The first person I saw when I reached the office on Monday was Fielding.
I had come in through the bay, and he was already dressed in scrubs, waiting to get on the elevator. When I noticed the plasticized blue paper booties over his running shoes, I thought of what the police had found inside Steven Spurrier's house. Our medical supplies were on state contract. But there were any number of businesses in any city that sold booties and surgical gloves. One did not need to be a physician to purchase such items any more than one needed to be a police officer to buy a uniform, badge, or gun.
"Hope you got a good night's rest," Fielding warned as the elevator doors parted.
We stepped inside.
"Give me the bad news. What have we got this morning?"
I said.
"Six posts, every one of them a homicide."
"Great," I said irritably.
"Yeah, the Knife and Gun Club had a busy weekend. Four shootings, two stabbings. Spring has sprung."
We got off on the second floor and I was already taking off my suit jacket and rolling up my sleeves when I walked into my office. Marino was sitting in a chair, his briefcase on his lap, a cigarette lit. I assumed one of the morning's cases was his until he handed me two lab reports.
"Thought you'd want to see it for yourself," he said.
Typed at the top of one report was the name Steven Spurrier. The serology lab had already completed a workup on his blood. The other report was eight years old, the results of the workup done on the blood found inside Elizabeth Mott's car.
"Of course, it's going to be a while before the DNA results are in," Marino began to explain, "but so far so good."
Settling behind my desk, I took a moment to study the reports. The blood from the Volkswagen was type O, PGM type 1, EAP type B, ADA type 1, and EsD type 1. This particular combination could be found in approximately 8 percent of the population. The results were consistent with those of the tests conducted on the blood from Spurrier's suspect kit. He also was type O, types in other blood groups the same, but since more enzymes had been tested for, the combination had been narrowed to approximately 1 percent of the population.
"It's not enough to charge him with murder," I said to Marino. "You'd have to have more than the fact that his blood type includes him in a group of thousands of people."
"A damn shame the report from the old blood isn't more complete."
"They didn't routinely test for as many enzymes back then," I replied.
"Maybe they could do it now?" he suggested. "If we could narrow it down, that would be a big help.
The damn DNA for Spurrier's blood is going to take weeks."
"They're not going to be able to do it," I told him. "The blood from Elizabeth's car is too old.
After this many years the enzymes would have degraded, so the results this time would be less specific than what's on this eight year old report. The best you could get now is the ABO grouping, and almost half of the population is type O. We have no choice but to wait for the DNA results. Besides," I added, "even if you could lock him up this minute you know he'd make bail. He's still under surveillance, I hope."
"Being watched like a hawk, and you can bet he knows it. The good news is he's not likely to try whacking anyone. The bad news is he's got time to destroy any evidence we missed. Like the murder weapons."
"The alleged missing gym bag."
"Don't add up that we couldn't find it. We did everything short of tearing up his floorboards."
"Maybe you should have torn up his floorboards."
"Yeah, maybe."
I was trying to think where else Spurrier might have hidden a gym bag when it occurred to me. I don't know why I didn't think of it earlier.
"How is Spurrier built?"
I asked.
"He ain't very big, but he looks pretty strong. Not an ounce of fat."
"Then he probably works out, exercises."
"Probably. Why?"
"If he belongs to some place, the YMCA, a fitness club, he might have a locker. I do at Westwood. If I wanted to hide something, that would be a good place to do it. No one would think twice when he walked out of the club with his gym bag in hand or when he returned the bag to his locker."
"Interesting idea, " Marino said thoughtfully."I'll ask around, see what I can find out."
He lit another cigarette and unzipped his briefcase. "I got pictures of his crib, if you're interested."
I glanced up at the clock. "I've got a houseful downstairs. We'll have to make it quick."
He handed me a thick manila envelope of eight-by-tens. They were in order, and going through them was like seeing Spurrier's house through Marino's eyes, beginning with the Colonial brick front lined with boxwoods and a brick walk leading to the black front door. In back was a paved drive leading to a garage that was attached to the house.
I spread out several more photographs and found myself inside his living room. On the bare hardwood floor was a gray leather couch near a glass coffee table. Centered on the table was a jagged brass plant growing out of a chunk of coral. A recent copy of the Smithsonian was perfectly aligned with the table's edges.
