All the Things You Are Read online

  Gene looks above his laptop.

  ‘OK, Dan. I do have some breaking stuff here, but …’

  Gene does something involving the sound of keystrokes, and then gives Danny his undivided attention.

  ‘Shoot.’

  ‘Ralph told me that … that he’d figured it out, basically. And you know, because I saw Dave Ricks, and Dave Ricks mentioned Ralph’s novel, and I think it wasn’t really a novel at all, it was his account of that night, of Halloween night 1976, thirty-five years ago tonight.’

  ‘It was the Bicentennial, wasn’t it?’ Gene says, a false smile suddenly appearing on his face, his voice a little loud.

  ‘I don’t think that mattered to us. Anyway, Ralph would have known immediately what to think of a name like Claire Bradbury. Claire being my wife’s name. But then you know that, don’t you, Gene?’

  Silent now, Gene tries to hold Danny’s gaze, breaks it, his eyes flickering to his laptop screen and to whatever else is on his desk.

  ‘Ralph said we’d all agreed it was me who threw the fire bottle at the wall of the house. At your insistence. He said your voice was the loudest, your memory was the clearest, your opinion the surest. You prevailed. And Ralph went along with it for a while. But something just didn’t sit right with him. It began to niggle away at him. See, Ralph was behind me when I ran into the tree, he had shoved me, to get me out of the blazing skull. And he never saw me throw the fire bottle.’

  ‘What did Dave say?’ Gene snaps.

  ‘He said he saw me throw it, but it was clear it was by accident, it was because I was trying to keep my balance. But Ralph—’

  ‘You know what Dave says, and you know what I say, but the one you want to believe is Ralph, who said, what, let me guess, you didn’t throw it?’

  ‘He said he went back a year or so ago and got access to the report of the original investigation. There was one fire bottle found on the site. We didn’t bring but four. Ralph said he threw his, after he got me out of the fire. By which time I was unconscious and in no condition to throw anything. He said the other two bottles were thrown then, one by an F and one by a P.’

  Gene frowns. ‘An F and a P?’

  ‘We were the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, remember? Fire, Famine, Pestilence and Plague. I was Fire, Dave was Famine, Ralph was Pestilence, and you were Plague. He remembers yours because as soon as he knew you were a P, that’s what he had to be too. Him being your little shadow. And I remember being Fire, so by a process of elimination, Dave was Famine.’

  Gene looks at Danny and then towards the window, his mouth opening and closing as if he is having difficulty breathing. He forms his lips into the shape of a word, but Danny doesn’t let him speak.

  ‘Ralph said the one who threw the bottle, and it looked quite deliberate, had a P on his shirt. It wasn’t him. So it must have been you.’

  A phone rings and Gene answers it. ‘Yes. Yes. All right. I’ll be out now.’ He snaps shut his laptop and rises. ‘Danny, I’m sorry about this, I have to … if you want to wait here, it shouldn’t take long.’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘It really can’t wait, I’m afraid. But listen to me: Ralph may have got closer to the truth, but it’s still not the final version. I hope I can help you, Dan. I really do.’

  Gene’s phone chimes out again and he puts it to his ear as he leaves the office. There’s the sound of voices down the corridor. Danny wanders across to the desk and opens the laptop. Mail, the email program, is the front window on the screen. The message it opens to has the subject line: DANNY BROGAN WANTED, and in the body of the message, a link that has already been clicked. Danny clicks it himself, and arrives at Madison.com, a news source for the city, to find himself today’s top story.

  BOLO FOR BROGAN, runs the headline. The intro goes:

  MADISON BAR OWNER WANTED IN CONNECTION WITH TWO MURDERS.

  Oh, Christ. That was what Gene was reading. Where has he gone, to get the cops? Danny perches on a chair and peers out through the glass panel at the top of the exterior office wall. He can’t see anything, but he can hear men’s voices, and the crackle and beep sound of what could be police or security two-way radios. Danny leaps off the chair, flings opens the door and looks in the other direction. There’s a door at the end of the corridor. He paces out and tries the handle. It opens on to a small room with a sink and a fridge for making tea and coffee. He hears a heavy tread coming from reception and retreats back into the office. The only thing he can think of is the clothes rail. He stands on the wall side of the heavily laden rail with one end nudging up towards the door and waits. Either it will work or it won’t, he thinks, along with how the fuck did things come to this?

