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.