Centered on the magazine was a remote control that I suspected operated the overhead television projector suspended like a spaceship from the whitewashed ceiling. An eighty-inch television screen was retracted into an inconspicuous vertical bar above the bookcase lined with VCR tapes, neatly labeled, and scores of hardbound volumes, the titles of which I could not make out. To one side of the bookcase was a bank of sophisticated electronic equipment.
"The squirrel's got his own movie theater," Marino said. "Got surround sound, speakers in every room. The whole setup probably cost more than your Mercedes, and he wasn't sitting back at night watching Sound of Music, either. Those tapes there in the bookcase" - he reached across my desk to point them out. "They're all Lethal Weapon-type shit, flicks about Vietnam, vigilantes.
Now on the shelf right above is the good stuff. The tapes look like your everyday box office hits, but you pop one of them in the VCR and get a little surprise. The one labeled On Golden Pond, for example, should be called On the Cesspool. Hardcore violent pornography. Benton and I were together all of yesterday viewing the crap. Friggin' unbelievable. About every other minute, I felt like taking a bath."
"Did you find any home movies?"
"No. Not any photography equipment, either."
I looked at more photographs. In the dining room was another glass table, this one surrounded by transparent acrylic chairs. I noticed that the hardwood floor was bare. I had yet to see a rug or carpet in any room.
The kitchen was immaculate and modern. Windows were shrouded with gray mini-blinds. There were no curtains, no draperies in any room I had seen, not even upstairs where this creature slept. The brass bed was king-size, neatly made, sheets white, but no spread. Dresser drawers pulled open revealed the warm-up suits Marino had told me about, and in boxes on the closet floor were packets of surgical gloves and booties.
"There's nothing fabric," I marveled, returning the photographs to their envelope. "I've never before seen a house that didn't have at least one rug."
"No curtains, either. Not even in the shower," Marino said. "It's enclosed in glass doors. Of course, there are towels, sheets, his clothes."
"Which he probably washes constantly."
"The upholstery in his Lincoln is leather," Marino said. "And the carpet's covered with plastic mats."
"He doesn't have any pets?"
"No."
"The way he has furnished his house may have to do with more than his personality."
Marino met my eyes. "Yeah, I'm thinking that."
"Fibers, pet hairs," I said. "He doesn't have to worry about transferring them."
"You ever thought it interesting that all of the abandoned vehicles in these cases was so clean?"
I had.
"Maybe he vacuums them after the crimes," he said.
"At a car wash?"
"A filling station, apartment complex, any place that has a coin-operated car vacuum. The murders were committed late at night. By the time he stopped somewhere to vacuum the car afterward, there wouldn't be many people out to see what he was doing."
"Maybe. Who knows what he did?"
I said. "But the picture we're getting is of someone who is obsessively treat and careful. Someone very paranoid and familiar with the types of evidence that are important in forensic examinations."
Leaning back in the chair, Marino said, "The Seven-Eleven where Deborah and Fred stopped the night they disappeared, I dropped by there over the weekend and talked to the clerk."
"Ellen Jordan?"
He nodded. "I showed her a photo lineup, asked her if anybody in it looked like the man who was buying coffee in the Seven-Eleven the night Fred and Deborah was in there. She picked out Spurrier."
"She was certain?"
"Yes. Said he was wearing a jacket of some sort, dark. All she really recalled was that the guy was in dark clothes, and I'm thinking Spurrier already had on a Warm-up suit when he went inside the Seven-Eleven. I've been running a lot of things through my mind.
We'll start with two things we do know for a fact. The interiors of the abandoned cars were very clean, and in the four cases before Deborah and Fred, white cotton fibers were recovered from the driver's seat, right?"
"Yes," I agreed.
"Okay. I think this squirrel was out cruising for victims and spotted Fred and Deborah on the road, maybe saw them sitting real close to each other, her head on Fred's shoulder, that sort of thing. It sets him off. He tails them, pulls into the Seven-Eleven right after they do. Maybe he slips into the warm-up suit at this time, changes in his car. Maybe he already has it on. But he goes inside, hangs around looking through magazines, buying coffee and listening to what they're saying to the clerk. He overhears the clerk giving Fred and Deborah directions to the nearest rest stop where there's a bathroom. Then he leaves, speeds east on Sixty-four, turns into the rest stop and parks. He gets his bag that's got his weapons, ligatures, gloves, and so on, and makes himself scarce until Deborah and Fred pull in. He probably waits until she's gone to use the ladies' room, then he approaches Fred, feeds him some story about his car breaking down or whatever. Maybe Spurrier says he was working out at the gym, on his way home, thus explaining why he's dressed the way he is."