  The door opens and Danny sees Gene enter at pace, followed by two uniformed cops. Immediately he rams the clothes rail against the opposite wall, blocking the doorway, with himself on the door side and Gene and the cops on the other. Does he have even ten seconds? He doesn’t think, he just runs, along the corridor, through reception, down a couple of sets of stairs. He’s grabbed some sportswear off the rail and he throws it behind him as he goes, partly because it reminds him of something he’s seen in a movie and partly because it might catch someone in the face or under foot. Go. Go.

  Three floors down, he bolts along the corridor in the opposite direction from the tea and coffee room side of the building. He can hear the pounding of heavy cop feet continuing on down the stairs as he goes. There must be a service elevator somewhere in the Ainslie building, and there’s nowhere else for it to be. He sees a pair of swing doors at the end of the corridor, and hears another pair smash open behind him.

  ‘Hold up or I’ll shoot!’

  He’ll shoot? Fuck that. Bluffing. Danny flings a couple baseball shirts in the air behind him and powers on towards the door. A shot rings out. Warning. Bluffing. Fuck it. He’s not stopping. A shot? No. It was a door slam, a furniture crash. And he’s through the doors, and there it is, gray doors and a gray metal meal trolley beside it. He leans on the button, down, down, and the footsteps are getting closer, and the elevator is coming, thirty-two, thirty-three, thirty-four. As it pings and the doors open, he swings the metal meal trolley across and jams it beneath the handles of the swing doors and makes the service elevator door just as it’s closing and hits the lower-ground-floor button.

  As he’s going down, his phone rings. He must have left it on after he called Gene to set up the meet. Well, no sense in turning it off again; he’s been well and truly traced by now. He looks at the screen, and answers. ‘Mrs Brogan?’

  ‘You remembered. Well done. Mr Brogan.’

  ‘Did you remember?’

  ‘All the time.’

  ‘I was there, Claire. The Allegro Hotel. Room four-three-five?’

  ‘You were in Chicago?’

  ‘Just … passing through.’

  ‘Passing through? What does that mean?’

  ‘It means … Claire, I know we need to talk, but right now, there are cops after me.’

  ‘You’re in Gene Peterson’s office, right? I’m in Chicago too, in the Old Town? Can you make it over here? You can get the El, faster than a cab.’

  ‘What station? I’m on North Mich here.’

  ‘You’re on North Mich … go north one block to Grand Avenue, it runs under so you’ve got to use the steps, then … west two blocks, no, three, Grand and State. It’s the red line, ride north to Fullerton.’

  ‘Thank you. I’ve done nothing wrong, Claire.’

  ‘Neither have I, Danny. Neither have I.’

  Danny closes the call as the elevator hits the lower-ground floor. If no one has done anything wrong, just how have they managed to land in so much shit?

  There Will Never Be Another You

  Detective Nora Fox is at her desk at the West District station house on McKenna Boulevard. She has passed the Miraculous Medal on for fingerprinting: crosschecking with the alleged murder weapon may tell if there is a third party in the frame, or if the evidence points to
Danny Brogan. She has checked in with Ken Fowler, who tells her that Jeff Torrance’s red ’76 Mustang was spotted parked on North Clark Street in Chicago by a CPD beat officer, and that the vehicle is now under surveillance ready for the suspect’s return. Ralph Cowley was unmarried, but he had a sister living in Milwaukee; she’s expected tomorrow to identify the body. He ran a preliminary financial check on Danny Brogan’s finances, and found them to be in as heinous a condition as you might imagine of someone against whom the bank had initiated foreclosure proceedings, and far worse than his wife had thought. On top of the money borrowed to invest with Jonathan Glatt ($205,000 on top of the $50,000 in savings) there is a further $5,000 monthly cash withdrawal, which raises the question: who needs five grand a month, on top of all other average household spending? Elton John for fresh flowers? No documentary or anecdotal evidence points to Brogan being a degenerate gambler.

