Homicide Related (40 page)

D
ooley's uncle came out of the bank with a manila envelope in his hand. Dooley watched him look both ways before darting out into a gap in the traffic and jogging over to the coffee shop where Dooley was waiting for him. He was breathing a little harder than normal when he dropped into the chair across from Dooley and eyed Dooley's coffee.

“You want one?” Dooley asked.

His uncle shook his head.

“This is for you,” he said, handing Dooley the envelope.

Dooley hefted it, fingered it, but he couldn't tell what was inside.

“I got a call,” his uncle said. “This goes back a couple of years. Some guy—it turned out he was a neighbor—tells me it's a miracle she hadn't done it already, the way she led her life.”

Done it? Done what? Dooley thought about asking, but decided against it. His uncle would get to it. It was better to let him tell it in his own way.

“The paramedics said it looked like it was mostly for show,” his uncle said. “A nice big gash, but not deep. She was out cold, but it wasn't from blood loss. It was the booze and the pills. She didn't have enough of either in her system to do the job, though.”

Some show, Dooley thought.

“The fire, though—if the neighbor hadn't smelled something, that might have done the trick,” his uncle said. “She might have taken a few people with her, too.”

Jesus, after everything that had happened, he still hadn't heard one good word about Lorraine. Her life was misery after misery, a real fuckup.

“Those were scattered around,” his uncle said said, nodding at the envelope. He stopped talking then, and Dooley understood that he was supposed to open it.

There were more envelopes inside. Letters. Half a dozen—no—nine. Nine letters. One was addressed to Lorraine at a post office box Dooley had never heard of. The other eight were addressed to someone named Patrick Ryan Dooley. Dooley glanced up at his uncle, but his face gave nothing away.

Dooley picked up the envelope addressed to Lorraine and opened it. There was another envelope inside. Like the other eight, it was addressed to Patrick Ryan Dooley. Unlike the other eight, this one had been opened and its contents presumably read before it was put back into its envelope, sealed in a second envelope, and mailed back to Lorraine. Dooley pulled out the two sheets of paper—pink—and unfolded them. He skimmed the letter and then went back and read it again slowly. He checked the date. He'd been six months old when it had been written.

He refolded the sheets, put them back into the envelope, and laid it flat on the table. He picked up the other eight envelopes—still sealed after all these years—and lined them up according to the dates on the postmarks.

Nine envelopes in all, and what a story they told.

“She always said I had my dad's name,” he said.

His uncle didn't say anything.

In fact, he had Lorraine's father's name—her birth father. Her birth mother, according to the first letter, written by Lorraine, had died right after Lorraine was born.

Lorraine had originally registered Dooley as Ryan Dooley McCormack. Then, when she finally had an address to go along with the name she'd managed to find, she'd had his name legally changed. She'd dropped the McCormack and made him Ryan Dooley. Then she'd written that first letter to her father in loopy girlish handwriting, telling him all about herself and her little boy, telling him, “I can't wait until he meets his grandpa.” He pictured her waiting for the reply, checking her mail box every day, antsy and anxious, until finally she'd opened the box and found an envelope addressed to her. The envelope she had been waiting for. But when she opened it—not a word from her father. No, just her letter, returned without a word of acknowledgment.

Seven more letters had all been returned unopened, the words, “Return to Sender,” scrawled across them, the pen biting into the paper of the envelope.

The final letter, also unopened, had also been returned, but this time the envelope had been stamped “Moved—Address Unknown.” That was the end of the correspondence.

Dooley imagined how confused she must have felt when she found out about the first Lorraine. She'd acted out over that discovery. She'd also begun the search for her real parents—and look how that had turned out.

He stacked the letters and slipped them back into the manila envelope.

“To give her some credit, she must have really worked at finding him,” his uncle said. “The records were sealed. It couldn't have been easy for her to track him down.”

And there it was—the first positive thing Dooley had ever heard his uncle say about Lorraine.

“You said you found these when … you said it was a few years back,” he said.

“Two years ago this past June.”

“Around the time I was arrested that last time,” Dooley said.

“Turns out it was the day after,” his uncle said.

“Turns out?”

Dooley's uncle looked at him for a few moments, like he was trying to decide how to answer or, maybe, whether to answer.

“I asked her about you while she was still in the hospital,” he said finally. “I asked where you were.”

Dooley bet she had no clue.

“She was a little vague on the subject,” his uncle said.

There you go.

“Anyway,” his uncle went on, fiddling with a packet of sugar that Dooley hadn't used, avoiding eye contact now, “when I finally tracked you down …” He shrugged. It was a few seconds before his eyes met Dooley's. “She was right back in it. I know she was your mother. She was my sister.”

Except she wasn't. Not really.

“She was a baby when we got her. Not even a year old.” His uncle picked at the edges of the sugar packet, folding it and unfolding it.

“Maybe it explains something about the way she was,” Dooley said. “It's hard enough sometimes, not knowing where you belong.”