"Fred wouldn't recognize him from the Seven-Eleven?"
"I doubt it," Marino said. "But it don't matter. Spurrier might have been bold enough to mention that, say he was just buying coffee at the Seven-Eleven, and his car conked out right after he left. He says he's just called a wrecker and wonders if Fred could give him a lift back to his car so he can wait for the wrecker, promises that his car isn't very far down the road, et cetera. Fred agrees, then Deborah reappears. Once Spurrier's inside the Cherokee, Fred and Deborah are his."
I remembered Fred described as helpful, generous. He probably would have helped a stranger in distress, especially one as smooth and clean-cut as Steven Spurrier.
"When the Cherokee's back on the Interstate, Spurrier leans over and unzips his bag, puts on gloves, booties, and slips out his gun, points it at the back of Deborah's head…"
I thought of the bloodhound's reaction when he had sniffed the seat where it was believed Deborah had been sitting. What the dog had detected was her terror.
"… He orders Fred to drive to the spot Spurrier's already picked in advance. By the time they stop on the logging road, Deborah's hands have probably already been tied behind her back. Her shoes and socks are off.
Spurrier orders Fred to take off his shoes and socks, then binds his hands. Spurrier orders them out of the Cherokee and walks them into the woods. Maybe he's wearing night vision goggles so he can see. He might have had those in his bag, too.
"Then he starts his game with them," Marino went on in a detached voice. "He takes out Fred first, then goes after Deborah. She resists, gets cut, and he shoots her. He drags their bodies to the clearing, positioning them side by side, her arm under his, like they was holding hands, holding on to each other. Spurrier smokes a few cigarettes, maybe sits out there in the dark by the bodies, enjoying the afterglow. Then he heads back to the Cherokee, takes off his warm-up, gloves, booties, puts them in a plastic bag he's got inside his gym bag. Maybe puts the kids' shoes and socks in the bag, too. He drives away, finds some deserted place with a coin-operated vacuum and cleans out the inside of the Cherokee, especially the driver's area where he's been sitting. All done, and he disposes of the trash bag, maybe in a Dumpster. I'm guessing he put something over the driver's seat at this point. Maybe a folded white sheet, a white towel in the first four cases - " "Most athletic clubs," I interrupted, "have a linen service. They keep a supply of white towels in the locker rooms. If Spurrier does keep his murder kit in a locker somewhere - "
Marino cut me off. "Yeah, I'm reading you loud and clear. Damn. Maybe I'd better start working on that one pronto."
"A white towel would explain the white cotton fibers found," I added.
"Except he must have used something different with Deborah and Fred. Hell, who knows? Maybe he sat on a plastic trash bag this time. The, point is, I'm thinking he sat on something so he didn't leave fibers from his clothes on the seat. Remember, he's not wearing the warm-up suit anymore, no way he would because it would be bloody. He drives off, dumps the Cherokee where we found it, and trots across the Interstate to the eastbound rest stop where his Lincoln's parked. He's out of there. Mission accomplished."
"There were probably a lot of cars in and out of the rest stop that night," I said. "No one was going to notice his Lincoln parked out there. But even if someone had, the tags wouldn't have come back to him because they were 'borrowed."' "Right. That's his last task, either returning the tags to the ride he stole them from or, if that isn't possible, just pitching them somewhere."
He paused, rubbing his face in his hands. "I've got a feeling Spurrier picked an MO early on and has pretty much stuck to it in all of the cases.
He cruises; spots his victims, tails them, and knows he's hit pay dirt if they pull off at some place, a bar, a rest stop, where they're going to be long enough for him to get set up. Then he makes his approach, pulls something to make them trust him. Maybe he strikes only once for every fifty times he goes out cruising. But he's still getting off on it."
"The scenario seems plausible for the five recent cases," I said. "But I don't think it works quite as well for Jill and Elizabeth. If the Palm Leaf Motel was where he'd left his car, that was some five miles from the Anchor Bar and Grill."
"We don't know that Spurrier hooked up with them at the Anchor."
"I have a feeling he did."
Marino looked surprised. "Why?"
