aren’t in the marsh, then maybe someone is using them to try to get into Jack’s place. I’ve got an undercover car keeping an eye on it, just in case our friends stop by, but I won’t be able to do that for long. You think you can swing by there just to make sure the place hasn’t been turned upside down?”
“Sure. But-listen, Dan, there are some things I want to talk to you about- about Katy.”
“Tell you what. There’s a steak place not far from Jack’s. Let’s go by his house, take a quick look, grab his teddy bear or whatever the hell else he may need at the hospital-other than a bottle of rye-and leave. Then you can tell me all your troubles over dinner. And I can get the hell away from the stench of this place.”
Jack’s house was locked up and showed no sign of disturbance. O’Connor called the hospital from the home of one of Jack’s neighbors and learned that Jack was awake-and that Helen had told him what had happened to Katy and the baby. O’Connor asked to talk to him, and asked him where the spare key was hidden, and if he minded if Dan Norton entered the house with him.
Jack sounded listless, but he told O’Connor that the latest hiding place was in part of a window air conditioner at the back of the house, and that he didn’t care what Dan Norton did. But at the end of this dull recital, he said, “Come by later, if you get a minute, Conn.”
“I’ll definitely be there,” O’Connor assured him.
“For a drunk,” Norton said, looking around the tiny living room, “Corrigan leads an orderly existence.”
O’Connor didn’t reply to him. Norton watched as he walked through the small home. In the bedroom, James Joyce’s The Dubliners was on the night-stand. O’Connor took it with him. As nearly as he could tell, nothing in the house had been disturbed.
“Going to bring him a bottle?” Norton asked.
“No. I don’t want to kill him.”
“Kind of surprised you had to call him to find out where the spare key was. Surprised you don’t have a key to this place yourself. After all, he’s got one to your place, right?”
“He looks after my place when I travel. Helen looks after Jack’s place when he goes somewhere. She lives nearer than I do, and I guess they got into the habit years ago. I didn’t know where the spare was because Jack never leaves it in one place all the time, but I’ve never known him to forget where he’s hidden it, drunk or sober.”
“You finished here?”
“Yes.”
Over dinner, O’Connor told Norton his theories about the Sea Dreamer.
“I don’t believe all hell just accidentally broke loose among four sets of people who were as connected to each other as were Katy and Todd, Katy’s in-laws, Katy’s child and his nurse, and Katy’s good friend Jack Corrigan. And for starters, I don’t think the Ducanes were ever on that yacht.” He went over all the points Lorenzo had made to him. “He’s not a homicide investigator, but he knows boats.”
Norton didn’t say anything for a long while, then shrugged. “A possibility. Until I know what happened to the bodies, couldn’t say one way or another. I know the chief isn’t going to stand for anything other than the simplest explanation. He won’t want to hear about boats that didn’t really have anybody on them. But if the bodies are on land, we’ll find them easier than if they’re in the ocean.”
“I’ve been thinking about the car, the one Jack saw the farmer bury.”
“Maybe saw. Maybe didn’t. He’d had a skinful-as usual-and so many blows to his head, it’s a wonder it’s still attached to his neck.”
“I believe him.” O’Connor told him about the leaf.
“So the part about the eucalyptus grove could be real,” Norton acknowledged. “If you said to me, ‘Jack claims he was in a eucalyptus grove,’ that would be one thing. So many of those trees around, it wouldn’t be hard to believe. But seeing a farmer bury a car in the middle of the night? Makes no sense.”
O’Connor brooded in silence.
“Look, Conn, he’s my friend, too-but I have a job to do here, so I can’t let that count with me when I take a look at his story. What I can count is the number of times I’ve been around him lately when he was absolutely sober. I can do that without having to call Einstein to help me do the math.”
“He remembers things, even when he’s been drinking. Like the key.”
“This is bigger than a key, and in less familiar territory.”
“I think he saw it,” O’Connor said, “if for no other reason than this: it’s too strange a thing for him to talk about, unless he did see it. You ever hear him talk about hallucinations before now?”
“No,” Norton admitted. “But I’ve heard him talk when I knew he was confused by the booze. Add the whacks he took on his skull… he could easily be mixing up separate memories, combining them into one.” He held his hands up in a gesture of helplessness. “It would be hard for me to call this a lead.”
O’Connor decided he might as well let it drop.
Norton must have seen this in his face. He said, “All right, all right. Tell you what-if the bodies don’t wash ashore within the next week or so, I’ll get someone to canvass the farms near the marsh, ask if anyone has seen anything odd going on around there.”
“Anything else going on in the investigation?”
“We’re checking again for fingerprints at the Ducane house and in the boat and in the car that was left behind at the marina. We’ve got that new ninhydrin method now-we can sometimes find prints on paper.”
O’Connor tried to appear as if he was encouraged by this news, but he knew that until a suspect was in custody, the likelihood of matching the prints to a criminal was not good. He had seen the rows and rows of metal cabinets that housed the department’s thousands of fingerprint cards. Although a fingerprint expert would be able to narrow the search somewhat, it was still a long and tedious task that would only bear fruit if the Las Piernas Police Department had at some point taken the criminal into custody.
For the next two days, O’Connor was kept so busy between his work at the paper and keeping Jack’s spirits up, he had little time to look for answers to the many questions he had about the night Jack was injured. Jack’s fever subsided, but his memories of the attack did not grow clearer. Since he had learned about Katy and the others, and about the kidnapping, Jack hadn’t seemed to care about much of anything. O’Connor thought the news about Katy had damaged Jack more than the man who had used his fists on him.
One of the worst moments came when Jack asked him to look in his coat pockets, to see if his keys were there. “I might have left them in my coat at Lillian’s.”
“You probably had them taken from you. Remember? We found the saint’s medal on the giant. Besides, you told me the keys were still in your pocket when you woke up in the grove.”
“I might have been mistaken.”
“You have a cut and key-shaped bruise on your thigh.”
“Maybe the giant cut me with his own.”
O’Connor decided to humor him and searched his pockets. “Nothing, just this note.”
“What note? Read it.”
O’Connor opened it. “It says…”
“What? What’s wrong?”
“It’s nonsense, that’s all.”
“Give it to me, Conn.”
Reluctantly, O’Connor did as he was bid, but the injuries to Jack’s hands left his fingers too clumsy to open it. “It’s Katy’s handwriting. Must have slipped it to me at the party. Open it and tell me what it says,” he demanded impatiently.