A/N: Just a fun fact: In 1877 Boston, Massachusetts was the first city to establish a medical examiner system as opposed to having a coroner, who is politically appointed and does not necessarily have a medical degree. Coincidence? I don't know, but happy reading! Review, please!
Chapter 4 – Through a Glass Darkly
1947
The next day, Woody began his search in earnest, beginning with a visit to the imposing Beacon Hill structure that the Cavanaughs called home. In point of fact, the house belonged to Jordan, as it would have belonged to her mother, Emily, were she still living, though it was being held in trust by Max until his daughter's marriage.
It was odd, really, the things one did and did not know about a family like the Cavanaughs. So much about them was shrouded in mystery; while at the same time, much of their private lives had become public consumption. Casting his mind back, Woody tried to remember all he had learned about them on that day so many years ago when, just after his first meeting with Jordan and filled with an overwhelming curiosity to know everything he possibly could about this enigmatic woman, he had sought out the one source he knew he could count on to be able to impart to him even the minutest details of their existence.
1939
He still remembered the room, a tiny hole at the back of the precinct that served as a repository for all things that had outlived their usefulness. The air was stale and hazy with the residual smoke of a thousand cigarettes lit over a lifetime in the windowless, airless cupboard, where irregular stacks of boxes and spills of papers formed fantastic shapes and patterns in the murky atmosphere. At the far end of the room, seated behind a warped slab of wood that barely passed as a desk, sat the Boston Police Department's oldest living relic.
According to legend, he had once been an officer, one of the best, but no one in the precinct's current employ could remember such a time. He had been injured numerous times, but had kept on at his job until he had to be literally forced off the streets. Rather than choosing to retire, he had remained with the department, being shunted from one desk job to another, growing ever more remote and therefore mythical, as he was gradually detached from the day to day workings of the place, eventually coming to serve as a sort of collective memory, the final source to go to when all other recourses had failed. If information was needed, he was the person from whom one sought it.
Woody approached the desk and the tiny man, wrinkled, hairless, almost sub-human in appearance, who sat behind it. With a cough, he attempted to alert the man to his presence, but to no avail. The man merely continued to sift aimlessly through the mountain of papers covering his desk. Woody tried again.
"Excuse me, sir?"
No answer.
"Sir?" he asked, louder this time.
Still no answer.
"Lieutenant Wilde!" he shouted.
He looked up, finally, blinking owlishly at Woody from behind enormous glasses.
"No need to shout, young man. No need to shout," he murmured absent mindedly.
"I'm sorry, sir."
"What's that?"
"I said I'm sorry, sir," Woody shouted again.
"Oh, you're sorry! Quite all right. Quite all right. Now, what can I do for you, young man?" he asked listlessly.
"I was wondering, sir, if you could tell me anything about the Cavanaughs."
"The whats?"
"The Cavanaughs!"
"Oh, the Cavanaughs," he said, the indifferent air fading from his manner, to be replaced by a quiet pleasure at having an audience for his reminiscences. "Lovely family, lovely family. I remember Max when he just joined the force. Great detective. And his wife, Emily. Poor woman. Quite a scandal, it was, when those two married. And their daughter, Jordan. Used to come visit me when she was just a wee thing; pulled up flowers from the park across the way to bring to me. Still does, sometimes."
Woody smiled at this innocent, childish image of the whirlwind he had met the night before.
"Could you tell me about them?" he inquired, loudly.
"That's what I'm trying to do, son."
"I'm sorry. Please continue," he shouted.
And so Woody spent the afternoon cloistered in that tiny office, ignoring his discomfort at the cramped quarters and his difficulty breathing through the choking cigarette smoke, listening in fascination as the old man regaled him with tales of generations of Cavanaughs, past and present. He learned of Max's parents and grandparents, ostensibly a regular working-class family, but always followed by whispers of criminal pasts and shady dealings. He learned of the scandal that rocked Boston when Emily Pritchard, of one of Boston's oldest and wealthiest families, had run off with Max Cavanaugh, a brilliant but penniless detective with uncertain prospects and a questionable family background, and of their subsequent stormy marriage. Emily, according to Wilde, had always been a strange child – sweet, but moody, and there was something that just wasn't quite right about her. The couple had been prone to frequent, rather public arguments, and Emily was known to have disappeared several times in the years before her daughter was born. For a while after Jordan's birth, their lives appeared to have settled down into an idyllic pattern. Both Emily and Max were devoted to the girl, and all other problems seemed to be forgotten, especially with Max's rapid career advancement. However, such happiness could never last, and by Jordan's fifth birthday, the fights had returned, as well as the disappearances. Emily's behavior grew more and more erratic and Max grew more and more withdrawn as the years ground on, especially after the death of Emily's mother and the subsequent financial windfall it created for her only child, until the day their lives were irrevocably shattered, when Jordan came home from school to find her mother's lifeless body sprawled across the floor, blood congealing around a fatal bullet wound. The murder was never solved.
At that point, Wilde shifted his narrative to Jordan, telling Woody of the change in her after her mother's death. She and Max had always shared a closely bonded relationship, but upon Emily's death Max grew increasingly anxious about Jordan and dependent upon her, always worried about her safety and shoveling responsibilities on her in an effort to control that safety. For her part, Jordan seemed to take it all in her stride. Always a curiously adult child, she seemed to take it upon herself to care for her father, growing closer to him rather than resenting his interference in her life. But while absorbing her father's worries, she also began her own form of rebellion. According to Wilde, she had developed a vigilant sense of justice, and many were the times he had seen her in her father's office, sporting a panoply of cuts and bruises from her latest fight, always claiming that she was in the right, that the other girl or boy had been doing something truly atrocious and had to be stopped. She withdrew from the world her mother had belonged to, preferring to spend her time investigating her father's cases rather than enter into the social world of the exclusive school her mother's money had provided for. At sixteen she began her life of scandal when, as a reluctant debutante, she had entered society with red stripes sewn into her white cotillion gown. From then on, her life had been one of unorthodoxy. She was linked to first one young man, then another, but she never appeared to be on the verge of settling down and remained unmarried, a sin in and of itself for a young woman so attractive and socially prominent. While she did upon occasion attend various events expected of one in her position, she was as often as not seen poking around the police station or city morgue, her companions an indiscriminate hodge-podge of age, background, and position.
By the afternoon's end, Woody was more curious and unsatisfied than he had been before his visit, his fascination with the mystifying woman he had met the evening before having only increased with the taste of her history he had been given by the blind, deaf, and all-knowing old man hidden away from the noise and action of everyday life.
1947
Once again chastising himself for woolgathering, Woody brought himself back to the present and his current task: to interview the newest additions to Jordan Cavanaugh's life – her stepmother and stepsister. With a sigh, he mounted the steps, wondering what was in store for him upon his meeting with these two unknown entities.