  Having delivered his report, Nora expects that Ken will, as usual, want to go home, but no, he’s happy to stay at his desk. Halloween is not a night to be in the house. Now Nora is back at her desk, examining the file her friend Cass Epstein from the Wisconsin Department of Children and Families has left for her.

  There’s a birth certificate for Claire Bradberry, DOB 2/9/1973, with the relevant details: her father’s name, her mother’s maiden name (Howard), their ages, their states of birth (father Wisconsin, mother Illinois).

  There’s a report from the social worker who handled the case in November 1976, after the fire, detailing the contacts made with Claire’s two surviving brothers (the child having been placed in temporary foster care with a family in the Milwaukee suburb of River Hills that had experience of dealing with potentially traumatized infants). Neither brother expressed any wish to stand in loco parentis to Claire, or to have any say in her fate. In fact, it’s noted, ‘subjects expressed zero interest even in meeting the child, whom neither had seen since she was a baby.’

  There’s the documentation detailing the contacts between the Wisconsin DCF and the Family Future adoption agency on Miflin St, starting with the rationale for choosing Family Future over any other agency (usually there would have been an attempt to match, socially, culturally, ethnically, the background of the child to the adoptive family, but in the case of the Bradberrys, ‘other factors may and should be considered.’ In other words, and despite the fact that social services had failed to catch the Bradberry family while they were alive, the level of dysfunction present in the house was such that it was thought better to make a clean break of it.

  And there are the records of the adoption: the Consent to Adoption form signed on the child’s behalf on February 4, 1977, and the Adoption Confirmation form, signed on Claire Bradberry’s fourth birthday, February 9, 1977, by Barry and Janet Marshall of Kenosha, Wisconsin. And although, in the light of the DCF’s willingness to dispense with any attempt to match the backgrounds of adoptive parents and child, it would be stretching it too far to describe it as an irony, Barry Marshall’s profession is noted as that of medical doctor.

  In September, 1980, there are a number of reports and minutes of case conferences between Kenosha Department of Human Services, the Family Future Adoption Agency and Wisconsin DCF following the cardiac arrest and sudden death of Barry Marshall. Case workers agree that, while in some respects Janet Marshall is considered eccentric (she has an interest in spiritualism, and one of her neighbors reported seeing her sunbathing in the nude, although upon investigation, it emerged a) that the sunbathing took place while the child, now called Deirdre Marshall, was in school, and b) that in order for this neighbor to have seen Janet Marshall naked, he would have had to climb up on his roof as far as the chimney pot – which, it subsequently emerged, was exactly what he had done), she and the child have formed an extremely strong bond. A testimonial from Janet Marshall, which is littered with flaky-to-the-max references to birth signs and gem stones and reincarnation but is obviously warm and loving and, as importantly, intelligent and otherwise sensible, and an account of an interview conducted with the seven-year-old Deirdre, in which she displays considerable affection towards Janet, whom she calls Mommy, and recurring gratitude (to whom it is unclear, but it appears to be some indeterminate spiritual power or entity) that while Daddy was taken away, Mommy is still here.

  Recommendation: That Janet be entrusted to raise Deirdre as a lone parent.

  In 1985 there’s a further sheaf of case notes and conference reports between the agencies already dealing with the case and the California DCF and Department of Human Services. Janet Marshall intended to marry another doctor, Thomas Adler, with a family practice in Santa Monica, and to move herself and Deirdre out to live in Los Angeles. Background checks were run on Adler (even though he had no stated intention of adopting Deirdre) and testimonials were recorded once more. Janet’s is even flakier than the last time, as if the West Coast is already working its counter-cultural magic in her brain; Nora particularly enjoys Janet’s analogy between her imminent wedding and the partial eclipse of one planet by another. But the baseline is still that Deirdre will attend an expensive private school, she will go to university, she will make the best of herself. Deirdre, by now a mature twelve, alternately enthuses about the school she will attend and the fact that she’s getting out of Hicksville at last, and worries, in a humorous manner, that California might not only turn her mother into even more of a hippie than she is already, it could start to work its dubious spell on herself. Much discussion is devoted to whether drugs play any part in the Marshall household, and if medical reports and even a police investigation are required, but it is decided that there is insufficient evidence to support this approach, and that, while it is clear that Deirdre is increasingly looking on her mother as, if not a liability, certainly an embarrassment, this is not an unusual development in the relationship between adolescent females and their mothers.