"Because the women had been in his bookstore before," I explained. "They were familiar with Spurrier, though I doubt they knew him very well. I'm guessing that he watched them when they came in to buy newspapers, books, whatever. I suspect he sensed immediately that the two women were more than friends, and this pushed his button. He's obsessed with couples. Maybe he'd been contemplating his first killings, and he thought that two women would be easier than a man and a woman. He planned the crime long in advance, his fantasies fed every time Jill and Elizabeth came into his bookstore. He might have followed them, stalked them after hours, gone through a lot of dry runs, practicing. He had already selected the wooded area out near where Mr. Joyce lives and probably was the person who shot the dog. Then one night he follows Jill and Elizabeth to the Anchor, and this is when he decides to do it. He leaves his car somewhere, heads to the bar on foot, his gym bag in hand."
"Are you thinking he went inside the bar and watched them while they drank beer?"
"No," I said. "I think he was too careful for that. I think he hung back, waited until they came out to get into the Volkswagen. Then I think Spurrier approached them and put on the same act. His car had broken down. He was the owner of the bookstore they frequented. They had no reason to fear him. He gets inside, and very soon after his plan begins to unravel. They don't end up in the wooded area, but at the cemetery. The women, Jill, in particular, aren't very cooperative."
"And he bleeds inside the Volkswagen," Marino said.
"A nosebleed, maybe. Ain't no vacuum cleaner gonna get blood out of a seat or floor mat."
"I doubt he bothered to vacuum. Spurrier probably was panicking. He probably ditched the car as quickly as he could in the most convenient spot, which turned out to be the motel. As for where his car was parked, who knows? But I'm betting he was in for a little hike."
"Maybe the episode with the two women spooked him so bad he didn't try again for five years."
"I don't think that's it," I said. "Something's missing."
The telephone rang several weeks later when I was home alone working in my study. My recorded message had barely begun when the person hung up. The phone rang again half an hour later, and this time I answered before my machine. I said hello, and the line was disconnected again.
Perhaps someone was trying to reach Abby and did not want to talk to me? Perhaps Clifford Ring had discovered where she was? Distracted, I went to the refrigerator for a snack and settled on several slices of cheese.
I was back in my study paying bills when I heard a car pull in, gravel crunching beneath tires. I assumed it was Abby until the doorbell rang.
I looked through the peephole at Pat Harvey zipped up in a red windbreaker. The hang-ups, I thought. She had made certain I was home because she wanted to speak to me face-to-face.
She greeted me with "I'm sorry to impose," but I could tell she wasn't.
"Please come in," I said reluctantly.
She followed me to the kitchen, where I poured her a cup of coffee. She sat stiffly at the table, coffee mug cradled in her hands.
"I'm going to be very direct with you," she began. "It has come to my attention that this man they arrested in Williamsburg, Steven Spurrier, is believed to have murdered two women eight years ago."
"Where did you hear this?"
"That's not important. The cases were never solved and have now been linked to the murders of the five couples. The two women were Steven Spurrier's first victims."
I noticed that the lower lid of her left eye was twitching. Pat Harvey's physical deterioration since I had seen her last was shocking. Her auburn hair was lifeless; her eyes were dull; her skin was pale and drawn.
She looked even thinner than she had been during her televised press conference.
"I'm not sure I'm following you," I said tensely.
"He inspired their trust and they made themselves vulnerable. Which is exactly what he did with the others, with my daughter, with Fred."
She said all this as if she knew it for a fact. Pat Harvey had convicted Spurrier in her mind.
"But he will never be punished for Debbie's murder," she said. "I know that now."
"It is too early to know anything," I replied calmly.
"They have no proof. What was found inside his house is not enough. It will not hold up in any court, if the cases ever go to court. You can't convict someone of capital murder just because you found newspaper clippings and surgical gloves inside his house, especially if the defense claims the evidence was planted to frame his client."
She had been talking to Abby, I thought with a sick feeling.
"The only evidence," she went on coldly, "is the blood found inside the women's car. It will all depend on DNA, and there will be questions because the cases occurred so long ago. The chain of custody, for example. Even if the prints match and the courts accept the evidence, there is no certainty that a jury will, especially since the police have yet to find the murder weapons."
"They're still looking."
"He's had plenty of time to dispose of those by now," she replied, and she was right.
Marino had discovered that Spurrier worked out at a gym not far from where he lived. The police had searched his rented locker, which not only locked with a key but had had a padlock on it. The locker was empty.
The blue athletic bag Spurrier had been seen carrying around the gym had never been found, and never would be, I felt sure.
"What do you need from me, Mrs. Harvey?"
"I want you to answer my questions."
"Which questions?"