Dooley's uncle shook his head slowly.

“I went out there to see you the first time because I wanted to see what kind of screwed-up kid she had raised,” he said. “I told myself I wasn't surprised, given how fucked up she was. I went back the second time because I felt sorry for you. After that—” He shrugged. “Fifteen is pretty young—too young to give up on a person. I thought maybe if someone took you in hand, you could turn out okay.”

“But I'm not related to you. You're not really my uncle.”

“Lorraine was my sister, even if she was adopted. That makes you my nephew and me your uncle. I don't have a problem with that. Do you?”

Dooley didn't know what to say.

“I gave her some incentive to stay away from you,” his uncle said.

“She probably wouldn't have come to see me anyway,” Dooley said, although he thought she might have, maybe once. Or maybe not.

Probably not.

Dooley thought for a moment before meeting his uncle's eyes.

“That day you said you were going downtown to see your financial advisor …” Larry Quayle had had no record of an appointment.

“I went to meet Lorraine. She was a no-show.”

“And the night she died?”

“Same story. I went to talk to her. When she was at the house that time, she told me that she wanted to get involved in your life again. She tried to convince me that things would be different this time. I wanted her to stay the hell out of it. The night she died, I went to see if we could come to some kind of arrangement. Instead we got into an argument. She told me she'd already made contact with you and there was nothing I could do about it. I was pretty pissed off.”

Pissed off enough to get drunk and lose track of time? Dooley couldn't believe it. Did his uncle really care that much?

“She was trying to make changes.”

“But with her track record …” He shook his head again. “Maybe I should have given her a little more credit. I'm sorry.”

Dooley didn't know what to say. He hadn't felt any differently than his uncle had. If his uncle had been wrong not to give her a second chance, so had Dooley.

“If you want to make alternative living arrangements,” his uncle said, “I'll understand.”

“You want me to move out?” Dooley said. Where would he go?

“I want you to stay. But after what happened … if you'd rather not live with me, I'd understand.”

“I didn't give her much credit, either,” Dooley said. Even now, he wasn't sure that he'd been wrong.

“You want to think it over?”

Dooley shook his head. “I already made up my mind.”

Dooley looked up from the scanner when he heard the electronic bell sound over the video store door. Detective Randall walked in. He came straight to the counter where Dooley was scanning returns.

“How's it going, Ryan?” he said.

“You tell me,” Dooley said.

“How about I buy you a cup of coffee?”

Kevin, who had been coming up an aisle toward the cash when Detective Randall came in, said, “Break time's not for two hours, Dooley.”

Randall glanced at Kevin, pulled out his ID and said, “Official police business.”

Kevin stared at the ID. He didn't say anything as Dooley came out from behind the counter, went into the back room to grab his jacket, and walked with Randall to the coffee shop a couple of doors down from the video store.

“I thought you'd like to know,” Randall said after he'd put some coffee in front of Dooley. “Malone made a deal.”

“What kind of deal?”

“We got him on Jeffrey. His DNA is a match for what we found under Jeffrey's fingernails. We also got him on your mother. What was stolen from her—we held that back. Your uncle said she had a purse with her when she got out of his car. He said there was a bottle of prescription medication inside.” Anti-depressants, he'd told Dooley. “Malone as good as told you that the purse was gone by the time she was found. He knew there were pills in the purse, and he knew she didn't have any ID.”

“He could say he was just assuming,” Dooley said.

“He could try. He could also try to explain how he knew she was found behind a dumpster,” Randall said. “The only thing we released was she was found in an alley.”

“The person who found her might have told someone. Word gets around.”

Randall gave him a look. “Which side are you on, Ryan?” he said. “Besides having him for Jeffrey, we have traces of Lorraine's blood in his car from where she cut herself. We have him unaccounted for during the time frame when she was murdered. We have traces of narcotics. And the best one—we have a usable fingerprint from the dumpster. We got him. You did good.”

Good, but too late. He stood up, ready to go, then turned back to the detective.

“Jeffie told me that Malone reminded him of me, but I don't see the resemblance, do you?”

Randall studied him.

“Maybe a little,” he said. “Around the eyes and the mouth. And maybe the cheekbones.”

Dooley had a one-thirty dentist appointment the next day. There was no point in going back to school, so he decided to go up to Beth's school and surprise her. He was standing out on the street when the bell rang and girls came flooding out of the building. When Beth saw him, her face lit up. She broke away from the girls she was with and came running toward him.

A car horn tooted just as she arrived.

Dooley glanced over his shoulder. It was a midnight blue Jag. The driver's side window whirred down.

“Beth,” a voice called. Nevin's voice. “I'm glad I caught you. Here.” A hand came out the window. There was a sweater in it—a soft blue sweater that Dooley recognized. “You left it at the cottage on the weekend. My mother's been nagging me to get it back to you.”

Beth looked from the sweater to Dooley. She wasn't smiling anymore. Dooley thought, I'm not the only one with secrets.

Twenty-Two