  There are several further pieces of documentation. In 1994, requests are made when Deirdre is twenty-one through the Wisconsin Adoption Registry for genetic and medical information on her birth family, and for their identities. There follows another raft of paperwork on the rights and wrongs of releasing the names of her birth parents without their having issued consenting affidavits, notwithstanding the fact that the Bradberrys didn’t voluntarily surrender their daughter: they died. There is a strong argument made by several of the case workers to the effect that the circumstances of Deirdre’s family’s death are so distressing and potentially disturbing that it might well prove more beneficial to her if the knowledge is withheld. Countering this is the position that this would in effect be to play God, and that none of the statutory bodies have this right. Psychiatric assessments and psychological profiles are requested. Eventually, it is concluded that, on balance, the identities of the birth parents should be disclosed. A series of further meetings and consultations ensue, and it is considered that, given the circumstances, the subject is bearing up remarkably well. A few further details of Deirdre’s life at this time are noted.

  That she married when she was nineteen, and moved to Madison, Wisconsin, not knowing it was in fact the town of her birth.

  That her husband was killed in a traffic accident when an oil truck jackknifed on the Beltway.

  That before he died, he had set his wife up in her own hairdressing business in the city.

  That at this stage, Deirdre had become used to the diminutive name everyone had called her for years, and had taken to signing Deirdre as Dee, even on official documents.

  That furthermore, she had taken the surname of her husband, Martyn St Clair, upon marriage, and she had retained it after his death, and from that moment on would style herself Dee St Clair.

  Why Was I Born?

  In her apartment on East Wilson, Dee St Clair is crying. You can tell by her eyes that she has been crying for some time. She’s sitting in that living room of hers with the view out across Lake Monona, and you can see the lights of the houses across the shore, and the star trails of fireworks i
n the darkened city sky, and smell the jasmine and grapefruit candles burning slow around the room, but Dee isn’t looking out the window and even if she was, she probably wouldn’t notice the lights or the lake or the fireworks or any damn thing at all. Dee isn’t aware of the scented candles either; she is barely aware of her own breathing. Dee is responding to emails and texts and calls because she has no option any more. Not all of them. Sometimes the screen of her iPhone flares up and flashes and she winces and looks away until it stops. She wishes it could all stop without anyone else getting hurt, but the way it’s going, that’s not likely. She wishes it had never started in the first place. But it did, and willingly or not, she is at the heart of it. So she texts, and she emails, and she sometimes pulls herself together to talk without sounding as if she’s falling apart, and in between times, she cries. If only she had never met him. If only fate wasn’t fate. She cries and she cries and she cries. But when the call comes, the call to move, Dee will do what she’s called to do. It’s too late now to do anything else.

  In a store room in the cellar of the converted grain store on West Wacker, Dave Ricks is making a telephone call. We can’t hear what he’s saying, or tell if he’s angry, or excited, or upset. Well, maybe we could if we came a little closer, but we don’t really want to. We know we’re going to find out soon enough, and sometimes it’s better to wait. Sometimes it’s better, and sometimes we’re a little uneasy about learning the truth, even when deep down we know it’s what we want. There’s a riot of emotion in Dave’s face, that’s for sure. In the meantime, we’re looking around the room, and thinking this must be the office Dave started the design consultancy in. From little acorns. But the longer we look the sooner we stop thinking about design consultancies, or business acumen, or Chicago architecture. The longer we look the sooner we stop thinking at all. Soon all we do is look, is stare, is gape.

  For the walls of the cellar are covered with paintings, hundreds of paintings, barely a square inch of wall space to be seen. The paintings are of different sizes. Some are framed, and what a variety of frames, gilt, and steel, and plain and painted wood. Some are behind glass, some are bare canvas. The paintings are in different styles, some clear as a photograph, some thick with swirling paint, some naturalistic, some almost abstract. The paintings come in different colors, some bright and garish, some muted and monochrome.