"If there is evidence I don't know about, I think you'd be wise to tell me."
"The investigation is not over. The police, the FBI are working very hard on your daughter's case."
She stared across the kitchen. "Are they talking to you?"
Instantly, I understood. No one directly involved in the investigation was giving Pat Harvey the time of day.
She had become a pariah, perhaps even a joke. She was not going to admit this to me, but that's why she had appeared at my door.
"Do you believe Steven Spurrier murdered my daughter?"
"Why does my opinion matter?" I asked.
"It matters a great deal."
"Why?"
I asked again.
"You don't form opinions lightly. I don't think you jump to conclusions or believe something just because you wish to. You're familiar with the evidence" - her voice trembled - "and you took care of Debbie."
I could not think of what to say.
"So I'll ask you again. Do you believe Steven Spurrier murdered them, murdered her?"
I hesitated, just for an instant, but it was enough. When I told her that I could not possibly answer such a question, and indeed, did not know the answer, she did not listen.
She got up from the table.
I watched her dissolve in the night, her profile briefly illuminated by the interior light of her Jaguar as she got in and drove away.
Abby did not come in until after I had given up waiting for her and had gone to bed. I slept fitfully and opened any eyes when I heard water running downstairs. I squinted at the clock. It was almost midnight. I got up and slipped into my robe.
She must have heard me in the hall, for when I reached her bedroom she was standing in the doorway, her pajamas a sweat suit, feet bare.
"You're up late," she said.
"So are you."
"Well, I…"
She didn't finish her sentence as I walked inside her room and sat on the edge of the bed.
"What's up?"
she asked uneasily.
"Pat Harvey came to see me earlier this evening, that's what's up. You've been talking to her."
"I've been talking to a lot of people."
"I know you want to help her," I said. "I know you've been outraged by the way her daughter's death has been used to hurt her. Mrs. Harvey's a fine woman, and I think you genuinely care about her. But she needs to stay out of the investigation, Abby."
She looked at me without speaking.
"For her own good," I added empathically.
Abby sat down on the rug, crossing her legs Indian style, and leaned against the wall.
"What did she say to you?" she asked.
"She's convinced Spurrier murdered her daughter and will never be punished for it."
"I certainly had nothing to do with her reaching such a conclusion," she said. "Pat has a mind of her own."
"Spurrier's arraignment is Friday. Does she plan to be there?"
"It's just a petit larceny charge. But if you're asking if I'm worried Pat might appear and make a scene…"
She shook her head. "No way. It would serve no purpose for her to show up. She's not an idiot, Kay."
"And you?"
"What? Am I an idiot?" She evaded me again.
"Will you be at the arraignment?"
"Sure. And I'll tell you exactly how it will go. He'll be in and out, will plead guilty to petit larceny and get slapped with a fifteen-hundred-dollar fine. And he's going to spend a little time in jail, maybe a month at most. The cops want him to sweat behind bars for a while, break him down so he'll talk."
"How do you know that?"
"He's not going to talk," she went on. "They're going to lead him out of the courthouse in front of everyone and shove him in the back of a patrol car. It's all meant to scare and humiliate him, but it won't work. He knows they don't have enough on him. He'll bide his time in jail, then be out. A month isn't forever."
"You sound as if you feel sorry for him."
"I don't feel anything for him," she said. "Spurrier was into recreational cocaine, according to his attorney, and the night the cops caught him stealing the license tags, he was planning to make a buy. Spurrier was afraid some drug dealer would turn out to be a snitch, record his plate number, maybe give it to the cops. That's the explanation for the stolen tags."
"You can't believe that," I said heatedly.
Abby straightened out her legs, wincing a little.
Without saying a word, she stood up and walked out of the room. I followed her to the kitchen, my frustration mounting. As she began to fill a glass with ice, I placed my hands on her shoulders and turned her around until we were face-to-face.
"Are you listening to me?"
Her eyes softened. "Please don't be angry with me.
What I'm doing has nothing to do with you, with our friendship."
What friendship? 1 feel as if I don't even know you anymore. You leave money around my house as if I'm nothing more than the damn maid. I don't remember the last time we ate a meal together. You never talk to me.
You're so obsessed with this damn book. You see what's happened to Pat Harvey. Can't you see that the same thing is happening to you?"
Abby just stared at me.
"It's as if you've made up your mind about something," I continued to plead with her. "Why won't you tell me what it is?"
