I'll Be Your Blue Sky (Love Walked In #3)(37)

Although John did not catch sight of Mrs. O’Shea’s exiting the property and found no evidence of anyone outside, he knew that someone might spot his car if he left it on the street for too long, so he wanted to get Sarah and her child out of Edith’s house as quickly as possible. He knew that it would be only a matter of time before his fellow police officers found the body of Elliot Giles and began to search for the dead man’s wife and child. As soon as Edith finished tending to Sarah’s wounds, John Blanchard took Sarah and baby Steven away in his car. The next morning, after dropping them off at what he hoped was a safe location, he came back to Antioch Beach.

The morning after the shooting, Elliot Giles’s cousin, Roger, arrived with his wife and three children at the Giles residence for a scheduled visit and found the house locked and apparently empty, despite all three cars being in the garage. Over the next few hours, Roger Giles repeatedly called the residence from a phone at a local restaurant but never got an answer, and, finally, concerned and frustrated, he called the police. When the officers arrived on the scene, they discovered Elliot Giles’s body and immediately began searching for Sarah and the baby. Because Mrs. O’Shea had not yet come forward, no one knew of Chief Blanchard’s possible connection to the case. Also, at the time, Sarah was not yet officially a suspect but a missing person. One theory, proposed by Chief Blanchard, was that she and Steven had been kidnapped.

The morning of December 12, 1956, Mrs. O’Shea read about the case in the paper, put two and two together, and contacted the police about what she’d seen, giving her statement to one of John’s fellow officers. As soon as he learned what she said, John turned himself in, admitting he had helped Sarah and her baby get away, and telling them that Edith had played no role in their disappearance.

When the police went to question Edith, they found a Closed sign on the door of Blue Sky House, and Edith and her car were gone. At the trial John testified that Edith was a deeply private woman who had suffered a terrible personal loss, and he speculated that she’d left town, not to avoid police questioning, since she knew nothing about the death of Elliot or about Sarah’s and the baby’s whereabouts, but because Sarah and her condition had upset her and she wanted to get away for a few days. When she did not return and the police, despite assiduous searching, could find no trace of her, John surmised that either she had no idea they were looking for her or that, to avoid unwanted attention and because she had no information that would help in the police department’s search, she had decided to stay away until everything had blown over.

At the insistence of the powerful Giles family, the trial took place quickly, less than a month after John turned himself in, and everyone expected it to end quickly as well, with the jury finding John guilty and a judge throwing the book at him at sentencing. But somehow—and no one knew how, since, as far as anyone knew, he was neither rich nor well connected—John had snagged himself a top-notch lawyer from a fancy New York City law firm called Wickham-Flaherty, and Randolph Flaherty had left no stone unturned in John’s defense. He paraded in witness after witness to attest to Chief Blanchard’s courage, work ethic, kindness, and overall nobility of spirit, while another stream of witnesses spoke of Elliot Giles’s jealous rages, his violent streak, and what Randolph Flaherty called his “small, twisted, shriveled soul.”

Reading through the newspaper reports of the trial, I noticed a shift in perspective, a gradual turning of the tables. Headlines went from “Police Chief Turned Jail Bird” and “Police Chief John Blanchard Refuses to Give Up Murderess” to “John Blanchard Sacrificed Himself to Save Woman and Baby.” One editorial admired his implacable demeanor and steady blue eyes and called him saintly; the president of the local PTA wrote an eloquent letter to the editor titled “Sarah Giles Did What Any Mother Would Do!” that ended with the words “God bless Chief Blanchard!” By the end of the trial, John was being regarded as a hero by many local folks and, instead of the fifteen-to twenty-year sentence that the press had seemed sure of at the trial’s start, he was given four to six years. I didn’t learn how long he’d actually stayed in prison, but none of the legal experts the paper had interviewed seemed to think he would be made to serve the whole term. After the sentencing, an unnamed source at the police department disclosed that, while both Sarah Giles and Edith Herron were considered to be “at large,” the department had let its search for them drop.

“We all hope,” the anonymous source said, “that wherever those women are, they’ve found peace and a safe haven.”

The library was almost empty. The sky outside the periodical room window had turned to plum and smoke. Twilight. Closing time. I set down my pencil, gathered up my stack of notes—a final rustle—and summoned the memory of Edith in her gardening clogs, clear-voiced and assured, candid and wise and kind, standing firmly on the earth despite her cane, and I felt positive that she had found peace and a safe haven. I hoped that Sarah and her son had, too.





Chapter Fifteen

Edith





Winter 1953



Later, when Edith tried to pinpoint what it was about George Graham that made him stand out from everyone else in the sandwich shop, she realized that, despite his cardigan sweater and lack of tie, the folded newspaper tucked under one arm, it was his utter lack of casualness. Upright posture. Hair immaculately cut, slicked back, impervious to sea breezes. A face like chiseled marble with serious dark eyes. An expensive watch he glanced at more than once, in the manner of one accustomed to being justifiably impatient and to having his daylight hours neatly carved up into important appointments.