Art spoke up. “Mr. O’Conner, I checked your service records. You shipped out for Vietnam in June 1972. Was she pregnant when you left?”
“No!” O’Conner shook his head dazedly. “How could she be? We never…. We wanted to wait. Well, she wanted to wait. I never even…. Oh, Christ.”
Art gave him a moment. “How about when you got home?”
“I never saw her when I got home. She was gone by then. I don’t even know when she left — I didn’t even know she had the dog tag till Dr. Brockton mentioned it the other day. I sent it to her after I got promoted, but she never wrote back to say she’d gotten it. Her letters just stopped. It was like the earth opened up and swallowed her.”
And it had.
“How old was she when you left for Vietnam?”
“Twenty-two.”
It fit exactly with the skeletal indicators. I wanted to be sure I understood what he’d said earlier. “Mr. O’Conner, are you saying you never had sexual relations with her?”
“Never. She wanted to be a virgin when we got married. It sounds quaint in this day and age, but it was really important to her.”
“Would you be willing to provide a DNA sample to prove you weren’t the father of the baby?”
He stared at me bleakly. “How’s this?” He flipped open a pocketknife and drew the blade across the heel of his left hand. I saw a slit open, then brim with blood. He took a handkerchief from a hip pocket and soaked it in the blood, then held it toward me. I hesitated. “It’s okay, Doc,” he said. “No AIDS, no hepatitis, no syphilis. Pure as the driven snow.” Art produced a ziplock bag from somewhere and sealed the bloody cloth inside, then handed it to me.
During the long silence that ensued, I realized that I had delivered far worse news than I’d expected: not only was the woman he once loved a murder victim, but she’d been pregnant. By another man. A man to whom she’d given her prized virginity. “This must be a shock; I’m sorry.” He nodded grimly. “I hate to be blunt, but I don’t know any other way to ask this. She must have had sexual relations with someone, at least once. Do you have any idea who that might have been? The person who got her pregnant might be the person who killed her. Any idea who that might be?”
He looked up at the sky, and his eyes roamed back and forth, searching for something long ago and far away that didn’t want to be found. Then they froze, widened momentarily, and clamped nearly shut, in a look as black and menacing as a summer thunderhead. “Does the sheriff know all this?”
“He knows she was murdered. He knows she was wearing your dog tag. He doesn’t know she was pregnant. I’m fixing to go tell him.”
There was another long pause, long enough for me to make out the crowing of a rooster somewhere in the distance.
“You’re right, Doctor Brockton. She does deserve justice. And so does her baby. Go tell Sheriff Kitchings what you just told me. I’d love to be a fly on the wall when you do.”
* * *
Art and I rode in silence down the valley and into the tunnel of kudzu. As we emerged into daylight once more, I spoke up. “Well?”
“He’s not the guy that killed her.”
My curiosity outweighed the urge to gloat. “What makes you say that?”
“Dog tag’s a pretty good alibi, at least on the front end. He had to have sent it to her after he was in ’Nam, ’cause he didn’t make first lieutenant until he’d rescued that pilot. Besides, he doesn’t strike me as a killer. Call it cop’s instinct.”
I grinned, until I remembered the menacing look on O’Conner’s face. “But he knows who did it?”
“I think he thinks he knows.”
“The sheriff?”
Art chewed on that awhile, looking troubled. “Chronology’s a problem. How old’s Kitchings?”
“Forty, give or take a couple years.”
“But the evidence suggests she was killed thirty-two years ago. You think little eight-year-old Tommy Kitchings knocked up a strapping twenty-two-year-old, then throttled her when she started to show?”
Not likely, I conceded. “So why’d O’Conner point us at the sheriff?”
“Maybe he figures the sheriff knows. Maybe he figures the sheriff’s protecting somebody.”
That would explain Kitchings’s reluctance to speculate about the victim’s identity. But something about that scenario troubled me. It took me a moment to put my finger on what it was. “That doesn’t make se
nse, though. If the sheriff’s involved or covering up, why’d he drag me into this in the first place?”
“Good question. Maybe he’s not connected. Or maybe he is, but he didn’t realize it at first. Not till you started pulling on threads and his sleeve began to unravel.”
“Hmm. You still got time for an informal visit with one of your law enforcement brethren?”
I saw worry flicker in his face for the briefest of instants, then he flashed me a forced-looking grin. “Damn the tendrils. In for a penny, in for a pound.”
The sun was shining on the granite blocks of the courthouse when we parked, but as we walked toward it, a cloud moved in. The stone took on a dark and sinister hue. So did the SUVs and the black-and-gold helicopter parked behind the building. “Uh-oh,” I said. “Not a good omen.” We were almost to the front door when I caught Art’s arm. “Hang on, I’ll be right back.” I turned back toward a sagging bench under a dying oak tree. The dilapidated bench was inhabited by two equally dilapidated old men, whittling on cedar sticks. Piles of fragrant shavings lay at their feet, covering their boots to the ankles. I nodded deferentially as I ambled toward them. “Howdy, fellas,” I said, raising my voice a few decibels.
“We’re just old. We ain’t deaf,” said one of them.
“What’s that?” wheezed the other through a sunken, toothless mouth.
I turned my attention on the first one, who seemed like the better prospect. “You look like you probably know the ins and outs of Cooke County pretty well. Reckon you could help me remember a name from quite awhile back?”
“Well, I ain’t senile, either, but I cain’t make ye no guarantee.”
“Local girl — young woman, actually. Blonde, tall. Real tall. Lived around here in the nineteen-sixties, early seventies. Woulda been twenty or so by then.”
“Mister, I got no earthly idea.”
His companion wheezed to life. “Hell, course you ain’t. You ain’t been livin’ here but twenty year. You don’t know jack shit about Cooke County.” He worked his gums together thoughtfully. “Blonde-headed? About six foot? Likely-lookin’ girl?” I nodded hopefully, though I couldn’t vouch for her prettiness based on the waxen death mask I had seen. His stubbled jaw slid from side to side. “Bonds.”