"There's nothing to make up my mind about," she said quietly, pulling away from me. "Everything's already been decided."
Fielding called early Saturday morning to say there were no autopsies, and exhausted, I went back to bed. It was midmorning when I got up. After a long, hot shower I was ready to deal with Abby and see if we could somehow repair our damaged relationship.
But when I went downstairs and knocked on her door, there was no answer, and when I went out to get the paper I saw her car was gone. Irritated that she had managed to avoid me again, I put on a pot of coffee.
I was sipping my second cup when a small headline caught my attention:
WILLIAMSBURG MAN GIVEN SUSPENDED SENTENCE
Steven Spurrier had not been cuffed and hauled off to jail following his arraignment the day before as Abby had predicted, I read, horrified. He pleaded guilty to petit larceny, and because he had no prior record and had always been a law-abiding citizen of Williamsburg, he was fined one thousand dollars and had walked out of the courthouse a free man.
Everything's already been decided, Abby had said.
Is this what she had been referring to? If she knew Spurrier would be released, why would she deliberately mislead me? I left the kitchen and opened the door to her room. The bed was made, curtains drawn. Inside the bath, I noticed drops of water in the sink and the faint scent of perfume. She had not been gone long. I looked for her briefcase and tape recorder, but could not find them.
Her.38 was not in its drawer. I went through dressers until I found her notepads, hidden beneath clothes.
Sitting on the edge of the bed, I frantically flipped through them. I streaked through her days and weeks as the meaning became clearer.
What had begun as Abby's crusade to discover the.truth about the couples' murders had turned into her own ambitious obsession.
She seemed fascinated by Spurrier. If he was guilty, she was determined to make his story the focus of her book, to explore his psychopathic mind. If he was innocent, it would be "another Gainesville," she wrote, referring to the spree murders of university students in which a suspect became a household name and later turned out to be innocent. "Only it would be worse than Gainesville," she added. "Because of what the card implies."
Initially, Spurrier had repeatedly denied Abby's requests for interviews. Then late last week, she had tried again and he had picked up the phone. He had suggested they meet after the arraignment, telling her his attorney had "made a deal."
"He said he had read my stories in the Post over the years," Abby had scribbled, "and had recalled my byline from when I was in Richmond. He remembered what I had written about Jill and Elizabeth, too, and remarked that they were 'nice girls' and he'd always hoped the cops would get the 'psycho.' He also knew about my sister, said he'd read about her murder.
That's the reason he finally agreed to talk to me, he said. He 'felt' for me, said he realized I understood what it was like to 'be a victim; because what happened to my sister made me a victim, too.
'I am a victim,' he said. 'We can talk about that. Maybe you can help me better understand what that's all about' "He suggested I come to his house Saturday morning at eleven, and I agreed, providing all interviews are exclusive. He said that was fine, he had no intention of talking to anybody else as long as I told his side. 'The truth,' as he put it. Thank you, Lord! Screw you and your book, Cliff. You lose."
Cliff Ring was writing a book about these cases, too. Dear Lord. No wonder Abby had been acting so odd.
She had lied when she had told me what was going to happen at Spurrier's arraignment. She did not want me to suspect that she planned to go to his house, and she knew such a thought would never occur to me if I assumed he would be in jail. I remembered her saying that she no longer trusted anyone. She didn't, not even me.
I glanced at my watch. It was eleven-fifteen.
Marino wasn't in, so I left a message on his pager. Then I called the Williamsburg police, and the phone rang forever before a secretary answered. I told her I needed to speak to one of the detectives immediately.
"They're all out on the street right now."
"Then let me speak to whoever's in."
She transferred me to a sergeant.
Identifying myself, I said, "You know who Steven Spurrier is."
"Can't work around here and not know that."
"A reporter is interviewing him at his house. I'm alerting you so you can make sure your surveillance teams know she's there, make sure everything's all right."
There was a long pause. Paper crinkled. It sounded as if the sergeant was eating something. Then, "Spurrier's not under surveillance anymore."
"I beg your pardon?"
"I said our guys have been pulled off."
"Why?"
I demanded.
"Now, that I don't know, Doc, been on vacation for the past-"
"Look, all I'm asking is you send a car by his house, make sure everything's all right."
It was all I could do not to scream at him.
" "Don't you worry about a thing."
His voice was as calm as a spill pond. "I'll pass it along."
I hung up as I heard a car pull in.
Abby, thank God.
But when I looked out the window, it was Marino.
I opened the front door before he could ring the bell.
"Was in the area when I got your message on the beeper, so I - "
"Spurrier's house!"
I grabbed his arm. "Abby's there! She's got her gun!"
The sky had turned dark and it was raining as Marino and I sped east on 64. Every muscle in my body was rigid. My heart would not slow down.
"Hey, relax," Marino said as we turned off at the Colonial Williamsburg exit. "Whether the cops are watching him or not, he ain't stupid enough to touch her: Really, you know that. He ain't going to do that."
There was only one vehicle in sight when we turned onto Spurrier's quiet street.
"Shit," Marino muttered under his breath.
Parked on the street in front of Spurrier's house was a black Jaguar.
"Pat Harvey," I said. "Oh, God."
He slammed on the brakes.
"Stay here."
He was out of the car as if he had been ejected, running up the driveway in the pouring rain. My heart was pounding as he pushed the front door open with his foot, revolver in hand, and disappeared inside.
The doorway was empty when suddenly he filled it again. He stared in my direction, yelling something I could not hear.
I got out of the car, rain soaking my clothes as I ran.
I smelled the burnt gunpowder the instant I entered the foyer.
"I've called for help," Marino said, eyes darting around. "Two of them are in there."
The living room was to the left.
He was hurrying up the stairs leading to the second story as photographs of Spurrier's house crazily flashed in my mind. I recognized the glass coffee table and saw the revolver on top of it. Blood was pooled on the bare wood floor beneath Spurrier's body, a second revolver several feet away. He was facedown, inches from the gray leather couch where Abby lay on her side. She stared at the cushion beneath her cheek through drowsy, dull eyes, the front of her pale blue blouse soaked bright red.
For an instant I didn't know what to do, the roaring inside my head as loud as a windstorm. I squatted beside Spurrier, blood spilling and seeping around my shoes as I rolled him over. He was dead, shot through the abdomen and chest.
I hurried to the couch and felt Abby's neck. There was no pulse. I turned her on her back and started CPR, but her heart and lungs had given up too long ago to remember what they were supposed to do. Holding her face in my hands, I felt her warmth and smelled her perfume as sobs welled up and shook me uncontrollably.
Footsteps on the hardwood floor did not register until I realized they were too light to be Marino's.
I looked up as Pat Harvey lifted the revolver off the coffee table.
I stared wide-eyed at her, my lips parting.
"I'm sorry."
The revolver shook as she pointed it in my direction.
"Mrs. Harvey."
My voice stuck in my throat, hands frozen in front of me, stained with Abby's blood.
"Please…"
"Just stay there."
She backed up several steps, lowering the gun a little. For some bizarre reason it occurred to me she was wearing the same red windbreaker she had worn to my house.
"Abby's dead," I said.
Pat Harvey didn't react, her face ashen, eyes so dark they looked black. "I tried to find a phone. He doesn't have any phones."
"Please put, the gun down."
"He did it. He killed my Debbie. He killed Abby."
Marino, I thought. Oh, God, hurry! "Mrs. Harvey, it's over. They're dead. Please put the gun down. Don't make it worse."
"It can't be worse."
"That's not true. Please listen to me."
"I can't be here anymore," she said in the same flat tone.
"I can help you. Put the gun down. Please," I said, getting up from the couch as she raised the gun again.
"No," I begged, realizing what she was going to do.
She pointed the muzzle at her chest as I lunged toward her.
"Mrs. Harvey! No!"
The explosion knocked her back and she staggered, dropping the revolver. I kicked it away and it spun slowly, heavily, across the smooth wood floor as her legs buckled. She reached for something to hold on to, but nothing was there. Marino was suddenly in the room, exclaiming "Holy shit!"
He held his revolver in both hands, muzzle pointed at the ceiling. Ears ringing, I was trembling all over as I knelt beside Pat Harvey. She lay on her side, knees drawn, clutching her chest.
"Get towels!"
I moved her hands out of the way and fumbled with her clothing. Untucking her blouse and pushing up her brassiere, I pressed bunched cloth against the wound below her left breast. I could hear Marino cursing as he rushed out of the room.
"Hold on," I whispered, applying pressure so the small hole would not suck in air and collapse the lung.
She was squirming and began to groan.
"Hold on," I repeated as sirens wailed from the street.
Red light pulsed through blinds covering the living room windows, as if the world outside Steven Spurrier's house were on fire.